Overall I listened to 19178 tracks in 2007, which is back up near my 2005 number, after being down to 15988 in 2006.

Then, two lists. First, the list of 2007 releases that I listened to, cut off at 5 listens to match my arbitrary cut-off from last year. It could be used as a rough approximation of my “Best of 2007″ list, but only as a last resort, since even pro-rated play-count for the year is still only one part of the “best” equation.

That gives me a list of only 17 albums, ranging from 4 to 12.5 listens. Last year, I had 31 albums, ranging from 4 to 17.7 listens. So for some reason I spent a LOT more time last year listening to current-year releases than I did this year. Especially when you factor in that I had more overall listens this year.

This point is emphasized by my second list, which is the list of non-2007 releases that I listened to. This year, the first item on List 2 would be #1 on List 1, whereas last year, my top List 2 release would have been #11 on List 1. In other words, my most-listened-to album in 2007 was a 2006 album, whereas that wasn’t even close to happening in 2006.

I guess that must be saying that 2007 was a “bad year” for me. Or, 2006 was an exceptionally good year.

On the other hand, List 2 contained 37 albums 2006, but only 21 this year. The relative shortness of both lists this year makes it seem like I just listened to less music overall, even though the total numbers contradict that. The only explanation I can come up with is that I spent a lot of time at work this year listening to music on “Shuffle By Album”. If I’m consciously picking albums, I probably tend to think of albums that I’ve listened to recently, so that means my listens get concentrated on a relatively small subset of my collection. But if I let iTunes choose from my collection randomly, that means a lot of my listening time goes to the deeper and older parts of my collection, and it ends up being spread out more. So I probably had a lot more albums this year with 1 or 2 listens than I did last year. But I should probably run a report to check that, to make sure these anomalies aren’t just an error in my scripts somewhere.

Listens to 2007 Albums
===================================================
Grinderman - Grinderman - 12.5
Agua de Annique - Air - 10.8
Rotting Christ - Theogonia - 9.4
Nightwish - Dark Passion Play - 9.2
Novembre - The Blue - 8.8
Mael Mórdha - Gealtacht Mael Mórdha - 6.3
Alcest - Souvenirs d’un autre Monde - 6.3
Baroness - Red Album - 6.1
Aesma Daeva - Dawn of the New Athens - 6.1
Yearning - Merging Into Landscapes - 6.1
Thurisaz - Circadian Rhythm - 5.9
Primordial - To The Nameless Dead - 5.4
Iced Earth - Framing Armageddon - 4.9
In Vain - The Latter Rain - 4.5
Therion - Gothic Kabbalah - 4.3
Tomahawk - Anonymous - 4.2
Helloween - Gambling With The Devil - 4

