Blog: The Mix Tape

Last night I was watching the first episode of The Sopranos (which I've never seen before) with my girlfriend and my mother - a nice family night in, or so I thought. About half way through we stopped the DVD as I had to nip out to bathroom. In the quiet before restarting the episode my mother made a comment about a party taking place down the road and how it was too loud - and so began a minor confrontation. I was saying that she just needed to relax and let them have fun, and she was insisting that [...]

Just yesterday I received a very courteous email from an associate of Tokyo Police Club's record label asking me to withdraw a song of theirs from our blog. As a fairly new member of the music blogging community it was my first experience of a request to remove a file, and it came as a bit of a shock - I was never sure if it was just an urban myth, a tall tale, that record companies actually tracked down humble little blogs such as ours and forced them to hold the line - welcome to the dirty world of blogging baby! [...]

Episode 02 of The Mix Tape Podcast is now available for download! This week we sample some more of The Kooks' forthcoming album Konk (Due April 15th), we drop a tune from everybody's favorite new band Foals and for good measure, we throw in the smash hit 'American Boy' by Estelle Ft. Kanye West. 1. Olympic Airways - Foals 2. Counters - The Young Knives 3. Down To The Market - [...]

I have a thing about Bjork. There is something in her little Icelandic face that makes me go a bit crazy, however, my feelings for her are more than just skin deep. Her music refuses to commit to form - no other artist would have attempted the strange hushed silences of 1995's 'It's Oh So Quiet', or even pulled it off with such panache. No other artist would have the imagination or the guts to record an album driven almost entirely by A Cappella singing and beat-boxing as found on 'Medulla', and end up with it sounding so good. I will [...]

• Wanderlust (Ratatat Remix) - Bjork » 01 wanderlust ratatat remix.mp3

Welcome to the first of a new weekly feature on The Mix Tape Podcast - The Monday Mash Up. There really is nothing like a good old mash up, the bringing together of two pieces of music in perfect harmony - or at least we hope so. Have no fear, The Mix Tape is here to sort the wheat from the chaff and the hits from the shits. Without further ado, I welcome bad ass ivy league boys Vampire Weekend vs. Mr friendly himself, Styles P: [...]

I'll be honest with you, until about a month ago I had never heard of Erykah Badu. People seemed to be getting pretty excited about her new album and I had no idea what was so important. All I knew was that she had a cool name and probably the craziest hair I had seen since coming across the drummer from polar bear , apart from this I was blissfully unaware of the Badu effect - then came [...]

I woke up this morning with a tingle in my body. Not the kind that comes from needing to go to the toilet, or anything involving morning wood, but the kind that comes from realising it's a Saturday! Yes that's right, even though university life allows for more than enough days of laying in bed and surfing the net, saturdays feel that bit more special. So it was with this tingly warm feeling in mind that I slipped out of bed and flicked my ipod to Of Montreal. These crazy cats never fail to get me behaving inappropriately and the track I [...]

Get ready to meet your new best friends - Fleet Foxes. Hailing from Washington state, the five members of FF have just produced the kind of EP that might just make you stop. You know what I mean, right? Those times when you're clicking through song after song, and then suddenly there's a moment of stillness, a moment when you take a breath. With Sun Giant, FF conjure up 5 delicate songs, so gentle and precise in construction, that at times they can seem barely to exist. Their ethereal harmonies and soft melodic patter of drums are executed with such guile, its difficult [...]

What is it about Luke Pritchard's voice? There is something in the rolls and burrs of his words that compel me to stand up and sing: 'THE KOOKS ARE OUT, IN THE STREETS!' Is that just me? Probably not. Anyway, it feels like a long time since I gave 'Inside In - Inside Out' a turn on my ipod. No problem however, The Kooks are back with new material (Konk) and with more than enough indie-pop gems to satisfy the die-hard Kookian. Here are some tit-bits - not including 'Do You Wanna' that we included in episode 01 of our podcast! [...]

So if you've never come across BLACK KIDS before now, this is probably your first time on the big old thing we call the interweb. The sweetest blog sphere babies ever born, BLACK KIDS are ready and waiting to blow up big style. Their debut single is set for release in the UK on April 7, and the summer appears theirs for the taking. Sounding like The Cure on roller skates, there is something insatiable about this Floridian five-piece. Here are two of the rarer tunes from BLACK KIDS' terribly small back catalogue: [...]

1. Do You Wanna - The Kooks 2. Keep Your Eyes Ahead - The Helio Sequence 3. Cockateels - Guillemots 4. Raquel - Neon Neon [...]

The first ever episode of The Mix Tape Podcast is now live! After spending what seems like a lifetime typing pieces of text into tiny boxes and serious overuse of the cut and paste button, The Mix Tape Podcast is now available for your listening pleasure. Unfortunately we haven't worked out how to include a track listing in the podcast yet but hopefully that will come with time - be patient friends! Feel free to leave comments about our attempts below, we're all off to drink some 40s. Good day to you!