Nine Inch Nails released their latest album a couple of days ago. It’s pretty cool—more to my taste than their previous work. The only reason I know this, however, is because Trent Reznor has more clue about the interwebs than basically every record company out there; the first nine tracks (of 34) were uploaded to BitTorrent by the band, in MP3 format, and you can purchase the entire album in MP3, FLAC, or Apple Lossless formats for $5 (you can also order the two-CD set for $10).

What’s really cool is that they released it under a Creative Commons licence (Attribution-NonCommercial), so that as long as you credit NIN and don’t make any money out of it, you can do basically anything you like with the tracks once you have them. There’s already ogg-vorbis versions floating around, along with other formats, although people seem to be restricting themselves to sharing only the tracks that NIN released for no charge (which is pretty cool, since there’s nothing actually stopping people from sharing the tracks that NIN are charging for).

Anyway. Listen to it. I’ll quite possibly be buying it, too.

As Rich mentioned, Planet Rock is closing down. The owners give as their reason that ‘digital "was not an economically viable growth platform for GCap Media"’; I suspect that this is only true in the same way that there is a worldwide market for about five computers, and nobody could ever want more than 640k of memory.

Rich also mentions that it’s the only radio station I listen to—not only that, it’s the only reason I even own a radio, digital or otherwise. A big chunk of the music I listen to, I first heard (or first really took notice of) on Planet Rock—U2, Pink Floyd, the Who, Wishbone Ash, King Crimson, Talking Heads, Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers. Pandora (also R.I.P., for all intents and purposes) and Last.fm aren’t the same, since they recommend music based on what I’m already listening to; Planet Rock always introduced me to more classic rock and metal. It’ll be a shame to see it go.

Incidentally, I finally got around to listening to the Supertramp album I got for Christmas (Breakfast In America). I was a little wary, since all I’d heard was the title track (which I’m not a huge fan of), but the rest of the album is pretty bloody good; Take The Long Way Home is a constant fixture of my mp3 player.

Just as we arrived in the Fishbowl to do some database work, the jukebox started playing ridiculously loud pop music. So, since we couldn’t turn it down/off, we requested some of our own—DragonForce, in fact. Ridiculously loud, ridiculously fast metal for twenty minutes or so (three songs…) should teach them a lesson.

Update: they turned the music down. I wonder why…

In this interview with some Australian news people types, Trent Reznor is quoted as (literally) saying “fuck you” to his record label:

Label: “…It’s because we know you’ve got a core audience that’s gonna buy whatever we put out, so we can charge more for that. It’s the pop stuff we have to discount to get people to buy it. True fans will pay whatever”.

Reznor: “That’s the most insulting thing I’ve heard. I’ve garnered a core audience that you feel it’s OK to rip off? F— you’.

Dan claims that Christopher Biggins^W^WUkraine should have won Eurovision. I disagree. Swedish transvestites are much more entertaining than large men who look like they’ve had an accident with a roll of turkey foil.

Andrew Eldritch is a Debian user, apparently. Nice taste there.

He’s also an opinionated bastard, which is always fun:

Q. Why can’t evolution science be taught in Kansas?

A. Someone has to grow up stupid and flip burgers for everybody else. It says so in the Bible.

Starbucks have signed Paul McCartney to their music label. Actually, I don’t know whether this is reason to hate Starbucks (for supporting McCartney) or to hate McCartney (for supporting Starbucks), so I’ll go with both.

In other news, Elton John has been fighting for gay rights, telling the Australian Prime Minister “Up yours!” after the federal government overturned a law legalising gay marriage (or civil unions) in the Australian Capital Territory. He also claims that “organised religion lacks compassion and turns people into hateful lemmings”.

I haven’t posted much for a while. To be honest, there’s not been much to post about; I’ve done no coding, lots of reading, and more writing than I have in years (which is to say, I’m onto a second page—more fiction than I’ve written since I’ve been at Uni, and more than I’ve written at all since I gave up my history degree).

Following a conversation Chris and I had after his performance at BleepLoad, we’re planning to get together for a jam session this weekend—should be fun. I’m also hoping to get even more writing done, though it’s quite possible that most people reading this won’t ever get to read it until I can convince myself it’s any good…

Plymouth has been having ridiculously warm weather recently; it’s quite worrying, usually we have rain pretty much non-stop from September to June, then three months of decent weather. It’s nice, though. Pity Sunderland is (apparently) having nice weather, too—I don’t get to make my family jealous…

Also, I highly recommend the band Sigur Rós, especially the songs Starálfur, Olsen Olsen, Untitled 4 and Untitled 8. Jósef Tekur Fimmuna Í Vinnuna and Dánarfregnir Og Jarðarfarir are pretty good too. MP3s are available on their site.

As you may or may not know, last Wednesday Rich and Chris organised an electronic music “thing” at the Students’ Union. Now, electronic music isn’t really my thing, for the most part, but I went along and took my camera, so photos from the event are available on flickr, in the BleepLoad set. There may be a few more in the near future.

Various news sites have reported Pete Doherty’s recent driving ban, describing him as a “rock bad boy”. I’m not even particularly certain who he is, but I’m pretty certain he cannot be described as a “bad boy” or a “rock musician”, or even a “musician” at all. You don’t get to be a “rock bad boy” unless you’ve destroyed your instruments and equipment on-stage (bonus points for doing in before the gig is over), driven a car into a swimming pool, and trashed your hotel room.