Nikolette

Guys, is anyone able to record today's listening party with Jonny and Will on Spotify? It seems to be unavailable for the whole continent of Europe

For some reasons V2 sounded just like a draft where they shared the ideas of what and where can possibly be in the song: like, the drumming might be in that place and maybe more extended, the guitar solo can be like this and maybe at that part where it actually was or maybe for the part altogether with Merry Clayton's vocals (some notes of that solo are already there) because her part sounded even more not integrated, and on V1 it somehow sounded like already being more certain what to layer where but it seems to be the very first stage that's why it's without the solo and Merry Clayton, can it be like that? The AHFOD doc version has such a drastically different mood comparing to these two versions, so that I'm not sure anymore if it was even some kind of a final version of these two and it sounds more MX-era for sure. And I love that Merry Clayton's part there is in intro, feels powerful.

As @Captain Crieff rightly noticed, you can solve it by ordering 1 CD, my friend had the same problem in Germany and coldplayers from some other countries also had such 1 CD per person problem!

I miss the Oracle like hell, there were so many interesting and helpful replies (also in terms of gathering answers by fan in order to help someone asking stuff about life), so many technical peculiarities and especially for Jon's fans when she could ask Matt, now this all seems to be so cut off and far away... Is it me who thinks like that or was there actually an intention to integrate the whole Oracle's section during AHFOD's whole new website but that didn't happen? Because I somehow have a feeling that there were such talks about it being back? Also I really miss R42's blog's entries during album recording and overall each type of entry, be it such ones with a bit of photographic reports or already tour diaries, always seemed to be absolutely brilliant and entertaining!

Just because I always wanted Moving To Mars in higher quality but didn't see it anywhere for purchasing: maybe, you still remember where it was available?

From what I've seen so far that Mylo trade mark is registered under different classes rather than music stuff, it belongs to jewelry/precious-semi-precious stones and everything related to it (well, one class says bags but they can be encrusted with such stones) this all pretty much makes sense because of his wife's business. The only question is why the rest of the band is indicated there as owners O_o @sa_spurs_tx

Sure, I have this file @Yasuko, hope, it's ok for you if uploaded on Mega? If yes the here it is with the small announcement with Jon and Will https://mega.nz/folder/FNZwyRwJ#ZIjSAJinV3_3VwUN6Mn-HA

