I look forward to doing this post the most. Looking for indie bands in other languages is actually a lot harder than I thought. Often they sing in English (especially if they are European), so that they can appeal to a much wider audience. Today for no particular reason, I chose to look for some in German. From Hamburg, Gemany, comes Tocotronic a band that's been around since 1993. They haven't been commercially successful but have a pretty steady fanbase. 8 million plays on Last.fm for an indie band is pretty good, ain't it? Considering the fact I [...]
As you may of may not have noticed, I was absent from my usual time slot last week due to being a fun and adventurous college student. I was on spring break! Now I know what you're thinking: beaches, unruly alcoholism, Jersey Shore.... NO. Come on guys, I'm a classy broad. I went on a road trip! Me and 4 friends piled in a big ol' jeep and drove straight east from Claremont, CA into the American Southwest. What an experience, my friends. Over the course of the week I had about 16,000 new experiences. I went to Las Vegas, [...]
I remember where I was when I first listened to Surfer Blood- it was a warm January afternoon at a south Florida Starbucks, as I sipped iced coffee while watching the glistening canal water in the bright sun and the speeding traffic of Sheridan St. Their debut LP, Astro Coast , was instant nostalgia - it was like an album that had been there all along my Doolittle -rotation-heavy teenage years, playing silently in the background, a soundtrack to the nights spent on Hollywood Beach, just waiting to fully emerge from subconscious to consciousness [...]
Every other Tuesday, Pooch , one of the three heads behind Thisbonustrack.com will be writing for you about what warrants his "Props." This can be anything from a musician to a program to a label/studio or ANYTHING, but at the end of the day, this column is nothing but a long-winded recommendation or rant of sorts. I guess as of this week I'm starting my own little dictionary. This has been a long time coming as for the past two or three years, I've developed my own vocabulary that one of [...]
photography by purpleplaid I've been thinking a lot lately about the local music scene in Toronto and it got me to thinking that while I do check out a lot of bands, I never go blindly searching for new ones. I either go off recommendations from friends, promoters or buzz. So this week I decided to take the Wheel o' Bandcamp through the Toronto tag. As always, these are bands that I know nothing about, nor have every heard before going fishing. There's a great mix here that I think everyone could find something they [...]
First, a little housework. I promise that not every article will reference my newborn, but this post will. He was born a little over a week-and-a-half ago and was in NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care) for 10 days. As I'm writing this (on Saturday), he's been home for just over 12 hours. I'm running on about 1.5 hours sleep. But he's doing good and we are happy to have him home. Finally. Because of the unplanned post-birth scenario, I have done little music-related anything in the last two weeks. In the numerous trips back-and-forth from [...]
Here we are with another of the bi-weekly "Sad Bastard Sundays" from yours truly from Slowcoustic . Today, I thought I would possibly introduce you to a band from Belgium that shouldn't be overlooked. I also thought that I would try to show that just because songs are slower, mostly acoustic, enjoyed by Sad Bastards, they in fact might not be sad at all. These songs while on the mellow side of folk-pop almost feel uplifting as opposed to being the backing to your most recent break up. Please enjoy Isbells. ~~~ [...]
Happy Friday to ya, my friends!!! Man oh man have I been a busy little beaver lately. Work has been, well, work and nuttier than ever, but that's work and who wants to talk about that? Not I said the fly! Now, sure, we got you a badass mixtape to finish off the week all proper style... How's THAT for a teaser? But, before we get to that, let's talk about the other busys keep us busy. First up? [...]
What's up papercranes? It's me again, Chris from dailybeatz with another edition of everyone's favorite musical discovery game. Yes, you guessed it, we're talkin' bout some Hypem Hunting. In case you forgot from last time, this is how the game works. Go to hypem.com, pick a random word, search it in the search box, and then listen to a bunch of songs you've never heard until you find a bunch that you like. This week, the word was "rush", and here's what we've discovered. Let's travel back in time. The [...]
Welcome to the special SXSW edition of Something Old and Something New from Some Velvet Blog , coming to you live from Austin, Texas. Photo by Steve Gullick For Something Old this week, I've dug through the crates for this classic from The Flatlanders the legendary trio of Butch Hancock, Joe Ely and long time Austin resident Jimmie Dale Gilmore. The song comes from their classic roots record [...]
