Tweet One day in the future, at the time of the invasion of the Intergalactic Crown Prince of Martalia, we have it on sound authority that the anthems of all the nations will be scraped. The peoples of the earth will unite under one banner to defend our increasingly frail lands. They will march into battle with only one song as their anthem - Favorite Place by Black Books. It's true, we've seen the future and it's all about Black Books dear friends. The alien invaders will quake at the sounds of the [...]
Tweet We're different at SGTMT , and our mothers say that's a good thing. (Good things also come in small packages. It's what's inside that counts. And winning isn't everything). Whilst everyone else is off listening to the brand new record, released today, from two gallic robots, we've set up camp with a cup of tea in front of the turntable in the Listening Room at SGTMT Headquarters and we're listening to a record that came out last year. New music is great. Without it, well, there would [...]
Tweet Bands from Los Angeles have to work twice as hard to impress us. Is that a general rule of just one of team SGTMT? We imagine all musicians from LA to be part human / part rubber. They have glitter balls for eyes and bleed a mixture of champagne and mountain dew. This is all true right? Of course the city has a rich history of fine music but it's increasingly plastic persona still hinders our perceptions. Excuse our ignorance and be thankful that our vision is not so skewed to have [...]
Tweet Last night Team SGTMT went out for a little boogie. It had been a long old day, and we were pretty pooped, but we'd promised Danish pop sensation MØ that we'd go see her show at London's Cargo. You know those nights where you hope that the set is nice and short so you can get it over and done with and crawl back into the bunk beds at the SGTMT Dorm Room? It was one of those. Tell you what though guys; MØ is pretty amazing live. [...]
Tweet We've been big fans of Big Deal for a while now . We've been, like, making a Big Deal about them. HA HA HA HA HA HA. HA. HAHAHAHAH. Ha ha... Ahem. First came (at least on this blog) Teradactol, then In Your Car and now the elegantly bruising Dream Machines. Good grief that's quite the business. Big Deal release their debut album June Gloom on the 4th June and embark on a UK tour later this week, starting at the Great Escape [...]
Tweet At SGTMT HQ we've had a spate of frightening incidents involving Moonlight Shadow (the Mike Oldfield song, not the actual shadow of the moon, though that might make more sense...). First Tom got buried under a mountain of vinyl for a week , A WEEK, whilst trying to locate his copy of the aforementioned record (true story); and then we discovered a Turkish cover version of the song and blogged it (sorry) which nearly ruined our once prestigious reputation. So the last few days we've been in a state of [...]
Tweet SGTMT are hiring! We need a new masseuse. So we've spent the entire day doing back to back interviews in a Watford hotel where there was a rude receptionist but free breakfast. Interviewing all day is an oddly exhausting experience. Talking. Listening. Talking. Listening. It's weird. Anyway, we found a good one; the one that looked like Sky Ferreira . That done we've headed back to the SGTMT Headquarters Listening Room (shelves now repaired after *this* tragic accident ) and we've been having a [...]
Tweet In just over a weeks time The National release their sixth album Trouble Will Find Me. In our role as greatest and most respected of all online music emporiums (FACT), we felt it highly appropriate to give our own opinion on this latest release. I mean, what would the world do without our expert view and analysis? Seriously, what would you do? Would you cope? Would you survive? Would life continue with any meaning at all without SGTMT? We think probably not. Of course this surely raises a wider question, perhaps [...]
Tweet There has been a terrible accident at SGTMT Headquarters. I'd been telling the lads that we need to get the shelves looked at for weeks. The ones in the Listening Room which hold all the vinyl. They're an accident waiting to happen, I said. Matt said it would cost to much to get someone in to fiddle with them. Furthermore, we spent the whole maintenance budget on re-sealing the bath (probably a reference to my over-excited bath behaviour I noted with narrowed eyes), so the shelves would have to wait. [...]
Tweet Back at the dawn of the year we instructed you all to ' keep an eye on ' Wilsen. We trust you've been doing so. So, if you've been obedient, you'll be aware of their new release Dusk. It's super fantastical. If you're not familiar with dream folk (basically folk music for hipsters) then Wilsen are a pretty good introduction. They're fronted by English singer Tamsin Wilson but the rest of the crew herald from Yankland. Wilsen specalise in slowly melting cold hearts through intense, anthemic, yet soothingly lackadaisical adventures. [...]
