Dag 1180: Let the happiness in

My life seems to be getting more and more involved in music these days, which is a good thing, but unfortunatley, it is mostly listening to music rather than making it as I just never seem to get time for the latter these days.

My iPod died a month or so ago, but as I had managed to wangle a new W880i, which comes with a gig of memory, out of my mobile phone provider, I have started listening to music on that until I can afford to buy a new iPod. The sound seems noticably better than it was on my old The headphone I had been using were pretty cheap ones I had picked up from Edinburgh airport some years ago as I don't like using the in ear type that come with an iPod. I noticed that the sound from the W880i was far superior to my previous phone and as my headphones were beginning to fall apart I thought I might inverst in a new pair.

I had once tried on a pair of noise cancelling Bose headphones when I was working in Scotland and was amazed at how they much were able to reduce the background office noise. I thought it would be great to get some of those but they just cost so much that I thought I might get some noise cancelling headphones by a cheaper brand instead. I read a few reviews and it seemed that although I could get some for under £100 I shouldn't expect them to work as well as the Bose ones.

So one lunchtime last week I headed out to Richer Sounds to see what they had. On the way there I passed a Bose store and thought I may as well just pop in and see if they had some special one off offer on that meant I could get their noise cancelling headphones at a greatly reduced price. I found that not only did they have the noise cancelling headphones on display (unfortunately only at full price), but they also had 3 models of non noise cancelling headphones - and these were within my price range. The 3 models were in-ear, on-ear and around-ear and each (apart from the on ear model) was hooked up to an iPod so they could be tried out. First I tried on the noise cancelling ones, but the iPod only had a Michael Jackson CD on it so that reduced the value of any test I could do. I then tried the over ear ones and the iPod they were attached to was pretty full of all sorts of music. It actually took me longer to choose what I was going to listen to listen to than I spent listening to it. The sound quality was excellent, but I felt these headphones were too big to wear on the train or when walking through town. The on ear ones were a better size but I couldn't listen to anything with them. I decided that I had originally set out to get some noise reducing headphones from Richer Sounds so I headed of to see what they had to offer.

When I got there I saw that all the headphones were up on racks behind the counter so they couldn't be looked at without having to look around the staff which means you are bound to get one trying to help you sir. I wanted to be able to have a good look in peace. Also, as the headphones were all sealed in their boxes it meant that I couldn't try them out or get a feel for how comfortable they might be. I spent a bit of time looking at the Cd players and speakers while deciding whether I wanted to go up and look at the headphones or not. I was feeling that the sound of the Bose ones was so good that maybe I should just go back there, but then I remembered that I had originally intended to get some noise cancelling ones so I bit the bullet and went up to the counter.

I couldn't see any noise cancelling headphones on the rack and then came the inevitable "Can I help you sir". I asked if they had any noise cancelling headphones. He said he didn't think so, but checked on the computer and then said they should have 1 pair in stock but they must be in the back, so off he went to look for them.

While I was waiting a guy came in with a pair of headphones and handed them over to one of the other guys behind the counter. He explained that he had bought them one month ago and the sound crackled so what were they going to do about it. He handed the headphones over. I looked at them and was astounded to see that the whole length of the wire was filled with knots and some of the knots were themselves made up of knots. It looked a right old mess.

The conversation then went roughly as follows:

Guy behind counter: "Can I help you?"
Customer (handing over a set of headphones): "I bought these from you a month ago and the sound has become really crackly. I expected them to last longer than this."
Guy behind counter: "I can see exactly what is causing the problem - it's all these knots. Audio cable isn't designed to be treated like this and it causes the wire inside to break over time."
Customer: "So what are you saying?"
Guy behind counter: "You shouldn't have let the cable get into this state. This is what has caused the crackly sound."
Customer: "I didn't know that. Can you replace them?"
Guy behind counter: "I'm afraid this can't be classified as damage through normal wear and tear."
Customer: "So what are you saying mate - are you not going to exchange them?"
Guy behind counter: "We can only really exchange things that are damaged by normal wear and tear. All these knots ain't normal wear and tear mate".
Customer: "Yeah but mate no one told me that you shouldn't let them get knots in them".
Guy behind counter: "We don't mention that fact as normal policy when we sell headphones. How did they get like that?"
Customer: "I don't know that just got like this."
Guy behind counter: "Sorry, but there isn't really anything that we can do."
Customer: "But mate how can you say that. I didn't know that I shouldn't let them get like that."
Guy behind counter: "But mate you've got to see that this isn't just normal wear and tear. I don't see how they could have got like this in only one month."
Customer: "What are you saying mate? Are you saying you don't believe me."
Guy behind counter: "No mate, but I can't exchange these as this is not normal wear an tear."
Customer: "What are you saying mate? Are you saying that you're not going to do anything?"
Guy behind counter: "Mate, you could try sending them back to Senheisser to see if they will do anything, but I doubt they will as this is purely down to them not being looked after properly."
Customer: "So what are you saying mate? I appreciate about the knots, but no one told me that I shouldn't let the knots get in there when I bought it so I didn't know that it would damage the cable."
Guy behind counter (still managing to sound incredibly calm and collected): "But mate, really each time you saw that a knot had got into the cable you should have undone it to prevent it getting in this state."
Customer: "So what are you saying mate? Are you saying that if I had undone all the knots outside the shop before I brought it in then you would have replaced it?"
Guy behind counter: "Mate, I can see what condition they are in and I know that it is these knots that have caused the sound to become crackly."