COTW vs Charlie Brown

Hello to everyone from this thread! After several listens, I think I'm ready with my review of @M Marks The Spot's mixtape! That's my very first time participating in such kind of things in general, and it's been fun so far! First of all want to say massive thanks for Michael keeping this mixtape tradition alive and kind of hosting this year's one! Now let me get to the review itself! The mixtape's title is a really open field for imagination, my first guess was "What if we [meet each other] in the future" and, think, after listening I only had this guess more confirmed by the overall lyrics topics mostly fiddling around with the relationship topics,the cover also gives the same hints... Will the ellipsis mystery be solved? Overall I really like how sincere this mixtape is, that feels like Michael shared many of his favourite songs with trying to both represent some diversity in moods, sounds, musical eras, and share something he really resonates with! It really has a bit of travelling back to the past and present, maybe, future. Overall well done, was very interesting to get to know you better through your music taste! Now would like to go through each song separately with giving them not X marks, even though I'm not sure about assessing songs like that and don't quite like doing this but looks like it's within a tradition here. So here we go "In Love" - very calm vibes, lovely piano developing into electronic beats, a good atmospheric start 8/10 "In Crisis" has an unexpected continuation after an intro piece, relatable lyrics about modern anxiety, melodically catchy chorus, just not my cup of tea in terms of the overall genre and singing but it’s defo a good song within genre’s frameworks, just not vibing with that personally 5/10 "A Fling, You Say" - oooh, good old 90s type of sound which is a very signature one because of that futuristic synth experiments back then intertwining with a very active beat, reminds me of some songs by Madonna released back then but I kind of remember them very sparsely and I’m not familiar with all of her discography, wait, isn’t that Madonna herself, I always keep forgetting her younger voice? Interesting vocal delivery, by the way! 6/10 "Turn The Page" - here we go with the disco-type Kylie, sounds like end of 90s – beginning of 00s, unfortunately, not a song I feel being hooked on, so 5/10 "Uneasy" - this one in terms of the sound reminds me of the beginning of 2000s, pleasant soundscape with synths, clicks, piano, drums, and sometimes strings, again going back to anxiety issues but now with modern technology consumption highlight, nice metaphor with battery going low, overall an earworm! 7/10 "Lovesick" - this one sounds SO familiar to me; does this song contain some samples from another song? Hazy-like production, sounds nice overall 6,5/10 "Backwards and Forwards" - funny funky guitar all over, vocals sound pretty familiar, maybe, because it has the same style as Sandra's vocals in Enigma's first album, nice twist with the bridge, good classic pop song with hints to world music type of production, just again not clicking with this one 6/10 "Stay (Hear Me Out)" - wow, Editors here, completely digging I since the very start, amazing song, didn’t actually know it before, now to know one more song with “Black Gold” title! Rich instrumentals, catchy bass, nice synths, good vocals effects all over, like this heavy beat, defo 9/10 "One More Night" - ooo, hello, Kylie again! Such an earworm with orientalish kind of drumming, sounds like it belongs to the album together with “Confide in Me”. No issues with this one, 8/10 "I Still Have Feelings For You" - familiar strings, develops more since 3rd minute, didn’t dig the overall beat though, that’s why only 6/10 "Begin Again" - nice integration of orchestral sound here, like the overall mysterious vibe 7,5/10 "Be Right With You" - very nice bv’s, sound tends to be more indie with such production, like very much that part during “if you lonely, lonely, lonely, awake me”, not resonating though that much with lyrics, instrumentally liking it much more 7,5/10 "Dance Till We Drop" - nice twists with strings in chorus, good beat, just personally not my cup of tea again 5/10 Lighthouse: pleasant guitars all over, sometimes they sound like blinking lights, nice vocal delivery, a song to be calmed down by 7,5/10 "This Tainted Love" - hi, Matt Berninger, love “All For Nothing” – very much of a typical for him song but still really good, like the alternative title for this one! 8,5/10 "Wide Blue Yonder" - like this quiet atmosphere, actually, it was just stupidly missed out while writing this review, nice message, love the orchestral sound kicking in, strings are just wonderful! So this one should be like 8/10 for me! "A Permanent Mark" - vocally sounds like Swift, overall sound is overall very plain, ballad-type of song, complimentary production, I like ballads sometimes but overall this song is a total miss for me rather than hit 4/10 "At Peace" - the piano chords sound exactly like “Clocks” ones O_o Expected a bit more of sound development here with maybe unexpected twists but everything went quite evenly, not good or bad, just like it is, a really good transition to the next song. 6/10 "What If We... In The Future" here we go crying eyes out because that’s “O (Fly On)” by Coldplay, this song gets me each time and especially live with witnessing Jon trying such a simple but such an absolutely effective technique with imitating that birds’/seagulls’ sounds, the best song over here, hands down, a nice ending 10/10 Overall score probably be like 7/10 which doesn't say anything about the playlist itself but about my own preferences in music! In general was really interesting to discover such a mixtape!

