The French¶
276 words on Music
I like the band Hefner for all their nice songs and their very particular style. The French are a sibling of Hefner, consisting of two members Darren and John, and continue partly along the same lines as Hefner did – perhaps because of Darren's trademark voice and the odd topics he sings about – but with a more generous squirt of electronics added.
And this may just be continuing the trend Hefner showed in their most recent songs. Including more electronic beats, joking about how they could easily replace their drummer by a little box and actually doing so for a few songs when I saw them in Birmingham in 2001. So, yes I also like the French.
Thing is, however, that I haven't seen their record in my local record store, and neither did I want to spend the whole €17 at amazon just to check out the new sound. Which is the moment at which the fact that they offer downloads – more precisely: downloads done right™ on their label, Too Pure,'s web site. Now this is how things should be done: Reasonably easy payment with no need to sign up of a mere £2 for a four song EP in what looks like 192Kbit VBR iTunes 4.0.1 encoded DRM free MP3 files with a complete set of tags. Along with that I got high quality CD inlays and labels for printing, dedicated Mac and Windows downloads (probably the only difference being that one one zipped while the other was stuffed) and no more patronising than the little remark to Please use this download responsibly.
at the end of a web page.