During this conversation the guy behind the counter was staying very calm. I was very impressed with how he was handling the customer and he is a credit to Richer Sounds. I, on the other hand, was getting more and more stressed.
Who in their right mind would let their headphone cable get into that state and still expect them to work? Presumably the fact that this guy is still alive is purely because someone told him to "make sure you keep breathing and eat and drink occassionally" early on in his life.

At this point the guy looking for the headphones for me came back. He hadn't found them so I said I would call back next week and headed back to the Bose shop and purchased the on-ear headphones, despite the fact that I hadn't been able to hear a demo of them. The price was £20 more than the over ear ones so I thought they had to be at least as good.

I got back to the office and tried them out and the sound was incredible. It seems to make all the instruments have their own space in the mix and the bass is one of the best I have heard on a pair of headphones. In fact the best way of describing them is to say they are addictive - I just want to listen to music through them the whole time.

One of the first things I listened to on them was Smile's OK by The Hope Blister. This is a pretty high quality recording anyway and it sounded so good through these headphones that I became very anti-social at work and listened to it over and over again. One of my favourite tracks is called "Only Human" and it was originally recorded by Heidi Berry, who sang "Till I gain control again" on the This Mortal Coil album Blood. I had been aware that she had recorded some albums on 4AD but never heard any of them, but now I really wanted to hear the original version of "Only Human" through my new headphones.

The next lunchtime I trawled round all the record shops in Leeds but couldn't find any of her CDs so I had a look on amazon. The only one that seemed to be available new was Pomegranate (an anthology which includes Only Human), but it had a 6 to 9 days delivery. I ordered it along with Singularity by Peter Hammill and in order to keep me busy while I waited for these to arrive I went back into Leeds and bought the newly remastered version of Secondhand Daylight by Magazine along with a remastered Secrets of the Beehive by David Sylvian (which contains the track Let the Happiness In, also covered by The Hope Blister on Smile's OK). I have been listening to these 2 alot while awaiting my CDs from amazon. I had forgotten just how good Secondhand Daylight is and the David Sylvian album is great to listen to on these headphones as it is such a high quality recording. I hadn't heard this before and comparing the original version of Let the Happiness In with the Hope Blister version just shows how talented the peple invoved with the This Mortal Coil and Hope Blister projects are when it comes to arranging covers of other peoples songs. I pressume that Ivo Watts-Russell is the one who would take most of the credit for this.

The CDs from amazon have now arrived and I chose to listen to the Heidi Berry CD first as it was the one I had most been anticipating. The outcome of this is that I still haven't listened to the Peter Hammill CD (or anything else) since I listened to Pomegranite.

This is currently the my all time favourite CD of all time and I am sure it is going to remain in my top CDs list for the rest of my life. Her songs have a bit of a folky edge to them, and in some ways they remind me of Sandy Denny, who was one of my favourite singers in my youth. However, I certainly wouldn't class her as purely a folk singer/songwriter by any stretch of the imagination. Her voice is both beautiful and mournful and the songs themself are at times melancholic but uplifting and full of emotion. These songs are all over 10 years old, but have a timeless quality about them and sound like they could have been just recorded. In many ways they make me think of my youth, but I don't really know why.

It was interesting hearing the original version of Only Human as The Hope Blister had changed the lyrics around so they were directed at the singer, whereas in the original version the subject of the lyrics is somebody else. This is the only song on the CD to consist of piano and vocals - all the other tracks have a greater number of instruments involved. The tracks that so far stand out as the best are Northern Train (one of the greatest songs I have ever heard), Only Human, Mercury, Time and Follow, though there is not a weak song on the whole CD.

I now wish that I had sought her music out when it first came out so I could have had the chance to see her perform live. Looking at her website I see that she is currently teaching courses in songwriting in Brighton. I feel very jealous of people living in Brighton now as I would love to attend one of her courses, but it would be a bit of a commute from Yorkshire.

