The final night of the world's largest winter festival, Celtic Connections , and the 15th birthday celebration of Glasgow based indie label Chemikal Underground (home, at various times, to Mogwai, Arab Strap, The Delgados and The Phantom Band) gave the O2 ABC had dual reasons to smile through the Sunday night blues. With a mammoth bill of seven eclectic acts blazing through half a dozen tracks each, interspersed with label-affiliated videos, Chemikal Underground fell somewhere between a live version of an album sampler and a full on mini festival. Surprisingly, the ABC didn't seem that [...]
The Unwinding Hours debut album is for me and I'm sure many others one of the most hotly-anticipated albums of 2010. Formed from the ashes of Scottish alternative/post-rock rock band, Aerogramme. So far only two songs have appeared on bands MySpace , a demo of a song called 'Solstice', and ' Knut ', which you can download below. Both...
The Unwinding Hours debut album is for me and I'm sure many others one of the most hotly-anticipated albums of 2010. Formed from the ashes of Scottish alternative/post-rock rock band, Aerogramme. So far only two songs have appeared on bands MySpace , a demo of a song called 'Solstice', and ' Knut ', which you can download below. Both of which sound pretty amazing and distinctively like their previous outfit (no bad thing in my eyes). Would you care to introduce yourself? Hello. The [...]

The beautiful music of The Unwinding Hours will almost certainly get those who know their history feeling a bit nostalgic for Aereogramme. It will be intriguing to see what kind of profile Chemikal Underground's latest signing will attract outside of Scotland since Aerogramme, who released the last of their four albums in early 2007, enjoyed a cult following during a nine-year career that existed almost entirely outside the digital age as we know it. Their glory days in the late 90s/early 00s remind me of a time when, if I fell in love with [...]

Silver Columns I am not sure if it is still hush as to who Silver Columns actually, in case it is let's just say that they're two well known faces from Fence Collective . More importantly what you need to know is that they sound amazing, imagine Jimmy Somerville fronting Hot Chip and you're half way there. Their debut single, 'Brow Beaten' is free to download over at the NME , while you can grab a copy of their remix of Peter, Bjorn & John's 'It Don't Move Me' from their [...]
Super 45 forma parte del Music Alliance Pact (MAP), una iniciativa de The Pop Cop que reune canciones destacadas de músicos locales de 34 países, una vez al mes. A continuación podrán disfrutar de todos los temas y un link para descargar todo el compilado CHILE: Super 45 Astro - Raifilter Junto a los electro-poppers Moustache!, Astro (Andrés Nusser y Octavio Cavieres) es una [...]
ARGENTINA: Zonaindie Entre Ríos - Frontera Finally we get the chance to showcase this great indie-pop band from Buenos Aires on MAP. Entre Ríos is a musical project led by Sebastian Carreras (vocals, keyboards, guitar) that has been around since 1998. Their first albums were recorded with Isol as the main singer, but since her departure in 2005 they've featured different guest vocalists live and in the studio. Frontera is a MAP-exclusive [...]

The Music Alliance Pact is a collective of 34 of the world's top music blogs and webzines from 34 countries spanning six continents. Every month, each of these 34 sites picks one hot local song that gets posted on all these great blogs and zines. This month we picked Kolkata experimental rock act PINKNOISE 's 'Dream Dream' as the Indian representative on this massive international indie mixtape. The song comes from the band's soon-to-be-released live DVD. You can download 'Dream Dream' along with 33 other tracks from regions as diverse as Denmark, Brazil and Portugal [...]

Penúltima edición del MAP de este año, esta vez con la participación de una banda que ya venía haciendo ruido desde hace tiempo. Nuestra historia rockera es larga y grande, es algo que quizá estábamos olvidando, pero aquí están Los Protones dándonos un boleto de ida y vuelta a nuestros inicios con un rock instrumental que se acopla perfectamente con más de una circunstancia que vivimos a diario, son garage, surf, o como quieras llamarlos con la esencia sesentera en sus venas. Próximos conciertos *20 nov 2009 22:00 Concierto pro fondos 2do [...]

