Blog: Isaac Ashe's Sound Advice

○○○○● HERE are just a few reasons why you should support Hundred Reasons by picking up a copy of their latest LP. Hundred Reasons are as reliable as they come - and new album Quick The Word Sharp The Action is no exception, boasting a handful of sturdy tracks suck as Break The Glass and Boy . However the band can still confound expectations - for example the laid back Pernavas Iela followed by the ripping riffs [...]

○○●●● DOWNLOAD-only EP Mr Wobble's Nightmare , the latest release from schizotronic DJ Kid 606 , is hardly the stuff dreams are made of. Berlin-based Venezuelan-born American electronica artist Kid 606, real name Miguel Trost Depedro, attempts to blend as many elements of as many different styles of dance music as he can into each track. And as you can imagine, the results are a bit of a mess on the title track. Most in line with the techno scene, Mr Wobble's Nightmare is a bass-heavy, plodding collection of morbid dance tracks [...]

○○○○○ MANCHESTER outfit Spokes ' debut EP, People Like People Like You , is impossible not to like, people. The five-piece take their lead from post rockers such as Mogwai and Jeniferever , fashioning grandiose slow-burners that rarely clock in under the five minute mark. To these they add evocative rustic folk instrumentation as well as background ambience both sampled and incidental to create an album that sounds like an old friend, from the very first listen. And with the band currently beavering away on a full length introduction, isn't it time [...]

○○○●● IDM producer Tim Exile 's new album, Listening Tree , has a bark worse than its bite. Because although Tim Exile, real name Tim Shaw, clearly has all the necessary beats and bleeps at his disposal to bear a brilliant fruit, the album teeters on the edge of being fantastic without actually taking the plunge. Exile originally plied his trade as a drum and bass artist, and there's evidence of this at work at points throughout Listening Tree - it's no [...]

SHEPSHED popstar Bruce Woolley of the Radio Science Orchestra has launched a new solo website. The former Buggles' new site can be found here .

○○○○○ DERRY rockers Fighting With Wire released their debut album earlier this month to little fanfare - so allow me to blow their trumpets a little now. Because Man Vs. Monster is an incendiary alternative rock LP that deserves to fire up as many people as I can encourage to listen to it. Sounding like an angry young Foo Fighters or Biffy Clyro , the group bash their wash through fiery track after fiery track of top notch no-nonsense rock. It's not big - such as U2 [...]

○○○●● ONE of the most irritating things about music journalism is genres. When I was a hard rockin' teen growing up, the world was easily divided into pop, rock, dance and hip hop - with jazz, classical, opera, folk and other sad grown up musics hiding in the shadows. Now ridiculous genres like whizzgrind and twazzmodica spring into being every other NME. They're more trouble than their worth - I've had arguments, actual arguments, over what does and does not constitute math rock. I say this because oxymoronic Londoners The Rank Deluxe release their debut album [...]

○○●●● AS I pointed out in my recent review of Kelly Clarkson 's All I Ever Wanted , I simply do not know what we're going to do with all these American Idols. David Cook , winner of series seven of the show, releases yet another slick collection of inoffensive pop tracks, this time in an AOR style, on Monday. And I just can't summon up the strength to find any way to appreciate his self-titled album on any level. I am apathetic to the driving Nickelback -lite guitar [...]

○○○○● DESPITE only taking their first tentative steps into the big leagues with debut A Warning To The Curious - which was recorded before the band were lined up by a record company - Ashdowne clearly don't lack ambition. Recorded in a custom-built studio by the Mountsorrel and Leicester-based group, to say they like their songs big is like saying Shane MacGowan is partial to a drink. The tracks on A Warning To The Curious lace their epic driving soft [...]

○○●●● EACH and every track on Metro Station 's self-titled debut makes me feel old. Very old. The whippersnappers have concocted an Iglu & Hartly -style synth pop act that instead reworks the pop punk and emo outpourings of bands like Blink 182 and Panic! At The Disco . With puppy dog eyes and asymmetrical lip piercings, the group sing about first loves and teenage kicks over slick, simple electronica. It's a surefire hit, and both Shake It and Seventeen Forever have chart-topper [...]

