Rounding up to move on: James Blake, Hype Williams, Teengirl Fantasy

Once again it has been too long since my last post. I am my own worst enemy.

To ease myself back in, here are a few nuggets of audio joy, all of which I have been rinsing this week through my fucking awesome new soundcard. Even with lame Logitech speakers the following tunes sound heavy like a first day period, as Janet Jackson once said.

#1

James Blake, 'Wilhelm's Scream'


[Had to choose a different video as the Radio 1 version is too wide]

This looped refrain has been pulsing through my brain on and off for the past week now, but the real joy is when I get home and stick it on and am reminded of how damn classy and 'mature' the production is. A lot of people seem a bit surprised/confused at the sound of JB's album, which is so sparse it makes the XX sound like Wild Beasts, but after you get over your initial shock at how many moments of pure silence there are, you start to warm up to all the little production treats scattered throughout. Not to mention his voice - one of my favourite games over the past couple of months has been informing people that 'Limit To Your Love' is not a sampled vocal...

Also I have to briefly boast about seeing James Blake at Plan B last Friday, which @Dummymag pointed out was pretty much a 'We were there' moment. Again, the voice is proper spine-tingly live, plus hearing the bass out of the venue's Funktion One's made 'Limit To Your Love' a quite literally visceral experience. Excited to hear that he's planning a residency in February at a church in King's Cross.

# 2

Hype Williams, 'Rescue Dawn'



Yes, yes, I know hipsters were on this 4real like waaay back in 2010 but I haven't blogged for ages, 'kay? So I've been listening to the elusive duo's album (released on De Stijl) for a while now, having been slipped the promo ages ago and utterly failing to act upon it. It's called Find Out What Happens When People Stop Being Polite, And Start Gettin Reel.

Initially the whole concept of Hype Williams made me feel a bit sicky, partly because of the extreme alt.coolness of it all, with its pixellated visuals and anti-aesthetic aesthetic. Strong Dalston vibes emanate throughout, combined with not so much the 3am night bus atmosphere we've had from so many great records of 2008-10, but more a 7am 'oh my God, why am I still awake' feeling, which marries perfectly with the dubious 'hypnagogic pop' label defined by David Keenan of the Wire (hypnagogic meaning the state between awake and asleep). See also, #3 of this post.

Also, something about the warmth of the warped cassette effects, twisted vocals and repetitive infinite loopiness all came together to take me back to being a carsick 7-year-old on the way to Gatwick at sunrise (really). In particular I recall a tape we had in the Renault 21 of Chris Rea's Road to Hell, the cover of which most chillwave bands would kill to have come up with, and which had some sort of profound effect on my developing only-child psyche as it whirred round on its own infinite loop. Listening to the opening track of that album now, I think I get it. It's amazing.

Anyway, Hype Williams' woozy conveyor belt of barely there vocals and distant reverbed drums finally sank in just before Christmas and I learned to accept the fear and love them anyway. I also really enjoy the track names, which sound like placeholder project titles on Logic that they never bothered changing ('Rescue Dawn', 'Rescue Dawn 3', 'Untitled'). It adds to the digital-DIY feel of their of pixellated home videos, which of course works in perfect ironical symmetry with the band name.

#3

Teengirl Fantasy, 'Make The Move'



Yes, I KNOW, I know you've heard them and that 'Cheaters' was Fact mag's top song of 2010, I know all this. But I haven't blogged for a while and I'm seeing them at White Light tomorrow. After being informed that I missed the best show evah at XOYO a few months ago, where they supported Oneohtrix Point Never, I am looking forward to catching up. Sadly Becoming Real has now been demoted to DJ support, when I was expecting a live set of some kind. I dunno, a lot of new artists are having trouble working out how to do show-and-tell with their music now that everyone is a bedroom producer. Do you just bring in loads of musicians and mates to trigger sequencers and hit floor toms? Er, apparently so. But it seems a bit pointless. I applaud James Blake for having found a way round it (i.e. playing piano and singing, with live drums and a bit of looping thrown in).

