Everything, including the pictures, are nicked from Wikipedia, Last.fm and even Facebook.

Carbon Based Lifeforms

Carbon Based Lifeforms (CBL) are Johannes Hedberg and Daniel Segerstad, both born in 1976 and based in Göteborg in south-western Sweden. They met at the age of 15 and are still, amazingly, working happily together, almost 20 years later. CBL itself was formed in 1996, as an offshoot from other projects, but soon became their focal point, culminating in their first release on ‘mp3.com’ in 1998.

It is hard to categorise CBL’s music but the best description might be that of a groundbreaking mixture of acid, techno and house music. The term ‘acid/ambient’ has also been coined; perhaps a respectful nod to the great pioneer Brian Eno.

Hammock

Hammock is an American two-member post-rock band from Nashville, Tennessee. With music created in between production and songwriting projects over the course of two years, Hammock combines live instrumentation, electronic beats, and droning guitar into atmospheric music similar in style to the work of Boards of Canada, Explosions in the Sky, and Stars of the Lid.

Hammock is a collaboration between Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson that developed out of informal recording sessions between songwriting projects. Hammock initially had no intention of releasing their studio efforts. After building up a collection of almost 40 songs, however, they changed their minds.

Ben Howard

Ben Howard (born 24 May 1988) is an English singer-songwriter, born in Devon and currently signed to Island Records and Communion Records

Howard was raised by musical parents who exposed him to lots of their favourite records from singer-songwriter artists from the 1960s and 1970s, such as Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan, which were a big influence on him.

After attending King Edward IV Community College and Torquay Boys’ Grammar School and then a short stint studying Journalism at University College Falmouth, Cornwall, Ben decided to focus on making music full time, making melodic rootsy folk music, with progressively darker lyrics. He began to build up a reputation not just around Devon, but elsewhere in the UK as well. After a month of sold out dates across Europe and the UK Howard was eventually asked to sign to Island Records.

Because of the label’s history of UK folk singers, including Nick Drake and John Martyn, Ben decided to sign. With singles “Old Pine”, and “The Wolves” released already in 2011, he has recorded an album entitled Every Kingdom for the label, which was released on 6 October, 2011.

Jon Hopkins

Jon Hopkins is a London-based electronic composer, producer and remixer. He makes powerfully emotive, instrumental music that consistently crosses genres, ranging from solo acoustic piano to explosive, bass-heavy electro. A long-term collaborator of Brian Eno, his career has remained unpredictable, taking in collaborations with Wayne MacGregor, King Creosote and David Holmes; remixes for such varied artists as Wild Beasts, Nosaj Thing, James Yorkston, Four Tet and David Lynch; and film scores for directors including Peter Jackson and Gareth Edwards. His hyper-energetic live show has been seen at some of the world’s most iconic venues, including Sydney Opera House with Brian Eno, Madison Square Garden opening for Coldplay, and innumerable clubs, festivals and concert halls the world over.

Loney Dear

Loney, dear used to be the moniker of multi-instrumentalist and home-recording phenomenon, Emil Svanängen from Jönköping, Sweden.

Svanängen slightly changed his artist’s name in 2009, skipping the comma in Loney, dear. He is now recording and releasing music as Loney Dear. In either his tiny Stockholm studio apartment or the basement of his parents’ house, and with a dedication bordering upon manic, Emil discreetly builds Loney, dear songs using a modest home studio set-up. The music of Loney Dear has been aptly described as “soulful indie folk with a powerful mini orchestra.”

Layer upon layer, adding instrumentation and vocals, these songs seem to bloom like time-lapse photography, depicting glimpsed scenes of modern disaffection and timeless yearning. When performing live, Loney Dear becomes the band Emil conjures alone in his home studio, and mutates into a full, five-member band complete with guitar, sax, drums, organ and clarinet, shouts and claps.

