BBC’s sound of 2011 is quite a big deal in the world of music and deservedly so, not only does it allow new music to have its chance at throwing the charts into disarray, but it determines what you will be being smacked in the ears with for the rest of the year when you listen to the radio, go to clubs, bars, and when you tune into the fucking X-Factor, you know you do, you corporate bastard.

This year the BBC mixed things up by allowing the presenters of the ‘In New Music We Trust’ shows to take over the daytime schedule with Zane Lowe announcing the top 5 artists over the course of the week. Cleverly the BBC have got themselves a built in audience of those who regularly tune in to be educated by the likes of Zane and Huw and those who expected Chris Moyles to be dishing out his personal brand of morning coffee with way too much sugar.

The sound of, insert year here, does matter and though not all the winners go on to wow us, Little Boots I’m looking at you, some have shaped the entire year, Ellie Goulding, this year though the beeb have hit the ground running with a wide variety of artists who are all bound to become heavily appreciated in their inner circles.

At number 5 we have Clare Maguire a Birmingham girl who the likes of Jay Z and Rick Rubin were both interested in. Having worked on her debut album for over two years, big things are expected for this dark pop temptress with a soulful voice. Nobody at the moment sounds quite like this, but if you’re familiar with Amanda Ghost then you will like this one. What this means is get used to her being in the top ten and if you like her a little, your parents will like her a lot. These tunes are ripe for remixing so she’ll probably be greeting you on your nights out too.

Number 4 see’s the first of the dubby singer-songwriters come to our attention with Jamie Woon. The 27 year old has been bubbling up from the underground for some time, having the likes of Burial remix your work and declare themselves fans doesn’t hurt your reputation too much either, this is his year. From a long line of musicians, his mother sang back-up for MJ, Kylie, and Bjork, Woon has his beautiful voice layered over dark and haunting loops, he isn’t afraid of a simple acoustic number either, an eclectic talent for an eclectic listener. Dub-Step may have hit us hard last year, but this is the year of Post Dub-Step.

Jumping right in at number 3 is NME’s favourite new cover stars The Vaccines. You may have heard their name being thrown around by your indie friend who champions bands like The Drums and Surfer Blood, but don’t write them off as the next big band that will disappear in a year or so. These guys have been described as ‘game changers’ by some of the biggest critics in town and they are about to take us back to the indie chart success of 2007, but with a bit more bounce than your average Razorlight. Their sound is fuzzy, simple, and addictive. So be cool and pretend you heard them first.

Producer James Blake takes the number 2 spot with his Post Dub-Step styling’s. Not as underground as Jamie Woon, Blake has gone straight for the radio jugular, and unless you’re dead you have surely heard his new single ‘Limit To Your Love’, which shockingly is a cover of a Feist song and is probably better than anything Feist ever released. He’s going to be hard to miss this year and is perfect for nearly everyone. Inspired by artists such as Bon Iver he has the indie fans, a producer not afraid to show off he has the dance fans, and all mixed together and repeated on the radio for a few months he has the pop fans. Perfect.

Now up until this point all of these artists have been somewhat strange for a list of what the radio thinks is ‘hot this year.’ Underground dub-step and indie, even Clare Maguire sounds more like the Smooth FM type, but let’s not forget this is by those who are in the know and appreciate what they play, rather than those who order some songs that were on a list somebody gave them and then pretend they love the new Kings Of Leon song. You don’t like it really do you Fern? No.

At number 1 though is an artist Fern Cotton will probably interview on her popular ITV 2 show. She isn’t too populist to be cool or anything like that, well it depends what your opinion of ‘cool’ is, but she has been described as the new Lady Gaga. Are you still with me? Jessie J is the artist whom I speak of.  The start of her single ‘Do It Like A Dude’ says “Stomp Stomp I’ve arrived” Enough said?

The 22 year old has been writing for the likes of Chris Brown and Justin Timberlake for years, before her label, Island, told her to keep the single to herself, she was going to give it to Rihanna. Despite the fact of there being no gap in the market for another female solo artist Jessie J appears to have elbowed her way in and judging by these lyrics she is going to be one outspoken bitch. Perfect for radio 1 chart time. She might be the new Lady Gaga, but nobody seems to have noticed that Lady Gaga is still here and has a new album out this year, so it should be interesting.

It’s December and that means only one thing, time for lists! Oh and probably Christmas too, but what is Christmas without a good list. I’d make a top ten Christmas list if I had any idea what that even means, but since I don’t I’m going to be highly original and do lists of the best albums, films, and anything else that takes my fancy.

It’s a joyous time for me so get on board because otherwise this wont be much fun for you.

Let’s start with albums shall we. Now 2010 in music has been quite exciting and though some of the biggest bands going have released new albums and some even bigger bands have reformed, it’s new music that has come into the light this year and scooped all the prizes. Before you ask, no, Laura Marling will not be in this list or mentioned in any way from here on out because she should smash her boring guitar into her boring face and die a boring acoustic death.

So here it is, after much in house discussion, my top ten albums of 2010!

10. Just scraping their way onto the list is My Chemical Romance With Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Kill Joys.

A comeback record like nothing they have ever done this colourful concept album put the boys in black well and truly to bed. Danger Days showed My Chem now have the power of bands like Green Day in their hands and they can make an album become a global event. What they do next is anybodies guess.

9. Hurts- Happiness.

As much as it pains me to say it, the Manchester duo who came fourth in the BBC’s sound of 2010, are the coolest pop band around. Yes they dueted with Kylie, and yes they use far too much hair product, but in terms of sheer joy nothing beats Happiness. The cheesiest album of the year by far, but if you think you don’t like these huge echoey choruses and synthesisers then you’re only lying to yourself. You can’t hide for long, believe me I tried my hardest to hate it and now look at me.