So Teengirl Fantasy: another 7am 'why am I still awake' album, so much so that it's actually called 7AM. This time I don't feel carsick, just blissed out and over-tired. To me, this kind of beautiful glitchy techy music has a sort of cleansing quality to it, as though all those modulated crackles and stutters are washing out my furred-up insides like ice cubes spiked with bleach, or sugar-free lemonade... am I over-emoting that? Probably. But that's one of the pleasures of dancing about architecture, don't you think?

Enjoy!

What Difference Does It Make?: We can save 6Music, but not our universities

A small warning. Some political comments follow.

In a Guardian blog yesterday, Dan Hancox, a writer who's groped the muddy underbelly of politics before, lambasted Britain's music industry elite for sitting on their hands throughout the student-led campaign against education cuts.

He pointed out that the campaign to save BBC 6Music, the digital radio station threatened with closure last year, was backed by dozens, and then hundreds of well-known figures in the industry - Lauren Laverne, Jarvis Cocker, David Bowie, Emily Eavis and more. A huge internet campaign and reams of column inches eventually gained so much momentum that The Man changed his mind and The People got their music back.

The People, in this case, being exactly the population segment you'd also expect to be miffed about enormous cuts to education and the arts: middle-class, indie-loving, media-savvy 18-40 year olds, in Dan's words. So why aren't they standing up for the big picture stuff, which is just as likely to affect them in the long-term as the closure of a radio station?

My guess is this. They are just about media-savvy and educated enough to know that the British government see its citizens as little more than bots, with two functions. Press up and down to pay tax. Press left and right to vote. Game over.

As one of the commenters pointed out, the situation is different in some regards. The 6Music campaign was small, manageable, essentially apolitical. Nearly everyone agreed that the Beeb needed to cut executive and celebrity pay cheques, potentially saving millions, and then nearly everyone was baffled when the corporation choose to bring the axe down on a low-cost, niche radio station that provides a unique service to a small but loyal group of listeners (one that could never be matched by the commercial sector).

So The People made their voice heard, backed by celebs and media-savvy types, and the BBC decided to listen to the licence fee-payers and retain 6Music.

Success! Power to the people! Or is it?

The BBC is essentially publicly funded, as very few people do not have a television. If you have a telly, you have to pay the licence fee. But it is a choice, a service. We are essentially consumers in this transaction (as a horrified Reith turns in his grave). In fact, you don't even have to pay the licence fee to listen to 6Music - you just have to live in the UK.

Education is also publicly funded, largely - a proportion of our tax goes towards it. That proportion may change, but the principle remains the same. But you are not a consumer of government; taxes are mandatory and the way they are spent is chosen on behalf of you as a citizen. You can't cherry pick your service; there is no free market of competing governments from which you select your favourite, red or blue. Democracy involves compromise, essentially. Your vote is counted (press left, press right) and then you can like or lump the results.

Christ. Does that sound right to you? Is that what democracy is all about, in the end? The sacred D-word that took us to Iraq, Afghanistan and back?

Look at the BBC. I know the Beeb is unique because of the way it is funded, I remember the old idents, but come on - it isn't a principality. The licence fee is not a tax, because it's bloody optional. Throw away your TV if you don't like it (I'm simplifying here, but bear with me). And yet, even as consumers, we were able to shout loudly and get things done the way we wanted them done - and save 6Music. We would have paid the licence fee anyway, most of us, yet the BBC listened.

Now compare that with the way the government operates. This government in particular is all about 'choice', it seems. But no one can choose not to pay their taxes. (Well, except Vodafone. And Topshop. And Barclays. And...)

So we're not buying a service here. We are deeply involved in the running of this service as citizens, not consumers. We shouldn't be fobbed off with a sneer or teased with promises, broken promises and backtracking. 'You pays your money, you takes your choice', they shrug. But that is exactly what true democracy should not be.

