Firstly, this post needs to be appearing after the mandatory Two Week Christmas Recovery Period, where all email is automatically deleted, and any mentions of a trudge through Soundcloud or Bandcamp is deflected with a nervous laugh and the tinkle of another gin and tonic being poured.

Secondly, the ‘site’ (no-one has a blog any more) is spruced up to be slightly cleaner, slightly more obtuse and slightly hinting at a desire to make it a success this year.

And thirdly, all bloggers must make some sort of predictions about what might happen, and who might become successful in the coming year. This thankless task is repeated each year, just in case one of us is right, and can then brag that we tipped Band X first, even before other bloggers liked them, which is a move of such post-hipster idiocy, I can hardly think about it.

So: here we go –  an almost month-by-month series of predictions for 2012.

January

In the euphoric haze that arose from being listed in so many End-Of-2011 lists as the Next Big Thing, bloggers’ favourite Lana del Rey decides to take her tedious obsession with death to the logical conclusion by declaring herself deceased. All her earnings are used by her label to plan for her second coming (see June).

February

US Postal Service announces that the mass of Justin Bieber‘s valentine cards is ‘significantly more ludicrous’ than in 2011.

April

Almost-mysterious band Wu Lyf announce that the follow up to their almost-smash-hit 27th Best Album of 2011 will channel the spirit of neo-mysticism, but will be played with guitars and stuff and sound a bit like U2 demos.

June

Lana del Rey‘s carefully stage managed resurrection on the road to Damascus is obscured from an audience of millions by a broken-down truck loaded with almonds.

September

Wu Lyf announce a new project that will be 75% more accessible in order to attract mainstream chart success, and it will be called Wu Lite.

November

The BBC Sounds of 2013 poll reveals that the panel of tastemakers voted for the songs they really liked that were plugged by PR people around the time of the poll being sent out.

December

Viva Brother announce that their forthcoming album is cancelled for the good of humanity, and swear they won’t ever make any music ever again. No-one notices. The NME immediately responds with an RIP Viva Brother Collector’s Edition.

Related posts:

1. MIDWEEK MIXTAPE // 5th October 2011
2. Dolfinz; and Furious Machiavellian Machinations
3. ANBAD’s Best Bands Of 2011 // The Runners-Up (Part 1)

Well, in answer to the first question: yes, they were on ANBAD in 2010 – I saw them play a short, brilliant gig to an empty room underneath Oldham Street in Manchester and simply had to tell someone about it.

In answer to he second and most important question: they are #1 because, simply, LDD’s Pop Musiiic wheedled its way into my brain from the instant I heard it in October, and I’ve been humming its insane keyboard break ever since.

And if you need a better reason than that, then it’s time to take life less seriously.

LDD totally disappeared after I saw them. Then they reappeared, a year later, with this song. Bands are here-today-gone-today nowadays, so their return counts for something.

How many bands are really, honestly determined to cast off the shackles of currently accepted cool, plough their own furrow, and create a flat-out pop song?

By which I don’t mean making a pop song with a nod-and-a-wink, but pop music that actively longs, positively urges us to revel in its hooks, a sing-song melody and manic keyboard noodles.

I’d happily, and dutifully, count all the ways this song fulfils all the Perfect Pop criteria: it’s two and a half minutes long, it milks a brilliant chorus dry, it celebrates pop itself, etc., but really who can be bothered in the face of such a kaleidoscopic onslaught of Scandinavian Pop Excellence?

How about this for hyperbole: in a time when the biggest selling pop stars are making million-selling, thunderously direct dance-pop songs just like this, would Rhianna sing Pop Musiiic?

I think: probably.

Maybe Lissi Dancefloor Disaster‘s presence on this list sort of breaks the rules. Well, fine. Consistency has never been a part of the plan, and I’m not going to let a song like this pass me by. But hey, these lists are also meaningless, right?

So celebrate the now: indulge your base passions in a fascinatingly creative band with all 20 fingers pressed clammily to Pop’s pulse; a band who are usual and unusual enough to raise even the hippest of eyebrows. Excellent.

