I’ve had the melody to Ian McConnell’s “Bangladesh” floating in my head for weeks, so I decided to pull out my old Game Boy and record a chiptune version of the song: You can download my chiptune versions (including a version closer to the original BPM) on Bandwagon. Huge thanks to Tanner4105 for mastering these. And here’s Ian’s original version: The post Bangladesh (chiptune cover) appeared first on Doc Pop's Weblog.
Another short day, another long night. We see Marcello trying to do some actual writing in an open-air cafe, then getting attracted by an actual person’s story. He’s a little flirtatious with the teenage waitress but he mainly just seems interested in her as a cross-section of the Italian people. He also has a horrible […]
Some of these are arguably not love songs. We can argue that if you like. In no particular order, a non-exhaustive list. It's a bit of a mix and my taste in music is extremely variable. I like what I like and I often like a soppy love song. ♫ The Whole of the Moon, The Waterboys. A song about thinking that person is just the greatest thing. I spoke about wings You just flew ♫ Chain Reaction, Diana Ross. Is actually amazingly filthy. But I'm a sucker right from the first lines: You took a…
Example of good ol’ swinging guitar pickin’ spearheads the Amsterdam scene, while grabbing international attention with A Sinner Kissed An Angel by the Linus Eppinger / Sam Braysher Quartet. Something was in the air. Sparks, to be sure! It was Saturday, June 27 at indie haunt De Nieuwe Anita in Amsterdam. The Linus Eppinger / Sam Braysher Quartet totally burned Strouse/Adams’s Put On A Happy Face to the ground. The engine of super-swinging drum veteran Eric Ineke and beat-munching class act on…
New Order’s ‘Technique’ | A Quick Look at the Band’s Seminal 1989 Record
Coming up with a decent setlist for a live performance is quite the juggling act, you need to get an audience warmed up as soon as you can, but you don’t want to go too hard when you start, otherwise there’s no lift. You need to create a kind of narrative arc, in the words of scriptwriters, to draw them in, excite them a little, getting them nodding along and applauding, then within a few songs have them dancing and take them to a big climactic finale, with, hopefully, a final burst in an…
On 5 July 1975 American tennis player Arthur Ashe became the first black man to win the Wimbledon singles’ championship. Ashe beat defending champion Jimmy Connors three sets to one on Centre Court. Ashe would use his profile protesting against apartheid in South Africa and US treatment of refugees arriving in the country from Haiti. He died in February 1993 after contracting Aids from tainted blood. On 5 July 2012 The Shard, standing at 1,016ft, the tallest building in the European Union was…
Greetings from la Fortuna, Costa Rica! According to Spotify (see here), the sexy song “Koko” by the 27-year-old Puerto Rican singer and songwriter Omar Courtz is one of the most downloaded tunes in the Central American nation this week.
Let me get the three piece and a biscuit @gracespelman the songs aren’t ranked except for #1 which is ABSOLUTELY MY FAVORITE #musicdiscovery #musicrecommendations #playlist ♬ original sound - grace 🎧 | music discovery @nationofartisans How did Kaymet, a WWII-era sheet metal workshop on the Old Kent Road making chassis for radar, reinvent itself as the world's leading manufacturer of fine drinks trays and trolleys? To find out, I visited the factory and interviewed Mark Brearley, the proprietor…
1-01 The Harry South Orchestra– The Sweeney (Main Theme)1-02 Rose Royce– Car Wash1-03 Tom Scott– Gotcha1-04 Marvin Gaye– Trouble Man (Main Theme)1-05 Henry Mancini– The Return Of The Pink Panther1-06 Isaac Hayes– Theme From Shaft1-07 Morton Stevens– Hawaii 5-0 (Main Theme)1-08 J.J. Johnson– Willie Chase1-09 The Four Tops – Are You Man Enough1-10 Al Green– Let's Stay Together1-11 Earth, Wind & Fire– Sweet Sweetback's Theme1-12 Charles Earland– The Snake1-13 Curtis Mayfield– Superfly1-14 Ron…
Daylight Music is a wonderful concept: lunchtime concerts concentrated into a two-hour time slot in churches. It started in the Union Chapel in Islington, where I played and where I met Robert Rotifer and Ian Button, actually. They were part of the late Judy Dyble's band, who were playing that day.It's now moved to Leytonstone, not far from the tube station. Going yesterday was a no-brainer because not only was Clémentine March playing, but Terry Edwards was playing between the main acts.They…
Market Street Jazz I Market Street Jazz II Market Street Jazz III Market Street Jazz IV What a treat to listen to a really good live jazz band.
