As happens periodically, ANBAD’s New Bands Mountain™ teeters, shakes and collapses, exposing the unlucky few that somehow got suffocated for months underneath the whole – stupid, imaginary – pile.

Such a momentous virtual avalanche has occurred again, and, as usual, the quality of the band that was turned up has made me question my band prioritisation system.

No time for a more rigorously-implemented system right now, though: Sauna’s songs were whelped into the big, bad world a good six months ago.

Unfortunately, it was to a reception of idiots like me who promptly filed them under ‘Z’ or something, instead of …

Recently, I’ve been reminiscing hard about the heady mid-90′s days of Britpop’s pomp.

This is partly the result of one too many wine-fuelled rock reminiscence  evening with Dev Sherlock, and partly because, for some reason, when the sun emerges in springtime, those heady awkward teenage feelings flood back.

With hindsight, one of Britpop’s few redeeming features was the weird collective willingness of the UK’s populace to embrace fey Indie jangle-pop as the de facto pop music.

The inevitable Britpop crash killed off these waif-like bands, who, having finally summoned up the courage to stand up, were the first to get mown …

ANBAD rarely gives plugs to other websites, simply because ANBAD Towers is a haven of loathing, envy and Schadenfreude, but occasionally an email plops wetly into the ANBAD inbox that tramples over such rules.

So when recording engineer Nicholas O’Brien emailed me to let me know he was starting a project that involved cycling to unknown, unplanned places and recording a new band a day, his cojones ensured that admiration overrode any other latent feelings.

Simple plans are almost always the best: Nicholas will cycle to his first destination, record an artists, put the recording online, and then allow the person …

Oh look: the Midweek Mixtape has been rudely (and temporarily) shoved aside for a new semi-regular midweek column, the Midweek  Mouthpiece. Alex James/Crudely-Photoshopped Cheese Fans, fret not: the Midweek Mixtape will be back next week…

Of all the interesting points raised in this GQ article about - who else? - Skrillex, two in particular stand out.

Firstly, the surprise that Skrillex is still sporting the half-finished hairdo/NHS-glasses combo that has served him so well and yet spawned enough meta-hipster imitators to cause most people to reach for the electric razor and contact lenses; and secondly, the recognition that the …

My role at the Hype Hotel in SXSW sounded relatively simple: make sure the bands turn up, get on stage, and get off again.

In practice, this task was rather like herding cats whilst trying to nail jelly to a wall: complicated and with a lingering, vague sense of futility.

By the fifth day of it all, I had begun to wholly appreciate the beauty of simplicity. Some bands turned up at the stage door with two vans full of kit – one (unnamed) band had eleven (11) synthesisers, an act which usually coincided with the distinct feeling of my heart …

SXSW is, on the whole, no place to discover new bands (see yesterday’s post for further explanation/muddying of the issue).

Put simply, SXSW may once have been a place for bands to visit, slog the venues and swat away record deal offers until the right one is thrust at them, but no longer.

Just like that other place of music discovery, the internet, there are now so many bands milling around in Austin, TX, that the white noise drowns out any individuals.

Thus most of the bands have already been ‘discovered’ in a business sense – most already have …

ANBAD is still recuperating from a few weeks of madness working at the brilliant Hype Hotel in Austin, Texas for SXSW.

Below is an article that was written in small nibbles in between the delirious hours of work and snatched morsels of sleep. The contents may not be true in the cold light of day, but it’s (almost) worth preserving for posterity (or a reminder of what happens when sleep becomes a disposable luxury).

ANBAD’s Guide to Recreating SXSW in the Comfort of Your Own Home

Whilst experiencing SXSW’s dubious and multifrious charms at the actually fabulous Hype Hotel, it became clear …