Blog: Loughborough Echo - Sound Advice

LAURA Marling is a darling. Everyone loves her - she's the acceptable face of the Mumford & Sons alt-folk juggernaut, she's been nominated for the Mercury Prize twice, won a Brit for Best Female Solo Artist, , won Best Solo Artist at the NME Awards, singer songwriter Beans On Toast even wrote a song about how much he loved her. Luckily, it gives me great pleasure to say the latest LP from Ms Marling, Once I Was An Eagle, is high up there with her best material. And it gives me great pleasure to listen to, too [...]

FOLLOWING last week's reworking of The Velvet Underground And Nico's cover art by Andy Warhol, our Felt Hits continue with another classic drawn by a six-year-old. I hope it hasn't left you in the dark trying to guess - if you're stuck, give it some time, it's an all time classic. Please post your answers in the comments below this post. And if the iconic answer still eclipses you, perhaps you've got brain damage - you'll have to wait until next Friday to breathe a sigh of relief and find out the answer.

AS ELECTRONIC producer DAVIDS has been kind enough to offer up a free download for Sound Advice, we'll refrain from calling you Davids, David's, Dave, Davy, Davo, Dafydd or anything. We love you as much as you love CAPS LOCK, DAVIDS! DAVIDS said: "When I moved back home with my parents I started making electronic music. "They didn't seem to mind. "The '0613EP' doesn't come out until June 4th. "You're getting to listen before my family does." So grab a copy of Right On , a track from DAVIDS' forthcoming 0613EP by [...]

• Right On » DAVIDS - 0613EP - 04 Right On.mp3

SISTERS CocoRosie are harder to pin down than a greased hog on new LP Tales Of A Grass Widow. The globetrotting American siblings have a real European influence to their work - not least in their vocal stylings which sound like a mutant cross between Sinead O'Connor and Bjork, both distinctive and compelling. And their music, well, it's like a bastard cross between freak folk and brooding urban - like the soundtrack to a robot lost in a forest, or a wandering goblin in a metropolis. You get the idea, it's odd. But still it's oddly [...]

THE awesome Craig Ward has found the time in his busy schedule to create us a Soundcast Spotify playlist, and boy are we glad he did. The former dEUS and The Love Substitutes guitarist has picked out some gems in the selection, which you can hear below. A spokesman for his label, Jezus Factory , said: "Craig Ward moved from Scotland to Antwerp after an invitation from Stef Kamil Carlens (dEUS, Zita Swoon) to holiday there. "It was a long holiday. "Craig joined Kiss My Jazz and found himself in the hub of a [...]

ALTHOUGH only released in 2006 but recorded almost a decade before, Darc Mind's long-awaited, almost forgotten album was still a breath of fresh air. Originally recorded between 1995 and 1997 for Loud Records, the New York label went bust and Symptomatic Of A Greater Ill never saw the light of day recently, when Anticon unearthed it and put it out to a muted response. But the Darc Mind duo of rapper Kevroc and producer X-Ray are two treasures that had to be found. Kevroc's rap style is a laid back one, but with metronome-sharp timing, instrumental old-school [...]

FOLLOWING last week's iconic album cover version - which was Nevermind by Nirvana, if you didn't guess it - my young helper is enjoying 15 minutes of fame. So what better album cover for her to copy than the one pictured above above for this week's Felt Hits. If you can recognise the album artwork redrawn by a small child, then post a comment below! The answer, and another album artwork, will be posted next Friday.

THE energy of Jupiter & Okwess International is out of this world. On latest LP Hotel Univers the group kicks in with Bapesi, a funky, sped-up track which showcases a disco-meets-Afro-rock sound, and doesn't let up. As a result the former Damon Albarn-collaborating Congolese's fast-paced and jangly sound can be a bit cheesy at times, as a result, undermining any seriousness to subject matter. But it doesn't matter really, because you can almost hear the smiles on the faces of the people performing the tracks coming through your stereo - of you check into Hotel Univers, you'll [...]

RAFFERTIE'S latest EP sees the electronic artist building up his sound. The Build Me Up effort allows the London artist, real name Benjamin Stefanski, to add his own vocals into the sound which has earnt him an up-and-coming tag, following in the wake of peers like Jamie Liddell, James Blake, Jamie Woon, and probably more similar sounding knob-twiddling men called James. His sound is a dreamy one, and the extra soft vocal edge does add another dimension. But his lazy early-hours electronica still fails to build the listener up with anything amazingly engaging, although you're unlikely to [...]

BELGIAN band Tape Cuts Tape really are a cut above. The group's second album Black Mold, in particular the title track Black Mold, shows a group which is prepared to give a groove time to grow. The group have a basis in jazz improvisation and in rock - particularly with links to Deus. But due to their exploratory bent the trio's sound, although predominately a live instrument coupled with vocals approach, has more in common with the likes of electronic and trip hop acts like F Buttons or Portishead - opener Black Mold itself takes over 10 [...]