What happens when a few hundred media bods and a few thousand music fans run an online campaign to save a radio station, mostly via a petition and some celebs mouthing off?

And what happens when hundreds, then thousands of students, school pupils, teachers, parents and ordinary citizens march through the streets, occupy their classrooms, make banners, wave flags, stage flash mobs in high street stores and invade a political party's headquarters?

The BBC ends up looking a hundred times more democratic, open and progressive than the Liberal Democrats, or contemporary British politics, could ever hope to be.

Apparently Jarvis Cocker will be speaking at the demonstration in central London tomorrow, but somehow I don't think David Cameron will be paying much attention. If only someone could persuade Morrissey to lead the troops down Whitehall...

Coming live from a distant subwoofer: Local Natives at the Forum, 23rd Nov 2010

From London Student, December 2010

Even avoiding my usual two-for-one cocktail deal up the road, there is just no getting past the fact that the sound quality at one of London's few remaining mid-sized venues is utterly, unforgivably woeful. Think of the bands who have played here this year – Jόnsi, Wolf Parade, Liquid Liquid, Einstürzende Neubauten – and it seems bonkers that the Forum can get away with this half-arsed set-up; a feeble rig aimed straight into the ears of the front row and no further.

Local Natives' particular brand of finely balanced and tightly harmonised indie, like a cheerier Grizzly Bear or Fleet Foxes, is treated with asbestos mittens by the muddifying speakers. Standing in what should be a prime spot, 10 rows back and smack in the middle, the L.A. band's set comes off like listening to their precocious debut, Gorilla Manor, through a single subwoofer.

But! Local Natives are bigger than this sonic set-back. Their amazing too-tidy harmonies and fractured afro-popisms almost crave the shitty sound to make the thing sound like a live performance at all, so tight and polished is their set – but whereas a Grizzly Bear show leaves you open-mouthed at the fidelity to the record, Local Natives reanimate their songs with a welcome dash of vim and vigour.

The band seem genuinely chuffed to be playing their final show of 2010 here in London, where their following has grown exponentially since a tiny gig at Hoxton Bar & Kitchen in January. The unexpected disco dénouement of closer 'Sun Hands' ties up Local Natives' year just so, before they bow out gratefully to a satiated crowd.

Mescaline Hoedown: Jaill at Old Blue Last, 9th Nov 2010

From Loud and Quiet's December issue

How are we feeling about guitar rock, people? Were 60 long years enough? Can we plough this furrow every season and still get the full nutritional benefits, or will the yield be measly and blight-ridden? The answer, as the state of Wisconsin pointed out in 2008, is Yes We Can – and three Milwaukee boys in blue jeans are showing The Old Blue Last how, dripping sweat on their guitar pedals and imploring us to bring some green to the merch table after the show.

Kicking off their European tour in London, Jaill demonstrate what a provincial U.S. three-piece (the fourth member got lost in the airmail, it seems) can do with a decade of beers, tokes and psych-rock records. But if they smoke as much as they want us to think they do, the results are something of a surprise: juddering mescaline hoedown numbers (think Black Lips with a splash of Thermals) about real get-up-and-go topics like, um, shooting craps and lovin' their babies.

Jaill's parents might have made homebrew in the bathtub, but these guys just cruised around town looking for the best mini-mart deal on six-packs and Cheez Doodles. A band made in heaven for Sub Pop, who released their album That's How We Burn back in July.

The Boy with the Marling Tattoo: Regrets? I've Had A Few...

This week I saw Local Natives play their last show of the year at the Forum. I'll be posting my review of that shortly, but first I'm gonna mention a slightly odd encounter we had on the way home.

