Listening to music - and my pet hate

I play a lot of music at home using the party shuffle on iTunes. It's great for discovering parts of your collection yu have forgotten. Yu can fine tune a smart playlist from which it selects its tunes if yu want to have nothing really heavy or too long or classical or something. Works well.

I also listen a lot to internet radio stations - the beauty of having cable... Lately my favourite thing is Pandora - a really interesting project. Yu enter the name of an artist or song yu like and it attempts to play something by that artist (or that song maybe) and then it goes on to play similar artists and styles. Have discovered some amazing music that way. Try entering Brian Eno or Godspeed You Black Emperor - and see what yu get.

If yu like a song yu can tell the program that, likewise if yu don't and it will learn better what yu like. Unfortunately it only gives yu 10 hours of listening before yu have to pay (its worth it I think) or reset it (easy on a Mac).

Anyway this brings me to my pet hate of late... One thing I don't like that has become popular with a lot of electronic artists is the use of scratchy sounds like an old record. I grew up listening to records and really hate that sound. When I bought a new record it was relatively free from surface noise. Then as it got older the noise would develop - so disappointing and annoying. It was so wonderful when CD's came out and we were free from surface noise at last. Now these people are putting the noise on the tracks on purpose - eeek!! I hate it!!!! It ruins some great music I think!

Worst offenders - Müm - wonderful analogue electronic outfit - I just wish they would not use dusty scratchy record sounds.

Tom Waits did it on that scarecrow album and it was ok - seemed to fit the genre....