Like every other blogger we get plenty of emails. Well, when we say plenty, we figured out we get one every 11 minutes, all day, every day. It's somewhat boring to go on about it, but our point is that there's a whole stack of music waiting in our inbox every time we fire up our Gmail. Naturally, we don't like to miss out on any exciting artists, so we do our best to wade through when we get time, although it's more like using a thimble to bail out The Titanic. Sometimes this means that we have to rush [...]
You could learn to play the piano, we could learn to play the piano, we could all be pianists if we really, really wanted to. If any of us spent a few months or years having drumming lessons then we may end up happy to take to the sticks in a band. However, not everyone can sing. Sure, you can have lessons, we can have lessons, but without any actual original talent to start with it's pretty hard to get anywhere, especially professionally. You either have it or you don't. Well, here's a new artist that's stepping out from the [...]
Ahh, good old computers. Aren't they just great? These days it's so much easier to get to stage one of your career as an ambitious musician by tip-tapping away at your desk. Do-it-yourself is a phrase that's been taken away from the out-of-town hardware stores and bestowed upon a new breed of bedroom producers. It's now possible to use a computer to lay down a multitude of ideas in a song. You can produce it right there on your laptop, even adjusting for any lack of real skill, and record it with some pretty smart equipment, at least to a [...]
The blog world is one of the noisiest environments you can imagine. With everyone shouting all at once, it's like trying to get noticed across the room in an Ibizan super club - no easy thing. One method for bands to get to the front of the queue is to get referred to us by a fellow music blogger. We don't just mean by them posting it upon their respective blogs, we mean real referrals, where they actually approach us and directly suggest we listen to a band they've uncovered. It's something we've experienced a few times and it's always [...]
Does the actual language that a song is sung in actually matter when assessing whether you like a piece of music or not? How would Bob Dylan seem if you didn't speak English and couldn't follow his beautifully twisted tales of the world? Would it miss a major part of what makes it so magic? What if Conor Oberst's stories were just noise to a non-English-speaking listener, or is that his melodies are still powerful enough? The issue of language occurred to us recently, when our attention was brought upon this Danish quartet who sing in their native [...]
Perhaps we should start by discussing a few time-honoured cliches, such as " you can't teach an old dog new tricks ", or " if at first you don't succeed ", or " a rose by any other name ", as this quartet from Denmark used to make up half of an older group, Le Fiasko . However, this new reformation has released a set of rather masterful tunes, making their previous incarnation seem something more akin to a prelude to the new, improved outfit. We don't have anything against their previous incarnation, but listen to this new set [...]
Usually when an artist describes themselves as " ambient shoegaze " it would act more like a repellent for this blog, causing us to quickly immerse ourselves in something ass-kickingly rocking, like Led Zeppelin's Good Times Bad Times , or Slayer's Raining Blood , or we'd rush off to swag around with a turned-up-to-eleven blast of Ante Up , or any other musical equivalent to receiving a bucket of water facially. It's not that we're particularly against that style or genre of music, but most [...]
When you're discovering new music is there one over-riding element that makes you fall in love with it? Is it the melody? Is it the style? Is it the beat? Is it the vocals? Does it have to make you cry? Does it have to make you want to dance? What do you look for? For us it's often a whole host of different elements to the music that allows us to connect to it - in truth we imagine it's perhaps the same for you - but time and time again there's one particular feature that gets our internal [...]
Only last week we were ranting on about a northern band, called Citi Petts , that in parts reminded us of The Gossip , with oversized guitar riffs and lots of punched-with-a-run-up beats. Today we are fishing in the same pond, as we've recently had contact from another northern band who's new single can have it's genetics traced back to that same American band, giving us a case of blog ditto inside of just a few days, (Ed - perhaps that should be Beth Ditto ). If you like your guitar music to drive like Ryan [...]
A recent brief debate cropped up in a comment thread on our recent post about the band IO. You can see that post here and all it's reader's musings, but the main complaint was the lack of a distinct chorus within the tracks. Now for our tuppence worth we suggested that music doesn't actually need a chorus, no more than every film needs a twist, but amongst certain genres or types of music it is perhaps expected, and particularly if you are discussing the brand of indie that IO create. Personally we didn't think the lack of a [...]