The Lonely Island

The Lonely Island is an American comedy troupe composed of Akiva “Kiv” Schaffer, Jorma “Jorm” Taccone, and David Andrew “Andy” Samberg, best known for their comedic music. Originally from Berkeley, California, the group is currently based in New York City. The group broke out due to their collective work from 2005–2011 on Saturday Night Live. Samberg and Schaffer continue to work at the show, with occasional input from Taccone.

Once on the show, they wrote “Lazy Sunday”, a music parody video that became an instant hit on YouTube. Following the success of this digital short, the group produced the Emmy-winning “Dick in a Box”, “Jizz in My Pants”, “Like a Boss”, and the Grammy-nominated “I’m on a Boat”, which have subsequently had huge success both on SNL and on the internet, and prompted the release of the 2009 album, Incredibad. In 2011, the group released their second album, Turtleneck & Chain, which featured songs from such SNL digital shorts as “I Just Had Sex”, “The Creep”, and “Jack Sparrow”.

Fink

Fink, AKA Fin Greenall, is an English singer, songwriter, guitarist, producer and DJ born in Cornwall, currently based in Brighton. Since the 2006 release of his Biscuits For Breakfast album, the name Fink has also referred to the recording and touring trio fronted by Greenall himself, completed by Guy Whittaker (bass) and Tim Thornton (drums). Best known for the 2007 song “This is the Thing” and the 2011 album Perfect Darkness, Fink is signed to independent record label Ninja Tune Records. Greenall is also a sought-after songwriter for other artists, having recently written for John Legend and Ximena Sarinana. With the late Amy Winehouse he co-wrote the song “Half Time”, which appears on Winehouse’s posthumous collection Lioness: Hidden Treasures.

Aes Dana

Aes Dana was born from the meeting of Vincent Villuis, former member of goa chill band Asura, and Sunbeam (aka Mahiane) who spins english progressive vinyls, Aes Dana stands as a coherent fusion of both styles.

They bring out deep sounds rooted in the psychedelic tradition, in a fluid down tempo morning trance. Both musicans tend to create evocative sound textures, opening as a traveling over their analogical dreams. Short tales made of samples and waves, energised by tribal beats. Soundtrack for the early party letting time for the moon and the tempo to set, or for afters to slow down the nocturnal excesses and celebrate the return of the Sun. Aes dana’s music is to be enjoyed between the veils.

So why did you have to invite that other guy to the party? And not only did you invite him, you insisted I had to be his friend just so I could continue to spend time with you.

I’m of course talking about he unholy relationship between Spotify and Facebook. As of last week, Spotify began to require every new subscriber to have a Facebook account. Since I’m a long time Spotify subscriber, it didn’t actually affect me as current subscribers did not have to comply to the new requirement. But the concept that you need to have an account on a social network to be able to pay for a music service is just absurd. It’s like a grocery store demanding that you show them your pilot’s license before they’d sell you a loaf of bread.

All right, so not the best comparison, but you get the idea. Because of Spotify’s tight and unnatural integration with Facebook, I decided to move to another music service that should, theoretically, give me more or less the same service for the same monthly fee: A subscription service with millions of tracks available using a PC client and an Android client with offline mode. Same shit, different wrapping, basically. The service is the Norwegian WiMP (Wikipedia article).

Before I start this rant, I should tell that I once had very tight connections with Aspiro Group, co-creators of the service. A few years back (does time fly!), Aspiro Group bought a company I co-founded and I ended up sharing office space with the people building the WiMP service.

Anyway.

Even though Spotify and WiMP are theoretically the same type of service, they are also very different. Their choice of technology, streaming quality, editorial approach and the track availability make them stand light years apart.

WiMP scores high when it comes to how they present the music. There is a lot of effort going into making playlists, campaigns and presenting new releases. They also have some great music that is not available on Spotify, for instance Pink Floyd. The problem for WiMP, however, is that Spotify crush them in every other aspect:

Cross-platform

WiMP has decided to use Adobe Air to create a client that works on every platform supported by Adobe Air: Windows, OS X and Linux. This might have sounded like a great idea once, but the main problem with cross-platform frameworks is that you sacrifice performance for the convenience of not having to port your code to various platforms. Compared to Spotify, the WiMP client feels sluggish and non-responsive.

