Today I walked into a shop and randomly purchased a CD, which I took home and played.
Why am I bothering to post this? Well because if recent financial results don’t improve, it might be extremely difficult to do such a thing in most UK towns in the not too distant future – which would be a great loss.
While renting music or downloading it may satisfy some – I still like to own a physical copy of my music.
Yes I know its nearly February but here’s what grabbed my attention the most last year (in no particular order).
The Arcade Fire’s third album is one of those albums that sounds better as a whole that any single track. From the epic orchestral thumping of “Rococo” to the quiet introspection of “Wasted Hours” to the delightfully poppy “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” this collection of songs deserves your full attention while listening. While it probably is slightly too long, I couldn’t pick a song to drop and I’m glad they didn’t. There really is no filler on this album, a rarity indeed. Original, catchy, melancholic this if my favourite album of the past 5 years, let alone 2010. It just hooks me every time, it has its rockier moments, it’s quiet moments but they all feel like one. The hallmark of a great album is one where your favourite track changes regularly, for now my favourite track is ‘We Used to Wait’ (checkout this amazing dynamic video) but in the past it has been Rococo, Deep Blue, Ready To Start (in fact they’ve all been a favourite at times). Brilliant.
Audible UK have released an app for the iPhone. The best feature over the built in software is that it doesn’t rotate when you hold it sideways (I am certain this “feature” of the the iPhone exists solely for in-store demos, I find it very frustrating and wish it could be turned off).
Other features include the ability to download books over the Internet (but strangely, not 3G which would have been more useful), add bookmarks with notes, customise the length of time the rewind button goes back, a button-less interface for when in the car, and a sleep timer. Overall the user experience is much more suited to audiobooks than the default iPhone interface and I highly recommend it.
For those if you you haven’t discovered the joy of audiobooks, they are a great way to read while driving, doing household chores or just when your eyes feel too tired to read (I get that a lot since my job involves using a computer all day). If you like books then give them a try.
Now if only there was some kind of Kindle like device that would play audiobooks, but keep your place in sync between the audiobook and the eBook.