Just like Lawrence Tierney's character, Joe Cabot, in the final scene in Reservoir Dogs, we fear that there's a danger of regret as soon as we upload this post. Once that 'publish' button is clicked we're committed to our article and to be honest for the first time in nearly four years of posting, we're going ahead when we're not 100% sure about the band. The reason is that with today's recommendation there's a mixed feeling in Camp Recommender. On the one hand, this band have a striking brilliance that hooks you early on, but once you inspect [...]
We cannot for the life of us recall who it was that tipped us off in a past conversation about the band Money . It was some time last year. We were managing a gig involving the band Binary and discussing prospects for 2012, (perhaps it was with their manager?), so the tip was kindly passed to us and once we got a few spare minutes when back at home we set about searching the band out. We've written plenty about the issue of SEO and terribly unhelpful band names at length, ( particularly on this post [...]
As soon as this post is done and up online we're off to flagellate ourselves repeatedly in the hope of some atonement. We're supposed to be recommending emerging, new music, so if any of you lovely readers have come across this band before then we can only apologise and serve up our intention to repent for hours on end following this article. You see, this band have been floating around for some time, so there's a danger you know them. We don't like to recommend bands that are established in the public domain, it's kind of pointless. Not that we [...]
When you're hunting around the edges for very new music you come across a lot of utter crap. That's the price we pay for setting ourselves up as your filtering service. Please don't think that we come across bands this awesome every time we look, we don't, it takes an eye-wateringly long time to wade through the myriad of bullshit pretenders before we stumble upon diamonds cut this way. And this is truly one of those diamond finds. You're going to love them. Your friends are going to love them. NME is going to slap them all over their radar [...]
In a week where every other blog seems to have posted the latest leaked tracks by Lana Del Rey and/or Grimes , it seems like 2012 is already stepping up the pace of unoriginal blog posts. We enjoy both of those artists, particularly Grimes, who is due for a big 2012, albeit not as big as Lana Del Rey, but size isn't everything is it, and that's exactly what is at the heart of the frustration with this type of hit-hunting version of blogging - they want to be bigger. We famously adore our blog network and [...]
So here we go once again with another year, as we deliver to your patient ears the first full Recommender-ed artist of 2012. It's a fantastic way to kick off what we hope will be another year of superb discoveries, as this new duo have all the perfect ingredients for our readership. You come to these pages for quality cuts and today we serve up a dish as tasty as any. A Michelin starter for 2012 - what else would you expect? If all goes well we predict for this duo to be just about everywhere, as they tick so [...]
In tandem with the BBC Sound Of 2012 poll, a collection of music bloggers decided to get together to try and design our own list of exciting artists that we thought could break through over the next twelve months. The initial results of fifteen artists were published in a long list back at the start of December. Today we return to the results to produce the final five winners from that list, again in line with the BBC, as today they produce their own finalists. You can now see our successful top five [...]
As you can see from our 2010 review, ( found here ), we love an end of year wrap up, so we can reflect on what The Recommender's achieved over the last twelve months, hopefully giving you a little insight to what a year in a music blogger's life can be like. Each year throws up new opportunities for this blog, as it continues to establish itself in the world of music and this year was not short of new highlights. It's a labour of love producing this site's content, but you should also know that the rewards, both emotional [...]
You come to The Recommender to hunt out new music. Well, today's gigantic post has our Top 40 Tracks Of 2011 , so your hunting won't get any easier than this. Think you've heard them all? Think again. Perhaps, if nothing else, hit play on the tracks you've never heard before? We're confident that this list won't only surprise you, but will equally reward you too. To clarify, please note that the only criteria for a tune to earn an entry is to have either; A) been officially released this year as part of a single or [...]
Tony Marks hosts his New Music Show on Juice Radio , the largest independent station in our home city of Brighton, where he delivers contemporary releases on four shows each week. From January of this year he's been kind enough to invite us on to his show each month to natter about any new discoveries we've made. Every show's been an absolute blast, allowing us to deliver The Recommender in a completely different way to a new audience. You can find all of the shows that we've appeared on at this link . Below we [...]
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