Sound quality

WiMP streams in 64 kbit/s HE-AAC  and 256 kbit/s AAC, while Spotify has chosen Vorbis as their codec, streaming in 160 kbit/s and 320 kbit/s. I don’t know much about codecs and I’m not audiophile, but the Spotify streams sound better to me (even before I learned the actual codecs and bit rates used).

Track availability

Spotify has 5 million more tracks in their archive than WiMP. When I imported my Spotify playlists in WiMP some of the greatest tracks got lost in translation. It’s great that they have Pink Floyd, but in my opinion, diversity is more important than having the big names.

Streaming technology

WiMP uses a classic client-server approach, while Spotify is using peer-to-peer technology. Peer-to-peer has both pros and cons. On the con side, other people are hogging your precious bandwidth. On the pro side, the buffering time is close to nothing and changing tracks and fast forwarding is practically happening as fast as it would if you were playing local music files. Using WiMP it’s sometimes very obvious that you are using a client that has to wait for a server somewhere to spin up a disk.

Android client

The WiMP client is more feature rich than the Spotify client. It has a better search system and you get the feeling that the music is a lot more available than on Spotify. Also, both clients have offline modes, which is a must for me. The shuffle feature on the WiMP client  actually works, which is not the case for Spotify¹⁾. So, all in all, the WiMP client should feel better than the Spotify client, yes? No. There are two things that seriously grinds my gears with the WiMP client. First of all, it doesn’t support play/pause and skipping tracks with the headset button. What the hell is that all about? In addition to this, you can’t be logged in on the mobile and the desktop clients at the same time. I used this a lot on Spotify: Listen to a great album on the desktop client, add it to a playlist and then log on to the mobile client to make it available offline. With Spotify, you’d only run into trouble if you actually started playing music using both clients, but with WiMP you’re not even allowed to log in with the mobile client before the desktop client logs you out.

Final thoughts

But in spite of all this, will I go back to Spotify? Unless the lack of support for the headset button²⁾ in WiMP drives me mad, I won’t. The only way to tell companies, in this case Spotify, that they have made bad a decision is to talk the only language they understand:

Money.

In my humble opinion, however, WiMP will have to have a good look at their choice of coding tools, streaming technology and quality if they have any ambitions of competing with Spotify. And a re-branding should also probably be considered – WiMP? Really? Yeah, I know it’s an acronym, but who wants to use a service calling itself a wimp? Excessive lack of confidence isn’t really that attractive.

1) Even though you never managed to implement a proper shuffle function: Shuffle playlist, playlist stops after three songs. Man, I can’t even begin to describe how annoying that was.
2) In case anyone working on the WiMP Android client is reading this, here’s the key event code used for the headset button: KEYCODE_HEADSETHOOK. Off you go to your computer, then.

With the risk of losing what little I had left of musical integrity, let’s get started!

Alberta Cross

Alberta Cross are a New York-based band, formed by Petter Ericson Stakee (vocals, guitar) & Terry Wolfers (bass). Despite their different upbringings – Stakee travelled from an early age between Sweden and England with his singer-songwriter father, whilst Wolfers was brought up in London’s East End – they formed what would later become Alberta Cross. After relocating to Brooklyn, New York, Stakee and Wolfers solidified the line-up with the addition of Austin Beede, Alec Higgins and Sam Kearney.

The band’s sound has been compared to The Band, Neil Young, The Raconteurs and other blues-influenced rock bands.

Alberta Cross on Wikipedia and Spotify.

Biffy Clyro

Biffy Clyro are a Scottish rock band from Kilmarnock,[2] comprising Simon Neil (guitar, lead vocals), James Johnston (bass, vocals) and Ben Johnston (drums, vocals). After their first three albums, the band expanded their following significantly with the release of their fourth, Puzzle in 2007. The album went gold in the UK, selling over 100,000 units. Biffy Clyro’s popularity was built upon further in 2008 and 2009 with the release of the singles “Mountains” and “That Golden Rule”, which both reached the top 10 of the UK singles chart. Their latest album, Only Revolutions, reached #3 in the UK chart and went gold within days of its release in 2009, later going platinum in 2010 and was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize.

