Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

Archives for May 2022

Andrew Fletcher has passed away

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Very sad to learn that Andrew Fletcher has passed away. He was only 60. I basically grew up listening to Depeche Mode and Fletch will be forever missed…

Andrew was one of the founding members of Depeche Mode in the 1980s. DM is among the most well-known, popular and successful electronic music bands ever. Andrew played the synthesizer, like the other band members. He was also the manager of the band.

I first listened to Depeche Mode in 1985, when I was 12, thanks to a good friend from school. At that time, Depeche Mode had released the first four of its albums. I remember having passionate discussions on choosing the best songs from these albums to make a compilation on cassette.

Since then, I’ve multiplied my age by four and I listen to at least a few Depeche Mode songs every day. I am happy that Christina, Anya and Kyan appreciate Depeche Mode too.

RIP Andrew.

How to discover new music?

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Since stumbling upon this article in The Atlantic on whether old music is killing new music, I have been thinking a lot about the process we use to discover the wonderful albums being released today vs listening to the wonderful albums released before and which are (more or less) embedded in our minds.

This is true for music, but also for movies, TV shows, anything artistic in fact.

Of course, I love the wonderful albums of the past. But the wonderful albums of today are worth discovering too.

Personally, I rely on charts (e.g. on RateYourMusic), recommendation algorithms (Last.fm, Spotify, TIDAL and YouTube), and also what friends tell me. But this is far from being exhaustive.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been discovering a lot of very interesting albums (e.g. in avant-garde music or experimental electronic music) thanks to Roon’s formidable integration with TIDAL.

I wonder what kind of process you use to discover today’s gems?

Liverpool: a Premiership climax

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22 May 2022. 18:40. Liverpool has two matches left to play.

Today, Liverpool will probably beat a weaker Wolves but whether the club comes 1st or 2nd in the premiership depends on Manchester City who plays against a weaker Aston Villa. But, who knows, anything is possible in football. That’s why it’s called the beautiful game.

And, next week, Liverpool plays against Real Madrid, in Paris of all places, for the final of the Champions League.