new year, new gear.

Billy's got a hole in his jeans.

...

An unassuming band that could easily walk you to the shops and make you forget what you wanted to buy:

strangest thing.

...
For a wee while now this blog has made my skin crawl. It became clingy. As soon as it needed me more than I needed it, I lost interest.

Then this artist gave me an urge once more:

Claire Maguire

About a year ago I was shown this version and yeah, yeah, her voice sounded pretty darn distinctive and worthy of a few listens but I couldn't believe it could be hyped into a pop sensation. Now, with the help of Primary 1 producing the track, it really can be. Let it start.

Claire Maguire - Strangest Thing

She has more power than Florence and I doubt she dresses like a right weirdo.

.x.

i've been a mystery.

this + this.

articulate my emotion.

...

"once he's drawn a stick-man and penned him a thought bubble with a witticism worthy of Wilde, he takes a short intake of breath and a large exhale follows.

Today was worthless. Today man scurried around him, took photos of his frown and fed him low-fat natural yoghurt. Tomorrow is a natural progression."

Villagers' new album - Becoming a Jackal, out now on Domino Records.

Superb.

grindin'.

...

this is like a fantasy of mine:

.x.

wait, just one second.

...

now, Dance.

or at least that's what's forecast for this summer with this track:

Uffie, Pharrell Williams + Armand Van Helden

(click)

yehmmm.

.x.

head's gone.

...

I apologise for my continued absence.

I fancy we'll have a revamp this summer - rip out the carpets, scrape off the wall paper, find the original fittings.

Sunvisor's "Sky Dive" by clicky clicky music blog

just enjoy that sun we've got.

.x.

I've been in Morocco!

...

The great North American reindeer, Caribou, Dan Snaith, is back after 3 years with another plate-ful, from a different genre, but just as tasty as the last.

Snaith formerly recorded under the moniker Manitoba but was threatened with a lawsuit by The Dictators frontman Richard Blum whose stagename was Richard "Handsome Dick" Manitoba...a mouthful, and proof that nominal determinism holds true...dictator!

Having grown up in the middle of nowhere in Canada, he took to music like a mouse to cheese and when he came over to the UK to study mathematics at Imperial (his family is saturated with mathematicians) he released Up In Flames to huge critical success. His previous album, Andorra, was Polaris Prize winning and considered an instant classic.

Snaith's new album, Swim, released last month, was inspired by his newest hobby of swimming, the music's tinged with art-disco and verges on Four Tet's turf.

This summer he's playing at Field Day in London - it looks a corker, I'd go if I were you.

Luke Lalonde of Born Ruffians sings on this track:

Caribou - Jamelia

.x.

chaos.

...

If anything the recent eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland has shown us is that our society has the capacity to come to a stand-still, but, more importantly, the ability to cope and to pull ourselves through. I, myself, was victim (and a very lucky conqueror) of the chaos that ensued, having been travelling around Morocco at the time of the eruption and witnessed first hand the pandemonium caused by a little bit of ash in the sky.

Not that we haven't had this hinted to us many times before with the elements, highlighted this very winter just been with the snow causing the country to seemingly shut down for a few days. So, with the impending explosion of the volcano Katla, more and more options and varying amounts of diversification need to be lo

oked at in terms of the way we carry out our lives. The Earth, and that includes us, is fragile.

The word 'change' is thrust upon us by the election campaign, almost too much, almost sickeningly so, but I feel we need to start being more accountable for the way we live.

With this in mind, a new book, 'Approaching Chaos' by Lucy Wyatt, has been published with the aim to open our minds a bit more to how the past can help secure our future.

Available from Amazon here.

A very good article published on her and her book here.

The London launch of the book is this Wednesday at Daunt's in Marylebone, from 6.30pm.

give me a dime.

...

If there was a name to the game that Americana folk could have, then Lissie would have it. She's as 70s inspired as Catherine Feeny, but has the air of modernity that artists like Florence Welch has managed. One slight cringe occurs when her vocals sometimes verge on commercial pop, exasperated harmonies that might better suit a teen-bopper, when she is in fact a mature lady who lives with her dog on a ranch next door to Johnny Depp...

Her single In Sleep was released today on Columbia.

Here's her cover of Lady Gaga's Bad Romance:

Lissie - Bad Romance (cover)

.x.

McJellySnot.