Biffy Clyro on Wikipedia and Spotify.

Florence + the Machine

Florence and the Machine (stylised as Florence + the Machine) is the recording name of English indie rock artist Florence Welch and a collaboration of other artists who provide backing music for her voice. Florence and the Machine’s sound has been described as a combination of various genres, including rock and soul. The band’s music has received praise across the music media before they gained mainstream success, especially from the BBC who played a large part in Florence and the Machine’s rise to prominence by promoting her as part of BBC Introducing.

The band’s debut album, Lungs, was released on 6 July 2009, and held the number-two position for its first five weeks in the UK Albums Chart. On 17 January 2010, the album reached the top position, having remained on the chart for twenty-eight consecutive weeks up until that point. The album has been within the top forty in the United Kingdom for sixty-five consecutive weeks, making it one of the best-selling albums of 2009 and 2010 so far. At the 2010 BRIT Awards, Lungs won the Mastercard British Album award. Florence and the Machine performed at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards and the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Concert. It has recently been announced that the band have been nominated for Best New Artist at the 53rd Grammy Awards.

Florence + the Machine on Wikipedia and Spotify.

John Mayer

John Clayton Mayer (pronounced /ˈmeɪ.ər/ MAY-ər; born October 16, 1977) is an American musician, singer-songwriter, recording artist, and music producer. Raised in Fairfield, Connecticut, where he attended Fairfield Warde High School. He then attended Berklee College of Music in Boston before moving to Atlanta, Georgia in 1997, where he refined his skills and gained a following. His first two studio albums, Room for Squares and Heavier Things, did well commercially, achieving multi-platinum status. In 2003, he won a Best Male Pop Vocal Performance Grammy Award for “Your Body Is a Wonderland”.

Mayer began his career performing mainly acoustic rock, but gradually began a transition towards the blues genre in 2005 by collaborating with renowned blues artists such as B. B. King, Buddy Guy, and Eric Clapton, and by forming the John Mayer Trio. The blues influence can be heard on his album Continuum, released in September 2006. At the 49th Annual Grammy Awards in 2007 Mayer won Best Pop Vocal Album for Continuum and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for “Waiting on the World to Change”. He released his fourth studio album, Battle Studies, in November 2009.

Mayer’s career pursuits have extended to stand-up comedy, design, and writing; he has written pieces for magazines, most notably for Esquire. He is also involved in philanthropic activities through his “Back to You” fund. Several high-profile romantic relationships and his involvement with the media caused him to become a tabloid staple, beginning in 2006.

John Mayer on Wikipedia and Spotify.

Ladyhawke

Phillipa “Pip” Brown (born in July 1979) better known by her stage name Ladyhawke, is a New Zealand singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. She was formerly a part of the Wellington-based band Two Lane Blacktop, named for the 1971 road film of the same name. Before assuming the name Ladyhawke, she formed the band Teenager with Nick Littlemore of Pnau and Empire of the Sun. Ladyhawke named herself after the 1985 Richard Donner film Ladyhawke. Ladyhawke is best known for her hit singles “Paris Is Burning” and “My Delirium”. Her self-titled debut album was released on Modular Recordings in September 2008. At the ARIA Music Awards of 2009, Ladyhawke won for Best Breakthrough single and album.

The Observer grouped Ladyhawke in with other singers gaining notice with their distinct fashion, 1980s references, and androgyny, including Lady Gaga, Little Boots, Lissy Trullie and Elly Jackson from the synthpop duo La Roux.

Ladyhawke on Wikipedia and Spotify.

Lars Winnerbäck

Lars Mattias Winnerbäck (born 19 October 1975), is a Swedish singer and songwriter. He was born in Stockholm, but spent his childhood in Linköping, where he attended Katedralskolan. He moved back to Stockholm in 1996, the same year he released his first album, Dans med svåra steg. He is now one of Sweden’s most popular artists.