8. Zola Jesus- Stridulum 11.

A dark avant-garde work of genius. The third album by the American born singer showed us just how good she can be. Her electro styling’s are reminiscent of Bjork, Ladytron, and even The Knife, Zola though is much more listenable than all of them, which is exactly why Fever Ray is supporting her and not the other way around. Stridulum 11 is an album you can truly delve into and get lost with for an hour or so.

7. LCD Soundsytem- This is Happening.
By far the best album of his career it’s a credit to James Murphy that he can bring himself to quit while he’s ahead. Each of LCD’s albums is better than the last and this is no different, mixing his usual ultra-cool indie with electro so pleasing it makes you do air keys. This is music on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

6. Pulled Apart By Horses- Pulled Apart By Horses.
The most aggressive band on the list, this Leeds band have brought some balls to the British rock scene. The eponymous album is nothing short of being a hardcore romp from one of 2010’s most unique bands. Expect big things from these young upstarts.

5. Yeasayer- Odd Blood.

The second album by Brooklyn’s weirdest band see’s them take their sound to a new level. A psychedelic amalgamation of the worlds finest music Yeasayer have created the years most eclectic album with their brilliantly honed pop vocals. At times very dark it never strays far from beautiful.

Is it me or does the guy on the left look like Harry Conick Jr?

4. The National- High Violet.
The oldest band on the list this is The National’s seventh album and just as consistent as their earlier efforts. A mature band The National have proved they can’t be written off as ‘dad rock’ and have come to dominate the international indie scene of recent years. High Violet has some of the bands best songs to date showing their knack for big instrumentation and clever lyrics. They may be critically acclaimed, but they deserve much more mainstream media attention than they get, next year could see them get even bigger.

3. Titus Andronicus- The Monitor.

One of my new favourite bands of the year the second album by this quintessentially New Jersey quintet reminds you just how good some feedback can be. The band that take their name from a classic work of literature obviously have a lot more up their sleeve than first meets the ear and this album, which is a concept album based on the American Civil War, is a slow grower, but give it time and you wont regret it. Inter-cut with stock footage, or so it seems, this album is fast, edgy, slow, and moving. T

Titus Andronicus could be the best band you haven’t heard of.

2. Everything Everything- Man Alive.

Easily the most insatiable album of the year. I almost want to say don’t listen to this because you will never stop. Everything Everything are the Pringles of music. Man Alive is a rare gem in an artificial pop world and this is a pop album, but don’t be disheartened because it’s also so much more than just a pop album. EE have angular math-rock guitars and keys, simple effective drumming, and arrogant singing. If you don’t tap your feet to this then you’re ears are dead. They top it all off by making it so effortless and pretty. With songs that slowly build up to immense walls of sound and some that never quite take off, not a single song on this album is worth skipping. Just start listening now and by new year you might have had enough, but probably not.

1. Beach House- Teen Dream.

If you search on Wikipedia for this band, yes I did that, what you get is ‘see disambiguation indie/dream pop band’ and dream pop is the perfect way to describe what Beach House do. This is their third and most widely recognised album since their conception in 2004 and it’s impossible not to fall in love with. The hushed vocals of French born singer Victoria Legrand are in such harmony with Alex Scally’s haunting lo-fi compositions that it makes time stand still. Don’t be fooled by the name Beach House are the least summery band in the world, this record is twisted and downright dark all of which is helped along by their interesting use of an organ. No other album of the year is so immersing and yet so simple. No matter who Legrand’s vocals are compared to, usually Nico, nobody else sounds like her right now, it’s a rare thing to not care what somebody’s singing about, because their tone tells all, but that‘s exactly what we get here. You will struggle to pick a favourite song from this album it works too well as a whole. If they make more of this delicious dreamy pop you can expect to hear much more from this duo.

Well that’s it folks my finest albums of the year are now yours to love and cherish and I suggest you do so immediately. My band to watch out for next year, as well as more from these lot, are Frankie and the Heartstrings. An indie pop outfit from Sunderland, they sound and look like a throwback to 50’s era pop with a modern twist and with their own label they have a sold DIY ethic. With a debut album out in February they could well be number one next year.

Christmas is once more upon us and this year its evil tendencies are back. SNOW has once more gripped the nation and descended us down to the seventh layer of hell where all anybody can speak about is SNOW and the real point of this whole entry, Simon Cowell’s minions with microphones have bludgeoned their way to the top of the charts. This ladies and gents is Christmas 2010, just like every other Christmas, except newer.

This entire post is basically an excuse for Interceptor to post yet more pictures of Cliff...

Last year the world breathed a massive sigh of relief when the first proper ‘chart battle’ in what feels like forever came to a satisfactory end. I say the world, because people who disagree with Rage Against The Machine winning are wrong and don’t count as part of functioning society. Yes Christmas 2009 was an anomaly, being the first in years that one of Simon Cowell’s minions with microphones didn’t top the charts. It will probably be the only year in modern history that real musicians hold the position.

Facebook campaigns were started this year, but it just didn’t have the spirit behind it. With three different campaigns going it just wasn’t organised enough to stop the force of mainstream Saturday night T.V. and Matt Cardle bludgeoned his way to the coveted spot with ‘When We Collide’ originally ‘Many Of Horror’ by Biffy Clyro.

He has now apologised to fans of the band for ‘ruining’ the song, personally I think he should apologise 439,000 times, one for each copy sold. There isn’t even really much to be said about his cover of the song. He’s just sort of stripped away everything that was interesting, to make it boring successful pop. Good for him. Of course I say him, what I really mean is a team of professional writers hired for the occasion. ‘When We Collide’ does now have the biggest weekly sales for any single of the year, excluding those for charity, which x-factor also won, to my surprise and delight.

