Not to harp on about band names again or anything, but hasn’t Olly Gale done himself a favour by releasing music under the moniker Blue Boats as opposed to the name on his driver’s license?

I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with the name his parents chose, but – and I don’t wish to be mean, Olly – it’s more befitting of someone doing something more normal with their life than recording songs drenched in echo, lust and wonder.

A song like The Fear has all these characteristics, and more: it is the sound of a long, slow, calming sigh …

Another day, another anonymous side-project. One day, all posts on ANBAD will simply be a number, followed by a question mark and a Bandcamp link.

I’m starting to get the sneaking suspicion that these side projects are actually a lot more interesting and satisfying than the artist’s main band.

This could all be monumentally unfair on Tech Coast (or should I say Anon Band #592?), but until he/she/they provide any proof otherwise – which they won’t – I’m sticking with this hypothesis.

Once, like me, you manage to struggle beyond the sleuthing stage, what Tech Coast do reveal is …

Don’t get me wrong, writing about the titular New Band A Day is always a pleasure, never a chore, but while I never tire of the bands themselves, occasionally the process can become a grind.

Some days, though, that ennui is shunted away in a laser-blast, ray-gun, neon-coloured POP BLAST. I’ve been looking forward to writing about Lissi Dancefloor Disaster‘s new, brilliant EP, ever since LDD’s lovely Johan sent me a preview a month ago.

Lissi Dancefloor Disaster have been an ANBAD favourite for about a year since I saw them at In The City and I subsequently became first a fervent unpaid …

The laptop is a brutally efficient, endlessly alluring tool for musicians, but one whose major drawback is one and the same: it is just too easy to suck the life – shhhllllurrrrrppp! - right out of a song.

Conversely, folk music has exactly the opposite qualities: it takes forever to write a great song, but when you do, it’ll touch your audience in a way they never imagined.

Trwbador are not the first band to try to balance this dichotomy. They are one of few who have actually managed it – and how, creating a sound that is otherworldly, yet real; mechanical, yet tender.…

A new week begin, but old puzzles remain. Just what do you call your one-man house music project?

Of course, no-one wants to use their full name – that’s all a bit too Sven Väth – but then why disassociate yourself fully from the final product?

Such conundrums faced Eoghan Reid, who took inspiration from compatriots Bono, Dana and (The) Edge and decided that actually, one name was more than enough.

So ‘Reid’ it was, and Reid it is, producing silky-smooth, thunderously soft house music. House music is at its most devastatingly effective when kept almost absurdly simple, and, in his echo-drenched thumper …

I usually need no extra incentive to listen to another chunk of Swedish lo-fi guitar pop.

Listening to a new Scandinavian band is like taking part in a lucky dip where the prizes are hidden amongst other prizes. It’s surprisingly hard to go wrong.

Swedish jangle-pop is about as close to a sure bet as you get in the world of new bands. They’re almost universally exciting, quirky or dreamy. Sometimes they’re all three.

Kudos is reserved for Petter Seander, who successfully gilded the lily by not only providing the requisite slice of blissfully skewed scuzzy pop, but by giving away …

I had a conversation with someone recently that touched on that well-worn topic of Music These Days, Hey?

To cut a long story short (these kinds of conversations are always long, especially when they take place in a pub), we came to the conclusion that we’re entering the most thrilling period in music creation in memory.

This entirely spurious claim was based on the rise of technology that has finally allowed the people who always wanted to create music – but never had the time, money or nerve – to actually make it.

A whole section of society can now simply flip open a …

Sampling is not so much a lost art as it is one that has been shoved brutally aside by the twin ravages of mindless litigation and the mutually shrivelled attention span.

Why bother spending ages digging around for great sound snippets to sample and crowbar into a new song if you’ll get sued until the pips squeak, or if it’s easier to simply download a curated pack of pre-assembled sounds, make a generic Dubstep record, and still have time to brag about it on Facebook?

Records like the ones made by Monster Rally – yet another superb release from the …

I’m going to a music college today to talk to students about How To Promote Yourself To Music Blogs. No, I’m not sure why they didn’t ask someone more suitable either.

I was fairly certain that this talk was going to take up a lot less than its allotted time, as the advice could be boiled down to ‘make sure you have three great songs’, and then I realised I was simply kidding myself.

Because, as my regular reader will know (Hi, Dad!), if there’s one other thing that guarantees attention – on this blog at least – it’s a band name that …

Just how hard is it to create something that sounds new today? That’s not a rhetorical question, by the way, but – hey – it’s not entirely serious either.

With the weight of 60-odd years of pop music pressing heavily on the shoulders of new bands, it’s no wonder they usually reach into the recent past and replicate the sounds of bands that have gone before them.

The few bands that strive to do that little bit more – the ones who lightly skip past the window of opportunity marked “Oh, Just Make It Sound A Bit Like Mumford And …