http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/video/2010/sep/13/kalaparusha-maurice-mcintyre-horn-starvation-box

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/feb/04/massive-attack-heligoland-review

But before talk of a free celestial jukebox – Woodstock for the 21st Century, everywhere, all the time! – spins out of control, it’s worth noting that there is a rub: the application is only available to those who subscribe to Spotify’s ad-free premium service at £10/month.

Spotify are clearly banking on a change of attitude among the music-consuming public who, up to now, have paid for their music per unit — a vinyl single; an album on CD; an individual track from the iTunes store, etc — rather than as a flat rate monthly service like a broadband connection or an unmetred water supply. David Bowie sounded sure, in an article in the New York Times in 2002, that music would go this way “within 10 years”, taking ideas of copyright and revenue from album sales with it. But is £120 a year a workable price for the service, given than Spotify is also available for free as a desktop application (albeit with fairly regular interruptions for ads) and that illegal downloading of music is more popular than ever?

Time will tell. My guess is that there’ll be a smallish group of smug early adopters before a viable alternative to Spotify (there are rumours of an iTunes “all you can eat” service, for instance) hits the market and prices become more competitive. To go one further, and accept the risk of hat-eating come 2012, I’d also guess that it’ll take a bit longer than the three years remaining in Bowie’s prediction for a monthly music bill to be the norm in most households. But the possibility of such a bill feels a lot more real today than it did yesterday.

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Postscript: I heard the idea of a Spotify iPhone app mooted a while ago by some friends of mine in the music business, but assumed that Apple wouldn’t approve it for entry on their App Store as it directly undermines iTunes’s raison d’etre, both as an organiser and a seller of music. Be interesting to see what Apple’s decision-making process was; my guess is that it hinged on an educated fear that if the iPhone didn’t adopt Spotify early on, their competitors (Palm, Android, Nokia etc) would suddenly gain a USP and start nibbling away at Apple with ad-lines like “why pay for music on iTunes when you can stream it for free* on the Palm Pre?”.

We had a few complaints that the MP3s of our last record wasn’t encoded at a high enough rate. Some even suggested we should have used FLACs, but if you even know what one of those is, and have strong opinions on them, you’re already lost to the world of high fidelity and have probably spent far too much money on your speaker-stands.

Quite.

2. The blog withered into server farm obscurity after four months and six apologetically small posts (that’s 0.375 posts a week). 

3. I’ve decided to start blogging here again.

4. I promise to feed and water this one more regularly.

But perhaps that´s it. What place encapsulates intranscience better than a station? There, everyone is momentarily rootless, in stasis, at the mercy of the gods (or the transport unions, whichever is greater); and there are no key-turning homeowners or smugly contented dog-walkers to remind one of the things one doesn´t have…

Perhaps.

Anyway (pontification over) the sun was shining, as it may still be - this is written in the underground bunker of a nearby internet cafe - cutting sharp wintry lines through the gaps in the awnings and fences, and whitening the pools of water in the eternally uneven pavement. And, as ever in this city, the atmosphere was not one of menace or bleak discomfort, but rather of uncomplaining, somewhat chaotic, busyness. The streets are messy and strewn with potholes: the people walk around the trash and step over the holes, acceptingly. The shops are out of milk and vegetables after a inflation-driven price-hike; people scratch their chins, and make plans for different meals. Only one girl is manning the checkouts at a downtown pharmacy, while her four other colleagues potter around in the store. An orderly, silent, and very long queue forms (of which I was the only impatient, confused and foot-hopping member). A rush-hour subway train is full beyond tinned-food standards: people breathe in, lean on each other easily, and depart into the night murmuring ´Permiso´.

Perhaps this is something to do with the layout of the city: unlike Rio De Janeiro with its imposing hilltop Redeemer, or Rome with its unavoidable papal nucleus, Buenos Aires is flat, dense, and somehow clandestine. It is strangely devoid of landmarks: postcard designers, in search of one, often resort to El Obelisco, the far-from-overwhelming memorial on Avenida Nueve de Julio. In terms of both national symbolism and cartographic orientation, it´s not up to much: think how cleanly the Eiffel Tour symbolises France; or how useful the BT Tower in London can be as a navigational tool. Buenos Aires has neither, really. Move two blocks away from something, and you can´t see it any more.

