Some recent music

There has been a flurry of articles in the press in the last week about the music industry's attempts to persuade the Government to levy charges through ISPs to compensate it for losses from illegal downloading. This smacks of desperation yet again from an industry that has had a negative public perception for years. So few businesses seem so intent on annoying their customers. I have been thinking about this issue for a number of years and of the new indistry model that this will all lead to. But claims that new talent will not be found are largely nonsense - there has never been a better time for a band to get themselves known - e.g. through myspace, etc.

And more small artists can get some access to the world than ever before. I have been particularly struck by the example of Jason Molina over the past few years. He would never have been able to release the large amount of stuff he has been able to, nor to make some sort of living from music, in the bad old days of limited numbers of big record companies.

The situation is really one in which large blockbuster albums (which were expensive to make) will become a thing of the past, while live performance will become increasingly important. But what can't be denied is that there has never been a better time to be interested in music (and I am pretty fanatical)

This week is my refresh week for my account with emusic.com and I have already downloaded about half of this month's tracks. Mostly tracks by the Japanese slow metal band Boris and some similar bands. Now this is an excellent example of a band that would not have been ever heard by anyone in the band old days before the internet. Beautiful slow heavy power chords, and a good compliment to Sun O))) who I listened to a lot last year.

Also downloaded some examples of African Blues guitar playing and 60 minutes of whale and dolphin sounds. All excellent stuff, I don't doubt.