It’s no surprise to anyone that x-factor wins every year and god knows it shouldn’t be a surprise. Apart from the fact that we are a nation of idiots who are spoon fed drivel and lap it up like kittens do milk, this program has a prime time spot on a Saturday night for three months of the year, coincidentally the three months just before Christmas. People have heard these songs for weeks on end and voted for their favourite, now if everybody that voted for Matt Cardle to win bought his single then these sales figures would undoubtedly be much higher, so let’s just assume that somebody realised what they had done and banged their head against a wall for three minutes instead of buying his single shall we?

Fig 1: Who would you rather go to a party with...actually...wait...don't answer that...

On the plus side of all this winter chaos, Biffy Clyro have had a great year. The very fact that an X-Factor winner is singing their song says a lot about how far they have broke into popular culture. They appear to be becoming Radio favourites these days, they must be the new Muse or something. One of the numerous anti X-Factor campaigns was for fans to just buy the original and they managed to get Biffy to number eight in the singles chart, not too shabby. Mon the Biffy!

So goes another Christmas, with its terrible weather and terrible soundtrack. Last year may have offered some hope, but it was all a mirage to shelter from the cold.

Is anybody even sure why they care about Christmas number ones? Look at the past winners, barely any of them are actually relevant to the holiday period. Bob the Builder got it in 2000 BOB THE BUILDER. That’s not even real. If Matt Cardle has got any other number one single of the year, nobody would care, but it’s Christmas and for some reason it matter.

Remember when Mad World won? That was a good year.

We don’t post shit like this that often any more (mainly because we’re a bunch of posing psueds who like to pretend we should all have jobs at The Guardian or something, rather than admit that we can’t spell, punctuate or grammaticise for toffee and don’t care anyway), but hey, this is fun, musical and ridiculously geeky -type in your sites URL, and any HTML (HTML!! Remember that?) will be transformed into soothibng synth beats!

Downtuned was pleased to discover that we’re a kind of jazzy early 90’s trip-hop, which may seem strange given the amount of Slayer related posts, but makes a lot more sense when you consider our massive tremazipan intake.

Anyway – play with this shit, it’s cool.

Sorry for the lack of posts. I’ve been listening to this on repeat. For three months.

The gig is a sell out, the band on the other hand are not…

My Chemical Romance are getting bigger by the year and now, with the release of Danger Days, they are set to go astronomical. The band had some trouble after The Black Parade with the departure of drummer Bob Bryar, an entire album scrapped, and about two years away from touring everything could have been a bit of a disaster for them. Luckily for them they know what they’re doing.

Storming on stage to riotous applause they waste no time and get straight into new single ‘Na Na Na’ out of the four or so new songs they play, which are all tinged with electro, this sounds the most polished and is a rowdy opener to get people going.

When you see My Chem you go to see a show rather than just a band, yet this was more of a minimal affair with little in the way of crowd-banter or showmanship. This new low-key style fit perfectly with their set which consisted of songs mainly from Three Cheers. This was a band embracing their roots with some ballsy pseudo-aggressive rock. Gerard stalked the stage like he was genuinely pissed off and even invited one lucky crowd member on stage to help sing ‘Honey This Mirror Aint Big Enough for the Two of Us’ from debut album Bullets. He was greeted on stage to “If you dare ask for fucking photo you’re gone” and then proceeded to miss the song queue three times. Fans eh?

With only the one song from Bullets played some of the older fans were inevitably disappointed. Though with a very young crowd (parents were involved for under 14’s) that went nuts for singles like ‘Teenagers’ this wasn’t much of a problem. That wasn’t the only problem with the evening. The Apollo is a great venue because you can see no matter where you are and it’s a pretty perfect size for a band of their stature to seem like it’s still intimate, but the sound quality just wasn’t good enough. This was more likely a problem with the band, who had slightly adapted some intro’s the fit with the ‘space music’ in-between songs, but they never seemed to pick up the pace again ‘Ghost of You’ was a particular low-point.

Despite all this the songs they do play well ‘You know what they do to guys like us in prison’, ‘Dead!’, ‘Give em’ Hell Kid’ etc…have thousands of people screaming the words and sound flawless. When they get it right there is nothing like it.

My Chemical Romance has a lot to offer and if you’re a fan of the albums then the raw energy of seeing them live is a must.

1. The Whiney Little Bitch

Nothing is good enough for this miserable fucker. Their entire existence, to them at least is constant torment. Their only ray of light in their self perceived crapsack life is their own favorite highly unpopular sub sub sub genre, which of course, their band and very few other bands play. Between moaning about their home town scene, or lack of it, more popular bands and how they suck and the mundanity of their hopeless little life, occasionally they will link to their own musical output. Don’t bother clicking on it though. They’re miserable for a reason.

2. Sir Linksalot

Walk away from Facebook for even a few minutes  and your news feed is filled with links. Most likely to YouTube videos of bands that have influenced them. Often accompanied by misspelt comments explaining that the band in said clip is a LEGEND!!11! or that the music in question is a Fuckin CHOONN! How they get any music written between the day long link sessions is beyond me.

3. The Constant Inviter

Despite the fact that Facebook allows you to show your location, this enthusiastic type will persist in inviting you to whatever gig they are playing. I may well be ensconced in my London pad, as it says on my profile and latest status update, but that will not put them off inviting me to a gig someone in Scandinavia. And they won’t just invite me once. Oh no. Poking, status updates and all the rest all trying to their their friends to gigs in faraway lands. Give up.

4. Rehearsal Room Reporter

Bands don’t practice in front of fans for a reason. Rehearsals are usually quite dull, full of miscommunication and arsing about. If fans could see their favourite bands locked in the rehearsal room their opinions of their musical gods may change. Especially if the singer is trying to explain his idea

“Yeah, a sort of chugga chugga riff, but, like, not dull, you know, like maybe in like 5/4 time or something”

So reporting on these goings on will reveal the dullness of being in a band to all and sundry. But some feel compelled to do it. We do not need to know about how you nailed that solo, or worked out a great drum pattern. And for the love of god, we don’t need to hear your shitty lyrics

5. Failed Musician Turned Blogger

So you couldn’t cut it as a musician for whatever reason. Probably because you were a talentless sucker. So you do what hundereds of you kind have done. Slag other bands off on the internet. And instead of keeping it to the confines of your shitty blog, you feel compelled to spread your half thought out ideas on ’social media channels’ because a ‘guru’ told you to. Unfortunately one of those ’social media channels’ is Facebook, so the rest of us have to put up with links to godawful reviews and opinion.

