Blog: Music Fans Mic

Bug Machine - Sympathy The synths are chunky enough to leave dents in the wall, the vocals smooth enough to seep through the subsequent cracks. Bug Machine combines harsh with resonant; gentle with aggressive, on his ' Disconnect' E.P . " We have selfish needs ", the anonymous vocalist claims atop a towering wall of sky-reaching synths - indeed, my desire is for this guy to be played on the radio as I drive in blistering temperates through the heart of the Australian outback, but we can't have it all. This guy [...]

TOPS - Turn Your Love Around Sometimes I worry about just how many superb full-lengths pass the average music fan/blogger/critic/whatever by. I hadn't heard of TOPS until today (despite the Pitchfork , No Fear of Pop recommendations) but it turns out in just under two weeks, they'll be bringing out an entire record's worth of Twin Sister -esque soft rock, on February 28th. ' Tender Opposites' would appeal to virtually every Twin Sister fan going, just like 95% of Bon Iver fans would fall head [...]

Tezeta - A Night Capturing the racing heartbeat of every single club at 4am on a Saturday night, ' A Night ' is the euphoric, breathtaking work of Canadian Joe Roth (aka. Tezeta ). Like a concentrated mixture of all of M83's best moments, it steers a gorgeous vocal sample into unchartered territory, blending tropical guitar hooks with a pulse-like, throbbing beat. Totally stunning. [via Cruel Rhythm ]

Chen and the Hoax - Flagg Staff A few years back when I was in my early teens, I was planning on saving up good money for a quality microphone. This was to go towards the recording of my world-class Franz Ferdinand cover album (which unfortunately never surfaced). Had I known that the USB mic that my Mum brought back one day from the Pound shop (or to our American readers, the 1 dollar (?) store) would have sufficed, I'd have taken up my chillwave project there and then. Chen and the Hoax [...]

Grand Resort - Microscopic A typical trait of music bloggers is to envy every other artist they end up writing about. Not only is Andrés Pichardo not going to have to endure a hazardous walk into campus this morning, over a thin sheet of ice that's laced the pavements, he's also a 19 year old Massachusetts resident who has the fine art of producing escapist pop music down to a T. Forget the (quite magnificent) Madonna Superbowl routine, sometimes you just wanna see a scruffy kid [...]

O.1 - The Glass Trees Last night I chatted to Crack In The Road founder Josh about 0.1 and why on Earth he remained under the radar. We both came across him yesterday; he has twenty or so tracks to his name (it was virtually impossible to choose one specific song to feature, they're all so good); he seems to be extremely prolific and yet, by the looks of it, the Australian is yet to be signed up. My aim this morning was to stop the chat and start writing [...]

Caves - Didn't I Luke Cage has picked up a guitar for his new EP release with Absent Fever (Galapagos, Birkwin Jersey), and good lord it's one punchy guitar. Previously he dazzled with high-pitched vocal samples, luscious layers of synthetics - the only problem with the ' Adolescent Dystopia' EP was that it sounded a whole lot like other artists around right now (naming no names, but they're all on the Tri Angle roster ). ' [...]

This Monday I took to DIY Radio to play 30 of my favourite mp3 finds from the past two weeks. These are often the tracks I don't have time to share with you all on the blog - either that, or they're a little too big to count as 'new music' when it comes to MFM's strict, ridiculous standards. Here's the tracklist: Summerays - Toyohashi Sleigh Bells - Comeback Kid Royal Baths - Faster, Harder [...]

T & The Wonder - Vespa Most mornings I wake up and plug you some drone music or some weird, instrumental, abrasive noise pop, or something along those lines. But this, friends: This could be something of a hit single. "If I had a Vespa, I would drive up to your house and I could kiss you on the cheek and then hang out for the weekend, but I don't." ' Vespa ' reminds me of the band Stars ; innately [...]

PURPLE : Loaded Guns Ever since this Portugese producer first emerged with the melanoid imagery, the big, bold caps lock logo planted across pictures of gargoyles…It all just left me desperate to see what a live show would like. Whether PURPLE is just one guy on a computer or three art school dicks with a good ear, I hope that somewhere out there they're considering playing live, shooting lasers in people's eyes and leaving audiences floored. A song like ' Loaded Guns ', played in a dark [...]

