NB: Since publishing this post, Julian and I have conversed via email. Julian's actually a good guy whose frustration with the music industry's reluctance to give bands time to develop got the better of him, and I was just the person he vented his spleen to on the spur of the moment.

I don't blame him for his frustration - I share it - so happily, him and I have the same basic ideas and views on music, and all is well. However, the core points of the post remain important, so I'm keeping it up, though with this caveat.


Excitingly, I got my first hate e-mail the other day. It was from a man called Julian Deane, who apparently runs a company called Raygun Music Management. He manages a few decent bands. Julian said that 'most of the bands on ANBAD are shite' and that 'any idiot can post a Myspace address every day'.

Hate mail is rewarding in so many ways - it means that something I've done has riled someone enough to actually spend time letting me know how they feel. Hate mail has as much impact as the praising emails that I get, in that it further confirmed that ANBAD is on the right track - by aiming not to please all of the people all of the time.

I'll happily admit that not all the bands on ANBAD are as 'good' as the others, but only if you define 'good' by, say, the likelihood that lots and lots of people will like them, which in some people's eyes also translates into 'potential for record sales'.

ANBAD isn't about taking part in some sort of dick-swinging contest, desperately trying to find the next big band before anyone else. There are loads of websites doing that. We just want to find bands which sound like something we haven't heard before. That's the only criteria, really. If a band does go on to bigger things, just like early ANBAD alumi Dinosaur Pile-Up appears to be doing, we’re more than happy.

With all that in mind, maybe you'll like Today's New Band, or maybe you won't. Hopefully, you'll think that We Fly Ships sound like something that you haven't entirely heard before. We Fly Ships are perfect week-ending material, half relaxing and half bangin', just like all good weekends should be.

Sometimes they manage both of these opposing feelings in the space of one song - World in Reverse spends the first, loopy, misty minute threatening to explode, and then transforms into something big, fuzzy and enveloping. Listen to it and try to resist being groped by its tempting grooves and luxurious melody. You'll wish that you could be listening to it a lot louder in the same way that Orbital's albums are never quite as earth-shattering as their live, loud counterparts.

The Bears Are Dead is, frankly, a wonderful mixture of warm synth washes, clattering drums and manic dog-barking. Yes, it's verging on the boundaries of sanity, but that's usually a good thing. It sounds like an early Spiritualized song remixed by Adrian Sherwood which is then remixed again by, oooh, Mr Oizo.

We Fly Ships are as warm, loving and intimidating as getting a hug off someone who's E'd up to the eyeballs. Snuggle up to them here - maybe you'll be enraged enough to write me a stroppy email. And then read ANBAD - The eBook and work yourself into a frenzy of righteous anger.

Labels: About, instruMENTAL, Pick 'n' Mix, Tight beats

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Remember Grunge? The rat-tailed-wooly-jumpers-and-miserablism rock behemoth crawled from nowhere in the early 90s and then disappeared almost as quickly in a miasma of introspection, shotgun smoke and underwhelming MOR rock tarted up as a quasi-Nirvana dirge. Perhaps the oddest thing of all was that this scene grew up, almost by mistake, around a city as seemingly unassuming as Seattle.

The truth is that Seattle has an odd knack for throwing up great new music - look at the bands that have appeared on Sub-Pop over the years for proof. However, for every Sleater-Kinney and Modest Mouse, there's a Kenny G (shudder) or P.U.S.A. So sighs of relief all round, bbecause Today's New Band, Feral Children, have both feet firmly planted in the former camp of inventive, quirky rock, and there's not a lick of smooth, smooth jazz to be heard anywhere.

Their song Zyghost is remarkably bouncy, nestling cozily between mania, insanity and Johnny Marr's songbook. Simple and obscure at the same time, it's touching, bold and as good a song as you'll hear for ages. A bit like how Razorlight would sound if they were all the things they're not: inventive, daring and exciting.

