Was rooting about in some old folders and came across this. A couple of years old, but with some tidying up didn’t sound too bad.
The first part I agree with wholeheartedly: there is far too much easy box-ticking around music today. It has to be instantly sad/uplifting/angry, with overtly obvious signifiers.
The cynical deployment of music in mass market television depresses me, as stock cliches are used to purvey the same message over and over again.
However, I diverge from your opinion when you talk about, “a respect for music that the digital age has taken away”.
As someone who has taken the step of getting rid of a large ‘physical’ music collection, because of my increasingly rare use of it, I find that the acquisition of music digitally provides a focus on the music itself, rather than the ephemera around it. I would concur that vinyl is a thousand times more aesthetically pleasing than any CD, but I feel that the music I own digitally creates a very pure relationship between the sounds and myself: there is little or nothing else to interfere with that.