Yes, this is me.

Normally here on DT we avoid clubs and stick to real, actual live music, but it’s Saturday night in London Town’s most self-consciously hip district, which usually means cocktails in a former bomb shelter surrounded by pencil ‘tashed hipsters. But despite the lure of Deep House and hen parties at nearby Axis, we’ve managed to get ourselves down to Shoreditch High Street, avoided trying to sneak into Shoreditch house, and made it into Concrete for a night of retro thrills courtesy of new concern The Record Player….

Usually home to the sort of banging trance that activates my heat vision, Concrete has so far evaded the DT team’s attentions, so it’s with some trepidation that we venture into the oily depths beneath trendy eaterie Pizza East to be confronted by..well..concrete. Now, I’m sure this is meant to be ‘construction chic’ or something, but basically it boils down to a large room resembling an underground car park, a few candles and tables made from laminated chip-board. Let’s just say it won’t be appearing on Grand Designs anytime soon.
But it’s the crowd and the choons that matter right? And with The Record Club, Concrete could be onto a winner.

It’s a simple enough conceit – pick a year and stick to it for music, and get the crowd to vote for a top twenty. For this opening salvo we’re in 1979, so let’s see if our childhood memories stand up to the merciless alcoholic glare.

We arrived early, and there’s a weirdly school disco ambiance going on in the still pretty empty room at the start. Elvis Costello and similar new wave angular tunes are mixing it up with some stone cold classic disco as a small group of girls nervously edge onto the stage, while the rest of the room hug the bar and try to avoid the mechanical death-eyes of Margaret Thatcher. The Iron Lady goggling down at us from giant spirit of ’79 posters planted about the place. For a while we’re worried –sure the music’s good, but it’s too quiet and no-one’s dancing. As your intrepid DT staffer has the coordination of a dead pig on a skateboard we stick to the atrociously overpriced cocktails as the huge space very, very slowly starts to fill up.

Of course, we are also old people so have forgotten that young ‘uns these days don’t get started until at least midnight. Sure enough, the witching hour strikes, the place fills up and the sounds go up to eleven. And what sounds –everything from Donna Summer and MJ to AC/DC and Bowie –it’s eclectic, but for the most part electric.

The stage fills up and is helped along in no small part by DT’s official hero of the night, a velour suit-clad dandy with a nice line in bizarre Leslie Phillip’s-esque dance moves; he’s covered in bust ladeez despite being camp as a legion of scouts and none the worse for it. Eventually even we hit the floor and have a bloody good time. If there’s a downside it’s that it’s a little too busy, with an uncomfortable number of pissed-up 40 something blokes staggering about and adding a greasy undercurrent to proceedings, and an inexperienced DJ duo who really need to pay more attention to the mood of the room in order to keep the vibe flowing.

Small concerns –a little crowd control and the chance to settle in will sort them out –follow The Record Player on Facebook in the meantime – 1990 is up next so dig out those whistles and white gloves -based on opening night it should be a fun, unself-conscious event that deserves to be a success.

The new way of discovering music through people. – Where music comes recommended. -Sit back and listen in full as your friends, dj’s and artists flow you the tunes they really rate flow music to your own friends and followers and earn 20% of the price when they buy.

mFlow. Uh. Yeah. So it’s Spotify plus Twitter with some way to make some money if people buy what you recommend to them. It’s quite confusing.

So lets see if it’s any good. I’m downloading it now.

Setup is utterly painless. Not sure why it wants my whole name but hey. To them my name is Optimus Motherfucker. The login screen also looks like a laynyard. That’s a nice touch.

Lets see how it works. Nicely done tutorial – no  video. Just some screens. OK, so I have to follow people to get ‘flows.’ That’s the music I can listen to. I refuse to make a joke about ‘flow’. I’m above it. Really. If I ‘flow’ music and someone buys it I get a few pence.

Ok. So who can I follow?

Fuck. Zane Lowe. I hate that guy. NME? Bah. I’m not sure they fit my taste. Bit too, well, NME. Popjustice? Love the man’s writing, but can’t say I agree with what he says is AMAZING.

I’ve heard Metal Hammer is on here, so I might as well take a punt and follow them . How do I find them? Ah, they’re featured. If they weren’t I’d have no idea.

Followd. They’ve flowed some Bon Jovi. Way metal guys. But I can take a listen to the track. To be honest nothing they flowed is ‘new music’ though. Anyone who has even stood close to a metalhead knows the bands they’re recommending.

Let’s recommend something. Clutch? Clutch. More people need to know about them.

Search Clutch. One song. From The Crobar album. Strange. Let’s listen to it first so I know what I’m talking about.

Also, 90% of searches came up bad. Not much choice. Yes, the service is new so I’m going to be uncharacteristic nice and forgive them – but they better get a shit-ton of songs in there soon.

I only get a 30 second sample. Well, that blows.

What do I do with 30 second samples? I send them to people so they can hear the whole song. I’m comfused. And a bit angry. This makes no sense.

Can someone explain this to me? I want to listen to music, but I can’t. I’m going back to Spotify and Grooveshark until someone explains why this is a good idea. I like listening to whole songs. I like listening to new songs. I don’t like having to wait til someone sends me something so I can listen.

So, yeah, if you like your music taste dictated to you – go for it!