ANBAD’s original post // Fascinating interview on Swedish pop with Johan from LDD // LDD’s blog

(And in answer to the latter question in the first paragraph: you really ought to know this by now.)

Related posts:

1. Lissi Dancefloor Disaster: Superlative Overload
2. MIDWEEK MIXTAPE // In The City Special 2
3. TV-Ad Competition Update! Plus! Bonus Best-Of-2010 Band!

Nearly there now… don’t forget to check out the runners up (

How did Trwbador sneak into the number two slot? They’re just so unassuming. Look at them. They wouldn’t even bruise a fly, let alone hurt one.

Well, bluntly, it’s because Sun In Winter has been buzzing around my brain like one of The Numskulls ever since I first marvelled at the breathtakingly clear-cut splicing of folk ‘n’ beatz that makes up this marvel of a song.

Now, I understand that mixing folk with snappy, cut-up samples and clicking drums sounds heinous. So it’s the fact that the resulting song is truly wonderful that has propelled Trwbador to such dizzy heights.

I’m hoping for – nay, expecting – much more brilliant songsmithery from them in 2012. And I rarely even begin to think things like that.

ANBAD said: “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.

This song is a remix of a remix of a song that never existed in the first place. We can imagine this song – it’s so close we can almost touch it – and yet it simply doesn’t exist. Beautiful, bright, brilliant.”

Related posts:

1. Trwbador: Brutal, Elusive
2. ANBAD’s Best Bands Of 2011 // Top Ten: 10 – 6
3. MIDWEEK MIXTAPE // 16th February 2011

As we trundle imperceptibly closer to the frothing climax of ANBAD’s 2011 Top Ten, the bands are getting weirder, more coiling, and more devious in nature.

Just like capitalism, the closer you get to that top 5%, the more sly and crafty it’s inhibitors are.

ANBAD: you’ll come for the bands, but stay for the politics.

Don’t forget to check out the runners up (Parts One and, indeed, Two), as well as the bands who are ranked from 10-6.

#5 – Tech Coast/Tours: So many bands present themselves anonymously these days, that soon all bands will be faceless, and they’ll have to start changing their name every few weeks to keep us on our toes.

Tech Coast have already begun the trend, changing their name to the slightly more generic Tours. Oh well – it doesn’t matter. Tours make wonderful music.

ANBAD said: “Eyes to the sky, wrists to the heavens: If a song was ever cloudy, then this is it. Vast, open and – once you crack past the rigidity of the form – softer and more unctuous than egg custard.

This, I suppose, makes Tech Coast‘s music the crème brûlée of dance. And I love crème brûlées. Excellent, excellent, excellent.”

#4 -  Baaneex: ANBAD has a fresh-dog-turd-soft spot for bands that are deliberately obtuse. Make of that what you will, but while Baaneex are indeed just that, they are also brilliantly – wait for it – groovy, and unafraid to smash songs to bits part-way through.

For all these nods to eccentricity, awkwardness and perversity, they’re a band who deserve to be heard, even before their great songs are taken into consideration.

ANBAD said: “This song is so terrifically obtuse and accessible all at once it will fool you into thinking it has no antecedents… you could just as easily get lost in the fabulous density of a song that has so many constituent parts that it should never, ever work – and yet emerges triumphant as the most complicatedly wonderful song to appear on ANBAD for ages.”

#3 – Tigercats are simply adorable. In the flesh, as, barefoot and shy, they clang at their instruments and sway along to their own melodies; or on record where you’ll want to do the same – they will snag your eyes and ears.

Here’s a band who are the equivalent of the beautiful teenage girl who doesn’t realise her own powerful attractiveness yet. Similarly, you’ll want to put a protective arm around them. For now, at least.

ANBAD said: ”…the genuinely excellent 1985 is steely and brittle beneath its raggedy velveteen exterior.

Their songs betray no ulterior motives of forced cool, and are interested only in establishing their public image as an enthusiastic young band in love with making songs. Excellent, alive, and bright.”

Related posts:

1. ANBAD’s Best Bands Of 2011 // Top Ten: 10 – 6
2. ANBAD’s Best Bands Of 2011 // The Runners-Up (Part 1)
3. >May’s Top Five New Bands!

