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Jimmygee discovers the joy of shuffle

Selecting a soundtrack

jimmegee

Monday, 10 November 2008

My iPod hit its 8GB capacity several months ago and ever since then, I’ve had to be very selective with what goes and what stays. Until very recently, most of my electronic library was made up of, well, electronic music. Hed Kandi and Fierce Angel compilations, Freemasons remixes and mixes downloaded from the great and good of the Brighton DJ scene on Facebook et al. All great stuff but when you suddenly find yourself having to actually choose which measly 1,000 tracks you’re going to carry about with you 12 hours a day (including commute for me), you start to really assess what you actually want to listen to. I mean, properly listen to, not just have as a soundtrack.

Bizarrely, I found myself jettisoning the oh-so-inconsistant remix albums because, well, by the time I’ve listened to them endlessly for a week, they get kinda boring. This is not a bad thing. The totally, utterly brilliant thing about dance music’s various bleeps and pings is that they are soon outmoded. ‘Pjanoo’ by Eric Prydz gave me massive goosepimples every time I heard it for a month. And then, suddenly and without warning, it became the norm. So that went. As did most of the other older-than-a-month dance music tracks. I didn’t get rid of everything, mind you. Madonna remixes and anything with Freemasons attached to its name remain.

Then what I found was that I had too much space on the iPod. A great excuse, as if I ever need one, for shopping. And what I bought may surprise you, boys and girls, because none of it was dance music. Will Young’s new album, Jennifer Hudson’s debut album, the new Sugababes album (loving the Sugas anyway, so nothing new there) and Nitin Sawhney’s incredible, haunting ‘London Undersound’.

So, for the price of a night out on the town, I’ve revamped my playlists. A simple shuffle comes up with the following: Kylie’s ‘Wow’, Simian Mobile Disco’s ‘Sleep Deprivation’, Nelly Furtado’s ‘Maneater’, Kate Bush’s ‘Under the Ivy’ and ‘Pjanoo’…. er, what, how did that happen?