TAKING their name from George "Dubya" Bush's name for the countries he managed to rope into a war with Iraq, jazz drummer Bobby Previte's rotating supergroup The Coalition Of The Willing's eponymous 2006 album is a liberating listen. Forging jazz with classic rock sensibilities, forceful militaristic drumming and a funky edge, this post-jazz masterpiece is a revolution. Featuring talent such as saxophonist Skerik of Syncopated Taint Septet fame and mind-bogglingly talented jazz guitarist Charlie Hunter, the tracks pay homage to jazz greats such as Miles Davis but sound more at home in the rock bracket. So I [...]

ALLOW me to introduce a new feature on Sound Advice - child labour. That is, our new feature Felt Hits - say hello to a selection of famous album covers, redrawn by a six-year-old. I thought these 'cover versions' would be a good way of encouraging my daughter's arty streak, as well as teaching her about music. I'll post one each Friday, and let you know what last week's artwork was - so you've got seven days to try and guess what the first picture shown above is by posting in the comments of this post.

APRIL March And Aquaserge's self-titled album is as French as French could be - only it's not. A Gallic bread and butter pop album, you would assume this was music created in a back room off the Champs Elysee, by musicians sipping red wine and smoking unfiltered cigarettes, probably in black and white. But it's not - this is the work of artists whose day jobs include psyche rockers Tame Impala and Melody's Echo Chamber, Tortoise and 'April March' herself Elinor Blake. And with their CVs, you'd expect a modern, interesting, psyche twist on the sound they're [...]

AUSTIN band Black Books, who release their eponymous debut on Monday, are celebrating with a cover of The Cardigans' classic Lovefool . The band, which also embarks on a first UK tour this month taking in London, Manchester, Bristol and Nottingham, said: "If Romeo + Juliet hadn't come out when we were angst-ridden middle schoolers it may not have meant so much to us... but it did, and we ate it up. "There's no denying that ridiculous soundtrack. "Since we started playing music together when this was all over MTV, we decided to cover The Cardigans' [...]

• Lovefool » Black Books - Lovefool.mp3

"THE body was very warlike. But the eyes? They were telling a different story, hardly warlike. "Eyes, like the eyes of an old Russian lady, who had seen too much. An old Russian lady, with her arm caught in a loom, and big sailors would walk past and go "hello!" and she'd go "no, not hello. My arm - it's in a loom." "And they'd go, "Yes, hello!", and she'd go, "No, not hello. It's gone maroon. My arm, it is in a loom." "And they'd go "Yes, hello!", and she'd go "No, not hello" and in [...]

SKINLESS, the new EP from electronic artist Deco Child, is so haunting it cannot fail to raise goosebumps. The closest touchstones to the work of Deco Child, real name Alex Lloyd, are labelmates like Jono McCleery or Fink, but, and this is no offence to the aforementioned, to compare them is not to do Deco Child justice here. His transcendant ethereal vocals disarm the listener. And this vocal is sparingly used atop the most affecting, spectral piano-led music, which is carefully augmented with sweeping, grand, minimal electronica, which at times sits back, and other times overpowers. [...]

HOORAY! Hooray! It's a public holiday! Today in the UK it's the snazzily titled Early May Bank Holiday, and it looks like the sun has got his hat on too. And while I was rooting around looking for my emergency lagers, a clean pair of shorts, and the matches to light the barbecue, I also unearthed a Bank Holiday playlist I made a few years back, so I thought I'd share. Happy holidays, everyone!

Q) HOW do you make a duck into a soul singer? A) Put it in the oven until it's Bill Withers! Too often is this joke greeted with the retort: "Eh? Who? I don't get it." It's time for the Withers revival, people, so let me recommend Still Bill as the place for novices to start. The word still in the title of the legend's 1972 studio outing is incredibly apt. For throughout Bill is still, serene, almost effortless, as he lays down an array of nearly always funky, at times touching, and always brilliant [...]

IF THERE'S such a thing as a fine line between genius and insanity, then on Chromoscope, Buffoon straddles it. Not that Buffoon, the project led by Belgian musician Peter Vleugels, would stand still long enough to straddle anything. Because the LP is a stream of consciousness effort, a melange of musical ideas, all condensed into two long 'sides' rather than a formalised collection of songs. You can almost hear Vleugels running between instruments in the studio, picking up and dropping tunes, genres, emotions without reason, switching from psyche to fuzzy rock to electronica to experimental noise and [...]

"THIS, this is our new song, "Just like the last one. "A total waste of time." My Iron Lung by Radiohead.