The influence of songwriters like Carl Michael Bellman, Evert Taube, Bob Dylan, Ulf Lundell and Cornelis Vreeswijk shines through in Winnerbäck’s exclusively Swedish lyrics, which deal with shallowness, prejudice in society and hypocrisy in religion, as well as romance, relationships and anxiety. Several songs depict the difference between living in medium-size Linköping and metropolitan Stockholm.

Lars Winnerbäck on Wikipedia and Spotify.

Matthew Good

Matthew Frederick Robert Good (born June 29, 1971, Burnaby, British Columbia) is a Canadian rock musician. He was the lead singer for the Matthew Good Band, one of Canada’s most successful alternative rock bands in the 1990s, before dissolving the band in 2002. Other band members included drummer Ian Browne, guitarist/keyboardist Dave Genn, and original bassist Geoff Lloyd, later replaced by Rich Priske. In the years since the Matthew Good Band’s disbanding, Good has pursued a solo career and established himself as a political activist and blogger.

Matthew Good on Wikipedia and Spotify.

Mumford & Sons

Mumford & Sons are an English folk rock band. The band is made up of Marcus Mumford (vocals, guitar, drums, mandolin), Ben Lovett (vocals, keyboards, accordion), “Country” Winston Marshall (vocals, banjo, dobro), and Ted Dwane (vocals, string bass). Although the band members have claims on certain instruments, the members switch instruments during live shows according to convenience, for they each play a variety of instruments. The band formed in late 2007, rising out of London’s folk scene with other artists such as Laura Marling, Johnny Flynn and Noah and the Whale.

The band has often supported Laura Marling at concerts, while their association with Noah and the Whale can be traced back to St Paul’s School, Barnes and King’s College School, Wimbledon. Mumford and Lovett attended King’s College School alongside Noah and the Whale bassist Matt Owens, while Marshall attended St Paul’s School along with Charlie Fink, lead singer of Noah and the Whale.

The band’s debut album, Sigh No More, was released in the United Kingdom in October 2009, and February 2010 in the United States. On December 1, 2010 the band received two Grammy Award nominations, one for Best New Artist and the other for Best Rock Song (Little Lion Man).

Mumford & Sons on Wikipedia and Spotify.

Nada Surf

Nada Surf is an American alternative rock band. Formed in 1992, the New York band consists of Matthew Caws (guitar, vocals), Ira Elliot (drums, backup vocals) and Daniel Lorca (bass, backup vocals).

Nada Surf was formed in the early nineties by Matthew Caws and Daniel Lorca. They met in the Lycée français de New York (USA) and spent some of their childhood in France and Belgium. They played in many bands, including The Cost of Living and Because Because Because. Their first drummer was named Dan, later alluded to in the song “The Plan” (High/Low). Dan was then replaced by Aaron Conte, with whom the band recorded its first 7″, The Plan/Telescope (1994/Stickboy), as well as the demo tape Tafkans, the raw version of High/Low. Those raw versions were later released on their second 7″, Deeper Well/Pressure Free (1995/Deep Elm Records), on the Karmic EP and on North 6th Street.

Nada Surf on Wikipedia and Spotify.

Rise Against

Rise Against is an American melodic hardcore band from Chicago, Illinois, formed in 1999. The band currently consists of Tim McIlrath (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Zach Blair (lead guitar, backing vocals), Joe Principe (bass guitar, backing vocals) and Brandon Barnes (drums, percussion).

Rise Against spent its first five years signed to the independent record label Fat Wreck Chords, on which it released two studio albums, The Unraveling (2001) and Revolutions per Minute (2003). Both the albums met with considerable underground success and in 2003, the band signed onto the major label, Geffen.

