I dabble in audio.

Don't take anything I say as gospel, I don't add nearly enough snake oil to my hifi recipes :-)


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Music

I like to listen to a wide variety of music. I have some old favourites like Meatloaf, Deep Purple, and of course Pink Floyd. Pink Floyd lead me to Roger Waters, and Meatloaf lead me to Jim Steinman -- in both cases I found that I'm more interested in the man behind the music. Pink Floyd without Waters is so-so, Meatloaf without Steinman is boring.

Of course, that means that I also like Pandora's Box (a Steinman project) and the Air Supply and Bonnie Tyler songs where Steinman was involved.

Then, of course, there's Bob Dylan. Probably the most influential songwriter ever. And that lead me to Tom Waits, to whom I'm listening almost constantly at the moment.

On the other hand, I also like classical music. Beethoven's first and fifth piano concertos, and of course his symphonies -- the "real" ones or the soundtracks to Immortal Beloved and Clockwork Orange, depending on my mood.

And organ music rocks, although I still have to build the speaker stack I sometimes long for. Bach's nice, but Antiphone Blues and Cantate Domino is really really recommended.

Saffire was here in South Africa not too long ago -- they're even better in real life than on CD. Get the "Live and Uppity" CD and listen to Andra Faye's stunning version of Crazy.

Sometimes I get in a mood for loud noisy music (as opposed to loud Tom Waits, which I often annoy the neighbors with). Battery 9 is a local, very noisy band. The Violent Femmes (my favourite is Add it Up) and Nick Cave can get pretty noisy too.

No music collection is complete without some decent Jazz. My taste runs towards Swing and Big Band -- The Dutch Swing College Band, The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Brubeck, and then there's this CD my brother brought back from Prague -- The Jazz No Problem Band. Great music from a small local band.

Then there's the local stuff, mostly in Afrikaans. I have every one of the Valiant Swart CDs except for "greatest hits" type stuff, I'm a great fan. Koos Kombuis, Johannes Kerkorrel, David Kramer, Laurika Rauch, Gert Vlok Nel, Koos du Plessis, Rocco de Villiers... all great artists.

For background music there's Vollenweider, Oldfield, and Cappercaillie.

Who else? Moby, Morcheeba, ELO, Eels, Eagles, as I said, I listen to a wide variety of music...

Links

"In England, home taping is eroding the industry to such
an extent -- and this is not an exaggeration -- that in two
or three years there may not be an industry."

Brian Robertson, President
Canadian Recording Industry Association
UHF Magazine, November 1982

[Image] Hit Count
hits since 2003-07-14.

Back to Wouter's Audio Page (This page last modified 2004-03-15)