The Weekly Froth #20

Ali Love

Just a little bit later than usual, here’s our weekly look into the blogopshere where we talk about six tracks we found out about in the previous Wednesday-to-Wednesday seven-day period.

Ali Love – Love Harder (Prins Thomas remix)

Spaceness by Prins Thomas of course! Who else? None other than the Lindstrom accomplice turns this rather poppy track into a space disco eight minute lovefest. Hips a flailing on that sweet bass, which keeps on coming and coming. Who needs vocals, right? Well they do come in, first kind of high and on the background, but at the half mark (as in, almost precisely the half mark I reckon) they get a more prominent place. This is after you’ve been seduced for a good four minutes by Prins Thomas and his space disco qualities, and after that you’re so into the song that the vocals offer just a bit of variation in this nine minutes behemoth. Prins Thomas makes it pretty easy to start singing along a bit as well. So if you find yourself singing and dancing like a loon, Prins Thomas is to blame, as this is one seductive remix. … Continue Reading

The best of January

Beach House - Teen Dream

For the intrigued/lazy amongst you we’ve decided to condense a month’s worth of blabber into an easy to digest Spotify playlist. Included are tracks from reviewed albums by Laura Viers, Beach House and Delphic as well as some January singles (OK and some late December ones) from These New Puritans, Late of The Pier, Plan B, I Was A King and The Strange Boys. … Continue Reading

We’re looking for bands and short dramatic pieces

Muso's Guide

We are looking for short dramatic pieces, to be performed as part of a one-day event at The Camden Head we’re hosting on Sunday 4th April. In association with Broken Glass Theatre Company, the day will showcase innovative approaches to theatrical and musical performance.

If you’re  a band, please post links to your MySpace page as a comment to this piece – we’ll listen to all of them.The Muso’s Guide half of the event is looking for new bands and artists to be brought to our attention.

We are open to submissions of complete pieces from theatre companies and individual performers working with fresh approaches to live theatre, with a maximum running time of 25 minutes. Please email a short CV of previous work and proposals of no more than 300 words to alex@brokenglassplay.co.uk or vicky@brokenglassplay.co.uk by Monday 1st March.

2006: Gnarls Barkley, Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen

Gnarls Barkley - Crazy

While it was only a few short years ago, 2006 was a real game changer in terms of this decade. The previous year saw the implementation of digital sales into the singles chart and by summer this year Gnarls Barkley’s ‘Crazy’ became the first UK number one not to sell a single physical copy. It was the also the year that YouTube went supernova and allowed many of us to check out classic clips of bands performing on Top of The Pops while we mourned the final weekly episodes. While the great rush to add people to your fledging MySpace account may have been slightly earlier, there are two acts that will forever be associated with it; Lily Allen and The Arctic Monkeys. … Continue Reading

2005: the year of Maxïmo Park

Maximo Park - A Certain Trigger

2005 was the year my favourite bands became more than a passing hobby, the year I slaved away at a double life reading my books in the daytime and drinking 70p spirit and mixers at dusk, the year I’d learn about new things through the anachronistic MySpace-trail and the year I became obsessed with Maxïmo Park. … Continue Reading

End Of The Decade: James from Rolo Tomassi on At The Drive-In’s Relationship of Command

Rolo Tomassi

Having been born towards the end of the 1980s, the last 10 years has served as my musical upbringing. As far as I can remember, I started buying CDs and records regularly at the turn of the century and have been an avid collector of music since. While it may be an obvious and a record that will undoubtedly make a lot of peoples lists, my choice for album of the decade would have to be At The Drive-In’s Relationship of Command.

I missed out on this band when they were current, preferring at the time to listen to stuff like Blink 182. I was initially turned onto the band by comparisons that Hundred Reasons were given. The latter were the first band I saw play live (supporting Muse at Doncaster Dome in ‘01 I think) and I’d say they were the first band I really got my teeth into. I’d read a lot of reviews were they were compared to this band At The Drive-In. It was a name that cropped up a fair amount so I did the decent thing of picking up the most recent album I could find by them. Needless to say, in hindsight, the comparisons ended with afros. … Continue Reading

eyeseesound – a fantabulous new website for the new Generation X

eyeseesound

Here at the majestic Musos Towers, we love it when people just go out and DO stuff. DIY equals FAB in our book. Therefore, we think you should visit www.eyeseesound.tv.

In the words of the authors “the website is a celebration of and promotion of independent music, film and art. Remember when you were younger and the thrill you’d get from making mix tapes for friends or telling them about something culturally wonderful you’d discovered? Well, fundamentally that’s what we’re doing on a larger, and slightly more finessed scale.”

It’s all the work of just two passionate beings too. Yowser. They’ve just released episode two of their magazine-style TV show thing as well. And it’s good. You should go watch it. No, really, you should.

So in the end, www.eyeseesound.tv is all about finding and loving great music, film and art and putting it into a nice show. This sounds ace to us.

In fact, it sounds skill – lush even. Maybe even a little bit bonzer. (Somebody switch him off now please – Ed).

Thoughts on the Mercury Prize nominees and beyond

Society

“I am outraged! I can’t believe the panel didn’t choose the 12 albums I would’ve chosen if I was their Che.”

This is a stupid stance to take, especially if you’re the Reviews/Features Editor of a music website so staunchly against giving records ratings, and as such I definitely won’t be taking it. The decision to review albums sans rating was a decision that required almost no second thought – as intrinsically incongruous as it already is to transform music into words, it’s beyond the realms of creativity to reduce an art form into a number. Arguably, it’s equally stupid to get so frothed up about the Mercury Prize nominations as I’ve done, but the difference lies in the excitement it invokes – the talk, the chat, the debate, the passion.

My reasoning against ‘out-of-10s’ lies somewhere between the adopted role of Narcissist and Self-Depreciator, both as defender/rep. for my own reviews and some sort of mother-figure for the gaggle of writers I’ve accumulated along the way in my year at Muso’s Guide. Back to me again, I don’t want whoever may end up reading one of my reviews to skip to the end in search for a number. They may well scan for words I’ve bolded, but I don’t want to make it easy for them. I love writing about music, that’s why I do it. It’s the only reason I do it. It’s more than enough, it’s more than is healthy. But then I am just writing for myself – I’m not trying to influence you, or you, or you or even you over there. And therein lies the decision. … Continue Reading

We’re reporting live from the Mercury’s nominations reveal tomorrow!

Mercury Prize

For those of you keen to find out who’s been nominated for this year’s Barclaycard Mercury Prize, we’ll be on your case from around 11.15 tomorrow morning.

Bookmark this link right now, in fact – ’cause we’re high tech like that. The page is blank as of yet and shows as non-existent, but tomorrow it’ll be chocka with excitement. Promised.

Who’s it gonna be? In case you haven’t read our predictions yet, our thoughts on this year’s Mercury’s nominations are available in massive depth for your perusal. What’s your tip?

Keep your hair on ’til around about 11.15am tomorrow (Tuesday 20 July) morning, where we’ll be giving you news and updates as they happen…

… Continue Reading

New Musical Order – Your Window on the Free Music Revolution

“Music will be free”. That’s was the buzz-phrase at UnConvention the other week. Apparently no-one will ever buy music again; it will all be made available free of charge over the ‘net.

It’s a view that is starting to hold a lot of sway within the music industry. And the labels are worried. If music is free, how will they make their money? More importantly if you ask me, how are musicians going to feed themselves?

As founder/owner of Musoswire, an online store for independent bands and musicians, I make it my business to ask myself these questions on a daily basis. In a world of free music, how do we survive? And how can we help our artists survive? … Continue Reading