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 …

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 …

So. Why pick the ANBAD End O’ Year List, which starts in earnest next week, over any other music blogs’?

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 …

And so, whilst End-Of-Year lists scatter all around us, ANBAD introduces the final Midweek Mixtape of the year. And, as always, putting it together each week has been a guilty shove-’em-in-and-see-what-happens pleasure.

Star of this year’s Mixtape show has been Britpop’s King Of Cheese. No, not, Liam Gallagher – although his Beady Eye gigs have had a distinct whiff of Stilton about them – but Alex James, a man who spent a million pounds on Champagne whilst being the Handsome One Out Of Blur.

He’s been pouring his own-brand molten cheese over a relevant person each week. As a special treat …

I’ve long postulated that songs will become shorter, and more spazmodic as time increases.

The rush and buzz of modern technology practically demands it: we all multi-task to the tune dictated by our smartphones and browsers – I imagine you have half a dozen tabs open right now and are only lingering on this one until another takes your fancy.

This behaviour is probably ruinous for our collective sanity. Such is life.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), Left Channel supplies the time-bereft with schizophrenic musical niblets to match the behaviour of scattergun minds.

In some ways, My Cathode Spike…

ANBAD is finally feeling in the mood for Christmas, having at last thrown off the antipathy towards The Most List-Saturated Time Of The Year.

And, as is traditional now, ANBAD is simultaneously grumbling about this flurry of best-of-2011 listing, whilst taking part. I’m also making sure I’m reneging on promises – another key trait of this website – and featuring just a couple more bands before the year is out.

So, ANBAD switches into full-on LIST MODE at the end of this week. But before then, who could resist Your Rival, who seem right at home at this …

Joseph Hughes first wrote to me, proffering his music, in February. I listened, pulled a quizzical face, and put him on the ‘maybe‘ list.

Perhaps more surprising than the fact that ANBAD is organised enough to have to-do lists is that when he got in touch again, ten months later, he sidled straight to the top of my ‘to-do’ list instead.

So what changed? Ah, now that’s the kind of question that lurches drunkenly throughout the ages, and – thankfully – never gets properly answered.

The best word I could dredge from the recesses to fill in the …

There’s no real reason that the music you are instinctively drawn to at Christmas should be the chirpy ‘n’ cheerful 70s hits that are pumped out 18 hours a day in your local Starbucks, you know.

Don’t get me wrong: I love the Xmas Classics of Slade and Wizzard, et al, and I especially love the former’s total disregard for grammar.

But I’ve always found myself drawn to very specific albums at this time of year – Spiritualized’s Ladies and Gentleman We Are Floating In Space, Talking Heads’ Remain In Light, and other dark, hazily spacious albums.

The …

Hey, what’s that splashing at your feet? Oh, it’s the BBC Sound Of 2012 list, causing a plop in the music blogging cess-pool: ripples which will finally propel one of the hapless artists one the list to CHART SUCCESS next year.

Last year, the 180 or so ‘tastemakers’ who compile the list (i.e. bloggers who have read enough PR email to see which way the wind is blowing) selected a list that finally coughed forth Jessie J as its Big Tip For The Future.

You can decide the value of the list on the basis of whether you find Jessie …

Not entirely irrelevant preambling fact: Blue Whales are the loudest thing 0n earth – louder than volcanoes and bombs.

There’s nothing more exhilarating than Big Noise Done Correctly. Every teenager with a Vauxhall Nova and a Bonkers! CD knows that.

But what separates horribly-generic-crunchy-guitar-noise from deftly-assembled-swoon-fuzz-thrash? The truth is that there’s about a cigarette paper’s distance between them, and you can just as easily pop through from one to the other.

So my first listen to Playlounge‘s Orange Friends was a fraught experience, as I battled the tiny voice that kept piping up, “just you wait – it’ll go …