El lunes pasado, Margaret Thatcher una de las figuras más icónicas de la política moderna falleció, a lo 87años, abrazada por una muerte peculiar como lo fue su vida política: víctima de un derrame cerebral en una de las habitaciones del Hotel Ritz de Londres. Ésta mujer, de una personalidad más bien obstinada dotó de polémica a la situación política de la Gran Bretaña en los últimos 35 años, además de una condición dividisoria que oscilaba en las dualidades: entre la simpatía y el odio, la admiración y el repudio, resultado quizás, de que la división fuera uno de los [...]
Filed under: News , Exclusive , R.I.P. , Holy Hell , News Today, Oh Boy! , Politics as Usual Keystone Hulton Archive The death today of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has caused an outpouring of reactions, but very few of them would be positive from the music world. "She was only a grocer's daughter, but she ruined lives like a real emperor," Stars [...]
Sunday and Sun plus Mr B's Chill Session, is the recipe for a perfect Sunday. Enjoy & Happy Easter We Love Sundays. Kollektiv Turmstrasse, Holunderbaum/RumpelMIX Download here (Right Click, Save As). Hefner, An Evening With Hefner Download here (Right Click, Save As). Charles Webster, Be No One Download here (Right Click, Save As). Nick Drake, [...]

Words by Jamie Hallaman Here’s a good one. Norway’s Eivind Kirkeby of Lonely Boy returns as “90% of” The Society Of Poor Academics with a brand new album. You may remember TSOPA as a GFP TOTD in 2012 with the brilliant “Your New Boyfriend Is Ugly” and if you fell for his lo-fi bedroom 8-bit misery pop the first time around then I advise you keep reading (or skip to the "buy" button). Eivind is a bizarre character, he isn’t much of a singer and the [...]
Sit back and relax with Mr B's choice of beautiful tones. Enjoy your Sunday. Stereotyp Feat. Tikiman, Fling Style Download here (Right Click, Save As). Mutcof, Oort Download here (Right Click, Save As). Warpaint, Baby Download here (Right Click, Save As). Angelo Badalamenti, Into The Night Download here (Right Click, Save As). Hefner, Dawb Download [...]

So, erm... as the cultural black hole of the Edinburgh Festival lumbers towards us like a hungry giant, blithely trampling all before it as it stumbles clumsily towards the Magners tent to gorge itself on what can surely be chemically proven to be one of the world's nastiest ciders, I find myself wondering what the fine people of Edinburgh can do in the face of such a knee-trembling onslaught of shock and awful. Plenty, it turns out is the answer. So, after tearing my hair out waiting for the fucking Mixcloud uploader to start working again so I [...]
“We’re going to get bigger than the national debt,” claims Duncan Barrett, lead singer of Tigercats, as the east London band’s debut album draws to a close. Given the response they have received to date, you wouldn’t bet your tax-deductible Sterling against it. Tigercats are hardly your identikit Shoreditch-chic act – it is obvious from [...]
From the Twin Shadow website. I had no idea this was a thing! When I first saw the image of Die Antwoord that prompted my last post I credited them on originality, composition and execution. But today I checked out the Twin Shadow website and it made me second-guess the originality part. Here are some more "stoppie kisses" from Google image search: [...]

More Seattle goodness, this time from the friendly neighborhood Neighbors who are about to release their second album on Lost Sound Tapes. The easy reference point of Neighbors is Pavement , and I'm sure the band intend it, but their new album John In Babeland is not just paint by numbers. Pavement weren't created in a vacuum, and Neighbors have more than just one single influence. Since I don't personally know them I couldn't tell you what they are, but bands like Firehose , REM , Camper van Beethoven [...]

While it has been widely ignored, the post Britpop / pre "The Libertines/The _____/garagey" band era was kind of a dark period in UK music. UK had just witness one of the greatest talent and musical explosions of all time in the early 90s but by the late 90s, those bands had all either broken up, started to suck or completely change their sound. During this time, bands found it hard to garner success, specially with the charts being dominated by the Spice Girls/Westlife/whatever. To put it into perspective, Stereophonics was considered one of the biggest acts from the UK [...]

