REACTIVEradio

Over the weekend, I was spending time on my favorite internet forum SomethingAwful, and was presented with the opportunity to listen to a brand new album that one of a member had just finished recording. At first, I was a little apprehensive. I don’t usually like downloading full albums before I get the chance to hear a sample or two so as not to waste valuable time and disk space. But something about it grabbed me. I’m not sure if it was the title (“Sun Tales”), or the fact that it was simply labelled “Folk-Rock”; all I know is that for the first the first time in a long time, I’m glad my first instincts were wrong.

As I waited for the album to download, I started reading the reviews that fellow forumgoers had given him. The first comment in the thread was by someone going by the moniker Toastmaker; he wrote “A completely beautiful album.”

Well, that’s a good start.

The second comment, by JohnnySnitch, reads “Very nice album!” So, ok, maybe this won’t be a complete waste of time. On and on through the thread, the compliments keep coming, with nary a bad word amongst them. At this point, I was definitely over my so-called fear, and maybe even a bit excited. After all, the SomethingAwful forum members aren’t exactly known for their sugar coating; if they’re praising it, there’s got to be a least some reason for it.

15 minutes later (stupid slow Bermudian internet), the album was finished traversing the world wide web and had landed on my laptop. I unpacked the archive with anticipation, and threw on track number 9, “A Voice On The Wind”, the song that had received the most praise.

I was definitely not disappointed with what I heard.

A beautiful love song, very obviously sung from the heart, paints the very melodramatic picture of a past love lost. Waxing nostalgic about an old flame, you immediately feel a connection with Krueger, empathizing and sympathizing with him all at once. While being a very mellow song, it has the ability to send a flood of similar emotions through the listeners head, reminding them of their first true love. Being the only melancholy song on the album, it definitely stands out from the rest, but also fits perfectly between the other emotion-driven songs.

The 10th track on the disc, “Suriel And Azrael And Many Other Names [sic]” starts out with a very powerful guitar, but even so, you can almost feel Krueger holding back. A song about youth misunderstanding, you can almost feel the pure innocence coming from the speaker as if transporting you back to your childhood, naive and curious. It ends with an aural montage of sound bites from various news sources, mainly about the war in Iraq, bring the listener back from childhood, stripping away that same innocence that was granted mere minutes ago.

This album is raw in every sense of the word. Recorded in what I can only assume is his basement or living room with just himself and his guitar, each and every song brings you into his world, into his little bubble, and shares with you his most intimate of experiences. Throughout the entire journey, it almost feels as if you’ve been given a seat next to him in a time machine, as he narrates the intricacies of his entire life.

I could truly go on and on about how amazing this album is. I could write 10 pages on why you should do whatever you can to obtain a copy of this album, but it still wouldn’t do it justice. Sun Tales is a beatiful story told by a beautiful poet. This is absolutely what music should be about.

Artist’s Website | Purchase Album

The Microsoft Zune. What an absolutely beautiful device. An MP3 player with a 3 inch screen which is perfect for watching your favorite movie on a bus or a plane or when you’re just waiting in the stupid doctor’s office for your stupid turn in line to get your stupid chest x-ray taken. You’ve got 30GB of hard drive space to store tons of media, which is more than enough room to store 20 movies plus thousands of MP3s.

Even before you open the box, the Zune screams uniqueness. Rather than following the typical glossy packaging trend, it arrives in a non-shiny container, with pictures of people sitting around, chilling out, and having a Zune party (yes, they exist). The caption reads “welcome to the social [sic]” and with the features it’s bringing, I can’t wait to join in.

Welcome to the social. For once, Microsoft finally got their branding right. What sets the Zune apart from those other digital audio players (DAPs) *cough*iPod*cough* is that the Zune comes with Wireless built-in. No, you can’t surf the internet on it (being that it only has 7 buttons on it, that could prove to be difficult), but you can sync up with other Zunes in the vicinity and trade songs. There are restrictions on the transferred songs, such as you have 3 days or 3 plays (whichever comes first) to listen to them before they are removed from the player, but I think that it’s a great chance for bands with less than stellar advertising budgets to get exposure to new fans.

The display that Microsoft has decided to include in the device is 3 inches (diagonal) big, and has surprisingly crisp pictures. Before I purchased it, I was of the mindset that 3 inches was just too small to have any kind of real viewable picture; I’ve since changed my mind. I’ve encoded quite a few of my favorite movies into Microsoft’s Windows Media Video format, and the quality is definitely watchable. It won’t be winning any home theater awards for clearest picture, but it also won’t be getting any complaints.

Along with the hardware launch, Microsoft presented the Zune Marketplace which is essentially their answer to Apple’s iTunes service. While I can’t review the quality of the downloads personally as they don’t allow Bermudian credit cards to sign up, I can say that I was a tad annoyed when I was looking at the pricing of songs. You see, Microsoft elected to use their Microsoft Points (MSP) currency rather than hard dollars and cents. This makes sense because MSP are also the currency of their Xbox 360 platform; they’re interchangeable, so I can understand the reasoning behind wanting to unify the two systems. My problem is that they may be misleading the customer a bit when they’re purchasing their songs.

You see, Microsoft is charging 80 MSP per song, however to get 80 MSP, you will need 99 cents. I have little doubt that someone, somewhere out there will think that they’re getting a deal when they see that songs on the Zune Marketplace are 80 MSP, but on iTunes are 99 cents. In reality, the costs are obviously the same, but to someone who isn’t paying attention, it would sound like you’re getting a better deal on Microsoft’s site. I don’t know if I agree with that. Then again, what do I know about marketing? Absolutely zero. Food for thought.

Back on track, the Zune software is actually rather useful. When attempting to help friends out with their iPods and consequently iTunes, I always felt that the user interface was designed specifically for Macs with PCs being an afterthought. While this may be clever marketing (e.g. to get the user used to the OSX look so that when they finally switch *hint hint* it won’t be a shock), it always felt out of place when it was inevitably installed in Windows. Not so with the Zune software. On my Vista-equipped laptop, the software integrates beautifully with the look and feel of Windows.

On the functionality side, getting your media onto the Zune is honestly as easy as clicking and dragging it from Windows Explorer onto the software. You drag it, the software synchronizes it. It’s seriously that easy.

The battery lfie on the device is exceptional as well. Since I first got it, I’ve used it at least an hour a day (I listen to it on my scooter to and from work) and I only have to charge it about once a week or less. Obviously I have to charge it a little more often if I happen to have the opportunity to watch a movie or two on it, but even then, it’s still well deserving of a “good” rating.

All in all, I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending the Zune to anyone considering the purchase of a new MP3 player. It’s got all the functionality you could ever want (and more), it’s got high quality components, and most of all, it’s incredibly easy and intuitive to use.

Rating: 9/10