A Dutch hi-fi website recently posted the results of a survey find the best sounding music albums. I was surprised to find two albums I own in the top 30: Trentemøller – The last resort and Elbow – The seldom seen kid. I agree that these albums sound really terrific. Last year I already wrote something about the latter album and the fact that it had embraced the TurnMeUp initiative. It is really unfortunate that not more artists do this. When I have some time, I need to listen to some of the other albums in that list. There will definitely be some more gems to discover!
Fight the loudness war: TurnMeUp
This week-end, I bought The Seldom Seen Kid, the latest album by Elbow. The album is already some time out, but I only started paying attention to it recently when hearing the song Weather To Fly on the radio. I had already heard The Bones Of You and One Day Like this before too. The album is really awesome. Not only is the music superb, I was also pleasantly surprised to read this in the booklet: Turn Me Up To preserve the excitement, emotion and dynamics of the original performances this record is intentionally quieter than some. For full enjoyment simply Turn Me Up! (TurnMeUp.org) The TurnMeUp initiative battles the…
New toys
Since Friday I have my new hifi system. The new components are: Marantz PM8003 amplifier Marantz ST7001 DAB tuner Focal Chorus 816v speakers For audio CDs I still use my old Panasonic DVD-RV32. Although this is probably not of the same class as the other components, I don’t hear anything wrong with it, so I don’t see any reason to replace it soon. I am really amazed by the sound quality of this system. The sound is very detailed, with impressive treble and a very nice and not too overwhelming bass. It’s great to be able to enjoy the real sound quality of audio CDs now. Although DAB radio sounds…
Music For Life
For the third year now, the radio station Studio Brussel is organizing an action to collect money for the Red Cross, this year for homeless mothers and children fleeing war. 3 DJs of the station, make live radio 24/24h for one week from a studio (called “Glass House”) which this year is in my home city, Ghent. Listeners pay to request songs, (youth) associations organize all kind of actions to collect money and bring in the money live on the radio, VIPs organize auctions of all kind of objects,… During that week the DJs don’t leave Glass House and don’t eat. They live on fruit and vegetable juices. The action…
Various things
A bit of various things I quickly want to write something about: Mandriva (1) Mandriva decided to end the contracts of at least Adam Williamson, Mandriva’s community manager and Oden Eriksson, maintainer of the Apache, MySQL, PHP stack and other related packages. I’m disappointed to see that all the trouble Mandriva has gone through during the past years, still has not ended yet and that people who play such an important role for the distribution, have to leave the ship now. This has triggered a heavy reaction from the community now, with a public letter to the CEO being written, an online petition and people deciding not to spend money…
15 great music albums
About two weeks ago, I bought 15 music albums from an action by a Belgian newspaper. Those are 15 albums which take up an important place in the modern pop and rock history: Oasis – (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? The Police – Regatta de Blanc dEUS – In A Bar, Under The Sea Radiohead – OK Computer Coldplay – A Rush of Blood to the Head Lou Reed – Transformer Michael Jackson – Thriller Bob Dylan – Highway 61 revisited Dire Straits – Brothers in Arms Lenny Kravitz – Mama Said David Bowie – Ziggy Stardust The Cure – Seventeen Seconds Eurythmics – Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)…