Listening to Keith Jarrett is like listening to the thoughts of an angel. The music is subtle, beautiful and easily accessible. I can recommend no album more highly than The Koln Concert. Take a listen and then be jealous that I’m seeing him live in London at the Royal Festival hall in a few weeks. His first concert in London for over 5 years.

Booya!

Tom Critchlow’s Fav Tape

Sunbathing With Dragonflies (teaser)

I’m really excited about this – have found some great spoken word samples for the mix.

But I digress.

Recently, I’ve seen that Ninjatune’s Mr Scruff has recently started a new project entitled Ninja Tuna (btw, I have a ninja tune t-shirt. It shows a tuna fish wearing a ninja bandanna. I know, ninjatune are the best). What is project Ninja Tuna? From the ninjatune website:

As any fool knows, Mr Scruff is more than just a DJ/producer. Now the Mancunian maverick is to launch a new venture: NINJA TUNA. Instead of a traditional album campaign, over the next 18 months Ninja Tuna will release various types of Scruff ephemera, intramedia and post-prandial devicing – music, clothing, merchandise, art, technology, widgets, wall vinyls, videos, refrigeration devices, you bloody name it. If we can fit a wobbly cartoon of a potato person on it and render it with the production values of a space shuttle mission, then it might just happen. Just to ease you into things, release number one in this new venture is the most traditional – a single on which Scruff shows that all his music-making virtues are intact. Funny, funky, musically warm and astute, but with some of that cartoonish funfair atmosphere that makes every Scruff release a celebration, “Donkey Ride” is a collaboration with longtime cohort Quantic and pianist Andy Kingslow. Meanwhile, “Giant Pickle” slaps the biggest hip hop break up against hi-life keyboards and moody strings for the most moving ode to large vegetables killed by vinegar since…. erm, well maybe it’s a first. Unfeasible bass and cowbell snaps, this will move the floor. It’s not for us to say where…. Ninja Tuna – fishy business in an age of watered-down flava. Get collecting…Ninja Tuna 01 released 12th May.

But where are they going wrong? Well, there’s a couple of things. Firstly take a look at these search results. I know, I know, the single isn’t out yet, the project has only just launched. But surely it’s worth having something available to the search engines so that they can rank a page for ninja tuna (btw, I anticipate this page may well end up ranking for a [ninja tuna] search but obviously bear in mind that before I wrote this post it didn’t rank for it. Yagetme?).

Secondly, why isn’t there any link on the ninjatune site (or the mr scruff site) for me to link to about this story? If someone did want to blog about this event (like I’m doing now) I have nowhere to link to for this story

So, there’s a couple of problems, sure, but loads of music people suck at this online marketing thingamajig. Why all the fuss about these Ninja enabled Tunas? Well if you read the quote above, one of the drives for the Ninja Tuna project is “intramedia”, “technology” and “widgets” – sounds pretty web 2.0 to me. And if you’re going to go after web 2.0 then you should frickin go after it! Let that fat little wobbly cartoon person loose on the web 2.0 world and take it by storm. Social media loves the kind of kitsch, slightly daft and adorable cartoon drawing niche and so I think mr scruff could do really well in this space with some creative games, cartoons, story boards etc. Couple that with the album sales and music sales to back it up so the yanks can chip their $0.02 in and you’ve got yourself a recipe for ninjatune to break america. Something which I don’t think has really happened yet (though I may be way off on this one so please forgive me).

All in all, what it seem to me is that Ninjatune have their heart in the right place by pushing online marketing and trying to move away from the traditional album sales, but that they’re implementing it in a slightly backwards fashion.

Ninjatune boys, if you’re listening, I know a thing or two about being Ninja and a thing or two about online marketing. Gimme a shout if you’re interested, I’d love to chat (tom at distilled dot co dot uk).

How freaking scary! I hate you Amazon, I really hate you sometimes. It’s been an expensive month. sigh

If you use Last.fm (and frankly, why wouldn’t you?!) then I strongly recommend you download the Last.fm Extra Stats program. It allows you to slice and dice your listening data in many different ways. Not least of which is the ability to create those nice listening graphs which I did a few of much much more easily than having to do it through the web application.

Of course, I suspect this will appeal to geeks and data junkies far more than your average fucking coldplay fan. But that’s cool – I don’t want those people reading anyway

Check out some of this graph which is an alltime listening graph of my top 100:

Unfortunately, it cuts off about the end of Jan which was when I moved down to London and have had very little listening via a PC, all my listening has been done via my new fancy Klipsch iGroove!!

PS – I’m fully aware how broken this post is with the large image but I don’t care.

This is the highlight of the mix for me – this track has been going round and round in my head over the past week or so and I just love it!

Just a quick note to say that I started working from home around August time. Since then my digital music collection has grown from around 18gb to around 40gb. My CDs have grown very little (comparatively. Maybe 15 new CDs since the Bigchill?)

2.5gb has been downloaded this week alone in Mixmaster Morris DJ sets…

Something to ponder for you all.

