News
by Sean Adams
Ah, so February, you are such a short month, but what you lack in length, you've more than made up for with girth. This month has been bulging with brilliant new records, and tantalising tidbits of details about yet more goodies to come later in the year. Just imagine how hard it's going to be to pick an album of the year, but don't go wishing the year away quite so quickly, especially as this quick glimpse back at what has 'dropped' over the past four weeks will hopefully remind you that there is a lot to love and spend some time listening to before you zoom onto the next best thing... »
In Depth by Wendy Roby
Single of the Week!
Melt Yourself Down - ‘Fix My Life’ (The Leaf Label)
Jazz kaleidoscopes, man, everybody's gawpin at 'em. And you need to be gawpin at 'em too if you wanna be hip to Melt Yourself Down - who believe that every hook should be»
In Depth by April Clare Welsh
Here's the second installment of a new monthly column celebrating the sunny delights of DIY fuzz-pop, noise-pop, post-punk and straight down the line, knitwear endorsed indie-pop.»
In Depth by Dom Gourlay
In the first Nottingham scene round-up of 2013, Drowned In Sound's man in the East Midlands looks at the best new releases and live shows the city has to offer in the coming months and talks to up-and-coming three-piece Kagoule. »
News
by Robert Leedham
We went to the Brit Awards 2013 and all you got to read was this lousy chronological recollection of the night's events»
In Depth by Marc Burrows
Johnny Marr is quite clear that what he does is pop music. And pop, emphatically, is no dirty word.»
In Depth by Robert Leedham
In a world where we have the NME Awards, Mobo Awards and Mercury Prize exist, why bother with the Brits. DiS Does Pop investigates...»
In Depth by Wendy Roby
Of this week's single of the week, Wendy says: ".. this appears to be a song about how utterly boring life can be when you throw your lot in with someone else and discard all the spontaneity of early romance; it has lines about how Sweet Baboo is pleased that you categorise his life into 'little tiny piles', even though he still wants you to go and do something crazy - even though that's not How You Live. It also has a pleasingly original and internet-now video, that marries campy memes and real feelings even though you really shouldn't be able to do this. Basically, I put it on and then just grinned at it for the whole of its nearly-five-minutes."»
In Depth by Milton Savage
Movies, into games, do not compute... often. As Aliens: Colonial Marines arrives after a protracted gestation - given its license, you might have thought it'd be bursting to get out there - Savage Pixels looks at tie-in hits and misses, and remembers some awful movies based on (actually pretty decent) games. Oh, and a Fantastic Five from the awesome Chipzel, who soundtracked Super Hexagon. Game on... over... on... over...»
In Depth by Kyle Ellison
If you didn’t notice already, hip hop has gotten weird. The sound of rap in 2013 is no longer shaped by baggy-jeaned Dre and Premier worshippers mining their parents funk and soul records, but is being made by kids who grew up on the internet, bombarded by a broad spectrum of culture. That isn’t meant to in any way to discredit hip hop production of the past thirty years, only to acknowledge that it’s an exciting time to be a rap fan. At the moment it feels like anything is possible, as new sounds are created with increasing frequency and old styles are revived from new perspectives.»
In Depth by Russell Warfield
Seventh album Heartthrob isn’t just Tegan and Sara’s most focused and unified record – it’s also their best»
In Depth by Robert Leedham
Following news this morning that they'll be playing the Drowned In Sound stage at this year's Great Escape, Rob Leedham talks to the electronic trio about recording News From Nowhere, writing songs for Kate Bush and The Sopranos...»
In Depth by Wendy Roby
Single of the Week!
Darwin Deez - ‘Free (The Editorial Me)’ (Lucky Number)
Ludicrously-curly tunesmith Darwin Deez has a knack, and it is almost aggravating to hear him manipulating us again, with his bloody melodies and his wretched happines»
Review
by Mark Ward
Kraftwerk affirm that their art pop is equal to any pop art.»
In Depth by Robert Cooke
When it comes to writing this column, we spend an awful lot of time goofing around researching on the internet. Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud and Bandcamp – that’s how we find all the bands we feature here. It also where we learned the sad news recently that several of those bands – Standard Fare, Likes Lions and Les Oeuf Pourri – have called it a day. It’s where we found this surprising video of Lewis from Best Friends being dead good at skateboarding. It’s where we saw whoever runs the Tye Die Tapes Twitter account be a bit rude about another band, and a member of said band not take it that well. It’s where Tye Die Tapes have, hilariously, turned the accusation that they’re hipsters into a very funny bit of DIY branding. And it’s where Offbeat was resurrected.»
