Paloma Faith - Do You Want The Truth Or Something Beuautiful

Been listening to Paloma Faith's album - Do You Want The Truth Or Something Beautiful quite a bit over the last few days. The title track is great. She souds like a cross between Eryka Badu and Amy Winehousee. Big loud funky rock sound with some catchy lyrics. I'd only really heard one of her previous tracks and wrote her off as more bubblegum like Katie Perry but after giving the album a chance I really like most of it. Just my cup of tea.

Save The Hackney Hare

 

The council in Hackney are trying to force the removal of this piece of art from the side of a shop (which had given permission to the artist). If you go here
you can see loads more similar work by the same artist and if you go here
you can sign the petition to help save it.
If it was a big cock or something then fair enough, but this looks cool and anyone who objects needs to get a life.

Cee Lo Green/The Lady Killer Kid Cudi/Man On The Moon II (The Legend Of Mr.Rager) N.E.R.D/Nothing

Cee Lo Green - The Lady Killer
New album by the big guy from Gnarls Barkley on Elektra. From the start it's well produced by the likes of the Smeezingtons, Salaam Remi and the UK's own Fraser T. Smith. With contributions from singer Lauren Bennett, Earth, Wind & Fire's Philip Bailey and a new one to me Selah Sue. Cee Lo's voice is smooth and soulful, the tracks are intelligent and funny in places and the album as a whole leaves you with a chilled out, loved up vibe. The retro sound with it's trumpets and horns isn't for everyone but stand out tracks Bodies and Wildflower as well as the fantastic F*** You / Forget You make this album of love songs a relaxing listen. 8/10


Kid Cudi - Man On The Moon II (The Legend Of Mr. Rager)
The second album from the troubled rapper, and it's not going to endear him to many. Hip Hop isn't usually my thing but this guy doesn't give off a Look At Me And My Money aura. His dark  and melodic tunes are more cerebral than that. Kanye West features as does the big man from above, Cee Lo Green and even Mary J Blige gets in there so the kid can obviously has some big name fans. He is not going to be famous for his vocal range and the oohhs and aahhs and whispered lines could have been more melodic. Erase Me is the most radio friendly but my favourite is Mojo So Dope. Overall though it has the feel of a disjointed experiment and is hard to categorise or compare. 5/10


N.E.R.D - Nothing
I've always liked N.E.R.D. It's not as cool as Pharrell's usual stuff but is obviously done for the fun of it rather than to make the money. His falsetto on Hypnotize U  (produced fittingly by Daft Punk) is sleazy rather than loving. Victory could be by Queen. I've listened to this album non stop all day and love it's lazy beats and easy listening lyrics. It's like The Flaming Lips for the Trip Hop crowd. Funky and smooth without being cheesy. Hot-n-Fun at the end features Nelly Furtado and could have brightened up the middle of the album but would remix into a great club track. 7/10

Nokia BH-217 Bluetooth Headset Review

Recently the nice people at Nokia’s WOMworld sent me one of the new Bluetooth headsets (BH-217) to try out. It was one of a number of new products announced at NokiaWorld 2010, Nokia’s annual get together and to be honest I found it surprising that something as insignificant as a Bluetooth earpiece would get even that much attention. I remembered it though because I thought it looked ok for what it was, a minimalist headset with a hook and a funny looking earbud thing.

So anyway the box arrived and after opening it up and checking out the contents I could hear a voice, which turned out to be the headset itself giving me the first time set up instructions. I found this pretty cool, as after about a minute I had followed the simple instructions and had connected it to my phone. Connecting it to a second phone was just as simple. This really was the easiest pairing I have ever done with a Bluetooth product.