Listens to non-2007 Albums
==================================================
Disillusion - Gloria - 14.6
Rodrigo y Gabriela - Rodrigo y Gabriela - 11.9
Gotan Project - Lunático - 10.6
Aghora - Formless - 10.2
Shearwater - Palo Santo - 9.6
Estradasphere - Palace of Mirrors - 9.1
Califone - Heron King Blues - 8.9
Cursive - Happy Hollow - 8.7
Red Sparowes - Every Red Heart Shines Towards the Red Sun - 8
Tyr - Eric The Red - 7.9
Aterciopelados - Oye - 7.8
Disillusion - Back To Times Of Splendor - 7.2
Arcturus - Sideshow Symphonies - 6.7
The Gathering - Souvenirs - 6.5
Isis - Oceanic - 6.2
I - Between Two Worlds - 6.1
Chingon - Mexican Spaghetti Western - 6
Saturnus - Veronika Decides To Die - 6
Negura Bunget - OM - 6
The Dresden Dolls - Yes, Virginia - 5.9
Calexico - Feast Of Wire - 5.9
Hammers Of Misfortune - The Locust Years - 5.8
Dengue Fever - Escape From Dragon House - 5.7
Solefald - Red For Fire - An Icelandic Odyssey Part I - 5
Blind Guardian - A Twist In The Myth - 5
Silent Stream Of Godless Elegy - Relic Dances - 5
Novembre - Dreams d’Azur - 5
Kultur Shock - We Came To Take Your Jobs Away - 5
Noumena - Absence - 5
Ours - Distorted Lullabies - 5
Maudlin Of The Well - Bath - 5
In The Woods… - Omnio - 5
Dir en grey - Withering To Death. - 4.9
Tabla Beat Science - Live in San Francisco at Stern Grove - 4.9
Grey Skies Fallen - The Fate Of Angels - 4.9
Del Castillo - Brotherhood - 4.9
Compilation - Ethiopiques 4: Ethio Jazz & Musique Instrumentale, 1969-1974 - 4.9
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus - 4.9
Peeping Tom - Peeping Tom - 4.9
Dredg - Catch Without Arms - 4.8
Orphaned Land - Mabool - 4.4
The Old Dead Tree - The Perpetual Motion - 4.4
Ambulette - The Lottery - 4.4
Helloween - Chameleon - 4.4
On Thorns I Lay - Orama - 4.3
Novembre - Materia - 4.3
Sigh - Gallows Gallery - 4.3
Enid - Seelenspiegel - 4.2
Gamma Ray - Sigh No More - 4.2
Novembre - Classica - 4.1
Oceansize - Effloresce - 4.1
Rotting Christ - Triarchy Of The Lost Lovers - 4.1
Enslaved - Blodhemn - 4
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads - 4
Rage - Black In Mind - 4
Dead Silent Slumber - Entombed In The Midnight Hour - 4
Demonoid - Riders of the Apocalypse - 4
Skyclad - A Semblance Of Normality - 4
Gamma Ray - Insanity And Genius - 4
Alice In Chains - MTV Unplugged - 4
Skyclad - The Answer Machine? - 4
Primordial - Storm Before Calm - 4
Helloween - Pink Bubbles Go Ape - 4
Novembre - Novembrine Waltz - 4
Intronaut - Void - 4
Rotting Christ - A Dead Poem - 4
Searing Meadow - Corroding from Inside - 4
Agalloch - Pale Folklore - 4

In an effort to practice what I preach, I designed and built a new music-listening system for myself around the beginning of the year. It’s been in use for a while now, so I thought I’d post a report on it, particularly in light of my other posts today. The overall goal is to wean myself off physical CDs.

First, I’ll describe my old system. There are basically three places that I listen to music: my house, at work, and in my car. I don’t use headphones in my house, and only rarely carry music portably.

My House: I have a fairly standard home stereo system (floor-standing speakers, 5-disc CD changer) in the main room of my house, which has an open floor plan. Whether I’m in the “living room” or the kitchen, that’s what I use to listen to music at home. At the side of the room I have my 2 CD racks holding approximately 800 CDs. Like most people, when I wanted to listen to music, I’d pull something off the rack and put it in the CD player and listen. I’d rarely use the CD-changer capability.

At Work: I have a small stereo system on my desk in the office, and am lucky enough to be able to listen to music all day. Every morning, I would choose ten CDs from my rack at home and carry them into work, listen to them throughout the day, and then bring them home.

In the car: I don’t drive all that much or that far, so I just grab a CD or two off the rack whenever I know I’m going to be out for a while.

Now, to the new system.

Read the rest of this entry »

Take your pick for the topic of this post once you read the whole thing.

I recently got three new DVD-Audio discs, which contain 5.1-channel surround-sound mixes. They are:

Porcupine Tree - “In Absentia”
Bruce Dickinson - “Balls to Picasso”
Megadeth - “Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying?”

I had read that the Porcupine Tree represented a new reference standard in high-definition surround-sound audio, so I was really looking forward to that. I hadn’t been able to find any opinions about the other two, so I had no idea what to expect from them.