Labels: Kenny G, SATAN, yelping

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Labels: Electro, Tight beats

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Why is it that at the exact point that you think that things are calming down, in reality - the reality that you can't see or feel or taste until it's poking you in the ribs and sneering - it's the exact opposite and suddenly you have a bazillion new things on your plate? Thanks, life. Thanks also to Today's New Band, who, usefully, provided an equally sudden calm today.

Dave Osbourn is Today's New Band. Dave Osbourn might not even be a band, using friends and acquaintances to pad out his sound. Either way, Dave Osbourn doesn't have the usual name you'd associate with gentle, electronic-y, folk-y hybrid music. I suppose I expected something more... post-apocalyptic, which is a moderately stupid thing to say, but is an adequate indicator of my mindset, and much more importantly, of the softly troubling music Dave makes.

Imagine the world ended in a nuclear catastrophe, and you were lucky enough to survive, and in the new wilderness you found a radio and scrolled through the dial. Dave Osbourne's music would be tucked away in the hiss. And you'd feel at ease with everything. Night Time Chances is a bitty, bare, mournful song that only just lifts itself off the floor, but with grace.

In his songs are one or two sounds that are just too quiet to be fully recognised, and the effect is slightly disarming. Right By, a song that almost reaches the dizzy heights of 'happy', but not quite, is full of echoing knocking sounds and faint washes of noise to spread warmth and confusion.

He says his songs are meant to be reassuring. They are. Self-intervene and soothe by listening to his songs here!

Coming Tomorrow: we're all thrilled to welcome new writer Jamie into the ANBAD 'fold'. His first post will be tomorrow and will not only delight, but inform, it says here. So come, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, tomorrow for his first dalliance with A New Band A Day!

Oh, and apologies for those of you that have been using Internet Explorer and wondering why the homepage has been so mangled. We're confused too. I'm working on it RIGHT NOW!

In the meantime, try the ANBAD eBOOK for happy memories of when ANBAD worked properly!

Labels: I am calm, nostalgia, slightly mournful

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SIX MONTHS ON - NEW BANDS, ANXIETY AND A GREATLY INCREASED WPM SPEED

So we made it this far. Writing about the titular New Band A Day was always going to be a gamble. The bit of us that still mourned the guiding hand of John Peel and the other bit that gets all twitchy when it hears Scouting For Girls on the radio again came together and rolled the dice, blindly, and frankly, hopefully.

The hope was that there were enough good new bands emerging at a fast enough rate to write about only the best ones; and moreover, the prospect that writing about these bands, every day, without fail, wouldn't drive even a moderately sane person to drink, desperation, or at the very least, to suffer from some, like, really bad headaches, man.

And despite the wholehearted efforts of general personal idiocy, the best efforts of my hopeless ISP [name removed on lawyer's advice] and that feeling of panic that sets in when searching for bands and only finding duff Kooks-a-likes, the concept of A New Band A Day worked. And now it's six months(-ish) later. Yikes.

So as a big thank-you to all the lovely people who visit the site in their surprising droves each day, all our many subscribers who receive A New Band A Day by email, and especially to all those wonderful people who make my life that little bit easier by recommending great bands to us, this e-Book is a compilation of all the best bands and writing from A New Band A Day.

So what's in the book? The bands are arranged under loose headings, most of which have come from their tags from the website and may not actually have much to do with them at all. So pick any section you like and go with it. It'll kill a lunchtime, at least. Some of the bands contained within you'll like, some you'll hate, and some of them will make you do what the kids call a 'WTF', apparently. But rest assured - none of them are anything like Razorlight.

I hope you enjoy it. If you do, feel free to email it to whoever you like! It's free, like 'free beer'.

Here's the link again, in case you missed it: ANBAD - THE BOOK!

Joe Sparrow – ANBAD – November 2008
eLibrary - Open Ebooks Directory - includes most of the ebooks sold on the internet. Free for addition of one's own ebooks.