I was just saying goodbye to my friend, and as usual we were dawdling near some Tube escalators and getting into a rant, this time about the X-Factor charity single. You'd be surprised how often I get into rants deep in the Underground. Anyway, we were commenting on the Help For Heroes charity when a youngish dude started to interrupt. Usually in this situation it means I have riled or offended a passer-by with my ker-azy pinko politics and am about to get told off for expressing my opinion in the airspace of someone who holds a different one.

But this time it's just a guy, about my age, on his way back from a gig. He asks us if we know who Laura Marling is, and we say we do, and he says we look like we would (I don't know what that means). He'd been to see her that night, on his own, and had been standing right in front of the stage and had lifted his leg up there to reveal to Laura Marling a tattoo, from his ankle to halfway up his calf.

It said Laura Marling. In child-like handwriting, large, with two child-like flowers at each end.

It was not the best tattoo I'd ever seen.

The woman herself saw it and proclaimed him to be "the most chronically weird" fan ever, to which he replied that he was drunk when he got it done. So she told him he was "the coolest" fan ever. Respect to her for acknowledging him. It must be really, really odd when people you've never met ink your name on their body permanently.

So he tells us all this and explains that when he got the tattoo it had been a toss-up between Laura Marling or The Courteneers. "You probably did alright there," I tell him.

"Do you like Laura Marling?" he asks.

"Not especially. She's alright. Not really my kind of music."

"Do you like The Courteneers?"

"Um, no."

"Oh, why not? They're brilliant. Which album do you prefer? [Words to this effect. He natters on about the progression between the first and second albums, to which we can only offer two baffled but amiable expressions] I reckon Liam Fray is one of the best lyric writers there is."

"Really?"

"Don't you think so? Oh come on, he's amazing [more words to this effect]. Well, who do you rate for lyrics then?"

Obviously we go a bit blank at this. Sam chooses wisely, someone who this guy will obviously know.

"Morrissey?"

The dude is in general agreement but still rates Liam Fray up there with Moz. At this point I feel like there is not a lot I can add to the debate. He's incredibly friendly and obviously a very nice lad, if disconcertingly impulsive. He goes for the inevitable high-five and wishes us all the best, disappearing towards the Victoria line.

I can't imagine Laura Marling's fans are usually the type who'd get band tattoos done, so in a way the whole story pleases me. The sixth-form scarf-wearers were probably contorting their eyebrows at each other in that way that becomes really irritating on the other side of 18.

And it reminds me of a time that now seems almost like some other person's life, when I was barely even a teenager and plotting, with my next-door neighbour, our first tattoo - an occupation that has remained a staple, though I've never yet committed.

Which is a relief.

From the archives: ATP Nightmare Before Christmas 2009

Five postcards from Butlins

#1 In the main pavilion, Warren Ellis jerks his stiltskin leg out at right angles, ducking and swooping with violin tucked under chin. Dirty Three deliver a roar of sound and feeling that seems to pull the wind out of all of us listening. Almost as if he’s embarrassed to be playing music of such force and intimacy, he fills his stage banter with apocryphal anti-explanations: “This is a song about trying to get crisps out of a vending machine… but finding you have no pound coins.”

#2 A sullen, grey afternoon. We find Josh T. Pearson (later to be crowned King of Butlins by Warren Ellis) holding court on Minehead’s barren strand, his beard twitching in the salty breeze. Earlier he’d delivered his desert sermons in a gust of fire, brimstone and spittle, pleading with the angels from under his cowboy hat while spinning a sandstorm of crackled guitar.

#3 In the drizzle we spy two Horrors in capes and impractical shoes, consulting a map of the chalets. Later onstage, the monochrome ones seem to win over a typically aloof ATP audience with a set drawn solely from the kraut-gaze gloompop album of 2009, Primary Colours. Though unwilling to offer any more solid approval than a collective raised eyebrow, the crowd swells to one of the biggest of the whole weekend.

