Blog: Highway Five UK Music Blog

8 Deaf Havana – Fools and Worthless Liars These is not my normal cup of tea at all (not that I drink tea). Heard the single "I am a bore mostly" on Radio One (not that I listen to Radio One). I was hooked but the Kurt Cobain and Morrissey lyric and bought the LP. It is great. If I was 20 years younger this would be the soundtrack to my life. The lyrics have a gritty edge to [...]

Number Nine 2011 SBTRKT - SBTRKT The debut LP from Londoner Aaron Jermone SBTRKT is a masterpiece of modern electronic soul and dance music. Paced like the perfect DJ set this debut is full of promise. A bright new dawn for UK electronica. Share [...]

Number 10 2011 Tom Waits – Bad As Me Great to have Tom Waits back with a LP that mixed parts of his post Swordfish output with aspects of his early work. Full of hard won wisdom, melancholy, melody and bile. This track New Years Eve sounds like the prefect companion piece to the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl's Fairy tale of New York. [...]

Number 10 2011 Tom Waits – Bad As Me Great to have Tom Waits back with a LP that mixed parts of his post Swordfish output with aspects of his early work. Full of hard won wisdom, melancholy, melody and bile. This track New Years Eve sounds like the prefect companion piece to the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl's Fairy tale of New York. [...]

I found this page, Ten Best Indie Songs Under Two Minutes via a friend 's Facebook page and its started me thinking. What are my favourite songs that clock in at under two minutes. I found myself drifting back through my record collection looking for songs that I love that a short. The vast number although very brief clocked in at over two minutes. Below is my list of ten songs that last under two minutes. I have gone on the length of the official released studio versions of the songs. [...]

Go and download this amazing free concert by the Wordless Music Orchestra at the great NPR . I have listened to it three times already this week and its gets more amazing each time I listen. "...Led by the dynamic conductor Ryan McAdams, New York's Wordless Music Orchestra performed four works centered on the idea of loss and remembrance. The program featured the world premiere of Maxim Moston's orchestration of an arresting work by William Basinski, The Disintegration Loops. [...]

Jamie XX wonderful new mix for FACT magazine. Mix 282 is the blissful mix of dusk bound garage. The FACT magazine ends with a great closing paragraph. "... Jamie's FACT mix, a dusk-lit garage and house session featuring Elgato, Dark Sky and a bunch of stuff we've never heard before, though alternate versions of a couple of well-known Jamie xx remixes appear to be present. Naturally, there's no tracklist supplied...." [...]

• http://mp3.factmagazine.co.uk.s3.amazona... » FACT mix 282 - Jamie xx.mp3

The wonderful Billy Bragg tune Never By The Sun has been released as a free download via the Billy Bragg website. This is the official press release: "Billy Bragg's brand new song 'Never Buy The Sun' takes aim at the whole sorry story of News International's systemic failure to understand that there are limits to legitimate news gathering. Billy concludes that neither press, police nor politicians come out [...]

Hello all have launched a new site that attempts to cover all the stuff I buy second hand. Its called Secondhand Culture and I have done the first two post on Kate Bush's The Kick Inside and Alexander Pope's Selected Poetry . I have always loved buying stuff second hand and so many of my music discoveries are via second hand records. I can clearly remember buying a my vinyl copy of Closer by [...]

Billy Bragg proving once again that Folk Music isn't something that is just exists in dusty text books and crackling old vinyl records. This is Billy's response to the current issue with News Corp, The News of The World and The Sun. This as written and performed before the news about The Sun hacking Gordon Brown's son's medical records . If you wonder why Scousers Never By the Sun - Visit Here [...]

Belong – Common Era (Kranky) Back in 2006 the duo of Turk Dietrich and Michael Jones otherwise known as Belong released the beautiful drifting October Language . It was a dark heavy maze of gauzy guitar static and throbbing base tones. It was an ambient guitar suite of the highest order. Between October Language and Common Era they issued the Colorloss EP in 2008 since then things have been silent. The Colorloss [...]

• kranky - belong 'perfect life'

London via Spotify I have pulled together a collection of my favorite songs about London in a Spotify play list. Its covers London from many different view points and musical styles. I was born and raised in Plumstead, Southeast London and lived in London until I was 19 and went to University. Powis Square is the Market Square in Woolwich were I spent my teenage years buying vinyl records so its a good place to start. [...]

Billy Bragg performing the old Riff Raff song I Wanna Be a Cosmonaut live at Bridport Music on Record Store Day April 14th 2011 . Share | www.highwayfive.blogspot.com

It is that wonderful time of year again to get down to your local Indie record store and splash some cash on limited editions and lovely rare vinyl records. Here a list of the UK stores taking part. http://recordstoreday.tuneport als.com/Venues?country=United% 20Kingdom Rhino Records are releasing some nice New Order , Joy Division and The Smiths [...]

Great news from Hyperdub that Kode9 and Spaceape are teaming up again to release a new LP titled Black Sun on the 18th April in the UK. It got a great review in this months Wire and I can't wait for the release. Nice review here as well on Spoon Feed - Kode 9 and Space Ape Black Sun Review This is the full track listing. The cover art is beautiful, its one of the things [...]

Share | Brilliant version of the American Music Club track - The Thorn in My Side is Gone from the San Francisco LP . Mark Eiztel is is wonderful voice, the piano playing by Marc Capelle is great. Its good to see him have use of a grand piano and not the piano synth he played in Bristol last year. Getting Mark to give up [...]

Pleq has recorded an amazing mix for the great Headphone Commute. The mix is complied from a selection of his own tracks and remixes and is a beautifully beguiling way to spend 50 minutes. The tracks are fully of fragile piano notes, warm electronic fuzz and a lovely sense of space and time. You feel like you are inside the electronic dreams of Erik Satie. Do composers dream of electronic bleeps? This is the full track listing: [...]

Tom Yorke, Burial and Four Tet have teamed up for a one off 12" Vinyl Single the tracks are called "Ego" and "Mirror" and will be released on Four Tet's own record label Text . The tracks are embedded to a player on the Pitchfolk website. [...]

Video for Burial and Four Tet Track Moth/Wolf Club. This is what Stereogum said about the track "Kieran Hebden, aka Four Tet, is all about collaboration, so it's not a surprise that he teamed with shadowy English dubstep crossover Burial, aka William Bevan. The results, "Moth" and "Wolf Cub," arrive in a black sleeve and pressed onto a slab of 12″ vinyl with a black label. The lack [...]

The great Mark Eitzel is playing a number of shows at South by South West in 2011 as solo and American Music Club. The details can be found on his blog here - Mark Eitzel South by South West He is playing as part of the Merge Records [...]