Labels: A NEW BAND A DAY - THE BOOK

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In the mornings, whilst I'm shoveling yoghurt, museli and toast into my flapping mouth, I need to watch TV to to kick-start my addled brain. The only real option outside of the dull and worthy news channels is GMTV, which is the televisual equivalent of reading the Daily Mail whilst eating a full ENGLISH breakfast and complaining loudly about IMMIGRANTS and IT WASN'T LIKE THIS IN THE OLD DAYS.

This morning I wasn't able to perform my usual trick of phasing out all the moronic elements of GMTV, treating it purely as a mass of moving colours and shapes, and was forced to look elsewhere, in fear that I'd start worrying that a PAEDOPHILE IS ON EVERY STREET CORNER OH WHAT HAS THE WORLD COME TO.

I landed in desperation on an infomercial for a compilation of 'Midnight Soul' songs that featured tight harmonies and even tighter trouser crotches. The gist of the infomercial was, "Buy this nine-CD collection for only £39.99 and you are guaranteed SEX"

This is a decent selling point, I suppose, though one of the collection's featured artists was someone called Keith Sweat, which, unless you like spending sweaty intimate time with crooning men called Keith, is about as anti-sexy a name as there is. Today's New Band won't guarantee you sex. Let's make this absolutely clear now. They are The Trees, and they are from Basildon.

Neither of those details reek of imminent sexual gratification, but then again, would you want them to? The Trees are also another recession-friendly band (see yesterday's post), accessible to all and ready to jump into a Transit Van and tour the country. Their music is both comforting and sharpening, like a mug of cocoa laced with ground-up caffeine tablets.

Stop Talking, after warming up, pummels you into submission, drums relentlessly splashing and pounding. The song occasionally stops to ponder whether to cross the perilous line into late 80's baggy. Fortunately it never does, and we are all winners because of this. It sounds like lazy thrash. Good.

Dirty Money is a straight-up, excitable Riff-O-Rama, which all makes their song Odd One Out, the, er, odd one out, being folksy, dreamy and soft as a pile of goose down. The Trees are a band to end a tumultuous week on ANBAD with appropriate and disparate tumultuousness. Listen to them here!

PS - Oh, and next week, we're proud, in every sense of the word, to welcome a brand new writer on ANBAD, who'll be thrilling you with another New Band Perspective. More info, tantalisingly, next week...

Labels: all over the shop, chunky, your local band

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Seeing as people are getting all stroppy about money now the economy's plunged down the toilet, solid, tangible and safe things suddenly seem attractive. The price of gold has rocketed again as people realised that their money wasn't actually safe in, say, those 15 unbuilt city-centre apartments that are now mothballed.

This trait has drifted into rock 'n roll as well. At this point, allow me to engage in a some very minor name-dropping. I was chatting to the drummer out of Pete and The Pirates (CLANG) the other night, and he was commiserating with me over the excessive ticket price for the gig.

Even the bigger bands, he said, make the vast majority of their money from live gigs as opposed to CD sales now. Thus, the one thing that can't be bootlegged or put on a torrent site - the live gig, the un-digitisible tangible - is now the safe money maker, just like gold and oil and jewels.

So in times like these, perhaps the good ol' four-square rock band setup of guitars and drums and bass and singers will have more luck. Thus, invest your time, and money, if you have any left, into Today's New Band, Sister.

None of their songs depart from a standard rock template, giving singer Gemma a solid grounding to leap from. You won't need to see any of Sister's publicity photos to guess that she's very clearly the focal point, and for a truly valid reason - her vocals are engaging, believable and direct. Taking this straightforward rock starting point and create something that deviates from the norm is tough, but Sister have managed it, carving out songs that are bold, brash and yet sweet and articulate.

And as such, Satellite is heartfelt without descending into melodrama. It sounds pounding and sparse. Lovers of Today pops a large chorus into a song that seemed too fragile to hold it, but it works. Listen to them for yourself, right here, and stop fretting about the money you lost on High Yeild Commodity Price Movements, whatever they are.

