“Post murum somnii”

Or… “Does downloading embiggen your appreciation of music?” (And I still mean legal downloading, of course!)

I now have 12,548 “songs” in my iTunes Library. Every month I download 90 songs… OK, you’ve read that before.

Fourteen or fifteen years ago, on my way home from work, I stopped to browse in a record shop – in Station Square, Harrogate, directly across from the railway station. In one of the racks I found a CD by a group that I hadn’t heard of before, The Future Sound of London. (OK, maybe I had heard of them; but I hadn’t heard any of their music yet.) I was intrigued by the cover painting that depicted a young girl contemplating a sea-anemone-like creature that floated above her outstretched hand… It was Lifeforms. A double CD. And only £9.99. Yet I hesitated…

A few days later, I’d resolved to buy it, but going back to the record shop I found that the price had increased to – what? – maybe £15. Which broke my resolve. At £9.99 it could have been the first electronica CD that I had bought – that distinction was to go to System 7.3 Fire + Water by 777 (the U.S. pseudonym of System 7) – but at £15? No.

Now, I have 4,272 electronica “songs” in my iTunes Library. By 209 different artists… It’s one of my favourite genres – mostly ambient and IDM, with a smattering of drum’n’bass and trance. Yet, I’d hesitated… 

But what if I could have bought the whole album for less than £4? (Which I could if emusic.com actually offered it. The iTunes Store does… but it still costs £9.99!)

But there’s a huge range of music (and other stuff) on emusic.com at a ridiculously low price. It’s cheap enough to take a chance on something intriguing, to buy on a whim something new, fresh, different, to boldly buy music in a genre that I’ve never bought before… And tons to choose from. 

Frankly, some things are quite disappointing. Mmm… Master drummers of India and Sonic Youth’s Goodbye 20th century, for example.

And there’s not a lot of mainstream stuff (although I did find Snow Patrol’s back catalogue there). But that’s really the point…

I’ve discovered far more, and more varied, music that I do like, that I might otherwise have dithered over and not bought – or might not even have found. Orchestral works by Philip Glass, by Steve Reich, by Baltic composers with far too many As in their names. Finnish rock groups like Amberian Dawn, Nightwish and Unshine. Pretty much the whole catalogue of Ultimae Records. Boris Karloff – Boris Karloff! – reading Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark. 

And an album of Black Sabbath songs translated into Latin and arranged for mediæval instruments (Sabbatum by Rondellus). 

Now, my wife may not agree…

But I think I’ve found something.