Bad Brains

Since being wowed by No Trend, I've been slowly exploring the Hardcore Punk genre.

So far my favourites are Bad Brains, a band that stick out right away for being black rastafarians who occasionally play reggae. I've only listened to their self-titled first album so far, which Adam Yauch (aka MCA) of the Beastie Boys names "the best punk/hardcore album of all time". I'm not informed enough to confirm or deny that, but I do know that the album is fucking ace. Also, MCA's my fave Beastie Boy, so I'll just assume it's true for now.

Here are some great songs to soundtrack a day of joyfully smashing shit up (or sitting at home and watching skate videos on YouTube):

No Trend

I stumbled upon No Trend, and I think this song is amazingly and horrifically good:

I don't know anything about the band (they don't even have a wiki page, what the fuck?), but I take it that they were part of that whole American '80s Hardcore Punk thangg, which I know hardly anything about. If anybody stumbles across this post and has anything to recommend, please help a brother out.

Here's some other songs that aren't as good, but also kept my interest:

Also, bit lame, but I really like some of their album art, especially the font.

True Womanhood

I found this song on the internet. It's a cover of a song I don't know, but it's fucking great:

Anyway, it's this band, True Womanhood. I like their name, I like their musical aesthetic, I don't like that they dress like cunts. Anyway, this song's different to the first song, but it's still very good.

I "liked" them on facebook, and am excited to follow their progress.

EDIT: They don't dress that irritatingly actually, but still.

Terrible News

Spotify’s aim from the very beginning was to make music on-demand available to all. To give you the power to listen to, discover, share and manage your music the way you want to - simpler, faster, better - while making sure the artists whose music we all love continue to see the benefits as we grow.

Making Spotify available to millions across Europe has seen the service become incredibly popular. People are listening to more music and from a wider range of artists than ever before, and are giving up on piracy, which is exactly what we hoped would happen.

So it’s vital that we continue offering an on-demand free service to you and millions more like you, but to make that possible we have to put some limits in place going forward.

Here’s how the changes will work:

• New Spotify users will be able to enjoy our unrivalled free service as it is today for the first 6 months.
• As of May 1st, any user who signed up to the free service on or before November 1st 2010 will be able to play each track for free up to a total of 5 times. Users who signed up after the beginning of November will see these changes applied 6 months after the time they set up their Spotify account.
• Additionally, total listening time for free users will be limited to 10 hours per month after the first 6 months. That’s equivalent to around 200 tracks or 20 albums.

The changes we’re having to make will mainly affect heavier Spotify Free and Open users, as most of you use Spotify to discover music – on average over 50 new tracks per month, even after a year. Plus, the average user won’t reach the limit on plays for 7 out of 10 tracks, after a year of using Spotify. For those of you using Spotify to find new tracks to enjoy and share with friends, these changes shouldn’t get in the way of you doing that. Rest assured that we’ll continue to bring you the biggest and most diverse music catalogue available.

For anyone who thinks they might reach these limits, we hope you’ll consider checking out our Unlimited and Premium services, neither of which will be affected, plus we have a 7-day free trial for Spotify Premium that we’d love you to try. Throughout May, we’ll also have a pretty nice 30-day free trial for Spotify Premium – more details on that in the next few days.

Above all, this means we can continue making Spotify available to all in the long-term. We’ll be bringing out some awesome new features as well as significant improvements over the coming months, which will make the Spotify experience even better.

Thanks so much, as ever, for your unbelievable support and I hope to come back with some exciting news in the next few weeks.

Daniel

Fuck you, Daniel

Panda Bear - Tomboy

It's out on April 12th, but can be streamed for free HERE HERE HERE!

Panda Bear (aka Noah Lennox) of Animal Collective has made a psychedelic masterpiece. It's the kind of music I listen to and think "Wow, this is really fucking good music!", which is always a good sign.

Here's some tracks, but really listen to the whole thing on the link above.

I've never really listened to any Panda Bear/Animal Collective output before, but I'm definitely gonna check it out now. Nice.

Sebadoh - Bakesale

Sebadoh are a band that I hold dear to my heart, namely their album Bakesale, which came out originally in 1994. It definately comes in my top 10 albums of all time, and is a contender for my "Best Album To Listen To When You're Really Pissed Off" prize, being the perfect mix of sloppy '90s indie rock and grunge.

It's being re-released in the UK by Domino (Sub Pop in the US) and I'm definitely going to spend my money on it and the 25 extra tracks that come with.

As much as I love Lou Barlow (which is a hell of a lot), my favourite songs on the album are Jason Loewenstein's contributions. Sadly, I have yet to hear anything else he's contributed to that's nearly as good (I will continue my search for ever if need be).

Here's some personal faves:

It's just so good!

Also, live videos of their current American tour look fucking awesome. Really, really hope they come to London soon. I saw Lou's solo set last January and that was really, really great; seeing Sebadoh play live would be one of the best things to ever happen to me.

Gig: Deerhunter @ Shepherds Bush Empire 31/3/11

As mentioned in a previous post, I was really, really impressed by Deerhunter's most recent album, Halcyon Digest, and so I had really high expectations for the gig. They were still way, way more amazing than I thought they would be.

First on were Lower Dens, who I got there early to see because I really like their stuff up on MySpace: lovely shoegazey, reverby stuff. About half of their songs sounded identical and fairly boring (mainly thanks to the very, very boring drummer), but the rest of their song were really, really good and I'd definitely like to check them out again.

Just after Deerhunter came on, singer Bradford Cox informed the audience that "Steve the lightman" told him that the legendary Old Grey Whistle Test series was filmed there, which was a lovely factoid to start the show. They opened with a new song, which sounded great, and then went into an overly feebacky version of 'Desire Lines' which, while being my favourite song on the album, was not as impressive live without the backing vocals.

The gig went from good to AMAZING when they played 'Nothing Ever Happened' from Microcastle. They jammed for ages on the outro and it just sounded fucking fantastic. From that point on, all the songs linked in with each other and were extended to great psychedelic effect. A few of my personal favourites were 'Helicopter', 'Little Kids' and 'Memory Boy'. It was all so good, I didn't even mind the crazy middle-aged man screaming random lyrics in my ear.

Here's some videos (I'm really glad people got it on film, but the videos really understate the experience of being there):

This was their encore. It was brilliant (especially the joke).

The noises at the beginning of the video gives you a small taste of the amazing sonic soundscapes they conjured up throughout the gig.

This was the new song they opened with.

This was the brilliant Magazine cover that they also played on BBC 6music the night before.

And on the way home, I saw a man in a suit throw up what looked like bloody maggots. It was great.