I listened to all three of them in their entirety. I thought the Porcupine Tree sounded amazing, both in fidelity, and in the multi-channel mixing. It was everything I expected it to be.

The Dickinson sounded rather strange, the sound quality was worse than the CD, but it was kind of interesting because it was something different, and really gave a new tone to the album. The surround mix seemed decent if not as adventurous as the PT, although I thought it was strange that the guitar solos were put in the left front speaker. I might expect that with Maiden and their two-guitar attack, but it seemed weird here. None of that surprised me though, because it wasn’t mixed by a known surround-sound mixer, and I figured it was just crapped out in a hurry because Sanctuary wanted to get a bunch of DVD-Audios out.

I’d never really heard the Megadeth on CD before, but it sounded about exactly what I’d expect a 1986 recording to sound like.

So last night I was messing with my DVD player, and I discovered something interesting. I had the 6-channel connections between the player and my receiver completely mixed up! The rear surround speakers were fine. The front center and front left were switched, and much worse, the right front speaker and subwoofer were switched!

And I still thought the Porcupine Tree sounded great. Yikes! Was it because I was expecting it to sound great, because I’m a moron? I’m guessing it’s the former, but then I’m probably a bit biased. Or was it because it actually did sound great even with everything messed up?

I listened to a bit of the Dickinson with the connections fixed, and it sounded a LOT better. I haven’t re-listened to the others yet, but I’ll give a better review when I do that.

After reading about this several times here and thus having on my list for a long time, I finally got around to buying it. It was an iTunes purchase, and it worked out really nicely. I was sitting around yesterday trying to decide what I wanted to listen to next, and was thinking of something sort of modern-ish and new-Anathema-like, but I didn’t want to listen to Anathema. So I suddenly remembered that I’d seen “El Cielo” put in that category of music, I hopped to the iTunes store and was listening to the album probably less than a minute later as it started downloading. It was $9.99 for the album, and I think that’s an instant kind of service that’s pretty hard to beat any other way. Even downloading it from an illegal source would have taken a good bit longer and been more work.

Anyway, I only listened to it once, but it sounds pretty cool. If I was to compare unexpected major-label pseudo-prog-rock releases, I think I’ll probably end up liking this one more than The Mars Volta.

The one thing that surprised me though is that I’ve never seen anyone compare the album to Katatonia (and I checked the archive!) To me, it sounds quite similar to “Last Fair Deal Gone Down”, although it does seem to have more tonal variety across the album. I can certainly hear the modern-Anathema comparisions too, which is a good thing. iTunes also has “A Natural Disaster” available, I’m still deciding if I should take the chance on that one.

After reading about this several times here and thus having on my list for a long time, I finally got around to buying it. It was an iTunes purchase, and it worked out really nicely. I was sitting around yesterday trying to decide what I wanted to listen to next, and was thinking of something sort of modern-ish and new-Anathema-like, but I didn’t want to listen to Anathema. So I suddenly remembered that I’d seen “El Cielo” put in that category of music, I hopped to the iTunes store and was listening to the album probably less than a minute later as it started downloading. It was $9.99 for the album, and I think that’s an instant kind of service that’s pretty hard to beat any other way. Even downloading it from an illegal source would have taken a good bit longer and been more work.

Anyway, I only listened to it once, but it sounds pretty cool. If I was to compare unexpected major-label pseudo-prog-rock releases, I think I’ll probably end up liking this one more than The Mars Volta.

The one thing that surprised me though is that I’ve never seen anyone compare the album to Katatonia (and I checked the archive!) To me, it sounds quite similar to “Last Fair Deal Gone Down”, although it does seem to have more tonal variety across the album. I can certainly hear the modern-Anathema comparisions too, which is a good thing. iTunes also has “A Natural Disaster” available, I’m still deciding if I should take the chance on that one.

I’ve had this album for years, and listened to it infrequently over that time. I always thought it had one or two really good songs, but the whole thing kinda bored me.

