I NEED SUGAR

Rough Trade's release of Jónsi & Alex's Riceboy Sleeps includes an exclusive bonus disc, Rain Down My Favorite Songs. It's the most wonderful and surprising compilation I've heard all year and absolutely essential. There are some great standards from Billie Holiday and Audrey Hepburn along with some Washington Phillips, Cliff Edwards and John Jacob Niles, but it's everything in between that makes this absolute magic.

Here's the complete tracklist:

01 Natalia Janotha - The Celebrated Polish Carillon using only the upper three keys of the piano'
02 Alessandro Moreschi - Ave Maria
03 Smárakvartettinn Á Akureyri - Voggubarnsins Mál
04 Washington Phillips - Mother's Last Word To Her Son
05 Django Reinhardt - Doux Sourire
06 John Jacob Niles - The Gypsie Laddie
07 Billie Holiday - I Can't Believe That You're in Love With Me
08 Lucienne Boyer - Parlez-Moi D'Amour
09 Raoul Pugno - Marche Funèbre
10 Audrey Hepburn - Moon River
11 Ekkehard Ehlers - John Cassevetes (2)
12 John Somers - A Candy Coated Slow Down
13 Cliff 'Ukulele Ike' Edwards - When You Wish Upon A Star

Purchase from Rough Trade.

More from Jónsi & Alex.

Qasim was super generous to invite a white boy to the party this past Friday. I somehow managed to kill 2.5 hours of minimal into a 55 minute set. I was stressing at the 30 minute mark as I realized I was chomping through all the minimal I had that was anywhere close to Indian. Seems to have worked out in the end as I made it through 55 minutes of an hour long set. 

This is the unedited live mix from the evening so there's a little bit of unintentional madness occurring but that's the way it goes. Maybe I'll do a cleaner studio mix in the future but for now this is the goods. Enjoy!

Track list:

01 Rufus Wainwright - Agnus Dei
02 Trentemøller - Prana
03 Emmanuel - Indian Wallpaper
04 Basti Grub - El Gitarro (M.in Remix)
05 Andrea Giuliani and Luca Rossetti - Dirty Chant
06 Andre Crom & Luca Doobie - Harmonics (Ilario Alicante Remix)
07 Debashish Bhattacharya - Amrit Anand
08 Guillaume & The Coutu Dumonts - Can't Argue With Silence
19 Kabuto - Drunken Slumber
10 Masomenos - Juhuu
11 Chris Wood & Frank Leicher - Geisha
12 Gabriel Ananda - Sweet Decay
13 Chris Lattner & Coco Malente - Limbo With Coco

Download here.

Photo credit: Looks like a Slumdog Millionaire set photo as opposed to a screen cap. Taken from this blog, which offers no credit.

Image note: every track without a + beside it is no longer available from iTunes.

So very sick of the music industry complaining about sales being down when I can't even purchase music. 

I stopped buying from iTunes the first moment I tried to play a DRM file for a friend and found I had to enter my password on their computer. That was a few years ago and I had built up quite a wish list which I've actually added to over time, just to remember to seek out albums in the future.

So on a labour day weekend binge, I decided the future was now and I'd be willing to compromise my bit rate standard for convenience (iTunes is only 256kpbs; I've standardized at 320kbps), only to find that more than half my wish list is no longer available from the iTunes store. 

So, this is how they're dealing with DRM? By eliminating half the library. I'm glad I don't have to sift through DRM laden tracks at the store, but why is this music not available? Ridiculous.

UPDATE: Well this is cute. It looks like about half of these missing tracks are available if I search for them, it's just that iTunes has upgraded them to iTunes plus in a way that's broken my wish list links. Very bad!