...

a very impressive + preened Max McElligott, a.k.a. Wolf Gang:

Ricky Gervais inspired us.

...

New 'WDYD Bigtime?' fresh as ever, better than ever,

downloadable here, forever.

featuring:

1. High Rankin
2. Wolf Gang
3. Darwin Deez
4. Japayork
5. Beach House

MySpaces are attached for your titillation.

.x.

dethreading the linen sheets.

...

the new album, Down the Way, by brother-sister duo, Angus + Julia Stone, is so delectable. It's no grand deviation from their previous softly-strained percussion-ed folk, I can be transported to a summer dusk when it's just a little too cold and the goosebumps that arise seem to have been summoned by their dusty songs.

.x.

what shall we think?

...

twinkle, twinkle, little star, one day I shall see just how shiny you are.

Arpegiator Child (Heckle & Jyde extended remix) Unu vs Marika by alexwarren

the first track by Heckle & Jyde...comment, comment, ribbit.

.x.

this shouldn't be a good deed.

...

There's a crime being committed.

You can help stop it.

BBC 6music is being raped by the big dogs, by the establishment, by "the Man".

The sheer variety of music played on the station speaks to the mind of every true music lover. So if you truly care, halt this travesty by clicking here and signing the petition to save a national treasure.

If the "Beeb" honestly cared about "quality over quantity", as they claim, then they wouldn't be shutting down an institution that promoted those very ideals.

.x.

elastic enfants.

...

20th March I see no viable other option but to change into your comfy-cool shoes and make the well trodden steps down to Hidden, Vauxhall, for the second instalment by Kinetic Kids.

The launch gathered some of the coolest music-makers about including D.I.M. + Youngsta, so the standard's pretttty high for their follow-up, and by the looks of it they're keeping it that high - I've wanted to see JoJo de Freq for an age.

JoJo de Freq - Welcome to Dalston

BUT, this time, they're bringing you all the glory in not one, not two, but three of the finest rooms, so you're guaranteed to find a suitable spot to get some serious wiggles on. Maybe more importantly, you can do this from 10pm til 7AM - that's exercise in itself.

SO, if you're not a fan of de Freq, you can Dub it out with The Others in another room, or the resident djs in the third, all night long. (then you can waggle on over to The Egg for Breakfast?)

if you're crazy-cat cute enough with my email address, i have some tickets that you can purrchase.

otherwise go here.

see you there, mes frères.

.x.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, POOP.

...

Muchuu.

Brother and Sister duo – 20 year old Milky and 18 year old George Downes have been writing and recording music together since 2008...
“Their sound is a mix of electro-synth and keyboard sounds along with live percussion, wind instruments and Milky's distinctive, harmony vocals.”...They're so homemade it makes me yearn for apple pie: They made the music video for their second single, out in March 2010, Getaway Train, - a story about finding a magic ticket. Milky also made her own animation video for the song and G-man (George) uses a keyboard he bought for £29, which can only play three notes at a time. noice.

The name 'Muchuu' comes from Milky's love of all things Japanese and means to be in an ecstatic delirious trance. Granted, they’re a little bit obsessed with Pokemon and on their website you can play Pacman, Tetris and Asteroids and other classic arcade games, but their twee/cute ness has actually been described as "Enya meets the Ting Tings”, which kind of makes me a little sick.

Here's a beautiful cover mashup of Bat For Lashes’ Daniel + La Valse D'Amelie (from the film Amelie):

They're due to release their album ‘Adventure We Go’ a.s.a.p.

Muchuu - Somebody Tell Me

.x.

combing hands through a thousand secrets.

...

JJ are elusive (I cannot find their myspace), yet fawned over by Pitchfork, and rightly so.

Comparable to Washed Out, Delorean, Memory Tapes & Air France, they've brightly-coloured- skipped into my veins. The Swedish duo have scrupously studied hip-hop to produce this masterpeice:

jj - ecstasy

soon they won;t be mysterious, but connoisseured.

.x.

So, you see the sun scratch its way in.

...

Flora Cadzow.

The Ruby Suns.

These southern hemisphere darlings toured extensively with The Shins in 2007 and have been pushing out for more notice ever since. Full of the bright colours that Animal Collective wave about and the percussion that Yeasayer noisily brandish, The Ruby Suns are soon to tour with Toro Y Moi in America. Back over in England, the trio's third album, Fight Softly, will be released at the start of next month, with their collection of psych-pop songs to flurry the butterflies and flowers out of you. Frontman Ryan McPhun went into the new album looking for more organic sounds without wanting them to sound "organic", so out comes a more synth and effected guitar driven throng of songs, including:

The Ruby Suns - Cranberry

.x.