Verttigo : Autumn Dreams I don't want the vocalists of Verttigo to take this as a sour criticism, but a huge part of me wants to see Blonde Redhead's Kazu Makino appearing out of nowhere to sing on these songs. Three rough demos from the Canadian, shoegaze-enhanced troupe have enough promise to suggest that maybe, one day, we'll see Makino collaborating with the group. Heady dreams pushed aside though, for the time being we've been gifted with a hugely promising selection of introductory efforts, our pick of the bunch [...]

DENA : Games Part of me just wants to point you in the direction of the new M.I.A. song , command you to pull the blinds down and dance until your feet come loose. But this is a new music blog (supposedly) plugging new artists, and DENA can count themselves as relatively new, having emerged with ' Boyfriend ' a few months back. ' Games ' is like a more particular, well-refined version of its partner in tow, and that makes it just as danceable, just [...]

Great Bays - Numb Bobby Champs - All Night Solar Bears - Alpha People Dark Mother - Glass Cast Clark - Com Touch Amateur Best - Be Happy Sinkane - Jeeper Creeper Decks - Ghost Girl Swiss Alps - Riptide Lore Flights - Taller —- Huddle up and keep warm, or simply [...]

PARISWHEEL : DRAGON ' DRAGON ' spends its first 2 and a half minutes experimenting; acquainting itself with all the tools available, so to speak. With thirty seconds left to go, it suddenly unleashes what the listener's been eagerly awaiting: A flummoxing, gigantic chorus. Pre-explosion, we're given sonical snippets of what's to come; tribal drum hits; synths dripping with sweat; bold declarations of " I am fire breathing " from PARISWHEEL's vocalist. But then it clicks. Everything falls into place like a layered brick formation - perfectly [...]

Flights : Where the Willow Tree Died A couple of days back, yvynyl blog posted about the unlikely discovery of two Nashville-based friends who had made a record in 2011. 'Anywhere But Where I Am', the first work of Flights (Eric Hillman, Brian Holl) is without doubt an as yet unsourced gem. It has the same isolated, intimate feel as Bon Iver's ' For Emma… ' (true to the influence, this album was also recorded in an abandoned area of Wisconsin) and a wealth of instrumentation that [...]

Analog d r i f t : Manuel Antonio It's possible for me to be enamoured enough with a single second (or in this case, sample) of a song, so much so that I have to post it. ' Manuel Antonio ', one of many works by Oklahoma producer Brad Holden , draws you in with a sweep (and it is, a literal sweep) of shimmering guitars. He repeats this sample every 5 seconds or so (if you scroll back through the rest of his souncloud page, you'll [...]

Joseph Stallion : Dimespiece Every track on Joseph Stallion's ' White Lodge' EP could have ended up as some sprawling, unfocused mess with beats clipped all over the place; half-baked ideas packed together and then shortly cut off. There's enough ambition and enough variety for that to have been the case. Except, largely thanks to the vocals of Erin Ross - they sound part classically-trained, partly employed to support a beat like in the music of Grimes or Telepathe - Max Petrek's [...]

( Premiere ) BE∆CH HE∆RT : Feels Like The Sun I'm wrapping up a week spent being besotted with Isaac Mingo's music by posting a brand new track of his. Earlier on, I'd been basking in the twisted, haunting sound of 'Sky Shatters' , but now we're all subjected to a warmer glow, one that rejoices in simplicities rather than mystery. Mingo's voice is clearer, the beat is more conventional and the elevated synths go hand in hand with what most passers by might tag as a "chillwave" effort. [...]

Dark Mother : Glass Cast The first time I saw Crystal Castles play live, they were supporting C.S.S. and they were mercilessly booed by a crowd of punters who just wanted to see Lovefoxxx in spandex. 6 months later, I was at underage festival, seeing Alice Glass adored by a group of young'uns at Underage Festival, who couldn't quite believe what had just hit them. It was the first sight of what Crystal Castles performances have come to be; huge, ritual-like experiences in which people faint, climb over barriers, out-doing to be part [...]

BEACHPARTY : Runaway I'm officially in a yearly, sorry state where I spend all of winter in utter misery, hoping that tomorrow will magically produce a hot, sunny day, knowing full well that my allergies and pale skin won't make that much of a fun occasion either. BEACHPARTY is the THIRD band with the word 'Beach' in their name to be blogged by MFM this week. That says a lot about our urges to escape from cold, stagnating England. But it also speaks volumes about the quality of [...]