Posts tagged Fanfarlo

First band announcements for Indietracks 2010

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1 year ago
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Indietracks 2009

Now that London Popfest is out of the way, it’s time to turn our attention to this year’s Indietracks festival, which will take place 23-25 July at the lovely Midland Railway Centre in Derbyshire.  Last year we covered the event quite extensively, and this year will be no different.  Previews of the bands in the run up to the event, followed by reports and a shit ton of photos of the weekend itself.  I’m not exaggerating when I call Indietracks the highlight of my musical year.  Where else can you get a non-stop indiepop while surrounded by (and sometimes on!) steam trains?

Rather excitingly, the first band announcements are now out, giving us our first 24 bands that will be playing the festival:

Highlights for myself amongst that lot include Allo Darlin’, Ballboy and Standard Fare, but there’s a lot there already that I’m looking forward to.  A number that I’m not familiar with that I look forward to getting acquainted with too.  No word on any headliners just yet, but announcements seem to be coming thick and fast now, so hopefully we’ll have more soon.

Update: Of course, mere hours after I post this, 8 new additions have revealed: Internet Forever, , , , , , , Urbantramper.

Indietracks Website / Blog / Twitter

If we were in charge of.. The Mercury Music Prize

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2 years ago
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When I was first approached by BBC Music to put together a list of albums I think should be nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, I was initially hesitant. First of all because I don’t much care for awards, and if I’m honest, have never paid attention to the Mercury Prize. Secondly, because I hardly ever listen to complete albums these days. I want to be an elitist snob and pretend that I do, but most of my music is absorbed via an iPod on shuffle.

Throwing around the year’s music in my head though, I realised that it’s actually been a bloody good year for British music. I initially came up with a couple of albums, then a couple more, and it kept going from there. In the interests of brevity, I’ve limited the final tally to seven exceptional albums and a handful of honourable mentions at the end. I don’t expect a single one of these to actually be nominated for the prize, but hey, I’m happy to be proved wrong.

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ghtg

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Okay, so it’s not a radical departure for the Belle & Sebastian mould for Stuart Murdoch’s solo/side/whatever project, but that’s no bad thing. It’s not often these days that albums tend to tell a complete story, and that is what we have here. Ably held together by Catherine Ireton and an array of guests, it’s not absolutely perfect – the Funny Little Frog cover is especially misguided – but it unashamedly embraces the album format when everyone else seems to be fleeing from it.

MP3 God Help The Girl – Come Monday Night

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Dananananaykroyd

– Hey Everyone!

I’m under no illusions that the prize would ever get near an album like this, but that doesn’t make it any less deserving. To find a band with this much energy on stage is rare enough in itself, but to get the same urgency on record is near impossible. Dananananaykroyd manage it, giving us one of the finest debut albums in years. It’s loud, it’s messy, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

MP3 Dananananaykroyd – Pink Sabbath

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Camera Obscura

– My Maudlin Career

Camera Obscura give us three out of three so far for the Scots. It felt like Camera Obscura had reached their peak with their previous album Let’s Get Out Of This Country. Then My Maudlin Career pops up and blows it out of the water with it’s beautifully textured songs. It’s taken more than a decade, but this is the album Camera Obscura were destined to make.

MP3 Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career

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Emmy the Great

– First Love

Out of all of the albums on this list, I’d imagine First Love is the one most likely to turn up on any Mercury lists if any of them do. I can’t quite pinpoint why, but Emmy does seem to fit the slightly left of the centre singer-songwriter style that seems to have made the lists in previous years. The album is a grower for sure, but there is some stunning songwriting on display here. Emmy has only barely scratched the surface of what she is capable of.

MP3 Emmy the Great – We Almost Had A Baby

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Los Campesinos!

! – We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

Los Campesinos! remain the most posted band on this blog, and rightly so. Coming out with a good first album and then following it up with one of the best albums of the year within six months is no mean feat. Evolving beyond the “tweexcore” fun of the first, this is an album that actually has emotional depth and philosophy added to the proceedings. All while still continuing to sound like quite nothing else that’s around at the moment.

MP3 Los Campesinos! – We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

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Thomas Tantrum

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Thomas Tantrum pick up right where the dearly missed Life Without Buildings left off. Rough, random songs jump all over the place, but the appeal here is in the voice of Megan Thomas. Breezily floating between gentle and slightly unhinged, she gives the songs an unpredictable air. That their debut album is so strong is all the more impressive given they were a pretty mediocre live band only a year earlier.

Video Thomas Tantrum – Work It

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Aidan Moffat

& The Best Ofs – How To Get To Heaven From Scotland

Seems only fitting that we end with yet another Scottish album, resulting in them making up more than half of the list. It’s taken Aidan Moffat a little while to find the project that suits him after Arab Strap split, but The Best Ofs seems to be it. Allowing his songwriting and voice to be front and centre plays right into his strengths and results in an album more consistent than anything he and Middleton put out.

MP3 Aidan Moffat & The Best Ofs – Big Blonde

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Honourable mentions
– Reservoir
– Inside Your Guitar
– I Worked On The Ships
– The Golden Spike

Fanfarlo literally give you more bang for your buck

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2 years ago
in
Fanfarlo

I’ve held off of getting involved in this whole digital music trend. Perhaps that is an odd statement for an mp3 blogger. Yet I still haven’t purchased a single track on a digital format, let alone an entire album. I still buy CDs when I can, although this is becoming more difficult given the number of releases are going down the digital only route. are releasing their album on mp3, CD and vinyl. Yet they will likely be the band that finally gets me to buy mp3s.

The main problem I have with mp3s is the perception of value. I find it very difficult to reconcile the idea that a 5MB computer file can be worth the best part of £1, or whatever it is iTunes and their ilk are charging these days. I know that logically it’s flawed, given I’d pay £10 for a ten track CD, but the lack of physical product in my hands makes a difference. So if I’m going to purchase mp3s, it’s going to be because I think they are good value. Amazon’s recent £3 for an album strategy has been a step in the right direction. Fanfarlo are going even further, releasing their entire debut album Reservoir for the tiny sum of $1.

Musically, the lazy comparison would be to point out that the band the closest thing the UK has to an Arcade Fire. These are bold, beautifully arranged songs that soar, swirl and all of that other fancy stuff. It’s a joyous, rousing affair that doesn’t really sound like anything else London is putting out at the moment.

The catch is that the $1 price only lasts until July 4, then it returns to “normal” levels. Which is fine. I doubt you can make much money selling your album for so little forever.

Reservoir is available now for download directly from their website.

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