In Depth by Dom Gourlay
With over thirty years as a recording artist under his belt, Robin Guthrie's iconic status is well and truly justified...»
In Depth by Adam Anonymous
Once upon a time, in days when 'Americana' was still bandied around as if it wasn't a slightly cumbersome genre catch-all, the bittersweet beardy stylings of Grandaddy slayed many a delicate indie-rock heart. Their leader, Jason Lytle, is about to return to the UK for a brace of live solo shows in support of his second album, Dept Of Disappearance. DiS bent his ear and found out there might be some good news for fans of his most celebrated musical vehicle...»
In Depth by Wendy Roby
Single of the Week!
Randan Discotheque - ‘Grandad's Coffin’ (The Bonjour Branch)
I don't just love Randan Discotheque's Craig Coulthard for his Forest Pitch project, nor do I only love his band Randan Discotheque for their (perfect) concept s»
In Depth by Dom Gourlay
It's finally here! MBV (that's My Bloody Valentine to you and me) have gone and released their first album in 22 years also called mbv. Having spent twenty-four hours encompassing a total of eleven listens (one has to eat, drink and sleep too you know) in its company, here's DiS' first impressions of possibly the most eagerly anticipated album in history.»
In Depth by Dan Lucas
Back in 1979 Neil Young addressed worries of his own impending irrelevance on ‘Hey Hey, My My’, acknowledging critics who had accused him of sliding towards the middle of the road with his hit album Harvest and explicitly declaring his intent to arrest the drift. Such an accusation of burgeoning artistic anonymity isn’t really something that’s ever been levelled at Eels, AKA Mark Everett, AKA E. »
In Depth by Finbarr Bermingham
DiS chats to Frightened Rabbit and premieres a mini-documentary about the making of the new album, featuring brand new unheard material.»
In Depth by David Emery
Think about it for a second – if a track gets stuck up on YouTube, is that automatically a single? Probably not, right? Ok, how about if it’s put up for sale on iTunes at the same time? That’s a cautious “yes”, that’s a single, but then that swiftly turns into a “ah, probably not” if it turns out that track isn’t being taken to radio. Confusing, isn’t it?»
In Depth by Dom Gourlay
It's fair to say that no other record has influenced music in the same way as Loveless since landing at the tail end of 1991...»
In Depth by Sean Adams
Wendy Roby is sickly, so you have to deal with me, your grumblin’ editor, for this week’s rundown of the latest digital downloads and sparkly seven inch singles. »
In Depth by Kevin EG Perry
On February 19th 2003, a band called The Postal Service released an album called Give Up. It was the product of a curious union between vocalist Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and the producer Jimmy Tamborello, known as Dntel. The pair had been exchan»
In Depth by James Skinner
Twelve years ago Omaha natives Conor Oberst, Denver Dalley, Landon Hedges, Ian McElroy and Matt Baum decamped to a studio in nearby Lincoln, Nebraska to record a punk-rock record under the name Desaparecidos. The band broke up not long afterwards, only to release their first new material in a decade late last year. We sent some questions over to Conor on the reunion and his forthcoming solo dates among a bunch of other things.»
In Depth by Cate Blanche
'Planet Gear' is an irregular feature on DiS, in which we ask musicians to get a bit geeky and talk us through the equipment that makes the 'magic' happen... Here, James Yuill talks us through his love affair with MIDI...»
In Depth by Wendy Roby
Single of the Week!
Golden Teacher - 'Dante And Pilgrim' (Optimo Music )
Golden Teacher aren't messing about, which is why the entire vocal performance of 'Dante And Pilgrim' is snarled in jerky French - or saccadé française if you want to be a »
In Depth by Cate Blanche
It’s been 3 years since the release of their debut album Wave If You’re Really There. The follow up, Pollen, was created in the eaves of St Brides Church in Liverpool. Here, Tim Bruzon and Lexxx (co-Producer) talk us through Pollen, track by track.»
In Depth by Dom Gourlay
Next month sees the release of Foals third album, Holy Fire. With a heavy promotional schedule ahead of them before their mammoth worldwide tour commences in Australia next week, DiS caught up with frontman Yannis Philippakis. Here's what he had to say. »
DiS meets John Lydon - Part 1: The Man
DiS Does Singles 20.05.13: Paramore, Laura Marling, The Replacements
DiS joins the Music Alliance Pact + May 2013's global MAP compilation
Drowned in Bristol #12
DiS Does Singles 13.05.13: Swim Deep, These New Puritans, The National
Darkstar, Ed Harcourt, Halls, Wall +more for 3 DiS-curated nights at Great Escape 2013
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