01022010 - Palindrome.

...

Sunderbans.

The Sunderbans is the largest single block of tidal halophytic mangrove forest in the world. . .

It's also a blunt, racket-making, tinny pop band based in Dalston. My palette isn't clean so to me they sound 80s stripped down punk-folk, i hope that tastes nice. The trio will release their debut single on Y&L Club this month, keep an eye peeled.

For now whet your appetite with this: Sunderbans - Road Kill (y.s.i.)

Young&Lost Club's Acoustic night is showing off Tinashe on Thursday:

.x.

Sometimes I like to state what I believe in:

VICE interviewed Noam Chomsky:

watch the full episode here - http://www.vbs.tv/watch/vbs-meets/vbs-meets-noam-chomsky--2#

Although we may not be American, I'm hell-sure that you're aware of the uneasy feeling that's floating about, tainting and painting our breath.

Noam Chomsky's a wise man, albeit a tad croaky, so to whatever extent your political apathy may be, have a watch and take a heed.

I'm not saying you should go join your local political activist group, just don't let yourself be blind to what you're being fed, it may be a slow-working poison.

p.s. there are some amusing scenes within the video itself of right-wing American lunacy.

.x.

joshing.

...

Josh has done a cover of The Animals/Bob Dylan's House of the Rising Sun :

and although he'll protest it needs tweaking, I love it.

Here's the original as well:

.x.

we've left it too long to re-paint it in ever-green.

...

Esben & The Witch

This Brighton trio are named after a Danish fairytale, where the runt of a family becomes the hero in the end, so it's basically a Joseph tale, without an amazing technicolour dreamcoat. The band themself, however, sound more like if Florence Welch from Florence & The Machine fronted The xx; It's minimal scrumptiousness with haunting vocals.

Esben & The Witch - Marching Song

You can catch them live at an Eat Your Own Ears event at Hobby Horse, Kingsland Road, London, 4th February OR 11th February, Manchester, The Deaf Institute OR The Jericho, Oxford, 13th February. Expect to see a porcelain owl with them.

.x.

p.s. Here's the latest WHAT DO YOU DANCE? BIGTIME. which includes a song by Esben & The Witch.

a gentle whirr of my words feeds a gasp to the sky, full of joy.

...

Blogging's quite a discipline, I tell ya. I had exams, please excuse.

Although knocking about and knocking on the pop sensibilites of some for a good four years, FM Belfast are only just creeping over. It's so poppy, I almost cringe, but then I remember that it's alright to like Pop - what is Pop apart from the most popular of music, and there's a reason why it's popular: because it works. AND THIS WORKS. It's the most amorous of electropop. popple-di-popple-di-pop. FM Belfast are Icelandic (I really wanted to say Icelandish, but that's my word, you can't have it.), including one member of mum, but they are quite elastic on their line-up, so here's to yet more Nordic music!

FM Belfast - I Can Feel Love

Album comes out 22nd Jan-Jan.

(props to www.audiodrums.com)

.x.

when winter’s gone, can we still be friends?

...

Gaoler's Daughter.

The first song I heard instantly warmed the front of my body, reminding me of irretrievable days; the bandying teenage years of first-times, which were sound-tracked by Babyshambles, Maccabees, Mystery Jets, The Holloways, and 'etc' can be applied. Gaoler's Daughter, pronounced "jailer's", grab my reminiscence and stroke it, very gently, especially considering they're comprised of former members of Larrikin Love and Littl'ans. The foursome are named after the character in The Wind in the Willows that helps Mr Toad escape = 'a reference for escapism' and their EP is also called 'The Only Way to Travel', from which my token comes from; their aim is to have every one of their EPs named after a quote from the book!

Gaoler's Daughter - Sister on the Stairs [y.s.i.]

plus a bonus : Gaoler's Daughter - 9 Pieces of Silk [y.s.i.]

about apathy with age. The first song I heard.

Lyrics from their song From Russia With Love:

Death-spray chokes my lungs

Locks up my tongue

Can’t cage the secrets sung

With chemicals I can barely pronounce

I’m ready to announce

The truth is ready to pounce

.x.