Modern music sound? It just ain't me, says 'curmudgeonly' Dylan

The veteran rocker Bob Dylan has attacked modern recording techniques - saying that no-one should complain about people downloading the "atrocious" music for free. He even said the music on his new album sounds better in the studio than on CD.

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Dylan, 65, declares: "We all like records played on record players, but let's face it, those days are gone. You do the best you can, you fight technology in all kinds of ways, but I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past twenty years, really."

The man whose first recording in five years, "Modern Times", is released next week, sounds suitably curmudgeonly as he rails against modern recording techniques, even saying his new material sounded "ten times better" better when it was being played live.

Dylan has released more than a dozen studio albums. Among his best known are "Highway 61 Revisited", "Blonde on Blonde" and "Blood on the Tracks". His most recent album "Love and Theft", reached the top five in the US and UK charts in 2001.

Dylan first found success as a singer-songwriter on New York's folk circuit in the early Sixties. He created huge controversy among hard-core folk fans when he made the switch to electric instruments.

Rolling Stone asked Dylan about music downloads from the internet and the complaints from the recording industry about people who do not pay for it. Dylan responds: "Well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway." He also said that he has no plans to retire any time soon, adding that he thought he was in his "middle years now".