Blogging has been light due to a lot of work. While programming, I tend to listen to a lot of music, so here’s some notes on the musical world around me:

1. Both Trent and Tori have new albums; Trent’s is out now (can’t decide if I really care) and Tori’s is scheduled to appear on May Day. I used to be a rabid Tori fan, but have fallen a bit off the wagon. The Beekeeper—her last album—was the first one I didn’t immediately buy upon discovering it had been released. This coincided with the period in my life when I started buying a lot of music online: first, via the iTunes Music Store then later via eMusic. (I love eMusic, more on that in a bit.) At any rate, I pretty much reserve CD buying for things that are going to be better on CD (e.g. This Binary Universe from BT, which comes with a companion DVD; Kate Bush’s Aerial because, well, it’s Kate Bush). Major-label artist’s music not on eMusic will come from iTMS, but only reluctantly; I’d rather find it on eMusic or Bleep. Many times, I just go without.
2. Post-rock, that ill-fitting moniker given to bands with big ideas and sprawling musical landscapes, is getting a lot of playtime. Why hadn’t I paid attention to Godspeed You! Black Emperor back when they were still making music? (Yes, they still make music as other bands, but I only have so much time.) Luckily, eMusic has two of their three albums and their EP. Furthermore, since eMusic charges the same amount per month for a fixed number of tracks, downloading a GYBE album (4 tracks, each track clocking in around 15-20 minutes with multiple movements) is a lot better bang for the buck then Sufjan Steven’s Illinoise, what with its 22 tracks that sprawl out over about the same period of time¹. At any rate, I have now made “Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven/Gathering Storm” the song I listen to on my commute into work. It’s majestic, and makes me think of writing Python code as appropriately worthy.
3. Other stuff discovered recently in the same vein: Explosions in the Sky and MONO.
4. Amon Tobin‘s latest, Foley Room, is a mindbending nightmare. Yes, it’s that good.
5. I’m on last.fm, of course. Yes, that is a picture of me falling asleep on my erstwhile computer, the venerable iBook².

That is all. Good night.

¹ I get 40 tracks per month for $10. At $0.25 per track, that means that the aforementioned Lift Yr Skinny Fists… cost me $1.00 to buy on eMusic. Of course, I don’t get Godspeed’s painstakingly lavish packaging, and I’m stuck with the MP3 encoding that eMusic gives me, but … dude, it’s a dollar, and since eMusic doesn’t roll over my downloads into the next month, I’d better use them. At 22 songs, Illinoise would cost me a comparably whopping $5.50, and that’s over half my downloads for the month.

² I haven’t the heart to part with that damn thing, so it sits on a shelf collecting dust. Anyone want a 800 MHz G3 iBook? Anyone? At this rate, it’ll be Isabella’s first computer.