Reviewing this gig could be a problem. In fact, I’m not sure if I’m even reviewing it on the right blog. Yes, it was a gig, but it was also the launch of a new car, and featured some pretty kickass tech, so perhaps it should be over at Electric Spectre.

(So It’s there now too.)

So Chevrolet are launching a new car. If it was something like a Camero or a Nova we might expect their launch party to be held in a strip bar and feature entertainment from Monster Magnet, the Drive By Truckers, the Dallas Cowboy’s cheerleaders and a fountain of Malt Liquor. Unfortunately we don’t live in a cartoon version of the 70s. Cars are now economical, safe and don’t come with bucket seats, four tracks and NOS as standard. Shame really. So instead we  have The Mystery Jets, Nick Grimshaw and a nail bar.

The Mystery Jets, to me, are another identikit, landfill indie band, and Nick Grimshaw can fall on a spike for all I care. But for some reason, I had a really good time. Why? Free booze, fun toys to play with a good organisation.

Some bright Spark (Eh? See what I did there.) had set up a life size screen displaying the Spark  and a ‘virtual’ spraycan. This was coupled with a nice, easy to use graffiti program allowing us to spray paint the car. The cool thing was that this was projected onto a real Spark.

This meant me and Interceptor spent far too much time trying to recreate the Mirthmobile from Wayne’s World, the Batmobile and Ecto One as well as some very obscure 2000AD referencing graffiti.

We then decided to crash a photo of some models being taken in the car by getting in the back and asking how much it was for “South of the River”. We’re dicks. Sorry.

The DJ booth was pretty cool too – a Spark on it’s side with it’s wheels being used as the turntables.

So – I’m sure the Mystery Jets fulfilled their contractual obligations and played their music, and Grimshaw played some records. But I wasn’t looking.

You can check out pictures from the gig here – including some car graffiti – You can probably spot ours….

So, you’re a billion-selling rock behemoth that needs to make your dinosaur-grooves relevant to a new generation – have you considered getting the geek overlord over at rainwarrior.com to programme your biggest hit to work on a NES?

Last Week Downtuned was lucky enough to see a screening of the above documentary charting the history of Pirate Radio in London from it’s quite frankly ballsy beginnings an board sea-forts and ships to its slightly more low key contemporary incarnation transmitting from tower blocks using DIY technology. There is a whole lot more info here on Palladium’s site who commissioned and co made the whole thing.

Pirate radion in the 60s was a VERY IMPORTANT THING – giving an alternative to the state controlled radio at the time. Reaching millions of homes it was a real part of British culture. However pirate radio now – does it seem a little anachronistic to you? Considering to find new music requires a bit of typing and button clicking these days, dudes broadcasting to an audience with a maximum size of a few hundred people seem a little bit -dated?

Stop me if there seems to be any inkling of bitterness but do people really want to be paying money for songs that sound like a failed cross breed between a robot and a human person? With Kei$ha, that seems to be exactly what we’re getting. Here is a lady who has recorded her vocals and then let the machines alter them, think of a second rate Daft Punk done on a shoestring budget. The resulting mess is tic toc. (Not embedable. Wankers. Ed)

With so much studio trickery drowning out any sort of pure musical talent, it beggars belief to see how she would sing live. That’s unless she takes around one of those machines which can alter the pitch of your voice. For the comedy value, we’d go to see that. However, it would be wrong for us to judge. Surely there is some sort of footage floating around the internet of Kei$sha showing what she really do?

Guess what, there is! Join us in our musical tardis as we warp back to when Kei$sha is only 13 years old. Here in a school talent school competition she can be seen singing a cover of Radiohead’s karma police. Remember folks, this is a completely natural raw performance with no over produced studio trickery:

Can we draw any positives from that? Hmm, the piano player seemed to be ok and is probably now carving out a career in a folk blues band. But for Kei$sha? Perhaps disguising her vocal abilities under waves of overproduced electro pop beats are far the better.

If you’re a true music geek, then you’ll probably dig these weirdly beautiful charts by artist Marco Fusinato, each of which takes a piece of sheet music and suggests new possible reltionships between notes.

The process works on anything so if you’re planning a cover version or want to make a U2 song sound good* then this is the process for you! For the rest of us it just looks cool.

Check out Marco’s page for more of project: Black Mass Implosion.

*Not actually possible

Nerdcore – the geeky offshoot of rap and hiphop, more concerned with witches and trolls than bitches and hoes – where the size of your RAM is far more important than the size of your gun has thus far been a very American institution. But things change.

Thanks to a man named  Milk Plus and the homeless of London (yes, really) The UK now has a Nerdcore scene to call it’s own.

Who is behind the UK revolution? Matt Catlow is a music production trainer for a large homeless charity by day…. and nerd rapper “Milk-Plus” by night. (Milk-Plus being a reference to the fictional drink in the book/film ‘A Clockwork Orange’) Through his work with the homeless he works in a fully equipped recording studio in Covent Garden, London providing music production training and recording opportunities for homeless clients. A lot of the service users are rappers and most of them rap about the streets and the negativity inherent in gang culture. Nerdcore offers geeksta as an alternative to gangsta rap and because of the aforementioned wide lyrical playing field rappers can find something positive to rap about and still fit right in.

So, UK nerdcore now has a home, and a de facto leader. The tenth anniversary of the word Nerdcore (as coined by MC Frontalot) is coming up and now is the time for British nerdcore to rise up and get elevated. Go here and join in the fun

Japanese music hacker / designer / all round mad scientist Yoshi Akai has created something rather cool – an 3 channel 8 step sequencer that works by putting LEGO blocks on a big LEGO grid.

It’s pretty amazing!

Every time a story emerges about Prince, it seems almost impossible not to feel a bit of hatred towards the annoying midget singer. Yes he might have graced the world with a few catchy pop songs, but Christ is he a complaining prick who spits his dummy out all the time when things don’t quite go his way. Boo hoo indeed Mr. Prince. Do you want us to get you some crayons so you can go squiggle another stupid symbol across your head?