In the box along with the headset were two leaflets containing the instructions in a long list of languages, two cheap clear plastic ear hooks of different sizes, three white rubber new shaped earbuds (again of different sizes), two slightly different holders, and a standard small pin Nokia charger. The selection of hooks and earbuds make it easy to find a combination that will fit you perfectly but I’ll admit I did go through every combination more than once to find the one for me. The new ergonomically shaped earbuds take a while to get used to as they fit just inside your ear but not in your ear canal. I found this a much nicer way to wear a headset as you won’t end up with earwax all over the tips, which in turn attracts dirt when not in use, so yeah, they stay cleaner this way. The one I got was silver with a bit of white and blue but you can get it in a much darker grey/black again with the white and blue bits around the ear piece.

The two holders mean you have somewhere to put the headset when not in use. You can stick one somewhere in your car, preferably in reach of your charger as there is a hole in the bottom for this. The other one comes with a clip which you can fix to your clothes or desk or anywhere else you wish to attach it. Once put in the holder the headset automatically turns itself off and when you want to use it again just one press of the single silver phone shaped multifunction key on the headset turns it on and connects it to your phone again.

 

The design is very simple with just the one multifunction key on the outward facing side and a single indicator LED on the other side at the top. It feels well made in your hand with a smooth anodized feel and rounded edges but the best bit is the weight. The whole thing is so light you can barely even feel it in your hand or you ear. It comes in at 7.6 grams or 0.268oz. Certainly the lightest headset I’ve ever used. When you factor in the 3 month standby time and 5 hours of talktime, you wonder what the little pixies inside are living on. I haven’t tested the 3 month standby time as I’ve only had it for a couple of weeks but in that time I have only just recharged it and it only needed a five minute top up to show a green light, meaning full charge. The 3 months is if you keep it in the holders when not in use, otherwise they claim 100 hours. It’s about 5cm long, just under 2cm wide and just over 0.5cm thick.

Being Bluetooth 2.1 you can connect two devices at the same time pretty simply and the instructions tell you how to juggle calls on the two devices as well as how to get voice activation set up. If you only have the one device though a single press on the multifunction key answers and then cancels calls. To turn it off you just hold the key down until you hear the three descending beeps. Pretty much each function gets a small audible notification. The instructions tell you about all the different specs such as EDR (Enhanced Data Rate), Handsfree profile (HFP) 1.5, Headset profile (HSP) 1.1 but I have no idea what these mean.

The sound was perfectly acceptable for making calls. The sound is clear and crisp and the people I spoke to had no problems hearing me. There is no volume rocker but this wasn’t a problem as the headset automatically adjusts. I didn’t use it in high wind but walking along and sitting on a busy bus was fine. It apparently has DSP noise reduction which is all to do with digital sound algorithms as far as I can tell and as I said I had no problems hearing anyone but the one time I listened to some tunes the sound was tinny and horrible (maybe I was just too used to using a good pair of cans). I wore it for about 4 or 5 hours one day and often forgot it was there. 

There are cheaper headsets about but this one is incredibly light and comfortable, small and unobtrusive and has great sound. It has the feel of something much more expensive and not at all towards the cheaper end of Nokia’s range. At just £25 you get a lot for your money. You could spend a lot more for a lot less so these come highly recommended. Nokia aren’t yet selling them on their website but you can get them from Amazon for £24.95 in both colours. Everyone I showed them too was very impressed with the size and weight and when I told them the price they asked where they could get them.

