(from the It's better when it's freshly roasted department)
Hi everyone,
Dana, Rose & I attended the grand opening of the first Starbucks Reserve Roastery & Tasting Room. I saw the announcement that this one of a kind Roastery was opening up on Capitol Hill in Seattle today, so, with the promise of lunch, I bundled the family in the car, and we went on down.
Located in an old car dealership building, the entrance is quite impressive:
Inside, there are no green aprons to be seen. The Roastery uses a different color scheme - more like a khaki. The place was packed - so Dana, Rose & I sat down at the Tom Douglas "Serious Pie" restaurant inside, and watched the people mill about:
After we placed our order for lunch - pizza, of course! - I walked around the space and snapped a few photos. First up, the merchandise - those are custom glassybabies:
Down below is a classroom area and you can also see the large batch roaster just off to the right. The large batch roaster is the main production line for Reserve coffee. This coffee is not sold in-store, but is vacuum sealed, boxed up and shipped around the world:
There's also an upper coffee bar with pour over stations, clover machines and all sorts of other coffee makers. Note the pipes sending coffee beans from the small batch reserve area of the roastery to the coffee bar:
Coffee holding tanks for the upper, small batch roaster:
Another shot of the large roaster down below. You can just see the coffee library behind it - it's the large glass-walled room with the bags of coffee lining the walls:
The upper coffee bar, including the coffee bean pipes and the baristas with the khaki aprons:
I wandered over to get a closer look at the small batch roaster:
Here's a very quick clip of the small batch roaster in action:
And the finished product - ready to buy fresh from the roaster:
NOTE: The master roaster at the large batch roaster downstairs recommended letting the small batch roast age at least 8 days before brewing. It allows for the beans to out-gas properly and increases the flavor.
Finally - our pizza arrived. In a word - YUM!
And that was our coffee roasting/pizza eating adventure. We had a great time, and it was fun to talk coffee with everyone there.
If you're into coffee, I definitely recommend stopping by!
Now what follows is not a step by step guide - but my quick cheat notes for a Windows 7 system. Follow at your own discretion:
Navigate to your Exact Audio Copy installation directory and create a Nero folder (e.g. C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\Nero)
Open the NeroAACCodec-1.5.1.zip file, and navigate to the win32 folder.
Extract the three files - neroAacDec.exe, neroAacEnc.exe & neroAacTag.exe - from the win32 folder and place them in your newly created Nero folder.
Start Exact Audio Copy - making sure that you're in advanced mode
In the resultant program window, from the EAC menu, select Compression Options...
You'll want to set the following:
Check "Use external program for compression"
Set Parameter passing scheme to "User Defined Encoder"
Set Use file extension to .mp4
Set the Program, including path, used for compression to the location of your cmd.exe (e.g. C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe)
Set the Additional command-line options to the following: /c ""c:\program files\exact audio copy\nero\neroaacenc.exe" -br %bitrate%000 -if %source% -of %dest% && "C:\program files\exact audio copy\nero\neroaactag.exe" %dest% -meta:artist="%albumartist%" -meta:album="%albumtitle%" -meta:track="%tracknr%" -meta:title="%title%" -meta:genre="%genre%" -meta:totaltracks="%numtracks%" -meta:disc="%cdnumber%" -meta:composer="%composer%" -meta:totaldiscs="%totalcds%" -meta:year="%year%" -add-cover:front:%coverfile%"
Set Bit rate to whatever you prefer - (e.g. 128 kBit/s)
Check Delete WAV after compression
Uncheck Use CRC check
Uncheck Add ID3 tag
Check Check for external programs return code
Select the High quality radio button
Click OK to close the Compression options dialog box.
So the way this works is that it ties two of the Nero programs together - the Encoder and the Tagger - by launching them from the Windows Command shell. The number of " in the additional command-line options are important - don't omit them or it won't work.
The good news is that this does fill in the album art and a fair amount of metadata. I don't like lyrics in my audio files, so I didn't implement them, although the Nero Tagger supports it. You can adjust the bit rate via the pulldown in the Compression Options... menu - the script interprets the variables correctly - but the MP4s will be Variable Bit Rate (VBR) not Constant Bit Rate (CBR), so they won't match exactly.
As I've mentioned before - I'm a huge fan of the Shoegazer movement. One of the first Shoegazer releases I ever heard was the Mad Love EP by Lush.
Lush was a relatively young band signed to the prestigious 4AD music label. Their initial mini-album - Scar - was kind of punky - but their follow-up - Mad Love - found them working with the Cocteau Twins' Robin Guthrie who moved them firmly into Shoegaze territory with a wall of swirling guitars, buried vocals and dense layers of sound.
After a follow-up album with Guthrie - entitled Spooky - they moved away from their signature sound and became one of the forerunners in the Britpop movement with their final two albums, Split and Lovelife.
Sadly, Lovelife was to be their last album, due to the tragic loss of one of the founding members of the band.
If you haven't heard Lush before, I think Mad Love is a perfect place to start. If you like what you hear, then dive into the rest of their catalog.