Just like a teenager, Prince went through his rebellious stage when he was a middle aged man. Slightly angry that his record company were supposedly shafting him, the Purple Rain star decided to replace his name with a symbol. Did anyone care? No, at best the majority hoped ink poisoning would kick in.

If it wasn’t enough for Prince to be all upset about symbols and names, he later focussed his anger on digital music. Launching a personal crusade against file sharers, he strongly opposes the medium of musical distribution for free but has now gone one step further. Try visiting Youtube and searching for any releases by him. It’s difficult to listen to studio tracks from him underneath DIY fan videos. Why? Because Prince thinks it’s damaging his musical earnings. Or something like that.

And what’s next on the hit list of the musical superstar? Poor defenceless toddlers, that’s who! Annoyed by the fact that a young child was getting some sort of amusement and joy out of his track “Let’s Go Crazy”, the child’s mother Stephanie Lenz who filmed the clip, was sued for supposed copyright theft.

Of course, it might not be Prince himself directly barking out orders to remove these quite likely poor quality clips featuring a dancing child. Still, there is still a strong chance as he sits in a mansion plotting evil things where everything is lined with velvet and the heads of bootleggers on pikes.

Thankfully, commonsense prevailed and a Californian judge pretty much told Universal Records to piss off and stop wasting his and everybody else’s time. However, this does mean in theory that it’s possible to do dances to our favourite artists and not get in to trouble. We’re going to start by squeezing in to a leotard and prance around like Beyonce. Hell yeah.

Animals have been on this planet for as us human types. However, when you think about it, animals are generally rubbish compared to us. In ye olde caveman times, all we’d do is spit a spiel of incoherent words and gather food for ourselves. And if Miss. Caveman wanted some, she’d get the leftover scraps.

Humans have evolved in to all sorts. We invented the wheel. You didn’t get a lamb doing that. Some clever sod also discovered electricity. Not like a badger collaborated with other nocturnal wildlife to beat us to it. Finally, human speech patterns have improved and we can now communicate clearly to each other. Apart from in Liverpool. Scientists are still scratching their heads as to what went wrong.

It would have been quite cool if animals had developed at the same rate as us humans. We’d live in a society made up of chickens that could defend themselves with laser vision against foxes. Cows would also be able to prevent pissed teenagers tipping them over for cheap laughs.

Whilst this hasn’t quite happened, it does seem that us humans have looked in to giving animals a more prominent role in society. Nowadays we do more than simply butcher them for meat and use their fur as an overpriced designer coat. Look no further then the police force who draft in man’s best friend to bust various drug smugglers. The circus industry has also realised that people don’t want to see people juggling. After all, why have that when you can witness a bear riding a stupidly small bike and a fully clothed dancing monkey.

The one thing that animals haven’t been able to do compared to us humans is enjoy a gig or good album. Sadly, animals go mental when they hear a low frequency sound and they would have been unable to listen to such offenders like The Saturdays and any generic X-Factor winner/loser/laughable person who auditioned.

Oh wow! This is totally brilliant news. Now we can waste money on a piece of machinery that does exactly the same job as something we already have. But now our fluffy friends can enjoy our musical tastes without their ears being damaged. Though any generic R&B about pulling girls in a club and then taking them to an after party will probably get the same reaction like a low frequency sound. Janet Marlow, from speaker manufacturer Pet Acoustics, said pets will now find their owner’s music soothing and relaxing. She told The Telegraph:

“My Pet Speaker is the world’s first sound system designed to cater specifically to the hearing sensitivities of pet. It transforms your personal music library into pet-friendly tunes that soothe and relax dogs, cats, horses, and their owners. The limited frequencies and soft bass mean your pets will not be startled or disturbed by jarring volumes and piercing sounds that put them on alert. It is ideal for pets at home, veterinary clinics, barns and pet care facilities.”

Brilliant, now our animal friends can indulge in some Dutch gabba with us at home whilst relaxing to some weak indie at the vets. And how much will this cost? Just £159. That’s £159 you could spend on beer, silly amounts of Cream Eggs and records.

Yeeeeeeah boy! NWA may have produced a “bombastic, cacophonous car ride through Los Angeles’ burnt-out and ignored hoods.”(Rolling Stone Magazine), but who the hell cares about all that poverty and police brutality stuff -what we really like is the swearing!

As we all muthafucking know, swearing makes you harder and more muthafuckin’ sexy than any other muthafuckin’ muthafucka on your block. You want to be sexy dont you muthafucka? Of course you muthafuckin’ do! So why not check out the profanties only mix of NWA’s stone cold muthafuckin classic Straight Outta Compton?

Sure it might be missing the point completely -and reduce classic Comptons in the House to a mere 27 seconds – but those is valuable seconds you could be using to pop a cap in someone’s ass or nail some bitches..whatever those things are.

Anyway -it’ll still slam ya down to the street top: Check it out here!

How black is too black? None! Erm…or something…
anyway, put on your mining helmet and join us as we head down the dimly-lit path of rock n’roll nightmares and uncover the oily remains of The Blackest Albums EVER!!!!!!

1: The Black Album – Prince

Apparently some people thought that Prince was too pop orientated in 1987, because obviously Prince had never had anything at all to do with pop during his career. Anyway, he ditched the purple for
something altogether darker as a follow up to Sign O The Times.
Well, almost.

After cobbling together this collection of super funk -and the phrase “Who’s that skinny motherfucker with the high voice?” courtesy of weird woman-killing funk workout Bob George – Prince had a
religious wobbly and decided the whole thing was tainted with evil!

Brilliant!
Unfortunately he dealt with this by withdrawing it and releasing the altogether more upbeat LoveSexy instead, thus sparing us the likes of the wee fella drawling all over Cindy Crawford on ‘Cindy C’ and pretty much telling every gangsta rapper that they suck balls – top work Prince!

