Viva la album; or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the electric generation

About four years ago I felt as though the popular album was under threat. With the rise of itunes and the ever greater use of torrent sites or downloads by the public it seemed that more ephesis was being placed on the individial track rather than the album as a whole. The structure of the album, a musical form that survived for so long appeared to be loosing its grip, and its respect along with it. For a while, this really bothered me. I noticed that people were ignoring entire albums in their addictive search for maybe some gooey ballad they heard on the O.C. I even feared that it would affect my own views of the classic flow. Thankfully, this was not to be the case. In fact, the internet would give birth too many things that carried it on, simultaniously allowing the form to evolve in provoking ways.

You cannot understand my joy when itunes introduced a zero second track change in an update. No one wants an irritating gap inbetween tracks on The Darkside of the Moon or Another Green World or Francis the Mute or F# A# Infinity or any other god damn album for that matter. Freedom has a strange affect on music, but always a good one. Communication and expression should always be free, as long as we hope to all be human. We all grew up having the album forced on us by medium and the internet had always promoted a sort of communist attitude; power to the people and all that. Over the last few years we could collecively say "fuck off" to the oppressive nature of record companies and embrace the loving lips of free music. Smooooch, free music, a concept that every ethical artist stands by. I don't need to tell you that everything has become much more expensive (maybe someone could tell Brown for me). Well, the internet single handedly saved our ability to keep collecting music of any variety despite our class or income level. And the album kept up. If you got ahold of a single track, whether it be by legal/illegal downloads, from a friends hard-drive or some pirate website, you might have been tempted to locate where the track came from. Perhaps occationally buying an actual CD from an actual shop if you loved it enough, although that was generally a last choice. Musicians, bands and web creators heard your cry and responded with some excellent answers. Last.fm is an enormously populated music website allowing the member to see graphically what music he or she had been listening to. You can go to bands profiles and view their releases, see which album people prefer. The cover art of each is accessable and the download-able programme that burrows itself into your toolbar gives you information about where the track you are enjoying originates from. Sweet Jesus! Look to the right of my blog, THERE'S MUSIC EVERYWHERE!!! Honestly, its adictive.

Radiohead have been called musical innovators for some time and, with the release of In Rainbows, were crowned internet lords over its early and complete release on the internet. Although they were certainly in the position to do so, they made it also possible to get it all for free, if that's what you thought it was worth (there-by posing a difficult question of morals). It's a shorter total time than many other albums, perhaps to make it easier to download, but the structure is still alive and pulsing. Each track compliments each other and the after-taste sticks around. Bands are still using the album structure; maybe more than ever as the apparent ease is making the expression from the music and artwork more instant and genuine. The only problem is keeping up with it all, and that is much more of a worry. No no no, I just need to chill the fuck out. Besides, music now seems to find you before you can find it.