There’s a thin line between the music found on, say, your average Boards Of Canada track, and those CDs of calming Whale Song music you can buy at petrol stations.

Maybe it’s worth noting that I say this as an enormous fan of Boards of Canada – albeit one who is puzzled by the possibility that music of that ilk works on a fundamentally different level to your bog-standard buzzy guitar-pop song.

There is nothing to prove that Theoish is a whale, but - intriguingly - nothing saying that he isn’t, and so we must remain in taxonomic limbo whilst enjoying the …

Has Dubstep become a good joke yet?

I mean, the gag about ‘waiting for the drop’ is shoehorned wryly into every other conversation I have about music at the moment, but it’s not so much of a joke as submissive recognition of Dubstep’s current all-pervasiveness.

Still, I’m all for artists, as DREΛMS has, to label their music “pre-Dubstep”, in a frankly devious attempt to erase the present and fork off a new future where the words WUB WUB WUB are even more meaningless than they are right now.

Of course, the cynical question is to ask, “so is Don’t Care …

A week or so ago, whilst feeling fruity, I posted this deliberately provocative statement on the ANBAD Twitter feed:

I mean, really, most people’s attraction to new guitar-based bands is purely based on a romantic attachment to bands of the past. (Discuss) — Joe Sparrow (@ANewBandADay) April 11, 2012

And in many ways, of course, I don’t believe this for a moment. For, as Dave Greenwald from the endlessly excellent Rawkblog noted almost immediately:

@ANewBandADay Or more likely to the sounds of the electric guitar as uniquely pleasing. — David Greenwald (@daverawkblog) April 11, 2012

He’s possibly/probably right …

By now, I’m no longer sure which is the most embarrassing: me featuring yet another great band from the brilliant, elusive Bad Panda label, or publishing yet another post which begins by apologising for exactly the same thing.

All pop songs should be about two minutes long. There’s really no need for any more than that. Artists toying with the idea of dragging-and-dropping another chorus onto the end of your soon-to-be-released meisterwerk: think carefully.

Not that I’d like to hold Ghostandthesong up as a good example or anything – but here’s a scruffy, scattered pop song only 1m59s in …

In an era where the mere act of opening a laptop plunges the user into a bottomless pit of sequencers, instruments and composition, where does one begin?

The questions pile up thick ‘n’ fast – which BPM is preferable in today’s fast-moving musical climes? Why select this echo-laden bleep over that one? Will your finished piece be written off as Neo-Witch House? (The horror).

Thus, I’m always thrilled to hear music that has simply been made at all: its mere existence is the result of beating the odds.

I’m even more thrilled when it sounds, at the very least, like …

Wales, as has been noted in many outlets on many occasions, produces a disproportionate quantity of good music for a country of its size.

It’s always been my theory that part of this can be chalked up to the – ahem – stubborn Welsh demeanour, a mindset fuelled by years of being on the receiving end of a bad deal from the big, grumpy country it borders.

Still, hundred of years of cultural oppression is a small price to pay for some great pop music, right?

She Ripped hail from Cardiff, and are another band who are struggling to get out of …

It really would be remiss of me if, after bleating for so long about the joys of the bedroom-recorded song, I was to feature new bands that had recorded their songs in, you know, a studio or something fancy like that.

Fortunately, it’s frighteningly easy to find new music recorded in a corner of a scruffy bedroom, with only a  laptop and a USB mic for company.

It’s harder, of course, to find songs that are actually good, but that’s why I have 650 emails from new bands in my inbox and also why I lay awake at night wondering …

One day Bad Panda Records will stop releasing good songs by great undiscovered artists on their admirably free-spirited, free-thinking label.

But a delve into their amazing back catalogue of releases indicates that the hit ratio they have managed so far will continue for a long time, possibly beyond merely mortal lifespans.

Thus we can stop worrying about an impending (Bad) Bad Panda-pocalypse and continue filling our boots with glorious low-end sunshine-songs like Andrea‘s Work The Middle (Kodak to Graph Rmx).

As The Kids veer further away from guitars and more towards laptops and samplers, a strange thing …

This week’s Midweek Mixtape dispenses with the need for a manipulated photo of Alex James (for the desperate, check last week’s gloomy-cheese special), simply because when truly special unedited pictures like the one on the left turn up, why bother to doctor it?

Thanks, as always, to Mr. James, for providing a winning metaphor for ANBAD: a machine endlessly churning out apparently-delicious morsels that often, on closer inspection, turn out to be mostly pig-anus.

MIXTAPE!

FIRST: Hey, who knows if Flow Revere’s music is legit or not? This kind of detail bothers some people, you know. Others, like the artist …

Where to begin with the UK Bass music scene? Its sound is disparate and yet conjoined; multifaceted whilst coherent in its addiction to bowel-loosening low notes.

These thin, bassy themes that draw all the assorted, mysterious, bedroom/dank-underground-nightclub dwelling producers together are what makes their music so tempting and curious: sounding dusty, dark and broken, yet innovative and new.

Grobbie may want to re-think his stage name at some point in the future (or not – Chaka Demus and Pliars got to number one whilst using their clunky monikers, so what do I know?) but whether his name conjours up images …