Labels: chunky, female, your local band

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Two heart-warming stories in the news today. Firstly, the final solution, as it were, to the question that has kept all of us awake for the last 50 years - did Adolf Hitler have one or two testicles? The answer, according to UK rag The Sun, is - brace yourselves - only one. So now you know. The second story concerns the leak of those right-wing funsters The BNP's secret membership list.

The list has made all of the BNP's middle-aged xenophobes a bit hot under the collar. Far-Right political parties like the BNP go out of their way to portray themselves as serious concerns. This list has nicely knocked all that into a cocked hat, owing to the revealing notes next to each member's details - my favourite of which stated that one member wouldn't be renewing his membership because he objected to being told off for wearing a bomber jacket.

So now we have learned our second lesson of the day: ultra-right-wingers don't like to be told not to dress like nightclub bouncers. Poor things. A New Band A Day generally steers clear of politics, so you may be asking - what this has to do with rock 'n' roll? Well, not a huge amount, frankly. But after doing a quick search of the database, and finding a truly depressing number of members in my hometown, I needed cheering up. Enter Today's New Band, Oh!

Oh! are from Guadalajara, which is a whole lot of fun to say out loud, and their songs are short, ethereal bursts of creativity. Listening to them sucks you instantly out of your day-to-day routine, to a happy place that feels a bit like a warm, comfortable bed.

Once Upon A Time is minimalist to the point of almost non-existance, a slow repetetive drone that's somewhere between a distant pealing of a bell and a slowed-down recording of a heartbeat. Little Jerbil Life Form ping-pongs in the unusual way you'd expect of a song with a name like that.

In some ways Oh!'s songs are half-formed, in the nicest way. Songs like Happy Noaniversary pop in from a starting point you don't hear, and unravelling before an ending they'll never get to. Their songs are self-contained and you, the suddenly docile listener, bob along with Oh! on their short, light, peaceful journeys. Hold hands with them here, and forget all about everything, softly and gently.

Labels: drifting, satisfyingly short, tinkling

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In these recession-ridden times, hidden value - getting more than your bargained for - is about as good as it gets. This is especially true if you think that you've been diddled out of too much money in the first place. An example: when I went to see Pete and The Pirates last night, they had to prize the £9.50 out of my clammy hand. I paid it with half reluctance and half comfort - on one hand, nine pounds bloody fifty is a lot of money to see a band that hardly dents the Top 40, but then on the other hand, if that band is as good as P&TP, who cares?

They were, indeed, great. Lovely, charming, inventive tunes with lovely, charming, inventive lyrics. They reminded me a bit of James - not in their sound, but in their arty contrariness. But what made me totally forget all about the cost was the fact that their support band, Ex Lovers, were superb too. And so, in a fit of inevitable cunning, they are Today's New Band.

Ex Lovers just work. There are so many bands that aren't quite there - a good singer with a clunky band, or a great guitarist in a band that writes sub-Travis dirge. But Ex Lovers all fit together perfectly, like Stickle Bricks. And like Stickle Bricks, each bit of the band is different, and contributes something good to the whole. (No more dreadful toddler's toy analogies, I promise.)

Their gentle songs have that great indie coyness that has been hitherto trampled over in the rush for 'dancefloor' staccato beats and choppy too-cool guitars. Listen to Just A Silhouette, and swoon to the dreamy vocals, snappy hooks and the way it drifts into the chorus. Then - more hidden value - bathe yourself in the total absence of pretentiousness.

There's something softly defiant about Ex Lovers - all the songs sound like they are just about to dissolve nihilistically into warm fuzz. When I saw them last night, they were smart enough to only let that happen once or twice.

Ex Lovers play songs that do exactly what you were hoping they'd do, just when you were hoping it would happen. Thanks, Ex Lovers, for making that £9.50 seem like a bargain. Their songs are like soft electricity, a descripiton which I freely accept is the most pretentious phrase I have ever typed. But it fits. Listen to them here.