The band’s major label debut Siren Song of the Counter Culture brought the band mainstream success, producing several successful singles. The band’s fourth studio album, The Sufferer & the Witness debuted at number ten on the Billboard 200 chart and received positive reviews from critics. The band’s fifth studio album Appeal to Reason was released on October 7, 2008 and debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 chart. All three albums released via Geffen were certified platinum in Canada and gold in the United States. The band actively promotes animal rights and are all straight edge (excluding Barnes), PETA supporters and vegetarians. Rise Against is currently recording a sixth studio album at The Blasting Room in Fort Collins, due for release in 2011.

Rise Against on Wikipedia and Spotify.

Let’s start with the new server. I realized that the server that is currently running this site and two other doesn’t pack enough punch to handle the odd requests peaks I’m seeing. Every now and then, the one-liners are being picked up by some site, sending quite a lot of people this way. The last time this happened, about a week ago, the server got totally clogged when it ran out of memory. The reason? Only half of the 1GB chip in the box is discovered by the motherboard. The result? Swapping madness and total break down. The solution is to build a new and better box that will handle the peaks and then some. This will cost me a hell of a lot more than paying someone to host the site, but where’s the fun in that!? Now I’ve almost got all the parts I need (all I’m missing are some cables and the ones I received in the mail today were all useless – I have to learn to read the specifications properly before ordering), and I’m working on a small How To so that other people can also build their own home server. More to come.

The movie I went to see was the Norwegian “Tomme Tønner“. It’s heavily influenced by the style that Guy Ritchie uses in his movies, and it has its moments. They are brief, but they are still moments. Onc scene in particular actually made me laugh until I cried and that’s not something that happens often to me at the movies. Don’t get your expectations go through the roof, though, but you should still go see it. Maybe just to support Norwegian movies.

In other and music-related news, I’m happy to announce that Biffy Clyro is coming to Norway! Not only are they coming, they’ll be here in two-ish weeks time, on February 1st. That’s some great stuff right there. Even though their last album is not as smashing as the previous one, I’m not missing out on this. And to make everything even better, they are appearing on the Norwegian TV music show Lydverket on February 3rd. I’ll be in the audience, and so can you.

Anniken is still out and about on her 4 months journey. Personally, I wouldn’t mind if she got back tomorrow, but there are still two and a half months left until she returns home. Today she and Pernille, who she is traveling with, left Buenos Aires and flew to Costa Rica, which will be their base of operations for the remainder of their trip. Argentina was nice, but I think they are really looking forward to sandy beaches and umbrella drinks. Over the last two weeks, while they have been staying in the Argentine capital, we’ve been in touch every day using MSN and Skype. And I’m very happy we’ve got access to the wonders of modern technology or else I probably would have gone mad. Now, however, MSN and Skype use will be a more limited, as they will be moving around quite a lot and internet connections might be harder to find. Finger crossed, though, and there’s always text messages and land lines.

Even though Anniken is far, far away, she is in my head pretty much all the time, and sometimes she even manages to occupy it when I sleep. It gives me that tingling feeling, from the tip of my toes to the top of the longest hair on my head. It’s 78 days left. There, I’ve started to count down.

I, for one, am impressed. Not only does he play the classic pieces, he also know his way around the more modern gems. What about Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” and “Kashmir” by Led Zeppelin, also performed on an acoustic guitar?

Even though I listen to a lot of different music, I don’t have that many CDs; it’s been a while since I made the move from CDs from downloads. iTunes and torrents are to blame for that. For a while I downloaded pirated version of the album and then bought the CD online. Yes, I downloaded pirated music, but I also bought the CD. Probably not entirely legal, but I feel I’m in the clear. Because of this I’ve got quite a lot of CDs that I’ve never actually taken out of the cover.

Then I started to buy all my music as digital downloads and now it’s time to take the next step in the digital music evolution: Spotify Premium.

You’ve probably heard about Spotify, and it’s also a good chance you’re using it even if it’s still in a closed beta for most users. But if you’re not familiar with the application, here’s a very short summary: Spotify let’s you stream music from their vast music collection to your computer and mobile phone (if you have an Android phone or an iPhone).

