WOEBOT: MP3 Blogs.

September 29, 2004

MP3 Blogs.

Who gives a shit what I think about the ethics of offering up mp3s for download? I mean, REALLY, it's none of my business! Practice your own ethics I say. However, not being an mp3 blog myself, I do feel able to evaluate these things in much the same manner as I might offer up a critique of a record store. Commenting on one's fellow blogger's blogs (not mp3 ones that is) is altogether stickier. It's easier to just be nice, and praise their strengths, rather than focussing on their manifold weaknesses (tee hee, only joking!) I do believe the same cloying chuminess which many people say ruins "The Bloglom" hampers the mp3 blogs. It's most obvious side effect, in my humble opinion, is that the quality of some blogs is inordinately less than their online profile would lead one to imagine. Some mp3 blogs are clearly at the top of their own links bars.

I've looked at in the region of 100 mp3 blogs and on balance I was pretty appalled by the lack of care and thought that went into the process of offering up other people's music for free. Blogs seemed, in the main, terribly designed with little or no thought going into the attached writing. The music offered up seemed at once pretty ropey and poorly assembled. It's a condition with these things that the writing seemed a pretty pointless exercise anyway, I mean, what's the point in reviewing music which is (thanks to you) instantly available. On the other hand, I don't go with Mark Fisher's argument that reading writing about music you haven't the opportunity of hearing is a waste of space one iota. That renders most music journalism a redundant exercise (er, pretty much like it is, grin). It's the job of the music critic to impart his enthusiasm, to MAKE you want to hunt down sounds, to stroke your lobes till they fizz with uncontainable desire.

For these reasons the best mp3 blog of the lot, gabba pod, almost entirely dispenses with writing, cuts to the chase and hits you with the stuff; not a skanky remix in sight. Obviously this is manifoldly disproved by some music blogs which use mp3s merely to illustrate a written theme. Here music blogs which have crossed over into being mp3 blogs are a case in point. For instance both Oliver Wang and Nick Gutterbreakz have both run eminently readable blogs up until a few weeks ago, and now they carry over their discerning taste and eloquence into this new medium.

The thematic approach to presenting mp3s, a whole bag of tracks from a similar area of music, is another useful trope for the mp3 blogs. The point here is to know your strengths. One of the most awful things I've ever witnessed on the Internet was some witless coot's mp3 guide to Reggae, a fucking embarassment, a travesty even. Some pull this approach off with real flare, like for instance Christopher Porter at The Suburbs are Killing Us others choose wisely to stick within a certain remit, like the truly excellent 20 Jazz Funk Greats mp3 blog (strictly perverse noise) and the superb Cocaine Blunts site (Hip-Hop old and new skool). Still others power their offerings through an extremely intense, exquisitely personal idea of what music should be. Music lovers and their sites like Jordan Himelfarb's Said the Gramophone, Stuart Buchanan's Fat Planet and Loki's An Idiots Guide to Dreaming.

All of this goes some way to explaining why I couldn't find a truly decent Pop mp3 blog. NYPLM doesn't count I'm afraid as it's only one tenth an mp3 blog. Lest you think I'm biased to "dead" music, I'll admit to being a little disappointed at this shortfall. Maybe Pop fans are too busy having fun to labour in this deeply nerdy way, presumably they're all too busy surfing Limewire and Soulseek sourcing their instant highs to bother with the hastle of collating and documenting mp3s, perhaps it takes the monomaniacal collector's ethos to weld together an mp3 blog which plays to the medium's own strengths. Without further ado...

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...THE TOP 11.

Gabba Pod
The clear undisputed winner. Incredible and painstakingly sourced tracks from the foamy edge at the tip of the wave.

Boom Selection
The home of the bootleg mash-up now offering up fantastic looking mixes.

Fat Planet
Beautifully collated catholic selection.

Gutterbreakz
Drool! Real underground stuff. Recent highlight being Nick's LFO compilation, the Moog special and Nick's excellent Robert Rental special.