2: The Black Album – Metallica

Remember when Metallica were great?
Not if you were born after 1990 you don’t sucker.

Roping in Big-barneted cock rock overlord Bob Rock to produce may have cured the ‘playing under a mattress next door’ sound that plagued …and Justice For All and launched the band into the superstar stratosphere, but it also marked the start of their fall from world’s greatest thrash band to middle-management sub-Meatloaf
fare.

The song about the werewolf isn’t bad mind you.

3: The Black Album – The Damned

Loses a lot of points for three reasons.
Firstly, It’s not entirely black.
B: It was released on Chiswick records, a record label named after the least rock n roll place on Earth.
Number three: It contains music by The Damned.
The album still manages to rise above these limitations, containing the band’s most enduring tune – New Rose, and setting them up as the first UK punk band to tour the US.
Caution: May contain traces of Rat Scabies.

4: The Black Album – Jay-Z

According to Rolling Stone magazine, The Black Album ‘Allowed Jay-Z to show himself as a rap classicist’ which pretty much proves what utter shite the magazine talks these days. Possibly fearing the wrath of
Prince, Jay-Z saw fit to release an accapella version of the album alongside the regular one, so feel free to steal his shit, marry Beyonce and put together your own mega hit collection.
You may need to sell out completely to do this, but who cares about musical integrity when you own 15 Lamborghini’s eh?.

5: The Black Album – The Dandy Warhols

Imagine if you can the sheer terror that ran through our veins when we uncovered this. It’s an album by The Dandy Warhols…recorded in the ‘official worst decade for music ever’ mid 1990’s…that was considered too shit for general release!
Eventually a couple of the less crap tunes surfaced on the aptly titled ‘Come Down’ album, but it was too late for the literally tens of fans* who’d traded this underground. DT respectfully asks that you play Accept’s 1981 hit ‘Balls to the Wall’ really loud in their memory.

*Escaped Lunatics

6: The Black Album – Boyd Rice album

He’s a tricksy one is our Boyd, releasing his very own addition to the musical pantheon of darkness tucked away in a warm, welcoming box set. This 12 incher gets extra kudos for being playable at any speed, and for…ooohh…spoooooky…not having a track listing!!! That’s right –no song titles –has that blown your mind man? I bet it has. Anyway, you could do that sort of thing in the 70’s. Good luck tracking this fucker down!

7: The Black Album – Planxty

To be fair, I’ve only included this so you’ll think I’m some sort of uber-font of musical knowledge with a vinyl collection full of obscure, Stuart Maconie-approved folk from the 70’s and snag myself a late-night spot on BBC 6 music in the process. In fact the last vinyl I bought was Slayer’s Reign in Blood, but that shouldn’t put you off checking out the whimsical strummings and parpings of these Irish fellas whoever they are. Extra points for containing a song called Blacksmithereens.

8: The Black Album – Baby Bird

Baby Bird?! What, the ‘you’re gorgeous’ bloke? But he SUCKS!! Yes, yes he does, but when he first came out right, he was considered a musical genius. You have to remember that this was during a period when Oasis were occasionally considered ‘good’. Anyhoo, this piece of fusilin indie pops up crammed inside another box-set (there’s a pattern here..maybe the middle of a box set is considered darker man…); The Original Lo-Fi.

Unique in that its musical content was neither original or Lo-Fi, prompting The Independent to describe it as “A Bargain”. Hig Praise indeed as Frontball Stephen Jones proved himself an even worse muso than his Sex Pistols namesake, releasing songs named after lettuce (Iceberg) and inadvertently giving dire popsters Cornershop their name. Should you come across this in your local vinyl emporium, set napalm on it.

9: This Is Spinal Tap.

Goes Up To Eleven..blah blah…big bottom..blah blah…stone ‘enge…blah blah. Instructions for use:
1: Buy album and memorise it.
2: Travel to obscure metal festival in Belarus
3: Repeat lyrics ad nauseum to anyone within earshot.
4: Find you’ve forged an unbreakable friendship that will last a lifetime with all of them.

10: The White Album – The Beatles

Depending on where you live, this is the 9th and/or 15th album by little known beat combo The Beatles – the album is probably best known for it’s original title ‘A Doll’s House’ being changed when megastar musical geniuses Family released a sort of similarly named album, but hey, everyone loves Family don’t they? They’re the biggest band in the worl and practically invented pop music.

Anyway, The mop-tops might be quite good, but there’s no denying that as a black album this is shit!

Fuck you Paul McCartney, what the hell were you thinking? Honestly, only the ex-Mr Heather Mills could release a Black Album so totally wrong. Apparently most of the songs were knocked out by Paul and John who would ‘Rendezvous clandestinely in each other’s hotel rooms’ –their words not ours ladies and gentlemen, their words.

Anyway; a woeful attempt at blackalbumry easily topped by Back in Black which managed to be more black without even being called The Black Album. It’s no wonder The Beatles faded into musical obscurity so quickly.

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It’s hard out there for the independent artist. Let’s face it, today’s kids are way too busy destroying Nazi Robots or playing Wii golf to listen to actual music, and music games have been limited to the karaoke market with Rock Band and Guitar Hero; both great fun, but hardly likely to push the boundaries of musical discovery.

Until now – enter Jam Legend.

Jam Legend is a unique platform offering up-and-coming musos the chance to rise above the fug of X-Factor wannabes and autotune R&B slop by putting new music directly into the massive and largely untapped video game market.

Just visit the site, sign up and upload your tunes, and they’ll be instantly available to play, meaning artists get exposure and gamers get a massive, free catalogue of new music to conquer! Not to mention creating playable lists and sharing with friends/enemies via the facebook fan page, meaning JL has all the ingrediants to be absolutely massive.

