I’ve done two things lately: first, got a bit carried away on eBay and used some knowledge (and hi-fi prejudices) acquired from time spent with my father when I was younger to get a new (2nd hand) sound system. B&W 601 series 2 speakers matched with a Cambridge Audio A300 amp has got me some sweeeeeeet, awesome value bi-wired sound. Works well for the music recording too, but note for all wannabe rockstars: the A300 doesn’t have a headphones output (!!) so to monitor recording you’ll need to split the signal coming out of your soundcard and run the sound through headphones there. Or find some similar solution.

The thing that’s probably more interesting is the music I’ve been playing through it lately. I had a pretty hard-rockin’ 90s. Not death metal or anything – but lots of G&R, Nirvana, the Foo Fighters, Weezer, Metallica, Ugly Kid Joe etc… Hard rockin’. Recently I’ve been acquiring a taste for more indie music… partly influence of some of the people I’ve been hanging out with (like Chris and Tom) but also was pointed to Athlete by Mazmo and have pretty much been listening to their album on repeat for a week now, as you’ll see if you check out my Last.fm page. I’m enjoying the music (Athelete are chilled, catchy, singalongtoable). I am slightly worried that by the 2010’s I’ll be onto folk music, and by 2020 I’ll be listening to Mongolian throat singing. My hard-rockin’ ness is degrading…

;-)

Also really getting into Gorrilaz. I need more exposure to music generally, I think. At school, we used to visit each other with a stack of CDs and go ‘listen to this’… and so got a lot recommendations on a lot of new music. A similar thing happened at Uni with MP3s… but more recently this has subsided somewhat. Ah well – am signed up to an Indie night next weekend so hopefully get some new recommendations then (might need to use Shazam a little…).

In the meantime, if you think of anything I should listen to let me know in the comments. Some further useful indications of my musical tastes from Last.fm – but be warned – a couple of occasions when I left iTunes playing on random has somewhat messed with my history there**.

** also my excuse for listening to any really awful music. I’m sure I don’t own the Hanson album. I can’t do. Can I?