Would actually like to add thoughts about the overall consistent fanbase concept, as all great points about "Everyday Life" and band's evolution were made, everything will be just HUGE imho here, anyone could agree or disagree, these are not scientifically proven facts. Fanbase as a general concept has shifted from its initial form for past, like, 5 years (when I actually could assume anything since 2010) for sure, and one of the factors is how people started consuming and interacting with the information: past several years from my own close experience are highlighted with just passive consuming of the content where people CAN and indeed notice something but scroll past and among these people could be true fans as much as some random people seeing information, you see that in the statistics, you can witness a mind-blowing number there of people seeing particular information or just scrolling past and you will see 0.5% of an actual interaction (comparing to that mind-blowing statistics, of course) where people would talk about certain album/event/etc themselves and involve another in this talk so something would really honestly boost to being trended. I do not take mainstream bands or super-popular musicians, I see that among Coldplay, among many other bands that are in alternative kind of vein. The social media changed up their rules and politics and many platforms are just nowhere near (well, and the rest that are and are still alive lost in their popularity, well, basically people left these platforms themselves even though they still function, people just come back, see interaction by one-two persons who stayed and leave, then this is repeated in circles so that no one stays among those who returned to see "whassup") to providing any fandoms a place with many different useful tools for creating some informative and nice to interact page because of that change of perception of the information. Long-term fans exist and not in a small amount, but where do they gather so that there should be the feeling of consistent fanbase that knows about "Everyday Life" with bearing in mind that mostly the aspect of people being aware of something lies within seeing people on social media talking about that in public, so to say? I know quite some people that became disappointed in that internet platforms shift with fandom as a concept massive shift and they didn't move on from the band, they moved on from platforms to preferring sharing thought and stuff in their messengers or some close-circle-can-see type of platforms, and I think that's not a case of just few people, it's a case for many. Yes, there are people who are disappointed and moved on, there are also those who saw something new and tried to give a band another chance, but it's not overall just a flat perspective about fans-not fans and visibility, there are way too many aspects. New fans during AHFOD era you could still see talking back in that era talking on socials, that's why you could conclude about pop sound preference, and there were quite a lot of them starting following the band and talking about music and now how? You can see some fans that came for AHFOD album and stayed still dedicated and appreciating the latest one in full, and exploring more and appreciating that as well. The rest of the not already so new and probably new as well fans are just in numbers: in statistics of view under the posts/uploads etc. There are still fans who interact on several different platforms, and you know that even people joking about fans promoting Kaleidoscope EP was just the bitter truth, that EP showed the songs where the band did something completely different and interesting and that was just completely drowned promotion-wise by the band/band's team, promotion can't live on dedicated fans and their absolutely heroic newspages who actually did a massive job with making an overall awareness for everyone. Was it enough though? For randomly lurking people and vast majority that doesn't categorize themselves as fans/stans/etc, musical critiques and etc people that certainly wasn't enough. Also with recent mindsets, shifts and etc it seems like people just prefer following musicians only and if their team on social media talks like once or twice about the release, there's a low chance for people going further / being actually interested in than just scrolling past or getting that post being lost and not seeing because some social media are horrible with displaying posts accurately and in chronological order. Also these songs weren't even performed properly, performing once doesn't mean introducing public to something new. So that was heartbreaking to see such songs as "All I Can Think About Is You", "A L I E N S" and "Hypnotised" being so doomed to such no real exposure destiny. Yes, performing big hits is good and stuff but not making that a major priority and dooming something new and actually more out of their own comfort zone? And overall what to be afraid of? Of just audience changing to another people with another preferences rather than some recent poppy hits? Maybe instead filling up the setlist more with really great and not sounding like the other recent songs, your huge/big/big-that-everyone-curses-you hits won't fly away from you and performing like 4 on the big setlist would be cool as well as performing like 1-2 big hits in a livestream and the rest filling up with something new from "Everyday Life", otherwise it leaves many non-fans people thinking that they didn't get anywhere far from mentioned hits and overall questioning about the album's existence, as we witnessed? I admire the way that "Everyday Life" got promoted aesthetically, it was one of the most if not the most touching and beautiful promotion but the highlight is that it was indeed an intimate small promotion for the fans only. So, kind of, no reasons to be surprised of vast majority of people not knowing about the release while tour was the tiniest, the exposure wasn't even as big as for "Ghost Stories" which had the absolutely kind of more-intimate-not-stadium flavour. So, as they say, these are things that I don't understand. There's too much to unfold from different aspects, too many questions, and I actually don't quite see which path they're going with giving their own works any broader audience exposure.

Actually always wanted to participate here but was always too late for it So count me in, please, Michael! Just a question is in which format should the songs be, I guess, that probably mp3 because it's not always known if the person I create a playlist for has a means of listening something in FLAC or whichever else format?

All credits to Jacob Martin asking about Viva pedals (in a special thread here) that made a great push for me to find this breakthrough information A lot of coincidence but couldn't help but just share such observation

You're very welcome! Wish that book got more recognition, it's so insightful and useful at the same time!

Well, I'm not Matt to answer such questions, but I think for finding this out you might find useful this list of Viva tour equipment in roadie's book + I screenshotted Matt's answer in Oracle's section (so incredibly sad we don't have such anymore...) with everything about "Strawberry Swing"

Just for the sake of correcting: that was Latvia and, maybe, I got it wrong, but she went there alone and he just met her at the airport but I don't follow stories closely in general though. What's for sure that around that time Matt surely was busy with his usual tech routine and other roadies (another Matt for sure) were there as well. And, actually, by then would make sense to do some preparations for the upcoming festival, afterall