Whale Tooth was a CMW discovery. They were one of the opening bands for Mother Mother and I do have to say they did a great job of pairing bands together this year. The group are Toronto natives who pride themselves in having energetic live shows where beautiful singstress Elle LeGrow is the centre of all attention. She bounces and prances around on stage with dresses and short shorts. I actually spent a little bit of the show trying to figure out if she actually was wearing pants because it got [...]
Hey everyone. The devastation in Japan is mind-blowing. Anyone paying attention & watching the footage knows that Japan needs everyone and anyone's help. The Tsurus and the paper crane collective owe so much to that wonderful culture. We are folding 1,000 paper cranes for you in our thoughts. Baby really wanted to help out. She's taken her copper kitsuné (fox) clutch and put it on ebay . Here's the best part. The entire winning bid goes to the Red Cross AAAAAAAAAAAAAND Baby is going to [...]
As editor for The Recommender blog, I find our network of music bloggers one of the most rewarding aspects of our online world. This new Paper Crane Collective is the perfect forum in which to create something new out of the combined skills and passions of music bloggers. When I was asked to provide a regular feature it seemed fitting to create a post that focuses on the inner workings of music blogging itself. We fired off a Q&A to a multitude of world class bloggers, of all sizes, from all corners of the globe and [...]
"At The Library" came about when I tweeted about a CD I had on hold at my local library and Aaron, the man behind all this magical madness that is PCC, responded that it would make a good feature promoting local libraries and the music treasure troves that exist in many libraries. This open-ended topic leaves a lot of room for tinkering, so we'll see what evolves. For the first post I witnessed something a little bit special this past weekend that I'm excited to share with you. I'll be back next week with a new library story and you [...]
Welcome to Take Two, the first posting in a series from InYourSpeakers , where our writers take a look back at their old album reviews, providing new perspectives, revised opinions, or updates on the band. Our first album up again on the chopping block is Cassette Kids' mid-2010 release, Nothing on TV . I think my fellow music r eviewers will agree that parsing an album and weighing its merits is a difficult task. The easiest days of the job are when either a mind-blowing album comes our [...]
Here are the things that I love oh so much about High Fidelity, and miss in my current musical universe: -constant list-making -knowing endless trivia and stories about every band and song -sarcasm. So for the Paper Crane Collective, I figured I'd combine all these things into a twice-monthly Top 5 list. Every other Tuesday, Those Who Dig will present a list on various topics, genres, themes, news stories, or whatever we feel like writing about [...]
Photography by purpleplaid "Great is the human who has not lost his childlike heart." - Menicus This week ended up being about fulfilling childhood memories, letting my childlike spirit fly round and having fun. It was Canadian Music Week in Toronto but I only saw two shows at CMW as I am really not a fan of this festival. The only acts I felt worthwhile seeing, I had already seen throughout the year, in better venues with better crowds and totally cheaper. I did catch Rich Aucoin [...]
Retrospecticus: a journey back into my musical history. I'll be revisiting albums that opened up new genres for me as well as ones that changed the way I thought about music entirely. In a word: definitive. This column will appear biweekly on Thursdays, but for more of my words, visit Dipped in Dollars . It is impossible to think about an album that has become so much a part of me, without considering the moment I first heard it. I was driving around with my high school boyfriend the summer after our senior year of [...]
I thought I would make use of my space on this experimental collective of paper cranes to highlight some of the music new and old that for some reason or other doesn't get the flood of hype that makes up much of the blogosphere's musical coverage. We on The Blue Walrus as a new music blog are as guilty as others of getting sucked into the hyperbole every now and again as we try to surf the wave of the next big thing - but here on #PCC I feel I have a space I can devote to [...]
Hello again! This is a bi-weekly post on the sites and apps out there you might not know about where you can discover new music and artists. I'm going to delve into things that probably you probably have not heard about. Let's go beyond the hypem and Shuffler.fm and see what else is out there. This week's site is iSound . The general idea of iSound is that they want to pair your favourite artists with upcoming artists that are of similar [...]
T S U R U R A D I O
Bison - Quill
Monday Music – 28 May 2012