If you missed them, here’s Part 1 and Part 2 of the list of bands who didn’t quite make the Top Ten…

Sifting through the hundreds of bands who were splurged all over ANBAD is a task which is part edifying pleasure and part brutal exposure of this writer’s foibles at any one period throughout the year.

Not many bands have ‘aged’ badly in the months since they were first exposed in breathless terms (though some are there, if you’re inclined to find them). If anything, revisiting them has been affirmative: their songs still prickle the same nerve-endings as they did when first heard.

Thus, the following bands are the crème de la crème - the bands that didn’t just age well, but also surprised and charmed even more the second (or third, fourth, fifth) time around.

 #10 - The Parish Of Little Clifton: Exceptionally precise musicians often turn into tedious Phil Collinses, but TPOLC applies his precision in much less horrifying and much more gorgeously skylarking ways:

 ANBAD said: “entirely clear, precise music that ought to cut through mental fug like an industrial laser-beam.”

#9 - Petter Seander: Guess what overriding quality this Swedish songwriter has? BING! Correct – an alarmingly sharp grasp of pop melody, and songs that couldn’t be any more upbeat in execution if they tried. Oh, and they come with free tea. Tea!

ANBAD said: “when Petter croons, ‘nothing lasts forever,‘ the sentiment is met with a shrug and a dizzy shake of the head. Lovely, soaring, tinkling, jittering, perfect pop. Excellent.”

#8 – Petit Fantôme: While we’re making ludicrously unfair generalisations based on nationality, do you reckon that the French band Petit Fantôme has great, swooshing, 70′s synth-choruses or what? You’re right, of course. Excellent, unusual and brightly soft.

ANBAD said: “icy but warm; inert but humane; calm but darting; born of technology but realised in the bosom of life’s irrevocable chaos.”

#7 – Tripwires: a band that might not be truly classed as new, with a song that might not truly be considered to belong to 2011. But ignore Tripwires’ Cinnamon at your peril, because it’s too beautifully dozy to be engulfed by such petty squabbles. Delicious.

ANBAD said: “a miasmic swirl of hyper-echoed guitars, buried, frantic drumbeats and vocals that dissolve into the ether. Cinnamon might be a blunt instrument, or it might be a deft, monstrously delicate and gossamer-thin thing of beauty – you choose.”

#6 – The Lovely Eggs: here’s a band that generate goodwill. This is very hard to achieve. But The Lovely Eggs have it in spades, because their songs are not only funny, and smart, and knowing, and honest – but brilliant too.

ANBAD said: “Bands progress, and bands change: in the Lovely Eggs’ case, their progression within the space of one song is almost mind-boggling.

Because Allergies isn’t only a song, it’s a heavy-as-lead, psychedelic-lo-fi mini-masterpiece; the ‘Kashmir’ of winsome bedroom indie; the sound of a band shoving everything on red and then hitting ‘Record’.”

Related posts:

1. The Lovely Eggs: Put It All On Red
2. Tripwires – The Best Song Of 2011 (That’s Actually From 2010)
3. ANBAD’s Best Bands Of 2011 // Top Ten: 5-3

Here’s Part Two of ANBAD’s Best Bands of 2011 Runner’s-Up List. Cast a beady eye over Part One here.

Next week, a rarity: decisiveness in action, and I’ll be picking the Top Ten new bands featured on ANBAD this year.

All the bands that will be featured over the next week or so have quite definitely not been carefully judged, weighed and balanced against one another: you’ll find no pretence here that this will be anything other than the mysterious blue fluff nestling in the belly button that is ANBAD.

But first, here’s a bunch of bands that didn’t quite fit into the Top Ten. And they’re still all Too Legit To Quit 2011 without one more spin:

• ROUGH FIELDS’ Abu Dhabi is “dense. It’s also madly warm and almost too rich. Almost, but not quite. The most beautiful white noise you’ll hear all month. Fabulous.”

Rough Fields // Abu Dhabi

• REID“produces 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 Forrest, Reid has discovered this secret sweet spot.”

