Quarta-feira 18 Out 2006, 23h:43

Making mixes used to be one of those things that I found relaxing and really enjoyable, even when I was making them for people who I felt I had to make sure everything was perfect because I really cared about the craft involved in mix making in their case (meaning either I had a pash for them or they were super music snobs and top rate at mix making and I wanted to compete in their league) But lately I just find that mix making stresses me out and it's because looking at my music folders to find a narrow potential selection is just over-whelming. Thanks to the sheer abundance and ready availability of music in the digital age; instead of having a collection where I know every good song I owned and could keep track of its sound and theme in my head to detirmine suitability, I have a vast sea of music, most of which I've only listened to a handful of times and can't always remember. Sure my collection is meticulously arranged by genre and subgenre, but it's just not the same anymore.

Don't get me wrong I love the freedom to readily discover new things that we've got now, I don't exactly miss the days when being the one with impeccable music taste who was supposed to turn less adventurous friends onto hidden gems and new sounds meant taking flyers on expensive potential crap (even if there was something a bit exciting about that first listen to a random purchase. It's as close as I'm ever likely to get to the feeling of appearing on 'Let's Make a Deal') Being able to use p2p software to find out whether something is worth the investment has definitely increased the length of my 'to buy' list significantly and in even broader genres than I was buying previously, but I'm starting to feel burnt out on the digital age.

I decided about a year ago that I was abandoning cds as a format for music (at least in terms of pre-recorded purchased music) because they don't seem worth the expense at all. Also MP3 doesn't seem to me to be the way I want to purchase my music. I mean it's fine for computer listening, but when it comes time to pony up the money to own the really worthy music, what's the point of buying it on mp3? All you've got is a bunch of ones and zeros in a file that can be lost in the blink of an eye like it never existed, not to mention the restrictions legal downloading puts on the file. No, if I'm spending my money on really good music, music worthy of owning and supporting, I want tangible ownership, I want vinyl.

I never thought I'd be a vinyl snob, I guess it's rather fitting though, seeing as how when I was growing up my family was too cheap to buy me pre-recorded cassettes and so until I got old enough to earn an income I listened to records from the library or from my parents vinyl collection of mostly lounge music and classical. It's perfect though, for that desire to be really physically connected with a music collection. There's a sense of fragility and presence that just doesn't exist with the digital mediums. Records let you feel the history of music too, and who doesn't feel a thrill at being a bit antideluvian, I know I do (which is also why I use manual analog cameras from the 60s more than my digital and did all my film school work on Bolexes and did a degree in hand produced book, I'm good at being obsolete.)

I just want to figure out how to feel as intimate with all my music in an age when my collection has become so massive.

There is, by the way, a very nice discussion about similar quiestions with Jarvis Cocker, Nick Cave and others in this month's Observer here