Hindustan Times
Ever since iTunes opened up its store to customers in India, it has been bliss for me. I can now buy music at very reasonable prices – songs for as low as R12 and in some cases, even full albums for a dirt cheap R30. The opening up of the iTunes Store was the best thing to have happened for Indian music lovers but some of us, especially of the grey-haired (or, no-haired) vintage, the real deal is often all about buying the album in its physical, touchable form. There is a certain something about peeling off the plastic and opening up the jewel case of a new CD that digitally downloaded albums just can’t match. Read more
(3 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
Loading ...Posted by Sanjoy Narayan on Saturday, January 5, 2013 at 7:03 pm
Filed under Download Central · Tagged Algiers, Allen Ginsberg, argus48, baroque pop, Ben Harper, Berlin, bhangra, Brooklyn, Bruce Springsteen, Calexico, cassettes, Charlie Musselwhite, Download Central, folk music, funk, Glühwein, Grizzly Bear, Handwritten, Here Comes My Man, Horn of Plenty, Howl, India, indie band, iTunes, Mr Dead & Mrs Free, Music, New York, Nick Hornby, North Indian, psychedelic rock, Red Baraat, Sanjoy Narayan, Shields, Shruggy Ji, The Gaslight Anthem, Twitter, Van Morrison, Veckatimest, vinyls, wedding, Yellow House
It’s been nearly three months since Frank Ocean’s debut album Channel Orange was released and I find myself going back to it over and over again. In fact, Channel Orange is well on its way to finding a berth on my best albums’ list of the year. It’s not as if I’m the biggest fan of R&B – indeed, the current crop of R&B stars such as Usher, Chris Brown, Mariah Carey and Beyonce, don’t do it for me. In theory, contemporary R&B is an amalgam of R&B (of course) and funk and soul and hip-hop, but much of today’s R&B music, with its mandatory pounding beats and formulaic dance-friendliness really is like a substitute for erstwhile disco music. The music is often repetitive and clichéd and the lyrics unmemorable – not my cup of beverage whatever that might be. Read more
(5 votes, average: 4.8 out of 5) Loading ...Posted by Sanjoy Narayan on Saturday, October 6, 2012 at 5:06 pm
Filed under Download Central · Tagged André 3000, argus48, Bad Religion, Beverly Hills, Beyonce, Brandy, Channel Orange, Chris Brown, Cleopatra, Coldplay, Crack Rock, Download Central, Eagles, Earl Sweatshirt, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Frank Ocean, Grizzly Bear, Hotel California, Hurricane Katrina, John Legend, John Mayer, Justin Bieber, Mariah Carey, MGMT, Music, New Orleans, Nostalgia, Odd Future, R&B musician, Radiohead, Sanjoy Narayan, Shields, Super Rich Kids, Twitter, Ultra, Usher, Veckatimest, Yellow House
My trainer is an ogre and I’m his guinea-pig. Or, his lab rat at the gym. What else could explain the torture he subjects me to every morning? Pull-ups, push-ups, presses of different kinds, squats, deadlifts…. till everything becomes a blurry haze and my body feels as if someone’s put it through a sugarcane juice maker. Of course, I willingly do his bidding—in what you could call a valiant attempt at postponing the sag of age with the help of a quotidian dose of extreme physical discomfort. It would be unfair to blame my trainer for what I go through every morning because the poor chap is only trying to help me do what I’ve signed up for. But it is a tough proposition: he is an insistent coach, firm and no-nonsense, but that alone is not nearly enough to see me through my workouts. For that I have to reach out for music. Read more
(3 votes, average: 4 out of 5) Loading ...Posted by Sanjoy Narayan on Friday, October 22, 2010 at 3:43 pm
Filed under Download Central · Tagged About Face, Actor Out of Work, All Things Go, Antenna, argus48, Barbara Streisand, Black Keys, Crystalised, Dear Science, Download Central, Duck Sauce, Fables of The Reconstruction, Genius, Grizzly Bear, Horehound, I Saw The Light, Indrajit Hazra, iTune, iTunes music library, Jack White, Kid Cudi, Ludacris, Modest Mouse, Murmur, R.E.M., Reckoning, Sanjoy Narayan, So Far From Your Weapon, Sonic Youth, Spoon, St. Vincent, Surkin, Temper Trap, The Dead Weather, The Eternal, The Radio’s Crying, The XX, Transference, Twitter, Veckatimest, White Knight Two
I don’t know how many people read this column regularly (four, perhaps?) but ever since Download Central began a little over a year back, I’ve heard one common response: “Why do you write about bands that we’ve never heard of?” This has become such a refrain that I’ve often felt a twinge of self-doubt. Am I really writing about completely obscure bands that no one knows or cares about? If that was indeed true, what was the point of writing the column?
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(11 votes, average: 4.82 out of 5) Loading ...Posted by Sanjoy Narayan on Saturday, December 19, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Filed under Download Central · Tagged Actor, album Noble Beast, All Songs Considered, And You're Next, Andrew Bird, Animal Collective, Annie Clark, Backspacer, Bat for Lashes, Blood Bank, Bob Dylan, Bon Iver, Camera Obscura, Cat Power, Dead Weather, Download Central, Far, Grizzly Bear, Hazards of Love, He War, Horehound, I And Love And You, internet, Jack White, Merriweather Post Pavilion, Middle Cyclone, Modest Mouse, My Maudlin Career, Natasha Khan, Neko Case, No Line on The Horizon, No One's First, NPR, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Regina Spektor, Speak For Me, Spiritualized, St. Vincent, The Avett Brothers, The Decemberists, The New Pornographers, Together Through Life, Tracyanne Campbell, Two Suns, U2, Veckatimest, White, Wilco’s Wilco (The Album), Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