• YOOFS were briefly called AC Slater. One threat of a lawsuit later, and the newly-re-named Yoofs were making music that prompted this pseudo-deep comment: “Shooting for the stars is hard when you’re trying to make it seem like you’re scratching around in the dust – but this is what Yoofs are doing, and it’s working well so far.”

• BLOUSE are relatively big, at least for ANBAD’s scrawny parameters. But, they’er very good. And, “buried deep within Videotapes’ warped synths, clobbering drums and breathy vocals lies a pristine and simple 4-square pop song; hooks, choruses and progressions all in the right place, at the right time.”

Related posts:

1. Rough Fields – Drowned In Feathers
2. Reid – Milking The Sweet Spot
3. Yoofs: Slated

Well, there is no real reason, though if you’ve had the determination to read past the first paragraph, maybe you have a modicum of interest in slip-sliding into the grubby, ragged, and frequently ludicrous world of new bands from a slightly different, dubious angle.

Still, while you’re deciding whether it’s worth the plunge or not (HINT: it actually is – there were some genuinely terrific bands on ANBAD this year), here’s Part One of the patronising pat-on-the-head for the bands that were really great, but not quite really great enough to make the Top Ten…

•  PIXELS – In a moderately rare instance of ANBAD picking up a band that goes onto moderately bigger things, Pixels, “drag ideas from jangle-pop,with a vaguely hip-hop rhythm and an entirely disconnected outlook.”

• ARC VEL‘s songs “seem to be composed of snippets of other lovely songs –  dreamy, anti-brash, anti-form soundscapes is that… may only exist in the world of Arc Vel, and we’ll never hear them.”

• GALA DROP‘s song “Rauze is so devastatingly successful – looping noises back and forth, gaining momentum, pausing, unfurling – I wonder why music like this isn’t made more often.”

Gala Drop // RAUZE

• Where are PRAIRIES  from?I can think of some antecedents – for some reason T.V.O.D. springs to mind, apropos of almost nothing – but in all honesty, Prairies may as well be beamed from the future.

…Part 2 of ANBAD’s best runners-up arrives tomorrow!

Related posts:

1. Arc Vel – Memory, Objects, and the Journey Between
2. Prairies – On A Wing and A Prairie
3. Gala Drop – Drop It Like Its Hot

Because what is there not to love? And I do mean love - I can vividly recall the dizzying, bewildering, heart-racing feelings when I first downloaded it a few years ago, and lots days discovering and rediscovering amazing music.

I became Spotify’s loudest, most rabid, most insistent acolyte, forcing family and friends to download it. (I still recommend you do, by the way)

Try it yourself – just say to your nearest and dearest, “Imagine your iTunes collection suddenly bloats and distends to include almost all music, ever,” and watch as their eyes widen, sold instantly on the idea.

So who couldn’t love Spotify? Well, maybe the artists who supply it with ‘content’. Murmurings of discontent have been slipping from between artists’ lips for a while now – grumblings about paltry payouts, mainly. A few labels have voted with their feet, and pulled their music from the service.

What is the deal with Spotify’s payment system? On one hand, Spotify says it has “driven” a not-inconsiderable $150 Million out to artists. On the other,  Jon Hopkins, from the excellent King Creosote, says he got £8 for 90,000 plays.

So is Jon right to be aggrieved? Well, I’m not an artist. I’m a consumer – a paying Spotify user who considers £5 a month a tiny amount to pay for so much music. Hey, I’m listening to Spotify as I write this (Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life, if you must know)

I can see why Jon’s annoyed. £8 seems like the wrong kind of tiny amount for music – from the point of view of the artist. But is there more to it than that?

If, as Jon says, BBC Radio 1 pay about £50 per play, Spotify certainly does appear miserly. But think about these numbers and how our perception of a ‘play’ fits into them.

90,000 plays on Spotify doesn’t equate to 90,000 people hearing the song once. Their are people, like me, who will hammer an individual song 20 times in a row if they’re in an obsessive mood, and this behaviour distorts the figure instantly.

