Blog: The Muse In Music

So. The agonizing countdown to October 26 begins. Check out the five-minute trailer to Team Wachowski's adaptation of David Mitchell's bestselling novel Cloud Atlas . Spanning an untold number of years - probably 200 or more - the story weaves six narratives together into one epic composition. (The "Cloud Atlas" of the title is a sextet crafted by a destitute ghostwriter. We can't wait to see how  Reinhold Heil interprets this on screen.) The film stars just about everyone, and promises to be huge. Bernard Zwijzen's Sonmi451 project is also [...]

Earlier this summer it was announced, via a promo video , that Lord Huron would be releasing his debut full length album in October. The video featured a taste of the track "Time To Run" and now we have the full track for your perusal. That track is definitely upbeat with a sound that reminds me quite a bit of Frightened Rabbits, which is not a bad thing by any measure. The calypso sound that we heard on the Mighty EP is no where to be found on "Time To Run" which also isn't a bad [...]

The men of The Giving Tree Band come from adventurous, even heroic, stock. Their prescription for a good life is to live an honorable one, with a strong connection to nature and the goodness that comes from being in complete harmony with it. Find like-minded folk (say, a troupe of impeccable musicians) and the rest will follow. It’s an attitude more commonly found in fantasy novels than the real world. When I’m reminded that this mindset does in fact exist, it’s a refreshing and wonderful feeling. The Giving Tree Band is currently promoting their [...]

Naming a band according to some random set of symbols is nothing really new. Prince did it long ago and it seems to be gaining popularity once again with !!! and a number of other names that our blog won't support the characters of. The one problem with this route is that you either get a potential fan that scoffs and never gives a listen or you get the curious that will take the dive. Before you look at Alt-J, who uses the Greek sign Delta as their symbol but goes by the name Alt-J because that's the key command [...]

• alt-J - An Awesome Wave

What can we say? Slow news day. An near-infinity of music channels to choose from and yet there's nothing on. On that note, The Huffington Post reports: Researchers in Spain used a huge archive known as the Million Song Dataset, which breaks down audio and lyrical content into data that can be crunched, to study pop songs from 1955 to 2010. A team led by artificial intelligence specialist Joan Serra at the Spanish National Research Council ran music from the last 50 years through some complex algorithms and found that pop [...]

"Cry For Judas" is the first single off of The Mountain Goats upcoming album Transcendental Youth and like just about every other Mountain Goats single this one isn't a disappointment with its surging brass and upbeat tempo. Listen to the track below but first a word from our sponsor: So hey umm it is with great pride that the Mountain Goats present to you one of the 12 songs from our new record, Transcendental Youth. (If you want to pre-order the album and get the bonus 7? that comes with the first thousand or [...]

• The Mountain Goats - Cry for Judas
• The Mountain Goats - Cry for Judas

The third IAMX video journal is shot in "an abandoned East German horse ranch, of course," and between fiery games of ping pong, Chris Corner answers fan questions about illicit drug use, tour plans, and whether or not the album is in production. Weed, he claims, "is a little bit limited" (implying that other compounds do the trick quite nicely, thank you much?). He divulges who will produce the forthcoming album - Jim Abbiss - who Corner insists "make it more organic, more human." He paces alot, but seems much more at ease than he [...]

A human piñata may sound like a good idea but they come with a pretty obvious flaw. Kids wanting candy requires beating the human piñata with a stick, you can see where it goes from there. But apparently you can put them back together and all will be well.

We have an influx of tender, thoughtful music coming through the submissions box these days and each seems to serve a different purpose. Some are excellent companions when you're an emotional wreck . Some would make the perfect soundtrack when faced with a long stretch of road . But when easing into a fresh new day, good mornings should unfold to the music of Ruarri Joseph. Joseph is a London singer-songwriter who sticks to what he knows best – friendships, relationships and family. Previous albums were recorded in a small shed, [...]