Labels: actual brilliance, embarassingly pseud review, wistful

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THE EXCITING ALL-NEW A.N.B.A.D. RE-LAUNCH WEEK!

A New Band A Day has changed! Not by a huge, terrifying amount, but enough to make everything look and work better. It's been a long time since our old friends, The Alibies, were the first band on A New Band A Day, and as the writing got better, the website was still its clunky old self. It was time for a clean broom, and everything (if you understand the word 'everything' to mean 'a few bits and pieces here and there') is sparkling and new!

The robot has been terminated, and been replaced by something that doesn't look like it's been drawn by a five year-old idiot. The migraine-inducing orange has gone too, and has been replaced by a migraine-inducing vomity-green-ish colour instead. Yum. The old cassettes have gone too, and have been by the higgledy-piggledy pile of tapes on the right, which now act as your links. Go on, click them and try them out!

On top of that, there's a whole host of other new stuff, including a new fancy-pants Social Bookmarking feature at the bottom of each post that actually works properly this time (a big thanks to everyone who Diggs, Mixxes and Stumbles us, by the way). It includes two new buttons which will put ANBAD onto your iGoogle page as either an RSS feed or an exciting Google Gadget.

The one thing that hasn't changed is the dedication to bringing you all the best new, unheard-of, unsigned or unusual bands every single day; which, along with the dedication to highlighting bands that use dreadful puns, or make a noise like a spacehopper filled with spanners, I hope will continue to form part of your daily routine.

HUGE thanks to all the surprising numbers of you who subscribe by email, rss, or just drop by the site every day - and an even bigger thanks, with big wet auntie-kisses, to all those of you who email us. It's been a thrill-ride so far!

There'll be a few more bowel-looseningly brilliant surprises throughout the week, so keep 'em peeled, space cadets! Oh, and if you know anyone who'd be interested in the all-new ANBAD, and you feel like sharing the love, we'd be thrilled if you let them know.

Love and MAN-HUGS from Joe - ANBAD

P.S. - If you're reading this on the mail-out - click here to see the new site in all it's glory!

Labels: About, Gimmicks, Round Up

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The A New Band A Day Internet Monkey has been hard at work behind the scenes recently. Changes are afoot, and shortly, ANBAD will 'relaunch' (i.e. look a bit different, but not too different) with a whole host of 'new' and 'exciting' 'features' to scroll unexcitedly through before clicking on the link to The Onion.

If you are one of the zillions of our lovely email-subscribing readers, have one last look at the old site - it'll make you feel even more underwhelmed when the new one is whelped, jaundiced and screaming into the internet world. Otherwise hold tight and prepare for wide-ranging, skyscraping* change!

People don't like change, as a rule. In ANBAD's case, change was deemed necessary because the website looks a bit like it was cobbled together by a computer-illiterate colour-blind idiot with a mild obsession with vinyl-munching robots. In music, band after band claw onto what they know and daren't change a thing. As anyone who has attended a business seminar and is well versed in corporate bullshit will know - sharks have to keep moving, or they die. If we extrapolate this information to the music world, this makes Oasis a dead Hammer-Head.

We hold the most admiration for bands who, at the very least, try something new. So here's Death Of Concorde, Today's New Band, trying something new. The fruity-sounding Bath Partners is a jittering delight, lush and sparse all at once. Old Hammond organs swoosh about, deforming and collapsing into new sounds as and when needed. Communism is a song title that sounds like it ought to be on Side Two of David Bowie's Low, but wouldn't fit, what with it being a mentalist, mechanoid monster of a song, sampling both heavy metal riff-o-rama and fairground organs.

It sounds like Death of Concorde are eager to squeeze the wrong shaped blocks into the wrong holes, and manage to do it too, without their sounds becoming either a mess or contrived. Concorde Museum shimmers, wanes and echoes like a tape recording of an orchestra put through a guitar chorus effect pedal, always just on the right side of becoming all-out white noise. Melodic and dense, it's a soundscaping delight, pushing textures here and there excitedly.