One play on Spotify doesn’t mean the listener likes the song, or even listens to it. What if one of those ‘plays’ is a person idly pointing an ear towards a song for ten seconds, pulling a face, and skipping on to another? Should the amount paid to the artist factor in those people, these occurances?

Then consider this: each Radio 1 play will reach a lot more than, say, 90,000 listeners – it’ll be heard by hundreds of thousands at least, and many millions if it’s on the bigger shows.

Does each of these listeners hearing the song once on the radio equate to a “play”? If so, a £50 payment for having your song played to three million people doesn’t seem such a great deal.

In the end, it all boils down to control: the Spotify users control what they listen to – and the artist can decide whether they want their music to appear on there or not.

But at least there is control: would artists like Jon prefer it if the supply of their music was regulated – albeit in exchange for merely beer money –  or that their music was downloaded via a torrent, and any semblance of artist control lost forever?

And, as the ever-perceptive Sean Adams from Drowned In Sound pointed out:

I advise new bands to put music on Spotify if possible, not so much for the money, but purely for the fact that one of Spotify’s zillions of listeners might find you, become a fan, and then support you by attending gigs, buying merchandise, and coquettishly hassling you to come back stage and share your rider.

Listeners (like me) used to hate paying £15 for just one CD a decade ago, and although record sales could actually generate income then, the artists didn’t make a huge amount, either.

So now the artist gets screwed directly, as opposed to via a label – but now the consumer now thinks they’re getting a fairer deal. Is this right? Probably not, but what are the viable alternatives right now?

I feel for Jon. £8 for 90,000 plays doesn’t seem right. But then, if Spotify didn’t exist, 90,000 plays of your song might not have taken place.

Being angry with Spotify is probably not the answer. Spotify is a reflection of the times and of how people have decided to consume music now.

In a period where a heavy, grey cloud looms large over all music, is it better to look for a silver lining – regardless of how thinly beaten that lining is – or to stand your ground and rage against the status quo?

Ultimately, it’s for us – because we’re all consumers – to decide how this pans out. And for now, the vast majority of us like our music as close to free as we can get it.

Related posts:

1. BONUS ANBAD RADIO SHOW! Summer Special
2. OPINION // Downloading is dead. Discuss.
3. MIDWEEK MIXTAPE // 11th August 2010

Murilo Portescheller does not only have a fabulously beguiling name, but he’s a native of Brazil who is studying here in Manchester for a few months.

Having left the endless beaches of his homeland and swapped them for the endless  drizzle of Manchester, no wonder he is eager to reminisce about his country’s music scene…

In the past few years, Brazil’s got some emerging bands that may have changed the image of the country’s alternative music scene. Indie Rock and Experimental bands got back on track.

Jennifer Lo-fi is the most exciting new band that came out from São Paulo in many years from now. With influences from experimental, post-rock bands like This Town Needs Guns, Sigur Rós, Circa Survive and The Mars Volta, they created something that Brazil was not used to listen to.

Their gigs are definitely intense, energic, well played and veeery noisy, such as their two EP’s, Summer Session (2010) and Nóia (2011). Technically talking, they are one of the best bands in Brazil.

Another experimental band is making some noise in the Brazilian alternative music scene: Dorgas. This fresh new band – they’ve got only a single, Loxhanxha (2011), and an EP, Verdeja Music (2010), released – from Rio de Janeiro makes an experimental-druggy sound, with broken guitar riffs and drums, synth backgrounds and reverbed vocals. A band to watch out for!

The ‘biggest Brazilian new band’ is called Holger (which is already known in ANBAD – they appeared in The View From Brazil Pt. 1). They’ve grown a lot since their first EP, The Green Valley, was released. The press and the public literally embraced the band when they released the debut album Sunga, late in 2010.

It sounds like a mix of the early riff-indie rock from USA (like Pavement and stuff) and the african music beats – I could easily compare it to the self-titled Vampire Weekend’s debut album.

The funky band Garotas Suecas, from São Paulo, is a clear revival from the funk scene of Brazil in the 70′s and 80′s. They toured in NY last year and released the full-length album Escaldante Banda, which had got such great reviews from the local and worldwide music press.

