New Music Podcast – YNot Festival

Well those four weeks flew by. Be amazed that stuporcollider has kept a deadline! Anyways, here’s another half hour or so of new music, mostly from YNot festival. As always, support the bands and buy their merch and releases:

Darwin Deez
Sparrow and the Workshop
Doll and the Kicks
Alex Blood and the Diggers Free album download available on their website.
Rugosa Nevada
Rooney
The Lovely Eggs

Download the podcast from here.

Disclaimer: I have sought permission from these bands to play this stuff but couldn’t get to ask everyone and the bands retain their copyright. If anyone from the bands wants me to remove their music from here let me know.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tags: Alex Blood and the Diggers, Darwin Deez, Doll and the Kicks, music, Musics What I Like, podcast, Rooney, Rugosa Nevada, Sparrow and the Workshop, The Lovely Eggs, ynf, ynot festival

Stuporcollider – Now Available IN YOUR EARS…

Cloud 9 to be exact...

Two magpies crossed my path on the way to work this morning. Now I’m not typically superstitious but I had been planning on uploading the first of my new music podcasts today (OK, I had planned to put them up at the weekend too but I love me some procrastination), and I suppose this could be seen as a good omen.

And yet a better omen became apparent through twitter. 6 Music has been saved. Faithful readers (and the people monitoring my web use) will recall a klaxon call from these very pages, rallying music lovers everywhere to fight for the only radio station playing even half-way decent music in the UK.  Well the BBC trust have seen sense and agreed that ‘the case has not been made’ to close the digital station due to “significant public support for the service”.

I can think of no better day to try to launch the first stuporcollider podcast, highlighting new music. So with that in mind…

[Sneaky Neil edit] If you wanna download the mp3 of the podcast, you can do so here. Because we love you.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tags: 6 music, broken social scene, campaign, dutch uncles, everything everything, johnny foreigner, music, Musics What I Like, podcast, save 6 music, shameless plug, the canon logic, the hundred in the hands, two door cinema club

Saving 6 Music

The BBC and I are no longer as close as we once were. First there was that whole homeopathy thing, and now they’re threatening to kill off 6 Music. Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC and all round twat has been steadily decreasing the cultural value of the once-proud institution, and now he is recommending the closure of 6 music and the Asian Network by the end of 2011.

For the last 6 months or so I have been listening to podcasts of some of the finest new music, and classic, iconic songs from people that actually understand music. Radio 1 is at best an infuriating alternative and at worst a festuring turd polished up and sold to you as popular music. You’re not 3008, I won’t poke your face and it’s definately not Bonkaas, it’s shit. FACT.

The report states: “Given the strength of its popular music radio offering from Radio 1 and 2 and the opportunity to increase the distinctiveness of Radio 2, the BBC has concluded that the most effective and efficient way to deliver popular music on radio is to focus investment on these core networks.” I tend to agree more with Eddie Argos; “The record buying public shouldn’t be voting.”

Surely the whole point in championing new, independant, music is precisely that it isn’t yet popular since the record labels hosting the talent can’t afford the publicity and air time for a radio 1 heavy rotation that seems to go hand in hand with chart success. Some songs I’m not going to like despite how many times you play it, ok. I think the RATM thing over Christmas showed that there IS a musical revolution happening, sick of Scowell’s chokehold on our music, and this is  why 6 music is so important.

Luckily the gallows are not on the horizon (metaphorically and musically) for 6 Music just yet and there is plenty we can do to help save it:

• Listen to it. Pretty obvious really but some estimates already suggest thet the listening audience has already doubled since the news first broke. If you can listen to it through the iPlayer, even better, as this is one of the key measures of the stations success
• Sign the petition to BBC Chief Sir Michael Lyons.
• Use 36 Degrees’ template to contact the BBC trust
• Email your thoughts to :-

srconsultation@bbc.co.uk
michael.lyons@bbc.co.uk
richard.tait@bbc.co.uk
jeremy.peat@bbc.co.uk
mehmuda.mian@bbc.co.uk
david.liddiment@bbc.co.uk
janet.lewis-jones@bbc.co.uk
rotha.johnston@bbc.co.uk
patricia.hodgson@bbc.co.uk
alison.hastings@bbc.co.uk
anthony.fry@bbc.co.uk
diane.coyle@bbc.co.uk
chitra.bharucha@bbc.co.uk
trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk

• Change your twitter avatar using the twibbons.
• Join the Facebook group

And if none of this works?

Turn off your radio…

Tags: 6 music, bbc, campaign, music, Musics What I Like, rant, save 6 music

Amanda Palmer

I know Amanda Palmer is brilliant. Do you know Amanda Palmer is brilliant?