NOTE: 4AD put together an American compilation album of Lush's first three releases entitled Gala. The Gala collection includes the Sweetness & Light, Mad Love and Scar EPs/Mini-albums, plus bonus tracks. If you still collect physical media (i.e. CDs) this is the easiest way to get their initial EPs stateside. I recommend it highly.
Give this a spin and let me know what you think. Comments are always welcome.
After spending some time with Dana's mom in Winston-Salem, we headed to Sunset Beach on the coast. On the way there, we saw some amazing sunsets:
After our arrival at Sunset Beach, I found the perfect spot for my brother just a few miles away in South Carolina:
Donuts, Ice Cream, Fireworks,
and there's a Waffle House in the background
Rare shot of Dana entering a Dunkin' Donuts
David, Rena, and the cousins Alan, Amy & Eric flew in to join us. The next day, we caught a ferry and headed to the Fort Fisher Aquarium, where we were joined by Dana's brother Nick:
One of the few moments Rose stopped running around the ferry
The whole gang at the aquarium - with butterflies!
Rose gets a little crabby
After we visited the aquarium, we headed to the boardwalk at Carolina Beach, to visit one of the finest donut shops in existance: Britt's Donuts
They only make one type of donut - glazed - but it's amazing.
In an Ideal Deal Copy Blog exclusive, here's the masters at work:
Sunset on the ferry back
Dave, Rena and the cousins got to spend a few days at the beach with us. Here's the cousins interacting:
(from L to R, Eric, Rose, Amy & Alan)
Amy caught me taking pictures
Dave joins them - how did Eric's shirt change?
Rena catches up with the outside world
Next, we went to Calabash, NC to get some seafood:
Rose runs from the shrimp
Fresh from the boat!
While we were there, on July 3rd, Hurricane Arthur passed close by. We got a chance to see it:
Luckily, it was long gone by July 4th, and we had a great day grilling and visiting with Dana's friends. Finally, on July 5th, Dana, Nick, Rose and I got ice cream at the Calabash Creamery. Good stuff!
Now - there's two things you should know about my musical tastes. Number 1 - I love Shoegazing bands. Shoegazing was a musical genre that started in the 1980's or so - and hit its apex in 1991 with bands like My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Lush, and Catherine Wheel. Shoegazing was known for its dense wall of complex guitar sounds that required many foot pedal effects, forcing the guitarists to stand fairly still, and concentrate on their feet, hence the term "Shoegazing". (Wikipedia has a great entry on the genre.)
The second thing in my musical tastes is Swervedriver. Although nominally a Shoegazing band, they also had a fondness for Detroit punk (Stooges, MC5) that added an aggressiveness to their sound that most of their psychedelic brethren in the music scene lacked. Sadly - they also had one of the worst runs of luck of any major label band, so most of their work comfortably fits in Flashback Friday. I'm sure I'll be covering all of their four albums eventually, so let's start with their first release, Raise.
Originally begun as a series of EPs, the band collected them together, recorded some new material, and called the resultant album "Raise". Even though the songs were recorded at different times, it sounds remarkably uniform and works as a coherent statement from the band. Continuing with the Detroit fascination, many of the songs are about cars and driving. Highlights include Son Of Mustang Ford, Rave Down, Feels So Real, and Sandblasted. Think dense melodic guitar rock, in the vein of Dinosaur Jr. or Neil Young - but with a denser, fuzzier wall of sound - and you won't be far off the mark.
Although well regarded at the time, their run of bad luck also started right after the album's release; during a North American tour, while the band was waiting to enter Canada, the drummer left the tour bus to "get a sandwich" and never returned. When he was finally located, he would only speak to one of the band members, and stated he wanted out of the band. Their bass player quit shortly thereafter, leaving just two members to decide the band's fate. (To be continued...)
Give this a spin and see what you think. Comments always welcome.
Finally - a Flashback Friday Album that isn't quite so obscure. Chances are you may have heard some songs off this one - especially if you were a fan of the TV show The O.C.
In the season two finale, Imogen's "Hide and Seek" was used to punctuate the ending scene. This was later parodied on SNL as one of their Digital Shorts - Dear Sister - which is where I first heard the track.
Following an appearance by Imogen live on David Letterman, I decided to get a couple of her albums. Her work is very good - but this record is really special.
Written, produced, arranged, and funded by Imogen herself, it was the first record where she really explored the sonic textures and songwriting that would become her hallmark.
Musically the album ranges from the spare vocalizer sonics of "Hide And Seek", to the full-on guitar rock of "Daylight Robbery". In-between, Imogen detours into quiet strength with the song "Have You Got It In You?", gets Jeff Beck to contribute a solo to the upbeat "Goodnight and Go", and finishes with the jaw-droppingly stunning "The Moment I Said It".
Her other albums, like Ellipse, her latest solo release; or Details, recorded with Guy Sigsworth under the moniker Frou Frou; are also worthy of investigation. But Speak For Yourself is a great place to start.
Give it a listen and let me know what you think below.