Purple Radio – The Online Radio Station of the Bigchill Forums

Purple radio is a fantastic project, it’s free, it streams at a high quality online and it’s 24/7. During the evenings and weekends it has live DJs and during the day it has archived mixes from bigchill members (if you listen for long enough – some of my mixes will appear!). Sometimes chilled, sometimes funky but always awesome you should listen if you in any way are interested in the bigchill. It has some big names like MixMasterMorris playing but the real beauty is that it’s home grown with talent just lifted straight off the bigchill forums and everyone involved gives through a pure love of music. View the schedule and listen in here.

B00mb0x – An Online Mixtape Community

Do you remember the days when you used to spend hours crouched over a tape deck pressing stop/record at just the right time to make your perfect mix only to have it listened to by your cat? Well now of course people use fancy technomological mp3 mixes and a nice little community has developed around people sharing their latest creations. There’s a strong theme of electronica and alternative music but you can find allsorts on there. The community is really friendly and my first mix got over 100 listens! Find my mixes here.

Motel De Moka – A Music Blog Putting Out Mini-Mixes

I can’t even remember how I found Motel De Moka now but ever since I found them I’ve subscribed to their posts religiously. There’s a bunch of contributors but they all put out music which is alternative, fresh and excellent. From free jazz to japanese pop there’ll be something for everyone and personally I find myself downloading all of their mixes. It keeps my listening habits fresh and varied and I’ve found some real gems on there! Visit here.

Lossless – One Man’s Mission To Be Like Me

Ok, so James Seo isn’t trying to be like me (I don’t think) but his personal site covers everything I could ever want: Wong-Kar-Wai appreciation and awesome music mixes.He doesn’t put out his mixes very often but if you subscribe to his blog you’ll be kept in the loop about all the latest stuff.

Low Light Mixes – Ambient Mixes For Late Night Listening

I found Low Light Mixes via a link in the Bigchill forums (you can tell I spend a lot of time on there right?!) and instantly fell in love. You can tell when the mixes are put together with care and love and these certainly have those qualities in spades! In particular, a drift on the signal is my personal favourite – it’s mellow ambient style music interspersed with some haunting short wave radio sounds which gives it an eerie and ethereal sound. Almost like someone is broadcasting from beyond the grave! Check it out here.

One On Twoism – If You Lke Boards Of Canada You’ll Like this

I have no idea who is behind this project. The website has an about page which is cryptically obscure, referenceing Twoism message boards which I can’t find, websites which don’t exist and people I’ve never heard of… That only adds to the magic though of this sublime mix. Based loosely on the Twoism album by Boards of Canada it has a similar feel. Beautiful obscure music you’ve never heard of! I really like this mix and listen to it a fair amount, full of wierd sounds and samples which somehow pull together to form one seamless coherent mix which really hits the spot late at night. Visit the beautiful site and download either a single mp3 or a lossless collection of files.

Fluidnation – just.beautiful.music

If you ever had to write a thesis on chillout music you would have to make sure you referenced Ben Mynott. One half of fragile state, DJ, music journalist and all round stellar guy he brands himself as Fluidnation. You can download some of his mixes here, you can listen to his weekly radio show here, you can catch him on real radio here and you can see him DJ in real life here. Phew – he’s a busy guy and he knows his chillout. If you’re a fan of the genre you will certainly be a fan of Fluidnation.

Aurgasm – The Best Music You’ve Never Heard

There are a bazillion music blogs out there, most of which output rubbish. Aurgasm is different. Paul puts out some really good, unknown artists and gives them a chance to shine. I’ve found some gems on there and always pay close attention to what he says. It’s also a very well put together blog with clean design and nice working links. There’s a wide range of music but you can be sure it’ll be good music.

Last.fm – The Social Music Revolution

One of the best web 2.0 sites to grace the face of the internet. I love last.fm it’s that simple. Make sure you download the scrobbler and it quietly sits in the background while you play your music then compiles recommendations for you, shows you people listening to similar things to you and generally is awesome. In the same way that Amazon recommends books to you that you didn’t even know you liked Last.fm recommends music to you you’ve never heard of but that you love. Add friends with similar music tastes and find out what they’re listening to. The real power though is that you can listen to music through their player before you buy it. Create radio stations around your favourite artists and so much more. The awesomeness just goes on! View my profile and add me as a friend here.

Elbo.ws – Music Search Engine

Just like with music blogs, there are plenty of music search engines out there that are quite frankly terrible. This is the only one I’ve found which does a decent job of actually finding you tracks you’re looking for. If you hear a track on an advert and want to hear the whole thing or get recommended a track by a friend and want to check it out this is your baby. It can also find music blogs which talk about specific artists/tracks too which makes it even more powerful than a simple music search engine. I don’t use this too often but when I do it always comes up spades. Search away my friend!

Download Beatport Sync

I’ve been playing around with this today and it’s an excellent mp3 mixer with an easy to use interface. Ok, it lacks a fair few features but if you currently don’t have an mp3 mixer (like me!) then you should check this out! Combining this with winamp’s shoutcast allows for radio broadcasts over the internet so watch this space!