I’ve never been there, but I feel comfortable declaring that Dartmouth is not a Rock ‘n’ Roll city. It might not even be a city.

Its name conjures images of Thermos flasks, warm blankets and plenty of comfy chairs for old people to wait for the sweet release of death.

I may, of course be wrong. I only mention this because of a nugget of info I found in the descriptive tags that accompany Aux. Out‘s music. They read:

acoustic ambient electronica instrumental lo-fi Dartmouth

It would be facile of me to disagree with any of the former words – they’re …

If you ever wanted any more proof that there’s no accounting for taste, here’s a new fun game that will both pass the time and cause palms to be vigorously slapped against foreheads the world over.

Visit a website that streams music, and then go to the page of your favourite band – or your least favourite band. I picked Primal Scream, because of their maddening ability to occupy both those polar opposites simultaneously.

Then cast a lazy eye over the list of their most popular songs, as played by the general public, and prepare to commence the afore-mentioned …

The world evolves quickly, and the superseded are forgotten just as fast. So as the bulk of internet users flocks away from clunky old Myspace to Facebook, Twitter and the rest, take this opportunity for reappraisal and care to wonder if what’s driving the majority away isn’t the same reason that you ought to love it.

The innate beauty of Myspace is exactly what most people hate: rank flexibility – the terrible opportunity to entirely personalise an online space. What horrors!

Oh, please. Myspace is the only place to find the scrappy home-made creativity of ‘Zines on a large …

Innovators in pop are very rare. And when there is, a familiar pattern emerges: Proponent of new sound gets minor fame through aforementioned newness of sounds. Others quickly pick up new technique/style, and due to further innovation become even more famous. Then everyone else follows suit, and charts are flooded with dreary watered-down nonsense. Bad times. Such is the self-consuming nature of pop.

Like everything in pop music, the laptop ‘n’ traditional guitar-band combo is nothing new. But it was once. Today’s New Band, Apple Eyes, have grasped this idea and, with sticky fingers and mucky palms, squeezed a new …

Right now – right now – my favourite band ever is The Fall. I just can’t stop playing The Classical and its lyrics (“Hey there fuckface! Hey there fuckface!”) are rattling around my brain like loose bolts in a grumpy, sweary machine.

Last week, my favourite band ever was The Pixies. Two weeks before that, it was The Smiths. And so on. People who have an all-time favourite band that never changes aren’t to be trusted, or are Oasis fans.

Who, then, is Today’s New Band’s favourite of all time? Polychromatic‘s songs don’t really give …

If you’re like me (and if you are, please accept my immediate condolences), at any one given time, you’ll cite one particular band as the Nadir of Rock Crappiness. The band will change – at the moment mine is Scouting For Girls, but The Kooks, Kula Shaker and Ocean Colour Scene have all sprung quickly to mind when searching for an example of awful music.

In the past, Shed Seven also fulfilled the wispy criteria for inclusion. Their name was clunky, their songs were mindless and/or overwrought and/or lightweight, they were from York, and they were unfathomably popular, in the …

My girlfriend has a new mobile phone. Now, every morning, its alarm sounds with the Log Song from Ren And Stimpy. The effect that this has is to introduce mild lunacy into your life every morning at 7 am, and there it stays, pinging ludicrously around your mind all day. Try it. You’ll go crazy, you iiiiiiiiidiooot.

So once again, today’s task has been to find a way of sluicing out unwanted noise in my head. Usual tactics failed and so Today’s New Band have more responsibility than usual.

Thankfully, Nevada Base are the required distraction. Actually, that undersells …

If you’ve ever procrastinated over anything at all, you’ll know that the associated frustrations of long-term hesitation envelops your mind like a big, stupid bobble-hat with the word ‘indecisive (or is he?)’ sewn on the front. ‘Paralysis through analysis’, the Manic Street Preachers sang on their ace ’96 B-side Dead Trees and Traffic Islands.

Something I find endlessly admirable is the verve and determination of young bands when they start out. Cynics, older minds and failures will label this as youthful naivety, and, if you cast a lazy eye over the sheer number of new bands all fighting …

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Here’s an opening line you don’t often read in music articles: Statisticians, please skip a few paragraphs right now, because you’ll already know this bit. For the rest of us whose uselessness with numbers is in direct relation to the length of the angry queue that forms as we struggle with a handful of coins to pay for the newspaper, read on.

So here’s a statistical fact – if you are in a room with 22 other people, there’s more than a 50% likelihood that two of them share the same birthday. No, I don’t really understand either. For …