#4 Very, very late on Sunday night, Lightning Bolt are making My Bloody Valentine sound like the Shangri-Las’ kid sisters. A rumbling monstrosity fronted by some horrific, mutilated head – through the dry ice we make out a bandaged ogre, beating the terrified shit out the drums like an organ-grinder’s monkey possessed. Aural itching powder for the tired and emotional, LB stir up the only genuine thrashpit situation of the festival.

#5 And then there’s My Bloody Valentine, doing all three nights on the smaller stage because they are clearly too loud to be let out to play in the main pavilion – louder than stupid, louder than hell, Kevin Shields’ curls just a frazzled halo above his unmoving body, shrouded in smoke, the band blasting out sonic weaponry that cleaves straight through the laughable standard-issue earplugs. We give up and pull them out, and sink under the weight of pure volume.

"It's not that we want to be garish": An interview with Everything Everything

[written for London Student, October '10]

“We slide in from the epoch of Anglo American wire

And a Saxon spire, glint in the glare far above me

Put pressure on it!

She collapse me! Man alive, her every ache a baton to me!
Age of ending! Where’s the worth in proving I was here?”

- ‘Qwerty Finger’

These are the words of Everything Everything, a band who like to situate themselves outside of genre and convention, albeit with a generous nod to the catch-all of POP.

And poppy it is, if you disregard any kinship to ‘popularity’ and turn to the pop of artists Peter Blake and Eduardo Paolozzi: British eccentrics of the highest order with a taste for eclecticism, unpredictable juxtaposition and bric-a-brac display of non-sequiturs, naughty jokes and stripy jumpers. If you can take that mental image and reconfigure it as a three-minute audio experience, you are some way towards imagining Everything Everything on record, in case you’ve missed the hype and airplay the band have earned since January.

Receiving substantial support from BBC 6Music after featuring on the Beeb’s hype machine Sound of 2010 poll, the four-piece have actually spent much of this year familiarising themselves with Britain’s glorious roadside service stations. The never-ending tour is passing through London’s Scala tonight, but bassist Jeremy says he still has the stamina for splitter van life.

“Going back on the road is a bit like going back to school,” he tells me in the red gloom of the Scala bar. “Not in a bad way, but just that we know what’s gonna happen day to day, which we haven’t had for a while. It’s kind of comforting, actually.” He reels off a list of his favourite EE shows, from Reading and Leeds to their first gig abroad at a festival in Holland, but every band has one performance they’d rather forget

“Our worst gig ever remains one in a pub in Liverpool called Kelly’s Dispensary. In those days we used to just take any gig – it was very early days when we were all living in a house and rehearsing in a basement. We turned up and there was no PA and just one mic between the three of us. We were just shouting, and the bar staff kept coming over and turning our amps down! And nobody there wanted to listen to us. We were a much punkier proposition in those days,” he says.

Having polished off those rough edges, EE now find themselves on the threshold of the strange and fickle world of pop. Not that the music fans of 2010 would acknowledge a concept as retrograde as ‘genre’, flitting as we do from artist to related artist; scrobbling, blipping and sharing without a thought to the past or future. The marriage of music with the internet has given us an infinite real-time feed of single tracks from any year, label, city or genre.

But for all their name might suggest, EE aren’t necessarily a band cut of postmodern cloth. Jeremy is ambivalent about newfangled listening habits. “The great thing about it is that the music press has less influence than it used to in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when you’d open a magazine every week because you always read it, saying ‘Here’s what’s cool, here’s what to wear.’ And now younger people aren’t led by styles and genre. If you like the song, nobody’s completely loyal.”

But there are downsides for EE, whose skewed poppiness is surely made for the full-length long-player format. “It is a track-led culture, not an album-led culture. Maybe the majority of people who listen to this record aren’t going to listen to it all,” says Jeremy of their debut Man Alive. “But you can’t let that change your working processes, you don’t want to have a collection of songs that don’t have anything to do with each other, you want it to have shape. All the albums that we grew up on have that kind of feel to them,” he adds, citing classic British art-rock from OK Computer to The Holy Bible.

