Jan 24 2011

Share and Share Alike…

Hello folks,

This last week I have spent quite a lot of time listening to some of the great new music that has been brought to my attention recently, mainly through the joys of Twitter and Facebook. Both regularly prove great sources of shared information, especially in the world of new music. I currently follow 804 people on Twitter, the vast majority of them are musicians and music lovers with whom I have a great deal in common musically. So what better platform to discover new music?

I thought this would be a good opportunity to blog about some of the great new music I’ve been listening to over the last couple of weeks that have been recommended via Twitter and Facebook and give you the opportunity to check out some great independent artists you may not have come across yet. And through the joys of the Bandcamp embeddable  players I can miraculously place little links direct to their music right here on the blog. Sweet…

At the end of last week I received my copy of  Disarm by She Makes War (aka Laura Kidd)

This is a fantastic album of what Laura herself describes as ‘grungey dystopian gloom-pop’. The writing is really interesting and for me brought to mind some of Skin’s solo material on the first couple of listens. I posted my favourite track NIMN from the album in the player above. Well worth checking out and her Bandcamp page offers a plethora of imaginative packages.

My second offering today come from ambient/drone artist Emmalee Crane. I really enjoyed her 2009 album Crux and have been keeping my eyes peeled for news of her latest release Formantine. It seems I entirely missed said news and today discovered the album was released in November..

Emmalee creates some beautiful ambient soundscapes using a combination of acoustic, electronic and found sounds treated with delicate processing. The review at Savaran Music and Sound describes her music as ‘ambient, orchestral drone’. The production is wonderful and helps create some of the most atmospheric and organic ambient music I’ve heard in a long time.

Purely by chance this morning I came across A Lullaby Hum For Tired Streets by Ephemetry, also via the Savaran Music blog. This is the music of Derby based musician Richard ‘Biff’ Birkin. There are only five tracks on his Bandcamp page (two of which are free downloads) and the full album isn’t due for release until later this month, but I really loved what I heard…

The first track After Catalunya (posted in the player above) and track 3 A Lullaby Hum grabbed me straight away. Again we’re in the realms of ambient acoustic music with a few folky vocal acoustic tracks thrown in. I’m really interested to see what the full album sounds like and will be keeping my eye on his Bandcamp page for updates..

Finally it was brought to my attention at a gig last night that Hannah Peel‘s new album The Broken Wave is out now. I don’t have a cunning little player for you this time so I’ll have to trust you to check out the album yourselves. It is available from the usual download sites, including eMusic.

I met Hannah last year whilst touring with Duke Special. Her music is incredibly delicate and honest. She plays a variety of instruments when she performs, most notably a little wind-up music box which she painstakingly prepares the reels for with a hole-punch before the show. Produced by Tunng’s Mike Lindsay and with a couple of tracks orchestrated by Nitin Sawhney, the album is truly stunning. The official launch party will be at The Vortex on Tuesday 8th February. Get yourself along if you’re about…

Well that’s it for now folks. I’ll probably do this again sometime in the near future. There’s so much great new music out there right now, despite what the big record labels would have you believe. You just have to know where to look…