The New Breed of Female Vocalists

Ok, so the other day I listed some tracks from the likes of Nina, Billie and Ella and today I thought I'd mention the new breed. So in no particular order here is a track or two from my favorite female singer songwriters. It was about 10 years ago that I first heard of Jill Scott. She was the female singer songwriter who wrote the female lyrics for some of the tracks on The Roots album Things Fall Apart. Erykah Badu sang them but then Jill got some recognition and released her first album Who Is Jill Scott? which had some amazing tracks such as Getting In The Way and and A Long Walk. To be honest I wasn't as impressed with her next two albums but she did some great collaborations with people such as 4Hero and now seems to be doing a lot of acting, playing the lead in The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency and still releasing the odd stand out track..
Erykah Badu was someone I was already listening to back then. Baduizm had tracks such as On and On and from the Baduizm Live album Call Tyrone and Mama's Gun was a very worthy follow up. She has since added quite an extensive catalogue and featured on tracks with a whole host of people such as UK's Omar and Guru's Jazzamatazz among others.
Next om my list is Leela James. Probably my favorite of hers is Good Time. Again, she has worked with loads of people such as Talib Kweli and Raheem De Vaughn and done some very credible covers.
Angie Stone is next. I had heard of her before Mahgany Soul but that was the first album of hers I really listened to and I got hooked. I still listen to Pissed Off a few times a week.
I liked India Arie's first album, espescially Always In My Head. Her second album seemed rushed out and pretty bland though.
Sade has a new album out. She gets stick for doing Coffee table music but I grew up listening to her and she can do very little wrong in my eyes. Her old stuff is classic and her new stuff is pretty cool too. King of Sorrow is just an example.
Candi Staton is one of those singers who in my eyes is up there with the very best. Not such a great fan of all of her stuff but who can argue with You Got The Love in all it's different versions. I read a review of her performance in Brighton this summer and she is still belting them out as good as ever in her 70's! Here's an interview she did for the Guardian this year.
Can't not mention Amy Winehouse on this and rumered to have a new album out soonish but her first two were pretty damn good in my opinion. Her troubles aside I think she is probably the best new young singer in the UK for a long time. This is my favorite from her first album, There Is No Greater Love.
Of course there are loads more new female artists, such as La Roux and Skream's Dubstep version of Going In For The Kill, Andreya Triana and one of her many bits of work with Bonobo - The Keeper, and even Adele. Like Corinne Bailey Rae,  Adele gets a mixed reaction but I like them both. Adele has a vey powerful voice, like Beth Ditto, and for that reason I have included her here. This list is by no means definative and very much on the soulful side so feel free to recommend any others.

Introduction To The Old School Female Vocalists

Ok, well of course, there are the 3 greats, Nina, Biilie and Ella but since I got the subscriptsion to Ovi Music I have been listening to lots more. Here's some standards that have been covered by many but equalled by few.
Nina Simone - Wild Is The Wind from the album of the same name.
Billie Holiday - Solitude one of many versions.
Julie London - Blues In The Night my favorite version of this.
Ella Fiztgerald - Sentimental Mood I can't mention this without a nod to Coltrane's interpretation which is in my top 5 tracks EVER!
Sarah Vaughn - April In Paris
Dinah Washington - Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby this one is a Verve Remix but still a great tune. Verve did an album of remixes like this one.
Mildred Bailey - When That Man Is Dead and Gone not very well known this but I love it. 
Each of these ladies could have a whole section to themselves and I'll probably do a list of each of their best tracks in the near future but check these out as a start. Feel free to add any more in the comments section.
I've left out Strange Fruit, Don't Explain and a few others as, again, they could have a whole section to themselves and maybe I'll do that. Any other ideas just let me know.
Easy now

20 Years of Ninja Tune

It was recently the 20 year anniversary of the Ninja Tune label and so I thought I'd post some of my favorite tunes from their catalogue. You can click here to go to their website and check out some of their cool tunes from pioneers such as Coldcut, tunes you will recognise from Cinematic Orchestra and plenty that you won't but still, they are a great label and have been instrumental in the UK music scene of the last 20 years. This is just a selection but you can get most of the albums and all of the tracks below from Ovi Music.
So here are some of my favorites.
DJ Food - Consciousness from Jazz Brakes 5.
Up, Bustle and Out - Emerald Alley from Compared to What/Emerald Alley EP.
Coldcut - Walk a Mile in My Shoes featuring Robert Owens.
Funki Porcini - Dubble from Hed Phone Sex.
Bonobo - Recurring from his Solid Steel Prestents : It Came From the Sea.
Cinematic Orchestra - All That You Give from a 12" but I really could have picked almost any of their tracks.
Herbaliser - Mission Improbable from Very Mercenary
9Lazy9 - Black Jesus from the single of the same name.
Amon Tobin - Nova from the album Permutation.
Andreya Triana - A Town Called Obsolete from Lost Where I Belong

So here are just 10 tracks from their Ninja Tune's extensive stable of artists. All of there are pretty mellow tunes but there is some faster stuff if that's what you prefer. And once again, you can get all of there from Noki's Ovi Music. So why not check out a few of them. One of my favorite labels with some of my favorite tunes.