So will the energetic complexity of singles like the forthcoming ‘Photoshop Handsome’ be able to cut through the endless choice of tracks and more tracks, or will bands like EE lose out as listeners spend less time with full albums? “It’s kind of the industry’s fault and it’s kind of not anybody’s fault, it just happened and we have to face it,” says Jeremy, adding that their intricate music is “purely natural – it’s not that we want to be garish.”

Singer Jonathan’s lyrics often address the problems of postmodern fandom. “A lot of what he writes about is to do with information overload. Jon’s lyrics are quite hard to understand rhythmically and the way he writes is very dense. The meaning will be quite vague and then you’ll get this shaft of light, and it becomes clear.” The lyrics are opaque without a doubt, but they have a surreal beauty and depth to them that’s deeply satisfying when so many new bands are singing about smoking weed and going to the beach. It takes a certain boldness to sing lines like, “Chest pumped elegantly elephantine, southern hemisphere by Calvin Klein/ Watch your dorsal fin collapse, I know nothing about my history,” a couplet supposedly about “the limits of science, breast enhancement and corporate branding”.

But for every off-kilter line there’s a glorious pop hook, while wry politicking is balanced by eccentric joie de vivre and dirty misheard lyrics, like the now nearly infamous are-they-aren’t-they line in ‘Suffragette Suffragette’: “Whose gonna sit on your face when I’m gone? Whose gonna sit on your face when I’m not there?”

They promise they’re saying “fence”, but nothing is quite as pop as it seems in the technicolour universe of Everything Everything.

Departures

17 January 1962 – 20 October 2010

"D/R/U/G/S are good, they're from Manchester"

Tomorrow D/R/U/G/S are playing at The Nest in Dalston, formerly Barden's Boudoir. They are very much my cup of tea, at least on paper, so I'm expecting good things from the show, partly because the venue is the new project from the guy who used to run Fabric.

I'm not sure how I feel about a band called D/R/U/G/S. Initially it seems repellently Hoxtonite; later it's annoying to type; after a while you become immune to it and start saying things like this post's title when explaining the band to friends. Band name as infinitely variable gag machine. Not the first time, I s'pose, but it's a teensy bit Nathan Barley you'd have to admit (and saying that sounds hopelessly dated in itself).

At least they've updated it with the oh-so-2010 use of slashy symbols. The Guardian has noted this trend so it must have reached tipping point in certain London postcodes.

I'm going to stick my neck out a little and say that D/R/U/G/S have come up with a sound that is "original yet danceable" (my quote for the sleeve, if you will). A tricky marriage: clubbers (or 'people who go to clubs', if that makes you feel less sicky) tend to confine their appetite for experimentation to chemical and biological interactions, choosing their BPM and bass tastes long before leaving the house, home-strength Dark 'n' Stormy in hand. The aim of rave (in its earlier incarnations, especially) is to provide a steadily evolving fabric of pattern and texture that affects your brain and body in almost unconsciously felt ways, so that The Drop is that neuro-physiological pay-off used sparsely for optimum effect.

Not that I'm trying to reduce dance music to mere physical stimulant, but dance plugs directly into the spinal cord in a way the majority of popular music doesn't, which is partly the result of the bizarre circumstances we choose to experience it in (darkness, strobes, intoxication; a sanitised weekend bacchanal with only marginally less gory results).

Meanwhile, the constantly mutating strain of rave for the bedroom, for headphones, for gloomy moments staring out your bedroom window at a pavement strewn with mulchy autumn leaves, is inherently erratic, complex, less danceable. The slow builds and subtle shifts of dancefloor rave aren't necessary when you're soberly sipping tea, wearing your boyfriend's hoodie late on a Tuesday night.