I hope you watched that and now you know Amanda Palmer is brilliant. You may also enjoy the fact that she and writer of comics, books, TV shows (and studly gent) Neil Gaiman are to be wed. Here is a photo courtesy of Coilhouse:

Yet another reason to love Amanda Palmer. For reference see also:

Tags: gratuitous picture, marriage, music, Musics What I Like

The Guild Music Video

Okay, we all know Felicia Day is the new hotness thanks to Dr Horrible and Kari Byron getting knocked up but this is just silly.

For the reality impaired, Ms. Day produces and stars in The Guild, a web show about MMO players. The show is remarkable because it bears the title of ‘web show’ and is actually good. All of this of course, is pretence to show you this:

Did I mention the +52 dexterity vest? I’m pretty sure I did.

Tags: geeks, music, video

Buy This Stuff: JoCo DVD!

Since I’ve resubscribed to WoW I can only spend my time levelling, not posting. Instead here is a video of a man 75% of the SC staff would perform acts of coitus on singing my very favourite song..

If you love Jonathan Coulton as much as we do then buys his new live album and/or DVD.

–==||PLUG ENDS||==–

Tags: geeks, live, music, whoring

M.I.A. vs the world

Timely news for some, but it makes a nice change for up and coming ‘popstars’ to give a damn about things that aren’t Jimmy Choos or Kompressors, let alone use their influence to bring attention to things people like to ignore, but that’s just what M.I.A. has been upto drawing praise and criticism alike.

M.I.A. is the daughter of a ‘Tamil Tiger’, although she has never lived with him and hasn’t seen him since 1995, and has been using her music to try to draw attention to the ongoing civil war in Sri Lanka. Although she never openly gives her support to the ‘Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam’ she has been attacked by many, most notably Sri Lankan hip-hop artist DeLon for using the image of a tiger in her videos.

The conflict is an extremely complex issue and one that’s summed up definitively here but in a nutshell the minority Tamil Hindus are fighting for an independant state in the North and East of the island and have been labelled a terrorist organisation by many world governments.

In a recent blog she questions why she is also labelled a terorist because she wants the conflict to end. Clearly it will take more than this but hopefully it will open a lot of eyes to the bloodshed going on in Sri Lanka.

Tags: music, politics, Sri Lanka

Los Campesinos! We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

This album slipped by me since it was released in November, just eight months after the release of their Debut ‘Hold On Now, Youngster…’ but I’m glad I stumbled across it. Right from the opening lyrics (I think it’s fair to say that I chose hopelessness and inflicted it on the rest of us) it’s clear that tweexcore has grown up; out the window are the songs where the cherryade flows, replaced by bitterness, resentment and jealousy.

The sentiment in the title track, ‘We are beautiful, we are doomed’ shows a much bleaker, darker Los Campesinos! punctuated by the trademark glockenspiel – “I taught myself the only way to vaguely get along in love is to like the other slightly less than you get in return” – the guitars building to the anthemic outpourings about heart failures.

A major criticism of ‘Hold On Now, Youngster…’ may once again put off listners, as the new album is anything but an easy listen, but in my opinion this doesn’t detract from the quality of the songs; I’ll never grow tired of cheerful sounding tunes coupled with self-destructive lyrics like ‘It’s as if I walked into a room to see my ex girlfriend, who by the wasy I’m still in love with, sucking the face of some pretty boy with my favourite bands most popular song in he background’ all tempered by soft female vocals.

The stand out tracks for me are ‘You\’ll Need Those Fingers For Crossing‘ and ‘It\’s Never That Easy Though. Is It?‘

Tags: Los Campesinos!, music, Musics What I Like, review

Non-English Metal; We Salute You!

For your daily fix of everyone’s favourite President of the Union…

GO COMRADE! Brought to your ears and eyes by ANJ

For more of these visionaries work see below. You want 3:12 for the goods, but watch the rest for the pathos.

Incidentally ANJ are apparently on the soundtrack for Stalin vs. Martians, a new RTS featuring cutesy aliens and a giant controllable Stalin. Win.

Tags: funny, games, metal, music, parody, russia, Stalin, video

Why hit a Corgi?

Yes I know YouTube’s rife with stuff like this but I feel the need to push this on the world just cos it made me chuckle, also somebody’s got to continue supporting the Mon-stars of rock.

Also while you’re there check out the Saturday morning Watchmen video posted up by the same guy.  A tribute I feel more in tune with Alan Moore’s original intention for the material than the lackluster movie.

Tags: comics, movies, music, video