What’s It All About?
“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. It’s a really stupid thing to want to do.” – Elvis Costello
Sound Round was founded back in September 2008, when I was encouraged by some friends and family to start up some kind of a blog. Looking around at what I could possibly channel my energies into, I slipped on my headphones and listened to some music to pass the time and search for inspiration – when inspiration struck.
“I know!” I exclaimed to no one in particular, making my coworkers turn their heads and look at me as if I was crazy. (Quite rightly, too.) “I’ll go through my music library and review every album I have on there!”
Thus, the project began. It’s been slow-going, of course, because I have a lot of music on my iTunes (as of December 2009: 27,820 songs, 2,016 albums, 863 artists, accounting for just over 78 days’ worth of music), but because I have no definite endsight in date, I can work at my own leisure, as the inspiration strikes me. My collection will inevitably grow, as I discover new musicians and new albums, and that’s exciting to me.
Sound Round isn’t meant to be taken as something as definitive as, say, All Music Guide or Pitchfork Media. It’s just one guy, going through his music collection, and writing his thoughts down as they come to him. There aren’t any ratings; the only thing I include in the way of recommendations is something called “Essential listening”, which I feel are tracks that are the best of the album. A lot of the time, I’ll say that the entire thing is essential; it may be a lame easy way out, but there are some albums that are just that good. (On the other hand, there may be some times when I’d be hard-pressed to find anything essential on the disc. These will be rare, because I don’t like to have albums I don’t like, but when there’s a band or musician whose discography I have the entirety of, there’s bound to be some clunkers.)
Sit back, enjoy, and all that jazz. Feel the sound.