But damn, I just had a hell of a listening experience with it. What a powerful and epic sound, and that’s just the singer’s voice! Epic doom metal would be the word for it I guess, with a bit of death thrown in there. Some even reminded me a bit of Opeth, although not too much. And the closing title track….simply beautiful.

With this, November’s Doom, and While Heaven Wept, maybe I’m *finally* learning to appreciate doom after all these years. Although I just listened to Solitude Aeturnus’s “Through the Darkest Hour”, and that still bored the crap out of me…..

Just a goofy dream (in the most literal sense) that I had:

Iron Maiden was playing at some sort of college auditorium. Not an arena-sized place, but it could probably hold at least 5000 people. It was pretty packed, and I got there kinda late (I believe I had been looking for a class I was supposed to be attending), so my spot wasn’t that great. Maiden came out and started kicking ass, but almost immediately, people started getting bored and flooding out of the place. Me and my friends took the opportunity to go right up to the front of the stage, which was much closer than you could normally get at a Maiden show these days. By that time, there were probably about 15 people left, all in a single row at the front of the stage, but half of them were looking pretty bored too. Maiden was still giving their all though. Apparently Maiden was opening for Iced Earth (?), so I remember wondering if everyone was just unimpressed by the opening act, and if they’d all come back for the headliner. I never got to find out, because after about another song, I got bored too, and decided to leave. As I was riding away on my bike and winding through campus, I could clearly hear them start to play Bruce Dickinson’s “Gypsy Road”. That’s one of my favorite songs from Bruce, so I was pretty pissed that I had left and couldn’t go back. Plus, if Maiden was playing Bruce Dickinson songs, who knew what other kind of cool shit they’d have in the setlist? Luckily, I had no problem hearing the entire song, even though I continued riding away from the venue. At one point, I passed a guy who was walking and singing along to the song, but he had some of the lyrics wrong, so I corrected him.

Yep, that was about it!

Instead of just listing my top 20 albums of 2001, I’m going to list all the 2001 albums I’ve bought up until now. It turns out I bought 47 CDs from 2001 (which is down from previous years) and if forced to rank them in some order, this is how I’d do it.

I’m starting with my least favorite albums at the top, and will continue until I get to my most favorite albums at the bottom. So if you just want to hear about the albums I really like (which is probably the more useful endeavor), feel free to scroll straight to the end. As usual, there’s nothing set-in-stone about this list, and if you asked me to remake the list today, the same album could easily differ by five places or more. I wrote some comments about each album, but they generally aren’t very descriptive in nature; they’re more in the form of comparisons to other works, or simply semi-related ramblings that popped into my head. So if you have any questions about any of the bands/albums, feel free to ask!

Ok, on with it!

Read the rest of this entry »

Anathema - A Fine Day to Exit: At first listen, I recognized the first track (”Pressure”) from the Milwaukee Metalfest; it’s an excellent song, and the rest of the album sounded pretty blah compared to it. After a few more listens, I really started to like the final track (A Temporary Peace) as well, making for an album of blah sandwiched between two great songs. But I kept listening, and the greatness of the bookends bled in towards the middle, and now I think the whole thing is a very fine album. Definitely very relaxed and very un-metal, the only uptempo and heavy song is really more punk than metal. It probably won’t top Judgement, but it makes an extremely strong set of three consecutive albums from Anathema.

Evereve - E-Mania: Finally got my hands on this Massacre Records title. It’s fairly similar to their previous album (Regret), which means it’s again quite a bit different than their first two. But I think it’s a definite improvement over Regret. In a nutshell, it’s rather heavy yet danceable goth-metal. It’s mainly “goth” just because of the clean, low-to-midrange vocals, which come from a “new” singer (the band’s keyboard player and founding member) who sounds remarkably similar to their previous singer. Musically, it’s quite a bit more ambitious than the “goth” label suggests. Not necessarily in structure, but in instrumental flavor. Every instrument plays an important role, with keyboards and guitars especially adding constant blasts of color into the basic mix, blasts of ever-changing tone and style. Drumming is also unexpectedly complex, and the bass provides a fat bottom end. I’d say if you’re curious what Samael’s Eternal might sound like with different vocals, this is for you.