And to combine those two rival aspects of danceability and intricacy is always a challenge. I think it very rarely works, but when it does it is Truly Great. Like so much of my favourite music of the past few years (Caribou, Four Tet, Luke Abbott and others whom I've written more than enough about in this blog), D/R/U/G/S appear to not only embrace complexity, variety, maximalism, bricolage, etc., they also seem to have one ear on the dancefloor, keeping the tempo up and referencing more traditional dancey sounds (like the housey vocal snippets on 'Rad Pitt').

If I elaborate anymore I might end up postulating a feeble cod-sociological explanation for the rise (or revival) of Intelligent(Intricate) Dance(floor) Music based on: the increasing costs of clubbing, alcohol, cab fares and city living; the weakening potency of 'dance drugs'; the relative affordability of home music production software; and the rise of both bedroom DJs and blogosphere tastemakers (who might typically be found in their bedrooms on Saturday nights listening to music on headphones, only prodded into dancing/blogging about dance music when that music is suitably 'headphones-y' and beard-strokey and intricate).

But it would basically be bullshit.

No More 'No More Running': Animal Collective design shoes

As the Guardian reports, Animal Collective will be giving away their next album as a cassette with a pair of "otherwise plain canvas shoes" costing $75 (£45).

Apparently all profits will be going to some kind of eco-charity project, but wouldn't the most environmentally conscious move be to release the album digitally and donate all profits to the Socorro Island Conservation Fund? I suppose they're hoping that releasing music in such a physical (and expensive) way might limit online sharing, but really it punishes hardcore fans who will pay any price for a collector's item while rewarding fair-weather listeners and illegal downloaders who'll just BitTorrent it anyway once the audiophiles have done their worst on the cassette-to-MP3 conversion.

And just to keep things interesting (and pricey), the first pair will be designed by Avey Tare. Yep, in total you can expect Geologist, Panda Bear and Deakin to all put their stamps on "otherwise plain" sneakers in the next few months at a similar price. And of course there'll be kids out there who fork out £188 for the pleasure of owning four pairs of fake-Cons/Vans, four cassettes and a tape player off eBay.

I understand that bands are finding it increasingly difficult to make money from record sales and I totally sympathise, because there's nothing that kills creativity more than keeping musicians on the road for two years solid to pay off their advance. But I don't think gimmicky, over-priced collector's items and limited editions are the answer.

Radiohead's Colin Greenwood recently reflected on this conundrum for the Index on Censorship. Excitement! Radiohead have apparently finished a new group of songs. But it sounds like they'll be coming up with another approach to releasing this album following the pay-what-you-like system they pioneered for In Rainbows three years ago.

Colin himself says: "I buy hardly any CDs now and get my music from many different sources: Spotify, iTunes, blog playlists, podcasts, online streaming - reviewing this makes me realise that my appetite for music now is just as strong as when I was 13, and how dependent I am upon digital delivery."

This pretty neatly sums up the best and worst of the dramatic shift to digital in the land of music consumption. Pro: Music from many different sources means a wider variety of music can be exposed and shared; younger music fans particularly tend to be less preoccupied with genre and more open to new sounds. Pro: Music from many different sources means MORE MUSIC. Yay! Like Colin, I reckon my appetite for music is just as strong as when I was 13. My access to music isn't mediated by a weekly magazine or what my friends listen to (my GOD, that'd be dire) but is a constant stream of suggestions and blips and scrobbles and tweets and interaction that brings me right into the industry, amazingly.

But. The con: "I buy hardly any CDs now." Alright, I know Colin is getting some of his music from iTunes or 7Digital or Bandcamp, but he is also streaming. And so am I, and so are you. Spotify, Myspace, Last.fm, Soundcloud, podcasts... all free, and that's why my appetite is just as voracious as when I was 13. It would be incredible to relive my teenage years with the kind of overwhelming access to music I now have (although perhaps not desirable. So much pressure!), but with everything free and streaming just a few clicks away, where does that leave the artist? On bloody tour, again, that's where.

And not everyone likes Ginster's Steak Slices. Especially not Animal Collective, I reckon.

To be continued...