Sunday, 7 December 2008

Albums of 2008 MGMT - Orgacular Spectacular


OK it's approaching the end of the year so it's time for me and most likely most of the world to say what their thoughts have been about the albums of 2008 so I am going to tell you about what albums have been my personal faves for this year.

For me personally 2008 has been quite a good year for music certainly the Indie side of me. The metal side not so much but there ya go you can't have everything.

I not going to do them all in one blog because most of you have an attention span of a goldfish (hey it's OK I'm not that much better) so I will do them one at a time.

MGMT - Orgacular Spectacular

Well a friend once said to me "this group reminds me of Hendrix and I don't know why". It's a statement I didn't understand on first listen. After a few listens though I think I realised what she meant. Clearly musically they are miles apart. I would describe MGMT as Electro-Indie. It's a Genre that seems to be thriving at the moment with bands such as the Klaxons and Does It Offend You Yeah? doing well.
The comparison with Hendrix was valid though I think its the feel good feeling they leave after you have listened to them. Not many artists do that only Hendrix and Bob Marley jump out at me straight away. They remind you of summer.

Anyway back to the album itself it is full of uplifting tracks and the singles are actually the best tracks off the album which is very rare for me. I think, Electric Feel, Time To Pretend and Kids will be on my Ipod for years to come and will become anthems for me. The album is a mixture of psychedelia and progressive rock in my opinion. a very good album all round but not my personal fave electro-indie album of the year that title goes to Late of The Pier and will be the next album I review.

so stay tuned folks.

Saturday, 6 December 2008

The BBC sound of 2009 longlist

White Lies


Ok so this is my first blog post so welcome to my blog.



So the BBC have released the sound of 2009 shortlist which is the 15 acts they think will be big in 2009. The winners and the top 10 will be announced in the beginning of January and the eventual winner's as well as the top ten will boost from having the publicity.



Past winners have included Adele, Mika, Bloc Party and The Klaxons(I happened to meet their drummer Steffan in a toilet at my local rock club on Friday. He was doing a guest DJ slot. ) So the BBC generally seem to know their stuff. All of the top ten last year went on to have a huge sucsess with the exception of Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong, Whatever happened to them? they seemed to have died a death, most likely to poor performances at festivals this year but I digress let's get to the list of this year.



The 15 names on the list are(Please click on them to be directed to their MySpace pages)



The Big Pink

Dan Black

VV Brown

Empire of the Sun

Florence and the Machine

Frankmusik

Kid Cudi

La Roux

Lady GaGa

Little Boots

Master Shortie

Mumford & Sons

Passion Pit

The Temper Trap

White Lies



What's most interesting to me is how Electro seems to be the BBC's Main Genre in that list Little Boots, Frankmusik, and La Roux are just some of the Electro bands that have made it onto the list.

I wonder if we have to thank MGMT for the revival of Electro? I thought the Genre had died in the 80's with Gary Numan and Human League.



Now for the mo I'm not going to write reviews on any of these artists cos I have heard very little of any of them except White Lies. So I'm not going to offer my opinion as in who I think should win and who I think will be big in 2009. (Tho If White Lies don't make it big I think something will be seriously wrong with the world)

However I am going to sit here in the next few weeks and play all of these artists and write reviews of all the artists. So that's something to look forward too.

What do you think of the list and the bands in question? Is there anyone you think should have made the list please comment.