Sigarayı bırakma mücadelem yaşama uğraşı şeklinde gayet stresli, depresif ve saldırgan bir tonda devam ediyor. Bir dönemim özellikle kalbi kırık bünyeler arasında saygı gören grubu Hefner 1999 tarihinde The Fidelity Wars isimli nefis bir albüm yapmıştı. Birbirine benzeyen şık kapak tasarımları olan albümleri aslında grubun bir noktadan sonra kendisini tekrar ettiği gerçeğini değiştirmiyordu. Yinede her albümden ben bu şarkıyı çok sevdim dediğimiz güzel şeyler çıkıyordu. Bir süre sonra dağılan bu İngiliz çoçuklar şimdi hatıralarda yaşamaya devam ediyor. O zaman The Hymn For The Cigarettes parçası sigara bırakma müdalesi içinde olan tüm fanilere gelsin. [...]

For a good two or three years up until the turn of the millennium, if London had a house band it was Hefner . Championed by John Peel and beloved by a cult following, Darren Hayman and his bandmates built up three albums and innumerable EPs’ worth of indie goodwill with their folk-tinged and acid-tongued brand of guitar pop. On 2000’s We Love the City LP, the four-piece enjoyed something of a commercial breakthrough while Hayman sang acerbic tales about meeting girls in the Wig and Gown, moving to Hackney, and channeling his [...]

Facebook For the longest time, conventional wisdom about The Radio Dept. said the Swedish three-piece hated to play live, preferring to record, throw out and re-record albums of gorgeously forlorn synth-pop in the safety and comfort of their studio. As such, I undertook a pilgrimage of sorts to New York two Summers ago to see them play what I assumed would be an incredibly rare show. Even when their long-awaited third album Clinging To A Scheme broke them open to a much larger audience (relative [...]

Dead Media Dead Media first appeared in 2001, becoming Hefner ’s fifth album in a very prolific four years. I don’t remember any Dylan-esq yells of “Judas” from the back of the auditorium at the time but it certainly wasn’t universally popular with the anoraked teddy-clutching fraternity. An experimental departure from their previous lo-fi produced guitar efforts, it proved to have something of a divisive effect on their fan-base. The cause of [...]
day 28 - a song that makes you feel guilty I'm confused. Isn't this just a retread of the question for day 13 ? Why would you feel guilty about a song? Maybe Mark Chapman has a pang of conscience listening to Double Fantasy but the rest of us? It is self-evident that whoever compiled these questions just ran out of steam towards the end. It's the Sparkle In The Rain of pop music memes. A google search of "day 28 - a song that makes you [...]

I'm not sure being known as 'one of the other chaps from Hefner' isn't a bit annoying, but if you don't know who Jack Hayter is yet, then I guess it serves as well as any other description. This EP opens with a song it took me a while to recognise as a first rate pop classic. What threw me, I think, but I'm not sure, is that it just sounds so very English . I may be based in Scotland but I myself am actually as close to being English as any other nationality, so that [...]
Jan 19, 2011, 2:14pm
100b

We got a mail last week about Darren Hayman's January Songs project - you know Darren Hayman: "ex-Hefner, godfather of modern indiepop, one of the best songsmiths of the past 15 years, oh you know the one". Ok, I didn't know any of those things, but I'm sure you do. I've been meaning to listen to some Hefner for a while now, but haven't gotten to it yet. Isn't it funny how you can somehow miss out on something everyone else has been listening to for ages? Anyway, so there's this Darren Hayman guy who everyone already knows [...]
Editor's note: The 'let's write a new song a day, every day' approach Darren Hayman, best known for his work in Hefner, is taking for the month of January didn't really fit into any of the usual categories at TGTF, but we felt so strongly about bringing attention to the amazing effort Hayman is putting into this project, we had to write about him. Words by Shari Fedak I’ve been a long-term fan of Darren Hayman 's work, from his work with Hefner to his [...]
Gospel Music From: Jacksonville, Florida, United States Gospel Music is the nom de plume of Owen Holmes (sounds like an evil estate agent!), bassist for indie combo Black Kids . Owen has been taken a little time out from his role as the new indie bass gold standard to indulge in a little extra curricular activity. Owen called on the [...]
Calling Out Your Name Again from Darren Hayman on Vimeo . Ik ben redelijk verslaafd aan het raken aan de nieuwe plaat van Darren Hayman . Hayman was ooit de voorman van Hefner , een band die het in ons land nooit zo goed heeft gedaan. Hayman maakt melodieuze pop die regelmatig neigt naar de Americana. Dat komt onder andere door het gebruik van banjo en steelguitar. De songs gaan dan weer over super Britse onderwerpen en je zou dus kunnen zeggen dat op Essex Arms Groot Brittannië en de USA bij [...]