The BBC News website has an excellent Q&A article up at the moment dealing with the implications of DRM infested music files in the wake of the closure of Virgin Digital. In case you've not heard about this yet, Virgin Digital is closing its doors which means that any Club subscribers will now have hard drives full of media content that they can no longer play.

The article points out that we've "... been here before, most notably with the video wars between VHS and Betamax. When Sony's Betamax format lost the battle, Sony threw in the towel and started making VHS recorders instead, leaving Betamax fans reliant on aging machines."

All perfectly true, except when Sony threw in the towel with Betamax, they didn't instantly invalidate any media content that had been stored on Betamax tapes - which is precisely what's happening here.

I feel very sorry for any Virgin Digital subscribers that have been affected by this fiasco, but hopefully they'll start telling their friends to avoid DRM infested music in future and the music industry will stop treating their loyal customers as criminals.

I've just stumbled upon one of the best mash-up albums I've ever heard; it's called "Cracked Pepper" by ccc / Ill Chemist which takes each track from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in turn and mashes them with tracks by other artists making completely new songs while leaving the originals recognisable. Particular highlights for me are "With A Little Glam" which fuses "A Little Help From My Friends" with "Rock 'n Roll Parts 1 & 2" and the totally gorgeous "She's Slipping" which marries "She's Leaving Home" with Kinobe's "Slip Into Something". Wonderful.

Go grab it before some BPI/RIAA blowhard takes the tracks offline.

I've just finished having my mind mangled again for the umpteenth time by the Art Of Noise - probably one of the most infuential 'bands' of the 1980s, or at least before Anne Dudley, J. J. Jeczalik and Gary Langhan jumped the good ship ZTT and went their separate ways with China Records becoming a pastiche of themselves leaving Trevor Horn and Paul Morley behind. "And What Have You Done With My Body, God?" is a 4 CD box-set that covers their crucial period at ZTT, charting the initial foolings with the Fairlight CMI and found sounds to the highly polished released articles (Into Battle With and Who's Afraid Of). At times joyful, playful - sometimes tranquil and downright beautiful - and others surreal and disturbing, this is a fantastic collection of work.

This will leave some listeners cold; there are numerous versions of Beat Box, and the noodlings that were to become the definitive Beat Box (Diversion One) - various different takes on Close (To The Edit) culminating in the monumental twenty minute session that is "Diversion Eight, Diversion Two, Closest, Close-Up, Close (To The Edit), Closed" on CD4 - and not forgetting Moments In Love which appears in no less than four different variations.

But for those interested in the evolution of a band on the cutting edge of technology as they were during 1983 to 1985, this is essential listening.