Did you ever hope that the Darth Vader character would be reworked? A timeless and unforgettable villain, Vader has always been the kind of adversary who draws booing from the audience, but no genuine fear. (Even the prequel trilogy would have us believe that Anakin turned Sith and massacred his friends for ... the love of Natalie Portman? Now if it had been Megan Fox, we might have understood.) And granted, for a time it seemed that Bane wasn't it. DC Comics first introduced the character in 1993, presenting him as a steroid-fueled [...]

Well, now. A new Bat For Lashes album is nigh . Here's the video to "Laura."

Husky is yet another Australian band that is going to me making waves in the US market here very soon as they tour around this summer with Shearwater. The band is the first Australian band to sign with the iconic Sub Pop Records which should tell you something about this their potential. Formed by cousins Husky Gawenda and Gideon Priess, the band found their way like so many other bands out there when they were thrust into the spotlight after entering "History's Door" in Australia's Triple J radio contest to find the next best unsigned band. This [...]

• huskysongs - Forever So

Don't sell your favorite album short. No, seriously. Don't sell it short. What you should do, though, is buy around 8,000 shares of Cock and Swan . Quick math says that will lift the share price from $0.31 to $0.36 each, a 20% one-day gain for me, and 44% since my purchase date. Allow me to explain. Tastemaker X "is a social gaming app for discovering new music. The game aims to enhance your passion for discovering new music with a game that’s both [...]

I'm loving the sound of this stripped down version of "Shuffle" by London's Bombay Bicycle Club. The band just began their US tour last Sunday and will be coming to Dallas in October. Other tour dates here . artist website | facebook | myspace | twitter

Brooklyn falsetto crooner Tom Krell, aka How To Dress Well, will be releasing his sophomore album, Total Loss , in late summer but has given us something to chew on until then. "Cold Nites" is the second track that we've gotten to hear from the new album and both tracks fall right in line with one another. "Ocean Floor For Everything" and "Cold Nites" have Bon Iver vocal pitches with sultry R&B rhythms that will have you basking in Krell's atmospheric orchestrations. Total Loss is [...]

Ben Frost offers up an alluring tweet : "Trailer for Reynir Lyngdal's new film. Music by me. Its in Icelandic. Its called FROST." He goes on from there, surpassing our community standards by exactly four letters. The film premiers on September 7, and tracks "A young couple, physiologist Agla and filmmaker Gunnar," who "wake up at a glacier drilling camp only to find the camp mysteriously abandoned and their co-workers gone. When searching for the lost team they realize they’re up against an unknown deadly force." No music stream anywhere [...]

Swear and Shake have a sound that would make one think that they hail from the deep south but you'd be far from correct. Having this type of sound come out of New York City is a rarity but it has found a niche for the band that now has a loyal following with their second EP release, Maple Ridge . You can listen to the new EP below and bask in the clap happy tracks with boy-girl dueling harmonies from Kari Spieler and Adam McHeffey that battle back and forth like a person's subconscious wrestling [...]

Recent literature on neuroscience might be summarized: Even in the healthiest of brains, there is not one unanimous will, there are several. Some urges are louder and more persuasive, while others are hopelessly outgunned. Certain impulses are too quick to notice, and we act on them before we realize it. Others are much slower. Even others, elemental. But in short, the gray matter is soaked by numbers of conflicting neurotransmitters, and therefore by numbers of conflicting wills. To the point that the terms id, ego and superego need a [...]

Through word of mouth and relentless touring Freelance Whales have built themselves and nice little following since the 2010 release of Weathervanes and that following have been waiting with bated breath for their sophomore release to be announced. A few days ago the band posted on their website that big news was on the way and today they delivered with the announcement of Diluvia along with a first single (which they're offering up for free here ) and accompanying visual. "Locked Out" isn't as popping and bouncey as the band's previous work has been but [...]

It might be the Malbec talking, but it still seems like the four-track EP is a plain-sight metaphor for the four-track recorder. The ethic of simplification aimed straight at the song count, in what is otherwise an ocean of low-cost digital self-production and 140-character advertisements. Jen Miller's debut EP Forget The Dirty Hearts certainly embodies that ethic of simplification, right down the title. Funded with a better-than-hoped Kickstarter campaign (two lucky buggers won the name-your-cover prize), the album is condensed down to a guitar, a wry and smokey voice, a [...]