Music meme

[sen_no_ongaku]

Missed this the first time around. Lots of rambling and tangents. Consider yourselves warned.

1. Total volume of music files on my computer:

iTunes has 13.42 GB of music, about 10.4 days. This probably represents about 50-60% of my physical collection.

I also have about 3 hours' worth of recordings of my own music which, being in .WAV format, occupies about 2.1 GB.

2. The Last CD I bought was:

I recently received a package of CDs from the mildly unfortunately named and poorly organized Forced Exposure -- a store I nevertheless like very much -- that contained:

language is the most..., by agf, on Ars Electronica
miniatures, by alog, on Rune Grammofon
Kintopp, by Reuber, on Staubgold

I discovered agf (short for Antye Greie-Fuchs) while considering setting programming code to music; I read an article describing her Head Slash Bauch, which contains a lot of HTML, and decided to check it out. I dig it a lot, though it's not easy to listen to, being wicked abstract electronic music.

alog is a Norwegian electronica duo; I found them (and the entire Rune Grammofon label) on a sampler CD I received from The Wire, a music magazine which can be distressingly snooty, but also sends me interesting music fairly often.

reuber first grabbed my attention with a track called ruhig blut b, which is about 20 minutes of very loud and harsh techno/electronica, based almost entirely on one pitch class, its harmonics, and Tuvan throat-singing. It's a fucking amazing piece of music.

----

I like buying CDs. I don't feel as if a recording really belongs to me otherwise.

I must also admit to a fair amount of snotty pride in the fact that only two of the above artists and one of the above albums is available on iTunes. I know it's childish to take pleasure in the obscurity of the music I listen to; but knowing doesn't make it go away.

Perhaps the point of no return will be when I refuse to purchase music that isn't released on vinyl. (One of reuber's releases is LP-only. Dammit.)

3. The Last Song I Listened To Before Writing This:

Cheating, Lying, Stealing by David Lang

One of the first works of postminimalism I heard, from the Bang on a Can folks.

4. Five Songs I Listen To A Lot:

This is a hard one to answer; the music I want to hear changes from month to month, with little carryover. A track I might have listened to obsessively four months ago is collecting dust today. That's not to say I don't like it any more, or any less -- but it's been superseded by something else I can't get enough of. So I'll do two things.

First, songs that have been cycling through my head lately:

Sunflower, Low
desired constellation, Björk
I Wanna Be Adored, The Stone Roses
Meet Me In The City, Junior Kimbrough
Behind the Wall of Sleep, The Smithereens

(I've been on something of a moody rock-of-the-'80s kick lately, hence 3 & 5.)

Second, here are five pieces of music I wish everyone would listen to that they haven't (unless they are music geeks {or know me well [and maybe not even then]}):

Black Angels, George Crumb
Weather, Michael Gordon
Martes, Murcof
genetic engineering, phonophani
The Mess We Made, Matt Elliott

OK, I'm done.