As you might have noticed following the blog (maybe only if you are a very dedicated reader), the last few months have been somewhat of a turning point for me. And as with all major shifts in my life, they followed, or sometimes precipitated by, a shift in the music I list too. Maybe I’m just a music nut and most poeple don’t have that tight relationship between change and music. A few interesting articles I came across this week might suggest that it’s not just me…

World Changing, in a post entitled Acoustic Ecology and the Extinction of Silence, discussed a recent study which ‘Confirms Birds’ Changing Songs in Cities’:

Field studies in ten European cities, including London, Paris, and Prague, have confirmed that great tits adapt their songs to be better heard above a variety of noise conditions. The city-dwelling birds, a species that has adapted well to urban settings, were compared to forest-dwelling birds nearby. In songs important for mate attractions and territory defense, the urban songs were shorter and sung faster than the forest songs.

Species without these capacities may have no other choice than to escape city life.

It should come as no surpise then that we too are affected by the sonic landscape we inhabit. An affect thats applified by the fact that landscape is always changing. Just the other day, Pasta and Vinegar uncovered a interesting research paper that investigates that phenomenon:

D. Garrioch, “Sounds of the City: The Soundscape of Early. Modern European Towns,”

In European towns of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the sounds people heard were very different from those of today. Yet the difference goes much deeper: whereas today we try to escape city noise, for the inhabitants of early modern towns sound served as a crucial source of information. It formed a semiotic system, conveying news, helping people to locate themselves in time and in space, and making them part of an ‘auditory community’. Sound helped to construct identity and to structure relationships. The evolution of this information system reflects changes in social and political organization and in attitudes towards time and urban space.

So my turning point was accompanied by an equally dramatic shift in my listening habits. My last.fm illustrate the shift clear, just look at the 6 month album chart versus the 3 month album chart. It’s a rolling chart so the numbers overlap, but I’m sure you see the point. It’s so true, music does somehow let everyone ‘locate themselves in time and in space, and making them part of an ‘auditory community’’.

After years of listening to some really heavy hip hop from the likes of Dead Prez, Killah Priest and Immortal Technique it was a pretty dramatic shift and quiet refeshing to listen to stuff like Snow Patrol, Muse and Jeff Buckley. Different in genres aside, it’s the membersip to the associated subcultures that’s been the most eye opening, the difference in world view…

I’ve been enjoying life from this new perspective, it feels a lot like being a kid in a candy store!

I’d like to try and review some of the music I come across. Most of it will, no doubt be stuff you’re famliar with, but seen through a real geek’s eyes might reveal something different.

So, right now I’m listening to:

And of particular interest are:

These two explore the boundaries of sound to the incredible effect! but more on them soon.

I hope to review all of these at some point, studies and side projects permitting of course. In the meantime, I do seriously recomend them so give them a listen if you can…

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