For me, this has gives the city a kind of claustrophobic intensity: for the most part, one´s field of vision is close, one´s impression of distance limited to the numbers on the street signs which comfortingly mark every corner (100 = one block). Deja vu abounds: the streets (calles, pron. “cashays”) and avenues(avenidas) typically contain the same mixture of shops, kiosks, newspaper vendors, policemen – the friendliest and most helpful of any city I´ve visited – and, at night, litter-sorters who are trained in from the poorer suburbs.

These cartoneros, separating plastic from cardboard, metal from glass, have been a relatively recent addition to the city´s streets, their profession as a response to the 2001 financial crisis here that left over half of the population below the poverty line. They work quietly, nocturnally, and often alone; they are gone before the rest of the city wakes up.

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* A small footnote: one block away from this synagogue is the huge Abasto shopping mall, which, I was amazed to discover, contains a small ”McDonald´s Kosher” outlet.

I left this for too long, no second way about it. Felt reluctant to diarise my experience; was preoccupied elsewhere (a 3-week flat hunt recently finished with a satisfying bang, while weekday Spanish lessons continue); and, perhaps most importantly, I was enjoying the life of a traveling bum too much to think about elegant sentences, engaging reportage and mots justes.

Anyway, now I have a room of my own, a notepad half-full of scribbled observations, a dozen or so interesting photos — and this well-appointed net cafe, 4 blocks away. All the ingredients for a tastly blog soufflé, which I intend to serve (you may have observed) in tantalisingly small portions.

Next up: the taxi ride from the airport (walk before you run).

Hasta mas tarde.

There is nothing shocking about leaving home, but rather a slow feeling of gathering sadness as each familiar place flashes by the window, and disappears, and becomes part of the past.

-Paul Theroux, The Old Patagonian Express

Heathrow is an ugly airport, as everyone notices; glamourless, claustrophobic, frustrating, like an ineptly designed shopping mall. It would be my last ´familiar place´for 6 months. Perhaps this was a good thing: I was happy to get out of there. Adding to the unpleasantness, BBC News 24 was showing on unavoidably big screens in the departure lounge, with blanket coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings (breaking news then). At one point, they went to a feed from a White House press room, showing an empty podium at which – the anchorman announced with considerable gravitas – President Bush would give an address in 10 minutes time. An empty podium!

Accompanied by around 50 Argentinean soldiers, fresh from 6 months of blue-beret service in Cyprus, we boarded the plane and left the news behind. As its wheels touched down in Buenos Aires (Bs As from now on), the servicemen and women applauded and cheered politely, like the contented audience of a conjurer´s show. The sun was shining, immigration and customs were a breeze (I had steeled myself for US-style interrogation and paperwork), and I had an onwards destination scribbled on a piece of paper…

Nothing like an approaching departure to galvanise the list-makers within us. Loose ends that can usually be forgotten, postponed, rearranged, pipe up and demand to be tied. First, though, they must be carefully itemised in ballpoint ink!

My list contains a dozen or so urgent invokations to email (“Email G re: books!”, “Email M&S re: estblshng contact!”, “Email A: asia advice?”), a fistful of pressing household duties (“wsh ALL cths”, “tidy BOTH rooms”), and a few expeditionary queries (“Malaria?”, “Apptment in BsAs?”, “change to US$ or Pesos?”, “where ARE th fckng tickts?”). It’s a little strange to have these points – the various parts of an equation whose end product reads “= GO!” – written down as nondescriptly as a shopping list. Or perhaps it’s just strange to have written affirmation that I’ll be leaving soon, and that some things must either be done now or wait for six months.

Anyway, as G and A may be able to report, and some of my clths, slow progress is being made.