Fabchannel.com - given the name, you won’t be surprised to hear it’s Dutch - has a pretty good webcast tonight. They’re showing indie darlings Of Montreal, supported by Casiokids, live and for free on their site from 7.30pm.
The site, rather like Grand Crew in France, allows you to stream high-quality footage from previous performances as well. As I write I’m looking at MGMT’s performance at the Paradiso in Amsterdam, where Of Montreal will play tonight.
Other extremely decent acts whose gigs you can stream include Those Dancing Days, Junior Boys, The Teenagers Calexico, Kate Nash, Lightspeed Champion and the dearly departed Pipettes.
Head here to see Of Montreal live tonight

Posted by Stuart Waterman on Wednesday January 21st, 2009 at 12:35 pm

A heck of a lot has been written about Spotify recently, but since Shiny Media’s office soundtrack is currently being provided by the application it’s only fair I give it a mention as well.
Spotify is an application you download, and then it provides you with free access to stream thousands of tracks and full albums. The interface is really easy to use and you don’t need to wait for tracks to load up - they just play. Then, if you want, you can drag and drop them into a playlist which you can send to other Spotify users as a URL. You can also make your playlist collaborative, so other users can add tracks remotely.
That’s what we’ve been doing in the office, meaning the music we work to can vary wildly and, as you’d expect, lead to witch-hunts where we try and root out the person who put on “Cotton-Eye Joe” (actually, that was me). The one catch is that every 20 minutes or so you’ll hear a short advert, which seems a small price to pay for such a wide selection of free music.

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Posted by Stuart Waterman on Wednesday January 21st, 2009 at 11:50 am

Siobhan Donaghy’s Ghosts has won We7.com’s contest to discover the most underrated album in all of history.
A bit of a surprise, but for me personally quite a pleasant one, because I nominated it.
In an interview with We7 Siobhan discusses the “mixed emotions” she has towards the project, the rather shocking incompetence of the CD manufacturer which affected its first week sales, and what she thinks of Sugababes these days (clue: not much).
Sadly Siobhan doesn’t seem to be up for trying her luck in the music industry again - read the interview in its entirety here to hear why…

Posted by Stuart Waterman on Tuesday January 20th, 2009 at 3:20 pm

SoundCity, the toppermost industry schmoozefest in this here land, takes place this May in Liverpool. Earlybird tickets are now available for the criminally reasonable price of £35.
HOWEVS, if you are an unsigned band you might be able to attend for nowt by getting on the bill of the event. And as a wee bonus, you can submit your demo for consideration for free if you do so before 30th January (after that date it will cost £7.50).
Click over for all the info…

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Posted by Stuart Waterman on Tuesday January 20th, 2009 at 2:35 pm

Kid Cudi didn’t quite hit the number one spot yesterday - Lady GaGa held on for another week - but he did go in at number two with the Crookers remix of “Day ‘N’ Nite”, which is no mean feat.
He spoke to DJ Semtex about his pretty swift rise to success, and although he’s enjoying the exposure and the fact he’s about to sign a huge record deal, you can tell he’s a little ambivalent about the fact that it’s a dance remix that has taken him overground…

[semtextv]

Posted by Stuart Waterman on Monday January 19th, 2009 at 12:25 pm

This is a delightfully bizarre little scenario. The consensus seems to be that Japanese Cartoon is a side project of Lupe Fiasco. However the “band” is keen to let us all know that the singer is actually someone by the name of Percival Fats. Although they admit Lupe is their producer. Got that?
It seems pretty likely it is Mr Fiasco, but the interesting thing for UK fans of his music is the accent he employs.

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Posted by Stuart Waterman on Monday January 19th, 2009 at 11:00 am

Steven Tyler, lead singer of Aerosmith, how did you balance lengthy spells on the road back in the day with life as a married man?
You didn’t have sex for 10 days at the end of tour, but that was so you’d be sure to go home with a full cup of chowder. If you didn’t, you were definitely suspect.
Thanks Steven! Anything else?
Don’t get fuckin’ married. Lie till you die.
Thanks Steven! Bye now.
[Source: Spinner]

Posted by Stuart Waterman on Monday January 19th, 2009 at 10:20 am

If you flipped your lid at Empire Of The Sun’s “Walking On A Dream”, and the accompanying Bowie-in-China-style video, you will be pleased to know that their new video for “We Are The People” is similarly flamboyant.
Face paint and bewilderingly silly headgear are still very much in evidence, for which Empire Of The Sun get a big tick. Likewise the fact that part of the video has quite possibly been shot in the same lagoon that bathed the rippling frame of Peter Andre circa his “Mysterious Girl” video.

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Posted by Stuart Waterman on Friday January 16th, 2009 at 1:25 pm

I knew the bass line to the song, of course, but I couldn’t quite master this new, different way of playing it.
So sayeth former Nirvana bassist and hairytall legend Krist Novoselic, who found himself having a go at “In Bloom” in a store, bless him.
Meanwhile, this kid was watching me fumble with the game. I became self-conscious and took the controller off. I handed it to him, and he proceeded to jam on the song-and was really good! He had no idea that I was the musician he was emulating on the game, and I didn’t tell him.
I wouldn’t have told him either, Krist. He would have laughed at you. And probably not believed you :(
Read the rest of Krist’s blog post at Seattle Weekly
[via Fark Music]

Posted by Stuart Waterman on Friday January 16th, 2009 at 12:40 pm

This feels thoroughly unseemly, but if I can pimp other people’s work erry damn day I should be allowed to pimp my own now and again I think.
To mark the forthcoming “official” release of Tinchy Stryder’s unavoidable “Take Me Back”, I decided to help the young man try and find the lady to whom he finds himself begging in said tune.
My quest took me to dark, strangerous places no man should have to visit - like the recesses of the HMV website’s “customer reviews” section (see image above).
If you would like to see how my epic mission went head over to The Lipster, where I done wrote it…

Posted by Stuart Waterman on Friday January 16th, 2009 at 11:40 am