THIS SITE HAS BEEN ARCHIVED AND CLOSED.

Forget 'doing a Radiohead' - seems the best way to trample the pack now is to manipulate your slathering fan base with misinformation and cheap promo tricks. The big guns are waking up to the fact that the internet is an essentially meaningless echo chamber and playing off that - rather than kick off at the thing and its thieving ears they're using it for what it is; a huge media machine.

So this week we learned that Coldplay 'split', before they released a brand new track as a free download and 600,000 people listened to it. Christ, Phil Collins 'died' but came back from the dead to "retire from music" - other journalists; assertions not ours - Prince stopped getting annoyed at 13-year-old YouTube spods and rode the wave with a highly-camera phoneable rendition of 'Creep' at Coachella and Morrissey was rather sly with the phrasing of a net-bound press release to imply that NME had pulled tens of thousands of pounds worth of funding from last week's Love Music Hate Racism carnival and that he, the bold knight, had stepped in to save the day. Bad form? Let's hope not, eh.

Roger Waters and the aforementioned Coachella festival used the internet to launch a search party for an inflatable pig that floated away during the former Pink Floyd man's set but, sadly, had left to die in the desert. Portishead were busy fishing for compliments and they got them.

So, thank god for Radiohead, who turned their back on the internet this week. Right wrongs by naming Little Man Tate's new album. Take the power back...

- - -

Scarlett Johansson made the most discussed video of the week

News
Rival Schools reformed, Too Pure and Beggars Banquet were retired from active service, Scarlett Johansson's first music video surfaced, Coldplay were hounding the zeitgeist, Will Oldham was go-karting on magic mushrooms...

Festivals
V2008: Estelle, Calvin Harris, Sam Sparro, Captain, The Presets
Reading/Leeds: British Sea Power, Gallows, Mystery Jets, CSS, Crystal Castles, Simian Mobile Disco, Digitalism, Holy Fuck
Glastonbury: Fratellis, Manu Chao, Edwyn Collins, The Raconteurs, James Blunt, Vampire Weekend, Black Lips,
Creamfields: Erol Alkan, Switch
End of the Road: Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band, Dirty Three, el Guincho, Dead Meadow, Pyramids, Miracle Fortress
Green Man: Pentangle
Offset: Wire, Young Knives, Chrome Hoof, Ipso Facto, Make Model
Summer Sundae: Macy Gray, Mystery Jets, Efterklang, Lykke Li
Click here for a week in news…

No Age gave us a track by track run-through of soaring new album Nouns

A Week in Features
* Hadouken!: firing up all-ages dancefloors
* Mixtapes #6 & #7: Bumblebeez & Muscles
* Blowing off, still steaming: Bob Mould on gathering new music
* DiS's May UK Tour: Mae Shi, JoFo and Lionheart Brothers previewed
* Howlin' Rain: magnificently immediate rock 'n' roll explained
* Track-By-Track: No Age spell out their Nouns

Chatter and Opinion
* United by emo's Golden Age: a reminder of Rival Schools' peers

New Sound
* DiScover: Sam Sparro

Crystal Castles shook off east London’s hipster pack with their debut album

Single of the Week
* Factory Floor – ‘Bipolar / You Were Always Wrong’ (Outside Sound)
Click here for our Singles Round-up (28/04/2008)

A Week in Review
* No Age: Nouns
* Crystal Castles: Crystal Castles
* Scarlett Johansson: Anywhere I Lay My Head
* Torche: Meanderthal
* Sam Sparro: Sam Sparro
* dEUS: Vantage Point
* Wildbirds & Peacedrums: Heartcore

Message board ‘highlights’
* accidentally buying records by bands that might be racist
…“Evil always finds a way.”
* Most violent gig ever?
…stories of war, tales of woe
* Annoying Phonecalls
…“I'd write the date and time of the Champions League Final on her forehead as a reminder to not annoy me”
* how long have yoo gone without having a bath?
…"wallow around in your own filth and stare at the wall for hours.”
* People who describe themselves as "random"
…"they'll tell me they were raped by a Rod Stewart lookalike in a hovercar."
* sex with strangers
…“i've never opened my door so tentatively in all my life”

Bye,
All at Drowned in Sound

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