Sleepless - Winds Blow Higher: Here’s a band from Israel, but they don’t sound like Orphaned Land, and they aren’t even really metal. They’re definitely dark though, and The End’s “Tiamat, Ulver, and Pink Floyd” comparison is pretty much dead on. That would be Perdition City-era Ulver, in case you’re wondering. However, there’s a more direct, if much more obscure comparison: the band is surprisingly similar to Maudlin of the Well, if you take out all their heavy parts. The arrangements are generally very sparse, but surprisingly musical. And they manage to pack in a lot of different instrumentation when you aren’t looking. One of the main highlights is a lot of lead bass playing, much of it fretless. There isn’t a lot of guitar, but there is some sax, flute, classical guitar, and a good bit of synth electronics, although the album maintains a very organic feel. There are a couple parts where the music suddenly becomes heavier, and even though it’s still somewhat subdued, the juxtaposition makes the effect very intense. Cool stuff.

Borknagar - Empiricism: It’s so crazy how this band started off as a “supergroup”, and now, with completely new members from it’s original days, it’s probably the most “super” metal band ever. Look at all the bands just one degree away: Vintersorg, Otyg, Havayoth, Solefald, Emperor, Satyricon, Spiral Architect, Enslavement of Beauty, Dodheimsgard, and probably some more I’m forgetting. Anyway, Borknagar continue their tradition of putting one amazing song on each album that greatly overshadows all the rest. Previously they were “The Dawn of the End”, “Ad Noctum”, and “The Presence is Ominous”; this time it’s “Genesis Torn”. However, this time the shadow cast might not be as dark as before. The rest of the album seems filled with pretty good songs, the music is probably the most ambitious they’ve done so far, the sound is considerably more open than Quintessence, and I have a hard time deciding which of Vintersorg’s vocal styles (clean or growled) are more impressive. So that’s good.

I ordered 7 CDs from The End Records last Wednesday, got them on Friday.
They were out of stock on one of them (Dusk), but as usual their service
was top-notch. 6 CDs for $60. I imagine you could pay that much for
only three CDs at a mall store, with the only difference being the mall
store CDs wouldn’t be nearly as cool.

Misanthrope - Immortal Misanthrope: Yeah! With their fifth album,
it seems like Misanthrope has continued with their streak of improving
with every album. And no, their first album doesn’t suck. Anyway, it
continues pretty much where their last album (Libertine Humiliations)
left off: Avant-garde melodic death metal, albeit less avant-garde than
in their early days but still very unique. Think Dark Tranquillity’s
“Haven” with twice the speed, twice the intensity, four times the synths,
and a bit more showmanship. Would have most likely been near the top
of my “best of 2000″ list if I had gotten it in 2000.

Odes of Ecstasy - Deceitful Melody: Somewhat different than what I was
expecting, since dweeb kept describing it as “festive”. Thus I was thinking
it would be something pretty happy, but it’s really mostly in line
with their first album, just maybe a bit more developed. Basically it’s
beauty & the beast metal, with a good emphasis on “metal” rather than
“goth”, which is how I like it. I also like how they sneak in a creepy
song near the end of the album like they did on their first one.

Love History - Anasazi: A Czech band, which, as far as I can tell,
automatically makes them good. They have the characteristic sound that
all Czech bands I’ve heard seem to have; it’s very hard to describe,
but I really like it. All types of singing (male, female, growls),
a solid metal base, and things just seem to be written and played more
creatively than most bands. But it’s not creativity just to be different,
it seems like their natural way of writing music. Cross Root’s The
Book with Forgotten Silence’s Senyaan, and you’ll get something
pretty close to Anasazi.

