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 [...]
This week's new features tracks from Dada Trash Collage, Freshkills, Lux, Oy Vey, Sourpatch, White Rabbits, and a single from the upcoming album of unreleased Woody Guthrie songs, New Multitudes . Jay Farrar, Will Johnson, Anders Parker & Yim Yames : "Old LA" from New Multitudes: A Tribute to Woody Guthrie out 2/28 on Rounder Another batch on unrecorded Woody Guthrie tracks get recorded by a great group of performers. [...]
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 [...]
In re-imagining Steely Dan 's 1977 classic album Aja , Toronto art rockers The Darcys breathe new life into songs I've heard perhaps 500 times. The Darcys render these songs not grooveless, but grounded in a mostly minimalist, modern electronic landscape. They typically maintain vocal melodies but update the music by removing the pristine jazz-influenced approach of the original work and replacing it with bleak and angular electronics, regimented guitar, and metronomic percussion. That's not to say the vocals sound similar to the original, though; voices are frail and subdued, standing in stark contrast [...]
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 [...]
Montage Populaire – 'Reject Reinstall' Experimental glam pop from UK. These fellas are new on the block, yet act like they own it - convincingly. This song is boisterous, melodic, and inventive with a jovial, harmonious chorus, noisy breaks that channel the art rock of Roxy Music , and playful synth sounds that are reminiscent of Olivia Tremor Control or of Montreal . 'Reject Reinstall' is the lead track from their debut EP Not All Bombs Explode. Can't wait for this one... [...]
This is a beautiful EP. Two Inch Punch have whipped me into a late night frenzy of ambient swag with their generous 6 track "Love You Up" EP. The beat-maker has poured shimmering synths over the back of a washed out R&B beat, with warped vocals providing a great deal of sensuality - sampled from the likes of Brandy and Dru Hill. TIP's sound is ice cold yet it radiates a severe sexual heat. Similar ball-park to The Weeknd, but perhaps with more unique production and sampling savvy. Particularly hot moments include the playful synth strokes jammed out over "Love [...]
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 [...]
Thomas Azier – Metropolitan Tribe [mp3] (from Hylas 001 EP , out now) Berlin's electro-pop wunderkind Thomas Azier offers up shimmering synthetic beats with blissfully harmonious vocals and youthful abandon. Lower Dens – Brains [mp3] (from Nootropics , out May 1 on Ribbon Music ) A [...]
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 [...]
From Pittsburgh, PA comes Radio for the Daydreamers – an experimental rock band offering an amalgamation of avant garde jazz, classical music, black metal, & electronic music and striving for soundscapes that convey suspense, horror, & thrills. Their current project is a conceptual triptych of musical compositions revolving around a Faustian character (i.e. one that sells his soul to the devil for power and knowledge). The first in the installment is 'Mother Superior and Her Fields of Migraine', which the band claims " tells the story of our character indulging in misery, self-realization, seclusion, developing phobias, [...]
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 [...]
Porcelain Raft – Put Me to Sleep [mp3] Porcelain Raft – Unless You Speak from Your Heart [mp3] (each from Porcelain Raft - Strange Weekend , out Jan 24 on Secretly Canadian Records ) An eagerly anticipated debut album of elegant electo-pop from Italian Mauro Remiddi. Bursting with snyth, drums, and [...]
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 [...]
A hibernation mix for your winter blues: --Click here to download the entire gapless mix of mp3s-- Radio for the Daydreamer – 01 Curl Up, Time to Die (from Mother Superior and Her Fields of Migraine ) The Black Heart Procession – 02 Blank Page (from Blood Bunny/Black Rabbit ) Matthew Dear – 03 Headcage (from Headcage EP ) Work Drugs – 04 Flying Zambo (from Aurora Lies [...]
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