It's not the ease of storage, it's not the convenience of a database of music at your fingertips... As far as I'm concerned it's Audio Surf.

Not that I need another reason to stay up late, but this is my new favorite way to enjoy my music. It's a video game, sort of. Give the game a music track and it builds a psychedelic roller coaster ride matching tempo and beat of the song, filing it with coloured blocks that you must collect with your car/ship/thing and match up not unlike any of a thousand different puzzle games. If you're as big a geek as I am, you can think of it like a cross between the original Wipeout on the PS1 and Bejewled. I'm a little late to this party - the game has been out, as the kids say, at least 100 years...

I started with some tracks from John Butler and it was a pleasant little ride with plenty of red blocks corresponding to the drum hits, Aphex Twin had me on a purple and blue slightly chaotic, some what unsettling ride, Tori Amos was slow, but fairly interesting for that. Giving it Spiderbait's Black Betty showed precisely why the game comes stamped with a photo sensitive epilepsy warning as coloured blocks whipped past fast enough to give me motion sickness.

Audio Surf



If you've got the spare (US)$10 to spare, and have a half decent set of speakers on your PC, download it on Steam and give it a crack. If nothing else it'll give you a different perspective on your music.