Enid - Abschiedsreigen: From The End’s description and the sound clip,
I was expecting something similar to Angizia: piano/keyboard-led classically
influenced music with a Germanic touch. It’s that, but more. Unlike
Angizia, it gets both fast and heavy, sometimes sounding something like
a cross between Haggard and Dimmu Borgir (ok, maybe that’s a stretch).
Very interesting.

Let Me Dream - Greyscales: The End called them “Uptempo death rock with
growly and clean vocals” which sounded good to me, and Dark Symphonies
saying the album was a must for Vintersorg/Havayoth fans sealed it for
me. It doesn’t really sound like Vintersorg or Havayoth; rather, it falls
somewhere in between. It’s covered with Havayoth-like synths, has a
mix of black, rough-sung, and Viking-style vocals, and pretty much a
solid metal base. It does sound Finnish, since it’s Finnish.

Dawnbringer - Catharsis Instinct: American band playing melodic death
metal, perhaps with the goal of sounding Swedish, but thankfully since
they aren’t Swedish, they’re unsuccessful at that. If they had a clean
singer they might be called an American power metal band (like Iced Earth,
Nevermore), but their growler, even though he’s very low in the mix,
takes them out of that category. I think all of the interesting and
creative riffs will help this one stand out from the pack a bit.

==========

Now, the CDs I got from Napster. I figured it out how to get it running
at work this week, so it was my first time actually trying it out. I
downloaded 3 albums, and I fully intend to buy at least two of them.
Since my players at home and work can read CD-RWs, it makes it pretty
nice because I can just burn a temporary copy until I buy the real thing,
or just erase it if I don’t like it. The only reason I bothered to
get these albums is because it’s easier than it is to get a hold of the
real versions. Since I don’t have golden ears, I can’t really tell the
difference between high-quality mp3s burned to CD and real CDs, and thus, I
would gladly just pay the record companies to download the songs from them.
Unfortunately, there’s no one ready to accept my money yet, so I’ll have
to eventually pay them the old-fashioned way. Obviously I realize not
everyone feels the same way as I do, which is why Napster is such a big
problem. Anyway, it was interesting to actually try out Napster finally.
Here’s what I got:

Skyclad - Folkemon: This one grabbed me immediately, unlike the last two
Skyclad albums (which have never completely grabbed me). At first I
thought it must be a whole lot different than Vintage Whine, but upon
going back to VW, I realized it’s pretty similar. The difference
seems to be in the energy, which is just bursting out of Folkemon. I’d
say it combines the style and heaviness of Silent Whales… with the
attitude and vibe of Oui Avant Garde a Chance. It might become
one of my favorite Skyclad albums.

Helloween - The Dark Ride: Yet another winner from Helloween. As usual,
they make steps forward and do something different, while still hanging
on to bits of what they’ve done before. Cool atmosphere, and it’s
Deris’s least-annoying performance yet, as he uses a lot of his lower
range and does a lot of cool whispering.

Opeth - Blackwater Park: Ok, I’ve only listened to it once, which is a
stupid time to say anything about an Opeth album, but I’ll say something
anyway. So far it’s pretty much what I expected. Which is something not
too exciting, and something that sounds very familiar. Sure, it’s well
played and well produced, but I don’t really hear anything significantly
different than what they’ve done on their last two albums. The change
between Morningrise and My Arms, Your Hearse was huge, but since then
it seems like they’ve just been doing the same thing. What I would love
to hear is where Opeth would go next if they were to make another stylistic
change similar in magnitude to their first one. But the band seems happy
treading water, or maybe that’s just what happens when you quickly churn out
album after album. I guess if you loved Still Life, you’ll love this too.
Me, I’ll give it plenty more chances to grow on me, but I think at its best
it can only stand as the most refined variation on a theme rather than an
outright masterpiece like Morningrise.