John Cale is a genius. That I didn’t know of when I got my first Sony Walkman tape recorder in the late ’80s and Lou Reed was god. Cale for me was just the Welshman who played a weird amplified viola. I listened to the all the beautiful drones of the Velvet’s Black Angel’s Death Song and Heroin, or the soothing laments of that blonde Teutonic chanteuse in that cutting-edge, although a bit unwieldy, Sony gadget (as big as a ham sandwich) that cancelled out the eight-track Armageddon of Nazareth or the Scorpions blasting from the jeepneys plying the Blumentritt-to-Sta. Cruz route. Love Hurts truly hurts and definitely scars the earlobes. I brought the music of VU everywhere: to school, to my friends’ houses, to National Book Store, to the Harrison Plaza arcade, and in between anywhere. I walked with Reed then; I walk with Cale now.
Flash forward to the late 2000. When I got the Sony Ericsson W980 Walkman mobile phone, I dragged and dropped narcotic John Cale tracks into it (with a Mac it’s as easy as uploading MP3 files into a USB and keeping them obsessive-compulsively in neat folders) — and I took it for a walk. Looking for signs under a big white cloud… Hearing minor falls and major lifts… Scouring the endless plains of fortune… Hearing in my head sketches about the angel of death, ship of fools, the academy in peril, Carmen Miranda, Dylan Thomas and Pablo Picasso. A trip through the wires, you could say.
With its sleek clamshell shape, this flip phone has a nice mirror-like external screen that’s visually impressive. Armed with 8GB of internal memory, 3G (broadband-like speed), wireless Bluetooth and FM transmitter and radio, it can store up to 8,000 songs. Plus, it also comes with an ambient light sensor that is placed slightly below the display. It takes care of adjusting the display brightness according to the current lighting conditions.
Let’s take this Walkman for a walk.
A digression: Don’t worry this article is an attempt to not sound like a normal mobile phone or audio equipment review — or even a test-drive article — which linguistically comes across like a glorified brochure with so much jargons you could put them in a jar in a room filled with “end-to-end solutions” that “take things to the next level” in the name of “synergy.” Every time I read one of those smarter-than-thou reviews, I feel sort of dehumanized like Jonathan Pryce in the classic dystopian flick Brazil. Who enjoys reading those things? Mr. Roboto?
My beef with listening to music on mobile phones is the lack of bass punch. In my old phone it was like listening to Steely Dan and bassist Chuck Rainey didn’t show up for the sessions — car trouble or such. Thus the tracks come across as horny as hell; I mean all horns (from Brecker, Shorter), shrill guitars (from Skunk and Carlton) and muddied low-end. What’s more tragic is that I am a lackluster bassist (imagine Sid Vicious playing in Milli Vanilli) but I do really dig basslines. I could even get into a tragically sappy song — say, Touch Me in the Morning featuring Bob Babbitt or those Sergio Mendes hits in the ’70s — if it has a wicked, wicked bass.
A technological manna. Two things the new W980 has going for it: Clear Bass and Clear Stereo.
Sony Ericsson’s Clear Bass technology provides sharp and dynamic basslines free from distortion. You can hear Jaco, Flea, Wooten, Claypool, Pino Palladino and Stanley Clarke crisply and clearly in most mobile phone music devices because their basses are upfront, but with the W980 you will be able to hear the subtler — yet not any less talented — bassists such as Donald “Duck” Dunn and Rocco Prestia of Tower of Power. The bass is essential, after all; it’s not just a four-stringed guitar.
To find out how kick-ass the stereo technology is, one of the tests is to listen to tunes with great panning effects. Try listening to tracks from The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” such as A Day in the Life or Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. But the best example would be the Strawberry Fields Forever single. You got mellotrons and drums swirling from your left channel and backward guitars from your right — both meeting dead center with Lennon’s otherworldly voice. If you have Bang & Olufsen speakers, the effects are astounding. To steal the title of George Martin’s book, “all you need is ears.” But with the cheap ones I bought from Raon that I’ve used most of my life, even a piece of classic pop psychedelia sounds like compressed Jonas Brothers or Miley (Ray) Cyrus song where everything leaks into both channels crappily.
What Sony Ericsson’s Clear Stereo technology does is to correct the sound — not making things chirpier but making the sound as close as possible to the original recording. Unless somebody invents a time machine that would take audiophiles to the recording studio where Cale recorded “Vintage Violence” or “Hobo Sapiens,” the W980 Walkman — at least to a lot of Ericsson users — the closest thing to that experience.
Little wonder that the W980 has been awarded as Bet Product in the European Music Phone category of the European Imaging Sound Association (EISA).
More features: the Shake control is the easiest way to change tunes. With just a flick of the wrist a vibration will let you know that the track has been changed. A new song from your current play-list will be selected randomly and played automatically. Shake it up, so say the philosopher Hall and his associate Oates.
Sometimes you hear a new song on the radio and are curious as to what its title is or who recorded it, which can be frustrating because you don’t want to suffer from incurable L.S.S. of something you know nothing about. Well, the W980 can help to name that tune. Thanks to the TrackID, you can record a few seconds of the song you hear on the radio. Then, send the music to the Gracenote Mobile MusicID, a database for song recognition. You will receive the name of the name, artist and album sent to your phone in a jiffy. A discography in a flash. That works in normal circumstances; not when you’re dealing with really obscure numbers like Haring Solomon or Sa Silong ni Kaka.
The gadget also provides a choice of eight equalizer presets, each of which contains a distinct profile that is suitable to a wide range of music. So whether you’re listening to jazz, pop, heavy metal, or bossa-freaking-nova, you can always choose the best sound for the song.
Another great feature is the SenseMe command. If you’re going through your typical ever-changing moods, the SenseMe has a fun way of grouping your tracks in the music library — from “Fast” to “Sad,” from “Happy” to “Slow” to explore the music library. It would be great if you could have a “Genius” folder, where John Cale songs would reside until I discover a new aural prophet.
What’s great about music — same with mobile phone technology from really good manufacturers such as Sony Ericsson — the songs remain the same but the discoveries are endless.