I had a couple days downtime between contracts this week (I start a new gig on Monday), which gave me the chance to catch up on a few things, like sleep. And music. Lots and lots of music.
I went and bought Coldplay's latest album, X&Y (thank you, iTunes). As mentioned previously, I'm fairly new in catching on to Coldplay. The new album is OK, but I don't like it as much as I liked A Rush of Blood to the Head.
Also, I joined eMusic, finally succumbing to the "try us for two weeks and get 50 MP3s for free" pitch. So, for my free trial, I got the following albums:
- Funeral by The Arcade Fire -- this has gotten some good reviews from various music bloggers, and even my regular weekday morning mainstream radio station recently started playing the track "Rebellion (Lies)"; I like it, although some of the tunes sound kind of similar to me
- Light & Magic by Ladytron -- "Ladytron?" you're saying, "How 2002!" and you'd be right; although I'd heard a few of their tracks back in the day, and even saw them perform live, I'd never heard one of their albums in its entirety; I nearly bought Light & Magic once in HMV, but balked at the price ($21.99, IIRC) -- I'm glad I didn't buy it then, because listening to it now, I don't think it's really held up all that well
- Ciao! 1989-1996 by Lush -- another attempt to backfill the gaps in my music collection; I had an ancient cassette of Lush tunes that a friend made for me, and a handful of MP3s that I found online, but never actually "bought" anything from them before now
- Ultimate Sleep System by Ambient Music Therapy -- the above three albums brought my total up to 47 tracks, so this release -- 3 tracks of ambient electronic noise, clocking in at 25 mintues each -- filled out my 50 track quota
The one silly thing that eMusic does, IMHO, is that they don't encourage you to browse the catalogue before signing up -- a real mistake, because I think most people would want to know if the music that they offer is any good before forking over all their information (plus credit card number). Fortunately, you can circumvent the "start your free trial now" splash screen by clicking one of the footer links (such as the one for 'Privacy Policy'). From there you can access the navigation to browse through the various musical genres that they offer. There's some really good stuff there, particularly for indie/alternative fans; the electronica section is also strong, and my jaw dropped when I saw their jazz offerings -- classic releases from Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Thelonius Monk, Bill Evans, and more.
I've elected to go for monthly "40 MP3s for $9.95 (US)" package (sign up before August 31st and get 20% off an annual subscription), which, if you do the math (between 2 and 4 albums per month, on average) is a damn good deal. I've already queued up enough stuff in my 'Save for Later' list to take care of the first nine or ten months.
In terms of other media consumption, I went to see the movie The Island (Flash site) (IMDB info here). I enjoyed it, although the film's taken a real beating from the critics, mostly due to Michael Bay's noisy and chaotic directing -- I won't disagree, as the sound and visuals can be rather overwhelming at times. But the story's interesting, if you're willing to forgive a few plot holes.