The basic idea isn’t new, you’ve been able to stream music on the internet to computers and mobile phones for years, but the sources have mostly been radio stations with music that some DJ has already put together in a playlist for you. With Spotify you have access to the largest music collection you’ll ever see and with offline mode you can store up to 3333 tracks locally and listen to them even without an internet connection.

What pushed me over the edge from the ad-supported version to the USD 14 a month premium version were mainly three things:

1. The in-between-tracks commercials. Let’s face it, they have become intrusive up to a point where you really want to get rid of them, but not by not using Spotify.
2. Access to the mobile phone client, which is only available if you have a premium account. I just ditched my iPhone in favor of an HTC Hero running Android and the phone supports both the Spotify mobile client and proper multitasking. Hey, Apple, creating a handset that doesn’t allow multitasking is a god damn design error.
3. Offline mode. I don’t have a flat fee data plan on my mobile phone subscription so offline mode on the mobile client is just pure genius: It basically eliminates my need for iTunes. Even though there is a limit of 3333 offline tracks, that’s more tracks than my current iTunes library.

I’ve only been a Spotify Premium user for about half an hour or so, but I already love it. Right now I’m listening to an excellent Sarah McLachlan live album, “Mirrorball“, in offline mode on my HTC Hero and the sound quality is just great.

I got two Spotify invites to with my Premium account, so if you’re not yet a Spotify user and want to try it out, drop a comment with your e-mail address and I’ll send you an invite.

Update: Both invites are now handed out, but I’ll get two new next month.

He didn’t only download music, it’s Hallvard’s fault that Terje played The Sims instead of reading for his final exams one semester and that I had the chance to go postal inside the virtual hotel in Hitman: Codename 47 instead of in a real hotel.

But I digress, let’s get back to “Hello Time Bomb”.

For me it was an instant classic. The song was by a band called Matthew Good Band, a Canadian band fronted by lead singer Matthew Good. That you name your band after yourself might be one of many signs that you’re having a minor God complex, but when the music is so good, I’ll look the other way. Since “Hello Time Bomb” was released on the album “Beautiful Midnight”, the band released another album and an EP before Good dissolved his band in 2002 to go solo.

Now Matthew Frederick Robert Good is about to release his sixth solo album. After an excellent album (“Avalanche”, 2003), a so-so album (“White Light Rock & Roll Review”, 2004), a compilation with a few new, decent tracks (“In A Coma: 1995-2005″, 2005), a really good album with a few songs that I can repeat again and again (“Hospital Music”, 2008) and a live album that I’ve only played through a couple of time (“Live At Massey Hall”, 2008), it sounds like Good will be releasing an album as good (or at least almost as good) as Avalanche.

The album, titled “Vancouver”, has been available on www.matthewgood.org for everyone to preview since Saturday and you can listen through the whole thing on the website. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to jump to a particular track, you have to start on the beginning of the album and listen through to the end.

Unless you have a look in the HTML code, that is. The album preview is actually just a large MP3 file, and the URL is available in the code. This means that you can download the entire album without much effort, use some MP3 splitter to split it into tracks (I used iTunes) and you’re ready to go. It’s not the most legal thing to do, perhaps, but I’m buying the album when it’s released, so I’m sure Mr. Good won’t mind that I jumped the gun a little.

I’ve been listening almost non-stop since Sunday morning, and “Vancouver” is just getting better and better. There are some songs that just hits you immediately, like “Us Remains Impossible” and “Fought to Fight it”, and some that keeps on growing on you, like “Empty’s Theme Park”. Even the weaker tunes is gaining strength. My personal album of the year? It could very well be.

Be sure to have a listen yourself on www.matthewgood.org.

Anyway. Yesterday I sat down and played around a little with Logic and my guitar. After a couple of hours, my fingers hurt and it was about time to go to bed. You can download the untitled result here. The drums are some that came with Logic, it’s all drag and drop magic. But I play the three two guitars you hear. It’s really not as tight as it should be, I’m imagining a band with 10 year olds, but let’s face it: I don’t really know how to play the guitar.