So, as you hold your breathe excitedly for the ALL! NEW! ANBAD!, why not tune in and space out with Death of Concorde, and ease your passage into oxygen-starved unconsciousness...

*actually quite minor

Labels: instruMENTAL, mechanical, not-quite-NOISE

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Pitchfork, the music review website that is both pleasingly with it and, occasionally, maddeningly snobbish all at once, recently published a review of five re-issued versions of New Order's albums. It's a review which, for once, succinctly captures exactly what was so wonderful about them.

In contrast to The Charlatans (see yesterday's post) who failed to gain heroic status despite years of straining, New Order leapt there instantly without, seemingly, either trying or wanting to be there. I can't think of many bands who were so delightfully haphazard, arty and contrary, without any of those qualities being excruciatingly embarrassing. The only embarrassment present in New Order's case was the sense of awkwardness the band displayed when they suddenly realised they were, for a while, the most excitingly brilliant band in the world.

Unassuming, quiet and haphazard in their approach, they still managed to produce some of the most touching, belligerent and powerfully ecstatic music ever written. No posing, no pondering on how to achieve importance (hi, Bono!), just a heads-down approach to pushing boundaries and having a good time.

If you're like me, you'll already be scrolling through iTunes to find Power, Corruption and Lies, but before you take that trip back to 1983, how about Today's New Band, Thomas Tantrum?

Perhaps reminiscing about one of the greatest ever British bands immediately prior to introducing a new one is a bit unfair, but it doesn't really matter, 'cos Thomas Tantrum are great. Moreover, the rigid beats and polymedlodies of their super song Rage Against The Tantrum owe a bit to New Order, so perhaps it's all a neat circle. Rage Against... made me think of The Popguns a bit, which is enough to make these jaded ears prick up with joy.

Whether they're veering here and there on Warm Horse, or making the most disorientating pop music of all time on What What What, Thomas Tantrum are a true treat. They pull together the oft-disparate strands of noise rock and sparkly pop with true aplomb, and even find time to inadvertently bait the BNP with the swirling, heady Why The English Are Rubbish. Brilliant. Get confused in a kind of cute, pleasingly disarming way here!

Labels: 80's/90's, all over the shop, happy happy joy joy

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There was a girl who I met at art college. Her name was Laura, and she managed to be both swaggeringly masculine (her haircut, her demeanour, her clothes) and sweetly feminine (big coy brown eyes, cute cheekbones and pink lips) all at once. One of the things that I remember the most is that she told me that her favourite band of all time - of all time - was The Charlatans.

The Charlatans are a strange lot. They're one of those bands that nearly attained greatness, but never quite got there. From their baggy roots, through their middle (and best) stage as 60's-ish rockers, to the soul-y rock that they make now, they've always nearly been the best, but not quite. I can't imagine anyone ever placing them as their favourite band, and yet I knew someone who told me that they were.

This just goes to demonstrate again that taste is subjective, and is one of the main reasons I love writing about new bands. I genuinely hope that not all of bands on ANBAD are liked by you ANBAD readers, but I do hope that the ones that you do like make a real connection.

So with that in mind, maybe you'll like Today's New Band, Ghetto Mullet, and maybe you won't. But we hope you'll listen to them all the same, so that you can find out.

When they're not conjuring up images of business-at-the-front-party-at-the-back hairdos, Ghetto Mullet make similarly business-at-the-front-party-at-the-back instrumental hip-hop. It's a sound that you'll know almost straight away whether you 'get' it or not - you could either find it to be the kind of music that is perfect for a certain mood, or you could find that no mood you ever have will fit. Who knows.

Ghetto Mullet are great music to listen to as you concentrate on something else. That is meant as a compliment. To my ears, Rampant Thought is complicatedly twitchy and involving, yet nicely disassociated from the need for direct, concentrated thought. Arriving in Obscurity exists in a fug of scratches, radio fuzz and tape hiss, and similarly Feel It, probably Ghetto Mullet's most arresting song, thunders along with samples of radio bleeps, and what might be the sound of someone thumping a dustbin.

