Episode 36

I thought that I would write a little something about Beck – Modern Guilt. It has been a few years since he has put out an album now. Modern Guilt was released in 2008. He has been busy still though. He has recently helped to produce Charlotte Gainsburg’s new album released this year (2010) for example. Anyway, this is one of my favorite albums from Beck. He had some help on the production with this one from Danger Mouse. As a side note DM also produced The Black Keys – Attack & Release. These 2 albums have a similar sound and is probably why I could listen to the pair of them back to back and would not make a second glance. In general I like Beck’s music but DM puts a certain spin on the music that just draws you in. When I listen to this album I tend to think of viewing things with green lenses on. It is not that I feel sick when I listen to the music, not at all. It is more of viewing the world with a green tinged sight.

I bought this album when it was first released in ’08 and loved it. This purchase was made on CD. It was not soon after that that I found that the vinyl release came with a download code. It was not that the addition of the download intrigued me but more of what the download consisted of. The download was a recording of a good vinyl copy of the album split up by tracks. I thought this was a cool catch of both worlds. A digital copy of an analog (vinyl) source was a brilliant idea. Sadly, no other artist has thought of doing this as well. Since then I had been after a way to convert my records to digital as well.

I do have a way to convert my records now by the way. It is an item called an i-Key Plus. It is not being made anymore. This is too bad because it is a very versatile recording unit. It will record from a mic (it came with a small stereo T mic), phono direct or line in. It will record to a thumb drive in wav, or mp3 (up to 320 kbph). It also has an AC power cord or you can put a few AA batteries in the thing for portability. After I had seen the Jonsi concert I thought that I should have brought this with me to record the concert. I felt like such a moron.

The company, iKey-Audio, has stopped making this device. I am not sure why but it is very disappointing to me. There are not many devices out there that make recording records to digital easy. This was one of them. I am sad to have seen it gone by the wayside. The only thing that comes close from the company at this point is called a iConnex. It does the line and phono recording but in order to do the recording it needs to be plugged into your computer via USB. For me this totally eliminates the convenience of not having my computer plugged into my stereo. It also eliminates the possibility of recording live concerts. What they have done is effectively converted this unit into 2 different units. They have made not only the iConnex but also the HDR7. The HRD7 is a portable digital field recorder. It is a fantastic item but they have been around for quite a while now. If you need one of these things look for the i-Key Plus first. I got mine new for 100 bucks. You could probably get one used for less. It really is a brilliant piece of electronics honestly.

Since I am talking electronics I would like to add that my Nitty-Gritty record cleaning machine needs a tune up. Over the past year that I have been using the item it has slowly been going down hill. When I got it about 1 ½ ago I bought it used. Before it came to me it went into the shop to be “detailed and overhauled”. It had a new vacuum cleaner installed for sure and general maintenance done to it as well. I have cleaned hundreds of records with the thing in the short time that I owned the thing. I have also found that the thing was like 20 years old after talking to the owner of the company (also the person that does the work on the units). I hope that this will not cost me much money to have it repaired. It is already going to be expensive to ship the thing out to California from Minnesota and back. I am always collecting records and need this record cleaning unit working in order to play those used dusty records on my stereo.

Signing off