Rock’n'roll Black Drawing Chalks deserves some attention too. The band with heavy melodies and great riffs from Goiânia are well known in Brazil.

They already reached a good place in the alternative music scene with two LP’s released, Big Deal (2007) and Life Is A Big Holiday For Us (2009), and their single My Favorite Way was chosen by the Rolling Stone Brasil magazine as the best song of 2009.

It’s worth to keep the eyes on new artists from Brazil. Some really good stuff are coming out and not arriving in Europe. I’d say the next things to come are The Tape Disaster (a very talented instrumental band from Porto Alegre), Apanhador Só and Inverness.

PS:if you want to translate some Portuguese names of the bands:

Garotas Suecas = Swedish Girls
Apanhador Só = Lonely Catcher
Dorgas = Durgs, a joke with the word ‘drugs’…

Related posts:

1. The View From… Brazil
2. The View From… Camden (Again)
3. GUEST POST // A Ticket-Seller’s Tips

If you mention the town of Milton Keynes to anyone in the UK, they will immediately replace their previous expression with one of furrowed concern, and mutter the word, “

Milton Keynes is punctuated with more roundabouts than even begins to make sense. It’s a true shame that the town is mainly known for this, and as Vickee Tweed is at pains to stress – there’s a lot of new music screeching around those circles too…

With the recent double whammy of Foo Fighter’s gigs which saw a packed out Bowl, I dare anyone to say that Milton Keynes is little more than a land of concrete cows, roundabouts and a namely confused football team. From the air a place that resembles little more than your granny’s crossword with all it’s endless grid squares has some unearthed musical treats.

Ok so I guess we have the tour managers, promoters and general ‘powers that be’ to thank for that weekend’s fine feast of rock and Indie delights. However small and stuffy Milton Keynes is, over the past few years we’ve had some highly talented bands and individuals sprout through the concrete and add a little life into the mix.

Anyone remember Capdown? The progressive Ska band who made it onto the Lock Up stage at Reading and Leeds year after year, having a key supporter in the shape of Radio 1′s Mike Davis. Well they are indeed Milton Keynes born and bred.

I say it like they’re a thing of the past, actually do kids still skank? Apparently so, as it shows with their long list of gigs scheduled this year including Reading and Leeds alongside Boy Sets Fire and Come Back Kid. Well done to them I say. Another band hailing from MK was a Kerrang favourite, Fell Silent a progressive metal band who seems to have the grubby Pitz Club (RIP) kids under their experimental spell. After a long spell of touring with friends Enter Shikari and releasing a killer album the band went their separate ways last year to pursue separate projects.

Enough with the past, lets think present and take a look at all of the talent currently oozing out of the pores of this multi-faceted town (yeah, still not a city – not that we’re bitter).

The MK music scene has evolved and shifted in recent years, like any other big town there are trends and fashions that these kids are all too eager to to follow. A band breaking that mould and just making music because they like to be rowdy are Action Beat.

The ever-growing band have become well respected in Europe, touring every summer, serving up their thrashy, bashy, mashy mashed up lyric-less delights. These guys are mental, and over the years the band have seen over 40 band members and a heck of a lot of instruments – an average show could see up to four drum kits. Definitely an experience. Catch them in the UK in August. If you like something a little prettier but still with it’s experimental inner workings, think Bon Iver on speed. check out the solo project from former Beat boy Dean Spacer, House of John Player

If you’re a fan of the softer end of the spectrum there’s a couple of top acoustic acts in Milton Keynes worth opening your ears for. Toulouse Wolfe features the musical talents and pitch perfect tones of Goldsmith student Heather Britton.

Her EP is dark in places, almost haunting giving depth and character to her emotive lyrics. It’s astounding to think that this is her first release, already mastering and fine tuning her unique sound – I think there may be some accomplished artists turning a slight shade of emerald in the wake of TW. Lastly we celebrate the talents of Nick Fisher, charming both in character and in song. His music is so pleasurable to listen to, soothes the soul and puts a swing in your step. If you’re having an angsty five minutes Nick will sort you out. Sorted!

Related posts:

1. The View From… Glasgow
2. The View From… Birmingham
3. The View From… Coventry