Today's Lesson: Just 'cos you don't like the sound of it doesn't mean someone else doesn't love it. A bit like Morris Dancing, only less humiliating, and with fewer bells, sticks and hankies. Ghetto Mullet: possible Morris Dancers for the 21st Century! Listen here!

Labels: all over the shop, loopy, sleepy

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Winter has well and truly arrived here in Manchester. Initially, it came in fits and starts, drunkenly staggering frostily here and there, but now it's running its icy fingers up and down all our spines, and my extremities are in a constant state of chilly anxiety.

Manchester is renowned for its dreadful weather. Pewter-grey skies are the norm, usually accompanied by a constant fine drizzle which, helpfully, saps one's will to live within days. Look at this webcam, and I'm willing to gamble the image you'll see will be 50% fuzzy grey. Living in Manchester is like living inside Tupperware. It's no wonder Mancunian bands like The Smiths, Joy Division and The Fall are so relentlessly downbeat.

Today's New Band, Yes Please! hail from the outrageously named places of Espoo, Olari, Uusimaa in Finland. If that isn't making you splutter into your mug of coffee, then you, sir/madam, are not human.

At ANBAD, we have a soft spot for bands from the north of Europe, due to their almost unwavering lust for jangly pop songs. Yes Please! proudly exhibit this love too. Imaginary Success is about as growlingly hostile as Finnish guitar pop gets, a big heaving song that runs and runs and runs and then collapses. Enjoy and Laugh also flits between their twin ideals of brassy pop and earnestness.

Yes Please! was the name of the Happy Monday's last, dreadful album. They were from Manchester too, but their music was stupendously, well, happy - though this may have had something to do with the industrial quantities of drugs they consumed. Yes Please! the band are nothing like the Happy Mondays, but their music is just as joyfully enthusiastic. Listen here!

Labels: Finland, jangle, Manchester

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Here at A New Band A Day, we like to think that we're cocky and hard, a bit like Robert DeNiro in Mean Streets, whereas actually we're the wussy streaks of Indie piss that you'd have imagined. To counter this innate sense of wimpish patheticness, we all stayed up until well past our bedtimes to watch the Calzaghe vs Jones Jnr fight over the weekend.

The idea of being a boxer is quite attractive in some ways - who wouldn't like to be a mass of muscle, quick reactions and bloody cuts? Plus, soaking up all that female adulation kind of compensates for all those brain cells that get squished every time you step into the ring.

As much as I'd like to see Tom Chaplin from Keane - the most terrifyingly middle class band alive - plonked into a sparring session with Joe Calzaghe, I know it's not going to happen. Rock stars are wusses. That's why they're rock stars in the first place, see - being a rock star is the wimp's alternative to being a boxer. You get a chance to grab all the attention, women and admiration, but without the hours of blood, sweat and tears.

And talking of wanting attention, welcome Genio and Ginesio, who say that making music is their third love, after sex and football. This seems a fairly reasonable ranking in the grand scheme of things. Their remix of Articolo 31's Voglio Una Lurida is frighteningly jolly. Listening to it is like being attacked with marshmallows, aggressive in its mission to cheer you up. The song itself will leech imperceptibly into your brain and then burrow its way so far in you'll be whistling its weird regga/gabba (reggabba?) refrain all day long.

Genio and Ginesio's trick is to take a great song and flip its constituent components around. This sounds like a simple game to play, but is fraught with hazards - the most troublesome being the danger that the resulting new song will be worse than the original. They dodge this successfully - and turn the Beastie Boys' So What'cha Want into a big, rumbling and humming electro crusierweight of a song, light enough to move and heavy enough to hurt.