Ovi Music- What can you expect?

So here's a bit more about my experiences of Ovi Music. When I first got my subscription for unlimited downloads I was like a kid in a sweet shop. I typed in an artists I liked and then just downloaded every album they had. For some, like Nina Simone and Billy Holiday this was just not possible as they had so many albums and collections so I went with some of the better known albums and the collections with lots of tracks. What I noticed very quickly though was that I soon filled up my PC's memory and that a lot of the tracks featured on more than one album. Also I got a lot of filler tunes which were not the best and finally I had about 2 months of music and would never had heard the same tune twice. So after a couple of months I decided to delete everything and start again from sctratch. This time though I decided to just download tunes I really liked. This gave me more time to listen to new tunes and artists that friends and Last.FM recommends, which are more more realisticly similar to what you are already listening to that those recommended by Ovi Music, which tend to be latest releases from more mainstream acts. When searching by genre though the artists on each genres home page does give you a pretty wide variety from that genre and so you can use the 30 second clip function to just get a taster of the tune before you decide to use up more memory. Talking of memory I highly recommend getting an external hard drive. You can get 1tb drives now for about £60-70 from maplins or Amazon and to make the most of Ovi Music I suggest you get one.
Depending on the phone you have also depends on the services you can get. If you have a touch screen phone you can now get a whole album from one click, just like on the PC version but on the non touch versions you have to click each track, wait while it downloads and then go onto the next one. Sometimes you find out that you have missed one or two tracks.
Since Nokia have relaunched as Ovi Music from Comes With Music the website has got a bit better. It's still fairly slow but the layout seems to be a bit better but it can still be hard to find individual tracks. What you do get now is a Top 40 Albums and Singles section, Top 20 Compilations, Artists Recommend sections which seem to be only updated once a month and have 4 or 5 bands or artists and a top 10 of their favorite tunes, a What's Hot section of most downloaded tracks and a then a playlist with some sort of theme, be it Intro to Punk or Oldies but Goodies or Boybands. Again these seem to change only once a month but the rest seem to change once a week or so, but some popular charty stuff seems to stay on the home page or the genre pages for a long long time. Occasionally there are Nokia Exclusives too.
So there you have it, Ovi Music has a simple layout, a search function and they are trying to make it easy to navigate and find what you are looking for but you do really need to get spelling spot on as it can't findeven similar stuff if you don't spell it correctly.

First Post - What I've learnt about Ovi Music!

I'd heard about Nokia's music download service Ovi Music (or Comes With Music as it was when I got my first subscription) and wasn't really that interested for a number of reasons. The choice of phones was not very extensive for one and the mobile I wanted when my last contract upgrade came around was not available with it so I didn't bother. The music comes with DRM (unless you buy it) meaning you can't copy it, transfer it to other devices or share it in any way. To be honest I thought it sounded too good to be true. Then I was lucky enough to win a phone that came with a years subscription and ever since I have become slightly obsessed with the thing. It has it's flaws, which I'll try and go into soon, but the advantages outwiegh them by a long way and now I use it almost every day. When I show people they are impressed and when I hear a tune and think, I'll download that, I am rarely dissapointed that Ovi Music doesn't have it available.
What I want to do here is let you know what new tunes are being released, if they are any good, introduce you to some new and different music and also try and give you an intro to some different musical genres. I'd welcome any comments or suggestions.
Obviously my musically tastes might not be the same as yours but I do listen to a pretty varied selection of tunes so give them a listen and see what you think.

Easy Now
 Happy Listening