Tweet I bet his piano teacher never anticipated this. Cosmo Sheldrake started learning classical piano at the age of 4, or so the legend goes. Now he is a multi-instrumentalist (artist code for a git) capable of tickling the banjo, loop station, keyboards, double bass, drums, didgeridoo, penny whistle, sousaphone (he made that one up we reckon) and more besides. Though, we doubt he has yet mastered the dark art of sweaty armpit burps (my dubstep rendition of Moonlight Shadow is something to behold for sure). According to his web blurb [...]
Tweet Of Rust & Bone are brand new. They have 44 likes on Facebook (even my dad is more popular), 5 followers on Twitter (once again, even my dad beats that, he has 9, serious) and just under a 1000 plays on SoundCloud. Kids, I'll be straight with y'all, that's not much cop. Should they therefore concede an early defeat and retreat back to the lamentable lands of unfulfilled dreams and no ambition? BY NO MEANS! Of Rust & Bone may presently have the popularity of a leprous Traffic Warden, but the future is [...]
Tweet Running a music blog is a peculiar kettle of kippers. The constant stream of emails (80 today alone), facebook / twitter / soundcloud messages is almost overwhelming. Most correspondence is ignored, immediately consigned to the yawning gmail abyss of disregarded tunes. Our idealistic high hopes of a John Peel hunger for new music, listening to every tune from every band, have sadly been dashed on the cynical cliffs of our mailbox app. No longer will the Brazilian heavy metal bands & Latvian dream pop wannabees abuse our ears... BUT... every now and again [...]
Tweet Over here at SGTMT HQ we've spent the day listening to the sounds of Iceland. We were presently surprised. We were expecting the sounds of fevered Eskimos drumming incessantly on tightened seal skin drums, with Narwhal tusks instead of Vic Firths. Or perhaps some frozen variant of dubstep - winterstep or icicle-grime. Instead we were treated to an avalanche (shall I cease the stereotypical 'cold' metaphors now?) of Icelandic delights from the likes of; Pétur Ben, Snorri Helgason & Biggi Hilmars. Seriously, those Ice people have some talents. Check [...]
Tweet Who do you really want me to be? No, seriously; are you satisfied with the performance of this music blog? Have we met or perhaps even surpassed your expectations? Do we fill your lives with listening joy on a regular basis? Are we the best thing since Flash Gorden? Are we? ARE WE? It's a big question isn't it? But before we get all philslosthissocksandall let's get down to the music. Hey Sholay are back. They had an incident with a van and, like, all their instruments being stolen by a [...]
Tweet Bloggers should know stuff. We should. We should be able to say "I saw this band at a crappy pub with two other people and I predict they will be awesome. Or we should say, I found this MP3/Youtube video down the back of my sofa, I predict global domination. I cannot do that. Somebody else told me about this band. Their facebook page tells me they are getting lots of blog love already. Sooooooo I am on a mission to [...]
Tweet The Internet has been all hot and bothered over Daft Punk for the last few weeks. (There was a brief diversion into Jai Paul territory when some little scamp released a load of his old demos pretending it was his debut LP and everyone rushed to call it the best thing they'd heard in ages, and when the jape was revealed were suddenly quiet). But then we were back to Daft Punk again. Daft Punk, Daft Punk, Daft Punk, (bit of Jai Paul), Daft Punk. Here are [...]
Tweet At first, to be straight with y'all, we only liked Junip because of Jose Gonzalez. I know, I know... philistines etc. etc. Jose was actually part of Junip first, yadda, yadda.. We'll put all that to bed (but not with Tom at SGTMT HQ, he hasn't washed his bedding for a while. Not cool) and focus instead on the future, because, you see the future is Junip. Ahead of their debut album Junip have previously released the superb EP Fields on Amazon . [...]
Tweet SGTMT HQ is a joyous place. We're frequently celebrating the wonder of life through the medium of dance. Monday is ballet, Tuesday is tango and Wednesday, well.. it's probably best we don't say. Tom, gets upset you see. He's got all the moves, he's got the best outfits but sadly his feet are two small for his new tap shoes. Poor little button. Nothing fuels our moves more than a perfectly produced remix and today we've found such a tune. Penguin Prison has remixed Change by Churchill and produced something [...]
Tweet Tomorrow, Team SGTMT are being sent on a training course. This one is about time management; our owners have looked at the blog and decided we can be more productive. " Find more good music, post more good music, WRITE SOMETHING GOOD! " We protested and, well it all got a bit out of hand, but they threatened to remove our Angel Delight rights. So we're going. To Peterborough. *Sigh*. Not only do we have to go on the course, we've been set some 'pre-course [...]