Through the silent ambush of heavy snow Friday, three great shows were happening about town, and one that I missed while I was seeing Fanfarlo was Old Canes at the Hi-Dive. Signed to Saddle Creek Records, Old Canes are the project of Appleseed Cast frontman Chris Crisci. I've just stumbled upon their most recent album Feral Harmonic a day late, a dollar short, etc etc. The marvelously warm opening track on the album breaks exuberant and brightly colored - pounding and thumping with [...]
Contrast Podcast recently asked music bloggers like myself to submit our favorite 50 songs of the year for their annual "Festive 503 podcast. Our selections were then compiled into a shortlist and now we've been asked to recruit votes to narrow it down. For the curious, I've bolded the 10 songs I personally voted for. I really, really want "Nice Very Nice" by Kurt Vonnegut & Dave Soldier (from their album Ice-9 Ballads ) to make the final list. Not only because it's my favorite song of the year, from my favorite album of the year, [...]

La scorsa settimana abbiamo terminato il nostro viaggio attraverso gli album più importanti del decennio che si sta concludendo. Abbiamo quindi pensato di riassumere il tutto in questo post che non è altro che la lista completa, tappa per tappa, degli album che di volta in volta abbiamo approfondito, in modo tale da avere una sorta di indice delle varie puntate. Dopo il salto trovate anche la listona di tutti gli album che di anno in anno sono stati inseriti fra "gli album da salvare". [...]

Tori Amos's holiday album, Midwinter Graces , is in stores tomorrow, as is the Pixies 17-disc Minotaur box set. Among the discs that have already been sent my way, I can definitely recommend Caroline Herring's Golden Apples of the Sun , Hyperstory's self-titled album , Loch Lomond's Night Bats , and Robyn Hitchcock's live album, I Often Dream of Trains in New York (CD & DVD) . Reissues this week [...]

Top Album Releases: October 2009 Nick's Top Neon Indian: Psychic Chasms Black Heart Procession: Six Califone: All My Friends Are Funeral Singers Jay-Z: The Blueprint 3 The Flaming Lips: Embryonic Monsters Of Folk: Monsters [...]

CROOKERS - 3RD MICROMIX ANIMALS Tracklisting: 1 Hired Goons – Herbert 2 Don't Hide It – Alex Kid 3 The Whole Sh-Bang – Harvard Bass remix + Fukk Yeah – Dj Sega 4 Peanuts Club – Brodinski and Noob (BeatAuCue RMX) 5 Keep It Going Louder – Major Lazer (Diplo RMX) 6 Put Your Hands on Me – Crookers (BeatAu Cue RMX) 7 No Security – Crookers feat. Kelis (Rustie Rmx) 8 Heads Will Roll – Yeah Yeah Yeahs + Sha! Shti! – Gucci Vump (L-Vis RMX) 9 Predator – Tomb Crew 10 More [...]

Photo by Danny Bollinger. Click for nightmare-inducing high resolution. God damn this is my favorite time of year. Cold weather, warm clothes, the holidays, snow , and of course, baskey-ball. The 2009-10 nba season is upon us, my brothers. Tomorrow, Tuesday the 27th, we have Boston at Cleveland, Houston at Portland, Clippers at the Lakers, and the Wizards vs your Dallas Mavericks. Yeah, I know, football and blah blah blah. But see, I could give a damn if Dallas is a football town, I'll take Mavs tickets over Cowboys' any [...]

We continue our coverage of Yonder Mountain String Band's recently completed swing through the Northeast with a review by our two newest contributors who both hail from Boston. Please welcome writer Eli Badra and photographer S. Balaji Mani to our ever-expanding team. Colorado's Yonder Mountain String Band are now in the middle of a brief fall tour, which culminates in a two-night Halloween stint at Liberty Hall, in Kansas. While working their way through the Northeast, the quartet stopped by Boston's House of Blues, literally in the shadow [...]
This week may provide the greatest variety of music releases all year. From Sufjan Stevens' debut classical work, The BQE to Jay Farrar and Benjamin Gibbard's collaborative effort One Fast Move or I'm Gone: Music From Kerouac's Big Sur to Things About Comin' My Way - A Tribute to The Mississippi Sheiks , the week's release list is filled with variety. The week is deep in quality releases, from what I have already heard I can strongly recommend The Atlas [...]
This is an ever changing and (hopefully) expanding list of some of the songs I have mentioned before in this blog or simply stuff I have found somewhere on the web that I find interesting, but have no time to write about. All files have been found somewhere in cyberspace (and NONE of them have uploaded by me, so I cannot help you with any requests you might have - just keep returning and something new might pop up), so they will be available until the artists, record labels, fans, whatever decide to remove them. Thanks to a few readers, [...]

