Mixtape Exchange: Luke Abbott vs Dam Mantle
To kick off this new feature, we've asked two of our favourite British electronic whizz-kidz to make a YouTube filled mixtape for one another, ahead of their show together tomorrow night in London. »
To kick off this new feature, we've asked two of our favourite British electronic whizz-kidz to make a YouTube filled mixtape for one another, ahead of their show together tomorrow night in London. »
This is our monthly digest of what you were reading and should have been listening (including a handy playlist) to that was released in March 2013. »
As comeback singles go, this is awesome x700! “I guess people will be surprised there’s a rapper on the album. We just did a song that we felt needed a rap verse. In order to keep making music we have to surprise ourselves. If we stop doing that we’ll have to stop making music.” »
Been busy? Missed some of our best bits? Lost that mental note you made to go back and read something? Here's a run-down of our editor's January-March feature section picks...»
There's been so much great music already in 2013, and with the help of the DiS hivemind, we've compiled this playlist of our community's favourite tracks of the first three months of the year. »
Few bands have consistently tinkered with the darker recesses of DiS' collective heart as LOW have. With their tenth album out this week, we were lucky enough to catch the band on the campaign trail for a chat, and a special live session. Thankfully the guys from Beatcast were there to capture the intimate performance and Al Horner's chat with Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker. And here's what the camera saw... »
"The comic comes from a long line of our fans doing totally amazing things for us! We've had so many awesome things made for us over the years from fans, including incredibly powerful videos from Broken Pixel and Ana Stefaniak (who both won awards off the back of their videos) to this comic, which we thought was such a cool idea and executed absolutely perfectly by the lovely and very talented Rachael Smith, who is a Leicester based artist who makes these gorgeous looking comics. I can't exactly remember how it all got started, but we know Rachael from our shared Leicester connection, and I think one day we all saw these drawings she'd done of us and the idea just snowballed into this amazing comic!" - Sophie, Her Name is Calla»
Once again they've delivered an incredible list of names, featuring legends like Kraftwerk (in 3D?!) to DiS favourites including Cat Power, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Foals, Bloc Party, Efterklang, CocoRosie, Villagers, Mum, Japandroids, Maccabees, Everything Everything, Modest Mouse and Hot Chip. They've also got the makers of some of 2013's recommended DiS albums, such as Daughter, Wave Machines and Hookworms. Then there's the likes of Dylan Moran, Germaine Greer, and spoken word sets from Thurston Moore and Tracey Thorn?! And so much more.»
It doesn't matter if you're a fan of the band School of Seven Bells (or his previous band Secret Machines) or not. A human being who makes music and has huge medical bills needs our help. So please take a second to read this, and if you can spare the price of a pint or more, it would be a big help. If you don't have any money, the least you can do is spread the word: »
Here it is, one week before release, the gorgeous new album from Low, streaming in full. It has all the heft and the lingering ache that we have come to expect from the band, as well as the lushness and hints of gospel amid the glorious gloom. These soulful sad songs are perhaps slightly gentler and sparser than we've heard from Low of late, but what The Invisible Way lacks in noise and ostentation, it more than makes up for with beauty. »
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... »
Just in case you missed the news - in which case we can only assume you've been off colonising Messier 83 so, you know, well done you but still - Phoenix made their big comeback this week. The French über-stars responsible for DiS's favourite album of 2009 Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix announced new album, Bankrupt!, last week, followed on Monday with the world premiere of lead single 'Entertainment'.»
We went to the Brit Awards 2013 and all you got to read was this lousy chronological recollection of the night's events»
Last night, I saw the first UK screening of Dave Grohl's directorial debut, Sound City. The documentary tells the story of the legendary Sound City studio in LA where Nirvana's Nevermind, Fleetwood Mac's classic Fleetwood Mac, Rage Against The Machine's debut and several thousand other albums from Barry Manilow to Arctic Monkeys' Suck It And See were recorded across decades of scuzzy mayhem. It's essentially a love story, in which the main character is a 40 year old mixing desk with a great sound, and where all the sex scenes are 50-something rock stars having a bit of a jam together, a view given credibility by many of the faces they make mid-solo. »
Eluvium are one of those special acts that somehow ends up in your life, and you presume everyone else must have already been hip to them, as music this gorgeous surely is as big as Sigur Ros and The xx and you just happened to miss all the fuss? Not that this expansive drone-driven work is necessarily meant to tip-toe into the mass consciousness, but there's something welcoming about the cinematic melancholy of Matthew Cooper aka Eluvium's ambient works.»
