Noisy Neighbours.

No Noisy Neighbours are not the latest great band I've discovered, although its a better name than 'Vampire Weekend'. I just have neighbours who will not shut up. I would post about it here except that they have really bad musical taste. This wouldn't be a problem if they didn't insist on playing their music so loud that the whole street can hear it. They like very basic house/techno. So basic in fact it sounds like they might just be listening to a sample of the world's most boring beat. Perhaps the walls filter out all the great details of their favourite tracks but by the sound of it, the walls are not preventing much of the sound reaching me. I like Drum And Bass, I would just prefer not to feel it vibrating the floor. Perhaps I should buy them some headphones or double glazing, either way it must stop!

The Complete Sound Mix

I thought I would share some music I have been enjoying lately with you. There is a nice mix of different styles, mostly Indie with a bit of Dubstep, Electro and Dance.
Click the arrow below to stream.

TRACKLISTING:

Jens Lekman - The Opposite of Hallelujah 4:19
Neutral Milk Hotel – Everything Is 3:40
Foals – Cassius 3:48
Klaxons – It's Not Over Yet 3:34
Vampire Weekend – Oxford Comma 3:14
Burial – Archangel 4:01
Justice – D.A.N.C.E. [Justice Remix] 4:01
Simian Mobile Disco – Hustler (Club Version) 6:36
Hot Chip – Over and Over 5:49
Robyn – Konichiwa Bitches 2:39
LCD Soundsystem – North American Scum 5:24
Battles – UW 3:00
Liars – Plaster Casts of Everything 3:57
Cat Power – The Greatest 3:24
Cursive – Big Bang

The Crimea - 'Secrets of the Witching Hour' free album download

I discovered The Crimea via a television advert. Not the best place to find new music I grant you but it worked well this time. You might have seen the advert, it features a man going on a magical adventure through a world populated by bunny rabbits, clouds etc. This strange journey is bought about by a piece of chewing gum. I'm not sure if the gum was spiked with some kind of psychedelic drug or not but either way the music stands out from all the rubbish normally featured on adverts (with a few exceptions).




It turns out that the band who created the song, The Crimea were formed from the ashes of the first ever rock band I saw, many moons ago. Back then they were called The Crocketts and were fronted by a man named Davey Crockett, who, to my young mind at least, was a complete lunatic. I saw them supporting The Levellers and they blew me away. I soon stopped listening to The Levellers (in my defense) but always kept an ear out for The Crocketts.
After The Crocketts were dropped by V2 Davey "Crockett" MacManus and Owen Hopkin went on to form The Crimea who were dropped from Warner Bros after one album. Their latest album 'Secrets of the Witching Hour' is available to download for free from their website. This seems like a good approach for them at this point. It should result in a lot more people getting to hear, and love, the album. People have nothing to lose in giving it a try after all!

I read an interesting article on Wired.com entitled 'Free! why $0.00 is the future of business' which puts forward a very compelling argument for big businesses giving away products (and regaining the loss elsewhere). This is reliant on the low costs of production and distribution, particularly online. I would guess that the costs involved in releasing an album for free online are minimal even if recording time is not. With physical album sales falling drastically and illegal downloading becoming so prevalent even your nan is doing it, this looks to be a trend that will grow and grow. I only hope that the band can recoup the costs elsewhere. Not having to give a cut of the profits to a record company must help (although The Crimea have also released a CD for the hardcore fans.)

As fans of music I think we should try to support the artists we listen to, particularly those who are not living in a mansion somewhere moaning about people stealing their music. Maybe the lack of money spent on albums will mean an increase in gig goers or more money spent on merchandise.

Check out the video below to save me trying to describe the band's sound because I can only think of hackey, cliched ways of putting it and this isn't the NME, so we will have none of that here thankyou-very-much.

MGMT - Time to pretend - Live on Letterman.

I can't get this song out of my head. I recommend you check out the video here (The Youtube version is not embeddable, just in case, heaven-forbid, somebody decides to distribute the video on their blog. Record labels seem to have forgotten that videos are PROMOTIONAL material.) Just listening to the rest of the album now. Its much more guitar orientated than I expected from this song. It's sort of funky and spaced-out. Reminds me of AIR, prog and The Flaming Lips. As beatlawrence notes the album is created with traditional instruments more than electronics. This seems a bit of a shame to me but it is defiantly worth a listen and sounds like it will stand up to repeated spins.

The Klaxons and Rihanna Live at the Brits

I was planning on trying not to post about big mainstream music events. It seems silly everyone in the blogosphere (I promise to never use that word again here) posting about the same things all the time. It’s always good to break your self-imposed rules however, even if it is in the first proper post. And thus, I present, The Klaxons and Rihanna Live at the Brits.



I've posted this because I like both Rihanna and The Klaxons. When I was younger I went through stages (didn't we all) of being fiercely loyal to the genre of music I was listening to at the time. This was normally rock music of some description. Any other type of music, especially, god-forbid, pop music was considered artistically redundant toss aimed at the hard-of-thinking. Now that I’ve grown up a bit and I'm not searching for some kind of identity in opposition to others I’m much more free and easy in what music I listen to.

This also may be down to factors other than just growing older. These days genre cross-pollination seems to be much more prevalent. Bands and DJs and listeners move between rock, grime, electro, pop, world and anything else you care to mention without a care in the world. The music available is much richer because of this. This idea, along with hundreds of other interesting developments in the world of music is covered in Paul Morley's wonderful book Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City which I fully recommend.

The performance was the first time The Klaxons met Rihanna, they explained to Radio 1:

“It’s been a bit of a funny one because obviously she’s in America and they’ve got this funny idea of what our band sounds like.
We've done three of four different versions of the track. I think we have found something we're both happy with. It's good!”

First

Hello and welcome to my new blog. Stick around if you are interested in music and please feel free to comment. The title 'The Complete Sound' is a reference to Luigi Russolo's Futurist manifesto 'The Art Of Noises' written in 1913. Russolo refered to the chord/harmony as The Complete Sound.