Well, it had a good innings, two and a half years for any electronic gadget is a long time, especially for one owned by someone as fickle as me.
The iRiver H320 was my main mp3 player, compared to more recent devices it was big, bulky and incredibly geeky (open source firm ware was available for it, and pretty much the only music player I know that could play .OGG files), but it sounded great, didn't need any propriety software on your PC to move files across and as for the size 'problem', well I could cope with it. It's about the same size as a packet of 20 cigarettes, which isn't that bad in the grand scheme of things
Trouble is it wasn't waterproof, not in the least bit... :-|
So I'm now on the lookout for a new mp3 player, I have a horrible feeling I'll end up getting an iPod. Even though I'm completely opposed to tying in my music with iTunes, there doesn't seem to be any companies out there that our making hard drive based mp3 players that can cope with a reasonable portion of my collection.
To mark it's passing I thought I'd post a few tunes; I tend to get through new albums on an almost daily basis, however there are a few songs that I always find myself heading back to, what follows is a small selection of such tunes - just click on the titles to seriously damage my bandwidth.
Will You Smile Again For Me - ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of the Dead
A song with a few contradictions: it's big, epic and sounds vaguely celebratory, but it has some quite depressing lyrics ('you miss read your fate line, long ago ran out of time' - that sort of thing). I listen to this song pretty much at least once a day...
Angels of Light - New York Girls
A really beautiful song, but which probably has some distinctly sinister undertones if I chose to listen to the lyrics properly. I instead choose ignorance and allow myself to drift along with the song.
Basteroid - Sonnenbrilliant
I have no idea where this came from, it just seemed to appear in my music collection one day. I guess it's techno, I'm not sure, I've given up on dance music classifications.
Godflesh - For Those About to Rock
The idea of someone as serious as Godflesh covering a song as frivolous as this seems like a disaster waiting to happen, but somehow it works - the only problem is the fade out at the end, I'm not a big fan of those, but to be honest I've listened to this song hundreds of times and I still can't think of a decent way to end it.
Jesu - Sundown
This song comes from a stupidly limited 12", or you can find it on the Japanese version of the last Jesu album: Conqueror. It's really really long, it takes a good 5 minutes for the vocals to kick in, prior to that it kind of gets stuck in its own riff - however, patience is a virtue and the last half of the song contains some of the most wonderful, blissed out sounds that you will ever hear. I tend to listen to this at the gym, but I imagine taking plenty of good quality drugs would help the listening experience in a similar way. The trick is to get yourself into a state of mind were you can zone out any conscious thoughts.
Nine Inch Nails - Zero Sum
I really should do a post about Nine Inch Nails and especially the new album, it will have to wait until another day. This is the last song on Trent Reznor's concept album about the end of the world: Year Zero. If you look (or rather, listen) past the industrial-esque beats and the whispered ramblings, like the best NIN songs it just boils down to piano, I just love the way that an album about the social/physical/spiritual (delete as applicable) end of the world can end with a few simple chords, plus it was a great chorus.
Swans - Blind
Arguably overproduced, and not from the 'coolest' Swans album, but I love this song. I've seen Michael Gira bring a venue to stunned silence with this one, it's probably the line about 'the lonely fool' that does it for me...
The Knife - Heartbeats (onemusic session)
Do you remember the Sony advert with the bouncing balls going down a street in San Fransisco? If you do you may already know this song, however this is the way it is meant to sound. Ideally you need a music system with some decent bass response to appreciate it, and try not to think about 'Top Gun' while you listen to it - I probably shouldn't have said that.
The Passions - I'm in love with a German film star (long mix)
The soundtrack to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City made me realize that I have a sneaking admiration of 80's pop music, there are many gems that unfortunately passed me by due to an uncompromising stance on heavy metal during my youth. This is one such gem.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps
This was the number one song in my last.fm play list for quite some time, I think that says all that needs to be said.
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