French duo Natural Snow Buildings , Mehdi Ameziane / TwinSisterMoon and Solange Gularte / Isengrind, are a band I have spoken highly of previously, be it in Under the Radar 2009 and 15 Brilliant Out-of-Print Albums , and also in a guest-post artist feature on SleepWalking Mag about . They've just put out Shadow Kingdom a triple-LP/double CD on Blackest Rainbow . Following that SleepWalking Mag piece I'd done, the band were kind enough to mail along a copy of Shadow Kingdom [...]

I just got home from seeing Miike Snow for the 3rd time. As my mind recovers from their fantastic live show I figure we should go over the facts ... • Miike Snow is a band, not a man. They are made up of American Andrew Wyatt and Swedish producers/multi-instrumentalis ts Christian Karlsson & Pontus Winnberg ( Bloodshy & Avant ). ♫ Maroon 5 – Little Of Your Time (Bloodshy & Avant remix) • Andrew Wyatt , at 18, formed the Funkraphiliacs with [...]

So a few weeks ago, I travelled to Paris courtesy of Eurostar and We Are Social where I went to the Rock en Seine festival. You can see the full report here . Now the same nice people are kindly offering a Nialler9 reader a free pair of Eurostar tickets to either Paris, Brussels or Lille. Your choice. It's all part of their Little Break Big Difference campaign. Once you get to your destination, you can do anything you like or travel a bit further afield. In the more, I've compiled [...]

The sun continues to shine down on Saturday . Some of us catch The Leisure Society twice, once on the Garden Stage today and then the following day, a secret performance in the site grounds, crammed onto a tiny mock lounge stage. The latter sees a very enjoyable cover of Gary Numan's Cars with strings replacing the jarring synth and a delicate rendition of Something by the Beatles but it's their own soothing ballads that have us enthralled with highlights of Ivor Novello nominated first single [...]
Swan Fungus reader / contributor Ben still has swine flu. Here's hoping him a speedy recovery so that I we can read all about how much Sufjan Stevens SUCKED at ATP this year. Two Boots Night Tripper pizza, you make every meal feel like an orgasm. I'm trying to cut back on my pizza/cheeseburger intake these days, but I don't mind eating unhealthily tonight as Kasi commented today that I looked "different" before realizing that I've lost a considerable amount of weight this month. Oops. It's hard to remember to eat food. Two Boots plus LOST [...]

John Coleman spent Labor Day Weekend at moe. down & filed this report... Warm days and cool nights illuminated by a harvest moon meant plenty of good vibes floating around moe. down 10 at Snow Ridge Ski Resort, in Turin, N.Y. The rustic locale is located just outside the southwestern boundary of the Adirondack Park, rising up among sleepy towns and farms. Similar to the Mountain Jam stage setup at Hunter Mountain in the Catskills, the main stage faces up a ski [...]

It's everyones worst nightmare come true...an evening of coke, Henny, and a trashy snow bunny from Woburn has gone wrong...and guess what buddy? Your facing PRISON TIME!!!! No need to fret, friend. Thanks to New Englands inmates writing in to DJ ON&ONs " Prison Letter Of The Week " segment, here are some golden rules to get you peacefully through your bid. Each inmate has submitted: [...]
This Week's News Cover Me now has a twitter account. Follow us to get the latest cover news and stay updated on posts! SPIN.com is posting a great series of behind-the-scenes Lollapalooza covers. The third in the series is up: Amazing Baby tackling the dbs . Fact: Oasis broke up a couple hours ago. Opinion: They'll be back together within 48 hours. Fact: While you wait, check out the two covers Snow Patrol did at V Fest . When word [...]

a flood of indie/electro pop just before spring.. has anything else felt so right? english freak balls fenech soler are the "new kids on the block", tip-toeing closely behind such luminaries as friendly fires and miike snow .. i only came across fenech soler a couple of days ago after they were highly recc'd by my housemate.. their strong, sometimes harsh synth sound layered over and sometimes enhanced by charismatic vox and slick disco drums was somehow reminiscent of the blog haus golden years.. definitely something to roll with on the road to [...]

Here's our recommendations for this week. You can also follow us on twitter (@ Ultra8201 ). Monday (8/24) : Bare Wires, The Urgencies, DJ Ben Blackout, DJ Angel von Ripper at The Grand ( map ) Tuesday (8/25) : Harlem, Bare Wires at The Parlor [ FREE ] Show @ 7 Wednesday (8/26) : Anavan, Dazzler, Harlovve, Parson [...]