Dag 1162: If in doubt, be dancing

As predicted last time I have continued my CD buying spree and have been getting a bit more up to date on the current music scene. In the 70s and 80s I was pretty much up to date with what was going on, but things went a bit out of kilter in the 90s and carried on until fairly recently. The whole thing started during a visit to Scotland when I bought a Capercaillie CD. I liked it so much that I bought all their other albums and started going to see them at every opportunity. I soon started to listen only to Scottish music, but that felt too mainstream so I narrowed it down to only Scottish Gaelic music, then I started learning Scottish Gaelic and narrowing down my music purchases to ever more obscure Gaelic artists. It got to the point that if it wasn't recorded on the smallest most remote Scottish island during a force 9 gail then it was just too mainstream for me.

Fortunately, just when I was on the brink of adding a Mac to the start of my surname and refusing to speak English anymore I started working in Sweden. This enabled me to get into Swedish music and start learning Swedish instead. Fortunately though, instead of ending up only listening to music that was recorded under a midnight sun in the far north of Sweden, I discovered some really great new music that I just would not have discovered if I hadn't been working there (such as Kent, Eva Dahlgren, and even Roxette, who I hadn't been that keen on when they first became known in the UK).

So back to my latest music purchases:

Explosions in the Sky - All of a Sudden I miss Everyone ****

I went to see a band called My Latest Novel in Edinburgh last year (or the year before) and was very impressed. I discovered they were on the Cocteau Twins' Bella Union label. I ended up signing up on the Bella Union website and have had quite a few trips onto it to check out their band roster. There are plenty of interesting bands on there and this is the first one I have bought (apart from My Latest Novel). Like Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails I was presented with a cheaper normal version of the CD or a limited edition double CD at a higher price. Unlike Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails I bought the double CD version, and am pleased I did. The first CD contains the album tracks and the second contions remixes. Normally I think remixes are rubbish, but in this case I don't. The album is made up of 6 instrumental pieces and there are another 6 on the remix CD. The music is very atmospheric and melancholic which makes it fit nicely into the sort of stuff that I have come to realise that I like and the remix tracks sound sufficiently different to make them worthwhile listening so all in all this is a great CD. So far the final track stands out as being a particular highlight with its sparse and beautiful tinkly opening that gradually builds up to a full on climactic end. This is great music to listen to while working.

My Latest Novel in Edinburgh

Other Bella Union artists to look out for are Midlake, Devics, The Howling Bells and, of course, My Latest Novel.

Slowdive - Just for a Day ****

After doing some more browsing on wikipedia I found an entry about a type of music called Shoe Gazing. I wasn't familiar with this term, but it seemed that quite a few bands I really like fit into this genre so I guess I must be a shoe gazer too. So if you see me looking down at my shoes in future now you know why. The article listed many other shoe gazing bands that I hadn't heard before. I thought I would probably like them so I wrote about 12 of the band names onto a post-it note and headed off for Virgin Records in Leeds. After some frantic floor walking I discovered that they didn't have a single band on my list so I went across to HMV hoping they might be better kitted out for us shoe gazers. All I can say is that HMV in Leeds is a veritable haven for shoe gazers. They had multiple CDs from most of the bands on the list so, bearing in mind that I hadn't heard any of them, it was difficult deciding which CDs to buy. The bands at the top of my list (as they seemed to have the most said about them on Wikipedia) were Chapterhouse and Slowdive. There were a couple of CDs by each band and I ended up choosing a slowdive one as they had a girl singer so I thought I may just like them better. This is a double CD containing their first album along with their early singles and Eps. I only found this out after I'd bought it so I was a bit concerned that I may have been better off getting a later album, but as soon as I heard the first track I was transported back to that time period. The music sounds heavily influenced by the Cocteau Twins and as it was in the same style I liked it straight away. I must confess that I haven't listened to the whole thing yet, but that is purely down the fact that a) I have bought so much music lately and b) I just keep on going back to the Cocteau Twins time and time again (I am currently listening to Victorialand, again, as I write this). They were once my all time favourite band of all time and they may well just be about to become so again. If only they would finish their unfinished album and reform for a tour - I would probably try and get to every date.

Puressense - Planet Helpless *

Once I had picked my Slowdive CD I decided I'd get one more from my list. I nearly bought a Catherine Wheel cd as the cover looked good and Tim Friese Green (who worked on the later, and greater, Talk Talk albums) was involved, but if I got that it would have meant I was spending more than I wanted to I ended up getting Planet Helpless by Puressense as it was on the list and it was only a fiver. As soon as I started playing it I realised that this was a mistake. Whereas slowdive definitely fitted in with bands like Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil Puressense did not seem to fit the shoe gazing genre one bit. I would have fitted them squarely in with the Madchester bands who I have no interest in whatsoever. I listened to 2 tracks and took it off. This is the first CD I have bought in a very long time that I have regretted. If anyone wants to buy it off me please leave a comment to that effect.