Spectral Folk

iTunes needs a del.icio.us-style tagging system.

I just recovered my external harddrive from the EMC studio, where it has sat since my computer was sent in for repair a few weeks ago. It was nice to have a very small collection of music for a while - I found myself going deeper with a given record than I may have otherwise, simply because it was the only one of its kind I had to choose from. For instance, I've been craving the drone for a solid week or more. I got my satisfaction from Stars of the Lid (and an actual physical Kranky comp) until a few days ago. Now I'm chewing through LaMonte Young, Terry Riley, Tony Conrad, COIL, and Stockhausen's Stimmung again. Kaija Saariaho has gotten some heavy play as well - along with some other academic acoustic music, mostly of the IRCAM orbit. So what?

So, I realized that I suck in my music in loose associative categorical waves. I could say that I'm now into my Minimal-Drone collection, and my Academic DSP collection, or my Academic collection, or my Academic Folk, or Laptop DSP, or Spectral Folk collection, etc, etc. That's where iTunes is failing me. I want to sift through my collection for the sort of loose and rhizomatic categories that del.icio.us gives me for bookmarks. I'm tagging away with the custom genre box, but it's just not the same. Where is my statistical feedback, broken into clouds of popular tags and the like?

I guess I'll put on some Roger Reynolds and cross my fingers that a miracle will occur in Cupertino.