Our third visit to Rock Werchter, after 2022 and 2023. This time the two outstanding acts were Kneepcap and the headliners Twenty One Pilots. It's always well organised and great fun. This time I spent most of it listening from a distance, whilst the kids went to the front. Keanu Reeves was also performing with his band Dogstar. Dogstar Kneecap Twenty One Pilots
There's a pattern to 1987's indie chart I've appreciated experiencing slowly, and in depth, as I've written this blog. It starts with business as usual and lots of abrasive indie guitar bands topping the listings, then slowly morphs as sample culture and hip-hop and House music take hold - firstly in subtle ways, such as through the various Grebo crossover artists, then eventually with "Pump Up The Volume" acting as the final bucketload of water which broke the dam. The list of new number ones…
I’m pretty confident that the majority of my fellow bloggers and readers – at least those few who even bother to read my posts – probably shake their heads at my music tastes and that’s okay, as each of us likes what we like at the end of the day. That said, my new #1 song this week is “Homewrecker” by sombr (born Shane Michael Boose), who turns 21 today. Over the past year he’s become one of my favorite artists, and “Homewrecker” is his fourth song to top my chart, following “back to friends”…
DMG – Live the Dream Skittering glitchy rave from Daniel McGurty, aka DMG, now based in Edinburgh but a native of Blackburn. McGurty is painting with a delicate brush here, sketching around an absence of overt dancefloor kick/bass spine, but these two tracks from his upcoming album Live the Dream nonetheless evoke plenty of nostalgia for UK hardcore and rave. Blackburn was the epicenter of illegal raving in the UK in the late 80s and early 90s. Kids making great use of all the abandoned mills…
A favorite album by one of my favorite musicians, Bill Frisell. With Don Byron, Clarinet, Bass Clarinet; Guy Klucevsek, Accordion; Kermit Driscoll, Bass; Joey Baron, Drums. Recorded in 1992, the album cover features a 4th of July photo of racing … Continue reading →
This afternoon we attended a musical event with a difference. Sigur Rós: Ára is billed as ‘a fully immersive listening experience, expanding the sonic universe of Sigur Rós to new sensory dimensions’. In a small black box theatre, an audience of around 35 people sit or lie on beanbags, surrounded by the kind of darkness absolute enough that sometimes I wasn’t sure whether my eyes were open or closed. The music seems to come from all around you. Occasionally a sweet scent floats into the room.…
The CaretakerEverywhere at the End of Time2019History Always Favours The Winners(part of Resident Advisor's 2000-2025 Best Albums) Memories are ghosts inside your mind; samples are ghosts extracted from records and trapped in forever loops. Starting from these premises, The Caretaker takes snippets of maudlin balladry from pre-World War II crooners like Al Bowlly and subjects them to escalating levels of erosion, simulating the stages of dementia. These nostalgic wisps of decaying music…
Camper Van Beethoven Telephone Free Landslide VictoryGet It At Discogs Camper Van Beethoven were one of the great, pioneering indie rock bands. When Spinart released the Cigarettes & Carrot Juice box in 2002, legions of Camper fans probably rushed out to pick up remastered versions of great albums that had been out of print for years. Two years later, when Spinart made the individual albums available again, this time augmented by bonus tracks (the box set contained just the original albums, as…
I’ve been listening to this album when lifting weights at the gym recently. The Justice bass pushes me so hard I find myself dancing on the bench. This is the first album of hers that I’ve listened to, but I didn’t expect to see that it’s actually her fourth. It plays to me like a first album: lots of reference sounds (the Justice electro, the Charli XCX lyrics), mixture of genres and tempos. Maybe that just her brand and it’s established and I’m just the one learning it. I’m excited to see her…
Them Sugar Hill Gang bangers got everywhere in the 80's didn't they? Here replacing Grandmaster Flash with erstwhile lead screecher from The Pop Group, Mark Stewart. No subtlety here from absent lovers rock producer Dennis Bovell, who dubbed up The Pop Group's debut LP "Y" six years earlier, not with Adrian Sherwood at the controls there ain't. It's all there,distorted max feedback tape echo, Keith LeBlanc's thudding and crashing electro-industrial style drum samples, William S. Burroughs…
For the ninth installment in its 1970s ECM Special series, Trio Records in Japan presented its second of three artist spotlights, this time devoted to Ralph Towner, whose guitars have long served as measuring instruments for ECM’s most elusive cartographic spaces. The compilation begins where many listeners would instinctively begin, with “Icarus,” his most enduring composition, presented here in the version from Matchbook, his duo album with Gary Burton. Its melodic intelligence never…
Since today is the 4th of July and in most places the beaches are still open, I thought I would revisit, Jaws, with a bonus track. After trying to convince people that Mayor Vaughn wasn’t as bad as people make him out to be, I thought I would talk about someone else in the movie whose actions can also be looked at as villainous. I am not sure I fully be… Read more
Once again, RAYE shined last night at Montreux Jazz Festival. She was the star of the opening of the 60th anniversary of the festival, and had carte blanche to organise the evening.
The eighth volume of the Japan-only ECM Special series marked a shift by dedicating itself to a single artist, a model it would follow for the remaining releases. This installment gathers the art of guitarist John Abercrombie under a single lamp, though the music itself keeps slipping beyond the circle of illumination. From the beginning, he was a musician who seemed to enter a piece from the side door of consciousness, carrying with him some private geometry of hesitation and nerve. The…
Review by Sandre the Giant Released: 9th January 2026 Stop the presses, the Killchain is reviewing Chilean death metal again? Well, it is an open secret around here that when we see a promo hit our emails that has Chile mentioned, we do perk up our battered ears but we’ve got a lot of reason to. Chile has become the country-de-jure for extreme metal in the past decade, pouring out a crazy amount of incredible bands and albums, and Oraculum are about to take centre stage with their debut full…
Yooooo, have you heard of Altın Gün?! It’s a Turkish psychedelic band from the Netherlands. Last month I heard their music playing at Rooster Coffee House (one of Toronto’s best cafes), and it was so fresh that I’ve been listening to their albums on a loop: Check out the track Cemalim, too. My only previous exposure to Turkish singing has been through the band She Past Away. If a secret little goth heart doth beat under your lace undershirt, then you should be listening to them. It sounds like……
Market Street and the Market Hall Indie's Attic Threesome Window Shopping Smoke Break
Believe it or not, one of the defining moments in my relationship with black metal came the first time I heard Nargaroth's Jahreszeiten, and specifically the repetitive riffing on the last track, "Winter". This was my introduction to this band, before I knew of their earlier, more notorious records, as well as before many of the genre's foundational names. This kind of monotonous melodic austerity captured what I found to be essential in black metal, and shaped how I continue to appreciate it…