Once again, DiS will curate three nights of music, and we can confirm that our first two additions to the festival line-up are two headliners...»
BBC 6Music is hosting a series of live shows this week at the BBC's legendary Maida Vale studios. From midday each day this week Lauren Laverne will live sets from Suede, Foals, Everything Everything and Richard Hawley, and you can tune in via the below video box to watch them at your desk. Plus, this year they have extra sessions later in the afternoon with The Cribs and Palma Violets joining Steve Lamacq. »
Oh January, you were meant to be a quiet month, wha' happen'? Prince, Postal Service, Daft Punk, Foals, Nick Cave, My Bloody Valentine, Suede, Timberlake and the return of David Bowie, that's what happened! And that's not to mention the albums, oh the albums, so many albums, and lots of them are rather special. »
News comes, via French newspaper La Parisien and confirmed by The Hollywood Reporter, that Daft Punk have left long-time label Virgin/EMI and signed to Columbia/Sony for their upcoming release.»
To celebrate the re-release of Fleetwood Mac’s most successful album, Rumours, the band are inviting people to recreate the cover image.»
This new track, is taken from Olafur's forthcoming album For Now I Am Winter, which is set for release on the 25th February via Mercury Classics. »
Before we get our teeth stuck in to 2013, we asked some of our favourite artists what some of their favourite albums of 2012 were. In the previous part the likes of Sharon van Etten, Yeasayer and School of Seven Bells shared their picks, and you can find those lists, alongside our albums of year lists and more, here. Here are five more of our favourites, sharing the five albums that touched, shocked and thrilled them in 2012... »
Twenty-twelve was a big year for DiS. From Jan 1st through Dec 31st there were 32,786,312 pageviews on DiS, and our Google Analytics say that there were 8,508,628 visits to the site. There was an average of 490k unique users on the site each month, and every day the equivalent of a stadium crowd arrived on DiS to have a mooch around our reviews and discussions. ... So what were you all reading in 2012? »
Lauren Laverne just premiered a new Suede song entitled 'Barriers' on BBC 6Music. It's the first taste of the the band's forthcoming sixth album Bloodsports (yes, a new album, none of this best of with a bonus track nonsense...) and you can hear it right here»
DiS' 12 days of festive giveaways! Win big!»
...a record that will make your heart wobble ...a record that swooshes and sways its pain away ...that shivers, quivers and bawls, but has the strength of Lionness ...that has an ache in its paw, but despite the sense of gravity tugging on your emotions, manages to soar so gracefully that you can only ever imagine it as a crow dove looking down from another place and time...»
Like many DiS readers, I absolute adored Desaparecidos' (fronted by Conor Oberst/Bright Eyes) party-political-Pixies-pop of Read Music / Speak Spanish, when it was released back in 2002. A decade passed, and they never came to the UK?! So they seemed like the perfect band for this Detour idea, and lo! the DiS community agreed. Within 48 hours, 50 people had pledged to buy tickets, and Songkick contacted their management, and now, after a 10 year wait, a gig is happening. What was just a nice idea is now a reality, with tickets now on sale and a poster and everything: »
DiS is proud to premiere the video for Tracey Thorn's brand spanking new single 'Joy'. The video was filmed in Lille, Northern France and is taken from her Christmas solo album, Tinsel and Lights.»
We love to know what the artists we love have been listening to too. So, DiS went on an email rampage and asked for some top 5s and a few sentences about why the artist loves each one. We allowed them to also pick EPs and re-issues, if they wanted to.»
Hopefully this long list of names and releases gives you a clue about the individuals behind the screens at DiS. I've always thought of the site as being an aggregator of individual opinions, rather than some compromised coherent voice with a contrarian tone. It's near impossible to get music fans to agree on very much, which is why we do our album of the year list a little differently to most sites. We don't just tot up the votes and say what the most popular release was, as music to us isn't a popularity contest. Votes quickly become political, rather than personal and I hate the idea of mob rule. »