○○○○● UP-AND-coming rock trio The Xcerts 's debut album should mark the band's passage into the charts. Because the band, although raw and rough around the edges, play some enjoyably raucous indie that comes across as a dishevelled collection of extracts of established acts like Idlewild and Snow Patrol . The Scot rockers don't play anything particularly ground-breaking on In The Cold Wind We Smile - but that's nothing to frown about. A trusted formula done well, The Xcerts are one well worth gleaning for your [...]

QUORN-born popstar Lynsey Shaw has lent her local vocal talents to a new dance track. The track Read 4 More , by Disco International, will be showcased on the Hed Kandi Spring Mix album, which will be released in April. The work heralds a new direction for Lynsey as a solo star, as well as her continuing work with her girl group Electric Dolls . For more information on Lynsey, or to hear the track, click here .

○○○○○ WHEN Frightened Rabbit 's breakthrough album The Midnight Organ Fight was released last year, I must admit it passed me by a bit. I did enjoy the album on the few spins I gave it, but it never took hold - so I was glad that this acoustic album, Liver! Lung! FR! , gave me the opportunity to revisit it. And in the live setting of The Captain's Rest in Glasgow, the Selkirk rockers are given room for their compositions to breath, and take on an epic quality. With the same Scottish [...]

NEW acts have been lined up for Download this year. The latest editions to the Castle Donington festival are Opeth , Meshuggah , Dir En Grey , Five Finger Death Punch , You Me At Six , Steadlur , Lawnmower Deth and former Guns 'n' Roses bassist Duff McKagan's new band Loaded .

CASTLE Donington band Late of The Pier are the talk of music festival South By South West this year, after getting into a punch-up onstage. After a disagreement between the band and the venue over when to finish their set, the sound was allegedly cut mid-song - leading to a fracas between venue staff and security and the band and entourage. However after the incident, the band went on to finish their set to cheers from the crowd. Singer Sam Eastgate told NME: "I saw red. The venue were fighting us, literally."

○○●●● HAILING from the spiritual home of pop, Sweden, you'd expect established tunesmiths Peter, Bjorn And John 's latest to be a chart-troubler. But Living Thing , the group's fifth studio album, is too busy creating in a world of '80s influence - in minutes I had picked out echoes of acts including Erasure , Paul Simon , Depeche Mode and Phil Collins . Now this fusion of old and new has so far received pretty good reviews across the board, but for me it's too clever for its own good. [...]

AHEAD of their label debut in May, Leeds two-piece Castrovalva have been kind enough to offer a taster of their self-titled release. Click here to grab a copy of Triceratops , and revel in their joyous noise.

○○●●● IT'S hush hush, but for those in the know Official Secrets Act have been one to keep under surveillance. Not that you'd know it from the shoddy turn-out when they played in Loughborough recently - although then again, it's only a secret worth keeping if people want to hear it. Because their debut album, Understanding Electricity , is a bit of a shock following the hype. A competent but uninspiring collection of indie rock tracks, the Leeds-based band should expect to remain under cover - or is that undiscovered - for a [...]

○○○○● CONFUZED 90s, a new series of EPs from Hell Yeah, sees '90s dance tracks revisited by contemporary artists. For their first offering, Italian fidget house duo Blatta And Inesha take the reins, reworking tracks by Ramirez. Now not knowingly having heard the originals - as I was either not paying attention and/or was incapable of paying attention had I perchance been in a club in the 1990s while they were playing - it's hard to compare. But what I can vouch for is the four twisted tracks, El Ritmo [...]

○○○●● WHERE The Rakes used to be drunken, raucous, randy, cheeky, laddy fun-boys, they now seem to be a little hungover - coming across now as grumpy alternative version of The Feeling . In fact discontentment has been something of a watchword of the Londoners of late - with them splitting up and "doing their own thing" in the interim since Ten New Messages, and then abandoning their hometown for Berlin to record their latest LP, Klang . But for all this restlessness, the [...]