sean has written the following articles:
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. »
There's a new-found classiness, but not like a wine bar refurb of their festival-friendly drinking anthems of yore.»
Paramore discuss their self-titled forth album with DiS' editor. "...there’s all sorts of synths and guitars, a gospel choir, we did a string section, yeah we put guitars through weird synths and we’d tweak ‘em. I don’t think there was anything that groundbreaking but it was certainly new for us, it was groundbreaking for us, personally."»
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... »
The passing of time and the Drive soundtrack success of that song (‘Nightcall’) has done little to phase Kavinsky’s phazers. The rhythms remain ominous and the bass still bathes in the shadow of the synths neon glow. »
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...»
He moves like Jagger... scrap that, he moves more like Jagger’s shadow. Lithe, crooked, a controlled chaos, with these jutting motions that punctuate the syllable before the plosive sound. Threats, rather than eruptions, from a man who clearly has earthquakes juddering way down inside, alongside that hole where his soul used to be, and it’s from here that he warns you, seconds before the almost inevitable noise explodes»
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. »
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. »
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...»
I love the idea of Detour, primarily because it puts the power back in the hands (and pockets) of music fans. It seems to me like the first time crowd-funding has made sense, and agree with Ian that it could just be the way all gigs will be booked in the distant future. I asked Ian a few questions about Detour...»
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: »
...and after a week of counting down from 100... Drowned in Sound's album of the year is...? Revealed... in...side...this...link...all you have to do is click it to find out.... »
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.»
DIS' albums of the year countdown continues... What does your end of list say about you? And what does it say about 2012 that this isn't considered the most nauseating question imaginable?»
The countdown of our favourite albums of the year continues... Hopefully you will find something amongst our yearendageddon that you haven't had chance to check out or invest some more time with over the festive break. If you click on the writer names after each of these review fragments, you can read the full-length reviews. »
DiS' albums of the year countdown begins...»
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. »
DiS is as pleased as Rihanna is at shacking up with a man who punched her face in, to premiere the band new EP from Luke Abbott. It's called Object Is A Navigator and it's released on 12" vinyl and digitally on the 10th of December 2012 on NOTOWN Recordings»
An EP for fans of Chromatics... It drifts and trickles and then swells in a semi-meditative manner, and yet feels like a cousin of dance music that had an aunt that was massively into sound installation art. On each of the tracks here, Eaux take the gentle grace of various recent ambient and drone movements and fuse them with something that widescreen and euphoric. There’s elements of Oneohtrix Point Never off-setting the spiralling fizz of Factory Floor and Fuck Buttons. There’s that similar chill and a made-you-gasp awe you can also hear on tracks from Fever Rey to White Hinterland to Kate Wax and beyond. »
Hello! November has been quite busy hasn't it? Lots of records sneaking out before the year is out... and all the while we've been distracted at DiS HQ trying to work out what our albums of the year will be. Our countdown begins on Monday, but before all that, here's what we/I've been blasting at DiS HQ this month...»
DiS' inbox is being pummelled with videos at the minute, but these at the pick of the bunch that we thought you might wanna fill your eyes and ears with... »
DiS has spent some time exploring Instagram in search of musicians to follow (you can follow me as @seaninsound here and @DrownedinPhotos if you so wish. We also just signed up as @DrownedinSound, we'll use it a bit, but it's mostly so no-one pretends to be us), and seeing as last week Instagram launched web profiles, here are a 10 accounts we recommend and 40 more musicians/bands we think you may want to follow:»