Once more, here is November's edition of the Music Alliance Pact . For those of you who don't know about MAP, it's a collection of music blogs from around the world who band together once a month to shed light on up-and-comers from their home countries. It's sort of like the WTO without the human rights violations. No new MAP countries were added for this edition, so we're sitting solid at 34 countries. If you'd like to be considered, drop by the comments section with a link to your site and I'll [...]

We're so excited about this month's Music Alliance Pact we could explode since it gives us the exclusive privilege of inviting the world to download an incredible song by Scotland's best new band of 2010 and makes us want to use exclamation marks in a frenzied fashion!!! As ever, each country's mp3 selection and the words that go with them come courtesy of the individual blogs, who simultaneously post the entire collection you see below on their own sites. Here for your pleasure then is the world's greatest monthly mixtape... SCOTLAND: [...]

It's the 15th of November, Music Alliance pact day! Music Alliance Pact (MAP) is a collaboration between 34 blogs from all over the world, and every month, each of us present a band from our own country. All presentations are put together in this huge blogpost, and presented on the same day in all the MAP blogs. Massive promotion for the bands! This month is kind of special for the us at Eardrums, since it's 1YEAR since we first started representing Norway in the Music Alliance Pact . Yay for us! I've [...]
over the 12 months of being part of MAP , we've brought you the best of singapore music, from the established veterans ( concave scream , force vomit , astreal ) to the current flag bearers ( i am david sparkle , the fire fight ), spanning across genre from electronica ( MUON ), folk and acoustic ( jon chan , inch chua ), indiepop ( leeson ), post-hardcore ( a vacant affair ), and some good ol' rock ( nuance ), faithfully curated by our local music ambassador brian koh . this month, [...]
ARGENTINA: Zonaindie Entre Ríos - Frontera Finally we get the chance to showcase this great indie-pop band from Buenos Aires on MAP. Entre Ríos is a musical project led by Sebastian Carreras (vocals, keyboards, guitar) that has been around since 1998. Their first albums were recorded with Isol as the main singer, but since her departure in 2005 they've featured different guest vocalists live and in the studio. Frontera is a MAP-exclusive [...]

E 15 noiembrie, ceea ce înseamnă o nouă ediţie a megacompilaţiei MAP [download] . Silent Strike reprezintă luna asta România, iar dacă numele nu vă zice nimic, el e omul care a făcut muzica pentru reclamele promo la Sibiu, capitală culturală, în 2007. Silent Strike - 27 Silent Strike (Ioan Titu) is a 27-year-old electronic music composer and sound designer from Bacau. He is influenced by Aphex Twin, Future [...]

34 songs, 34 music blogs, 34 countries JAPAN: JPOP Lover Sebastian X - Tour Star People Sebastian X are an impressive Tokyo-based outfit with indie-pop and punkish leanings. Their brilliant debut album Wonderful World was finally released last week. The band, who don't use guitars, have catchy melodies driven by the cute pop vocal of Manatsu Nagahara. [...]
Bulan ini kami mengirim Santamonica sebagai perwakilan dari Indonesia ke forum Music Alliance Pact, semoga dengan ini musik berkualitas dari Indonesia dapat lebih didengar lagi. :) dan seperti biasa, apakah sudah siap keliling dunia melalui lagu-lagu terbaik bulan ini? Scroll sampai bawah untuk mendapatkan link download keseluruhan materi. ARGENTINA: Zonaindie Entre Ríos - Frontera Finally we get the chance to showcase this great indie-pop [...]

Next years will see the rather wonderful Chemikal Underground record label hitting the ripe old age of 15, and to celebrate they will be hosting their own night as part of Celtic Connections. Taking place on Sunday the 31st of January, the line up boasts an array of talent from their roster, including the debut live performance of The Unwinding Hours, the band formed by ex-members of Aerogramme . The line up in full looks like something like this The Unwinding Hours Lord [...]

The Twilight Sad's sophomore album, Forget The Night Ahead, has dropped before it's September 22nd release date. Hear it here on Fatcat Records They are opening for Frightened Rabbit at the Independent in San Francisco on 9/18/09. Recommended if you like: Joy Division, Editors, Glasvegas, British Sea Power, Amusement Parks On Fire, Deerhunter Twilight Sad - "Reflection Of The Television" Twilight Sad - "I Became A Prostitute" "The Twilight Sad announce the details [...]