The Cynic Says……

I don’t really ever buy CD’s because I don’t really have any good reason to do so. After all, I use my computer and my portable MP3 player to listen to music so having a CD doesn’t really do me much good and is more trouble than it’s worth to rip it into mp3 or wma format to listen to it on my mp3 player. I also have a subscription to Rhapsody to Go so I can just download anything out of their catalog of songs and copy them to my player. I pay a monthly fee and have access to something like 1.5 million songs that I can copy to my player as much as I want as many times a month as I want. It’s kinda nice because I have this problem where I end up getting bored of a CD after a week or so. With Rhapsody if I get bored of a CD I can delete it and copy something else over to replace it and not have to feel bad about having spent $18 on a CD I listened to 8 times. Regardless, the one CD I finally did decide to buy was "DE9: Transitions" by Richie Hawtin. It was $18.99 but surprisingly worth every penny of it. It not only comes with a CD but also a DVD with tons of bonus material. The CD includes a 74 minute mix, while the DVD includes the 94 minute mix in its original form along with a couple videos and an interview as well. The best part about the 94 minute mix is that not only is it available in a standard stereo format, it’s also available in dolby digital 5.1 and even 256kbps mp3 format to listen to on a portable player. The DVD is actually the entire reason I bought it since first of all, I like that he includes the mix in mp3 format with no DRM or anything of that nature and second of all he included the Dobly 5.1 mix, which sounds amazing on my home theater system. Truthfully I haven’t even bothered with the CD yet since I don’t really have any good reason to do so.

Frankly, I’d like to see more artists include an mp3 version of their music with their releases since mp3 players are becoming so popular. I’d probably buy more CD’s if they did. Of course the RIAA doesn’t want that to happen since mp3’s are easy to re-distribute illegally, thus taking money out of their pockets. Hell, as it is they’re trying to further regulate online music stores since they allow people to buy songs individually instead of making them pay $18 for the full CD even though there’s only one good song on the whole stupid thing. Hey, maybe if the artists actually put more than two or three good songs on a CD and took up the rest of the space with crap filler songs more people would actually buy CD’s instead of downloading them illegally or buying single songs online!

Regardless, the mix in question is absolutely amazing. Granted, you have to be into techno to really enjoy it but it’s still by far one of the best I’ve heard in recent memory. Basically what he’s done is cobbled together bunches of samples from a large number of songs into a 94 minute mix instead of actually playing consecutive complete songs. Whereas normal DJ’s will use two turntables or CDDJ’s, he uses turntables to an extent but also uses software such as Scratch Live & Ableton Live to more or less remix songs on the fly and weave them together in ways never before possible. If you watch the DVD it actually gives a visual representation as to what tracks are playing at the moment and when they come in and out of the mix. Oftentimes he’ll have 5 or 6 tracks laid on top of one another fading various ones in and out of the mix and even re-using several at various points along the mix. It’s quite the interesting listen and probably one of my favorite techno/electronic CD’s/releases/mixes I own. Definitely worth the money if you’re into that sort of music.