If being a musician makes you a boxer by proxy - a proxy boxer, if you will - then it must make us listeners the equivalent of Jack Nicholson cosying up to some fashion models in the ringside seats. That makes me happy. Grab a supermodel, a cigar and listen to Genio and Ginesio here!

Labels: Italian, remix, wandering minds

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So, two stories to tell today. Firstly, I somehow only remembered at the very last minute that I wouldn't have time to post anything today, due to innumerable computer/human interface-complications. Panic set in immediately. This is Idiotic Moment Number 2.

The GOOD NEWS, though, was that the consequences of Idiotic Moment Number 2 has been rescued by Idiotic Moment Number 1, which was usefully conceived and executed a few weeks ago, and then stored away for a rainy day like this. I knew this combination of a hoarding instinct and innate stupidity would pay dividends one day.

Idiotic Moment Number 1 began when I was recommended a band, who were so great I immediately began typing the review, before I'd checked small details like, "are they new and/or still functioning as a group?" only to find after writing that neither was indeed the case. This particular band has been around for a few years and split up a while ago. Durrrr.

So I saved it anyway, and now it's reprinted below for your delectation. Yum. Enjoy the flavour of stupidity.

Labels: already split up, Blame Canada, creative overload

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I slept really well last night. REALLY well. One of those deep sleeps where it feels like your body is slowly sinking, forever, into a pile of goose feathers and dreams are about marshmallows, bunny rabbits and cotton wool. Hence I woke feeling as relaxed as George Michael behind the wheel of his Range Rover.

I don't know if my mind just took pity on me, or the deep slumber meant that it wasn't awake quick enough to being inflicting annoyance on me again, but instead of having the usual dreadful novelty pop hit stuck on repeat in my brain, I awoke with Saint Etienne's I Was Born On Christmas Day lodged defiantly between my ears.

This kind of good fortune only happens once in a while, so I greedily capitalised on it by watching the video over and over again on Youtube, just to cement it in place. It's a lovely song, without irony or pretence, and is coyly romantic and twee, without plunging into cloyingness. Tim Burgess from The Charlatans is in it too, which just about knocks it into 'perfect pop song' territory.

Today's New Band is a bit of a stark contrast to St. Etienne. Kaisonia, not to be confused with ANBAD alumni Kaiton, makes spacey, drifting music that, as a quick glance at their Myspace page might infer, is particularly intergalactic. If I was being glib (and I am) I'd say that Kaisonia is a bit like the Orb, but more... now.

In fact, if you are stuck in a slight sugar-rush pop buzz at the moment and need to shift your attention before you listen to the same song 15 times in a row (see footnote), Kaisonia might be your first port of call. Their music might well be the audio equivalent of a hot bath and a foot massage.

It's difficult, and possibly pointless, when reviewing bands like this (see also: Boards of Canada and their ilk), to isolate individual track and comment on them. This sort of lilting, ethereal music doesn't fit into, and isn't restrained by, a traditional short-song format. It's more satisfying to take the string of songs as a whole, and judge the experience as you go along. In this context, Kaisonia are fabulously weird, dream-like and rigidly loose, if you see what I mean.

You'd be daft (and infinitely less 'chilled, maaaan') if you didn't dip your toe into Kaisonia's pool. So do so, here. Oh, and judging by their website, that pool might be a molten sulphur lake on Venus. Just so you know.

N.B. Prior to the writing of this post, Joe listened to I Was Born On Christmas Day 15 times in a row. Yikes.

Labels: drifting, loopy, sleepy

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One of the problems of constantly searching for new bands to feature on A New Band A Day is that, having heard all the great new stuff out there, all the music on my iPod is left sounding stale and old. I'll frequently spend 10 minutes spooling through all the bands on it, only managing to think of reasons not to listen to them. Why listen to an old Mansun album when you could be playing the new bunch of craziness from Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs?

Well, as I reminded myself yesterday when my iPod picked it on shuffle, because it's great, and that's why you bought it in the first place, you sieve-memoried-idiot. Mansun's vaguely stupidly-title