Check out Jam Legend here.

As time and technology have advanced, we’ve seen various instruments created to generate sound. A drum kit for example is an expensive way of making noises. Hitting different objects at various strengths with your fists can produce equal bangs. We also have different varieties of guitars! Unlike apples, they all make the same sounding note when plucked. These days its overpriced pedal kits which give you the ability to sound like you’re trapped in a moon crater.

With 2010 being the age known as the future, musicians from the eighties probably thought that musical instruments would have developed in amazing new ways. Science would give us the chance to be injected with chemicals and then make angel like melodies when we tapped our teeth, pulled certain armpit hairs or coughed. Did we get any of this? Not a chance. Instead, we got sodding “Guitar Hero” and its annoying sister “DJ Hero”.

Oh wow, look at that! The pretty colours that flash on the screen need to be pressed at the right time on the plastic guitar in order for it to work. If so, the right bit of music comes out the TV! Fail to do so and recorded voices boo you and tell you to go join Keane or some other weak feeble band. All of the repetative motions often leave players in a piss-poor trance that musicians would go through if they overdid it on herbal tea.

If this is the future of music then as music fans, we offer our collection of LP’s and stolen gig set lists to the Gods above. Honestly, it can sometimes seem that while diluted indie band after copycat act get airplay through various media outlets, the raw creativeness of some acts just seems to get ignored so a skinny boy with a battered guitar can sing mushy songs about his kitchen drain clogging up.

But amongst all the blandness there is one band that really is something truly amazing. This specifically goes right back to the instruments they use. Unless you’re brain dead you’ll probably have guessed that it isn’t a typical band set up with drums, guitars and a base. Nor have we found any musical scientists who have wired up monkeys and gives them shocks to make them produce different sounding notes.

No, it’s the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra who literally do as their name suggests. Making music from vegetables. Not only is this a truly fascinating concept, but watching a gig of theirs will quite likely count as one of your five a day. As this dinky little Youtube showreel of the band doing what they. From visiting local markets to buying their gear, engineering them to a high performance standard and then using converted carrots as flutes.

The sound of peppers, cabbages and pumpkins oddly come together well and can sound at times almost electronic. Do we know how? No, it’s far too complicated for our little heads. But we enjoy it. Which is the main thing.

Let’s be honest, no one wants to be a bass player.
If your nickname at school hadn’t been awkward dork, you’d be a frontman, blowing the clothes off the nearest member of the opposite sex with your tight leather pants and matching lungs.
If you could handle 6 strings without your fingers falling off you’d be a guitar hero, super talented and super sexy.

The bass is where the dorky boring member goes, eschewing even the rage of the drummer for a life of A pedal anonymity. Look at AC/DC. One of the tightest, finest exponents of hot rocking ever to stride the face of the earth, but Cliff Williams seemed to have lost his personality along with his leather wristband in 1976. He stands at the back. He plays an E. Admittedly he makes millions of pounds a year but it can’t be the most creatively satisfying career can it?

Despite this there are a few hardy souls who buck the trend, bass players who appear to be there by mistake. Tweaking the nose of treble clef superiority with their subsonic superpowers, they’re the leanest,meanest and coolest guys in the band – Check ‘em out:

Steve Harris – Iron Maiden

When I was 16, I spent most of my time drinking cider and enjoying intimate moments with a well used VHS Kathy Lloyd Playboy special .Steve meanwhile spent his formative years knocking out something altogether different-rock classics like Phantom of the Opera and Running Free, and possible the greatest band logo in rock n’ roll history. Employing a slightly odd and very,very difficult slap n’ tickle playing technique, his playing meant he managed to come out looking good despite a penchant for pinstripe spandex. The fact that he’s regarded as one of the nicest geezers in rock only adds to that sinking feeling you get when you realise you have no friends and struggle to pump out twinkle twinkle little star on your instrument of choice (The ukulele).

Joey Dimaio – Manowar

Roadies. They smell, they’re thick, they’re only good for tightening lug nuts and carrying speakers right? What they certainly aren’t is musical geniuses just waiting for the opportunity to crank out a solo 12-string versions of the William Tell overture, followed up by a 42 minute operetta based on The Iliad that somehow gets them signed to Geffen records. Sure Manowar are fucking ridiculous, but its a rare 4 string sorcerer indeed who can come out ahead in a band that features a singer with a 7 octave range.

Lemmy – Motorhead

How may drugs have you taken?How may people have you sexed up? Lemmy would laugh at your pathetic attempts if he had time between swigging from that whisky bottle. His name may have come from blagging ciggarettes from all and sundry (lemmy a fag mate…) but in return he gave us some of the tightest,dirtiest,all-round greatest rock n roll on the planet.

John Entwhistle – The Who

Outwardly the man known as The OX is everything a bass player should be, he’s quiet, resolute -hey, he was even raised in Chiswick. But look at that buzzard Bass, listen to those monolithic grooves. He may be the most boring man Bill Wyman has ever met, but he’s a groove-layer par excellence.

Stig Pederson – D.A.D

Throughout his career with never quite as popular as they deserved Danish rockers D.A.D, Stig has elevated bass playing to Zen levels, realising that minimalist is the way to go and dispensing entirely with 2 superfluous strings. His position on the list isn’t based on musical prowess however, but on his bubble perm, rocket shaped choice of axe and predilection for dressing up as a recently ejected fighter pilot-complete with parachute. Despite his status as a comedy Scandinavian, he still manages to anchor down some of the most lyrically complex, layered and just plain great pop rock of the last 20 years-do yourself a favour and check them out.

Billy Sheehan – Mr Big

So, there’s this guitar player right? His name’s Steve Vai. He was in this band with this dude called Frank Zappa-maybe you heard of him? Well little Stevie managed to be in that band and not ever get upstaged by big Frankie Z. And when Steve got hired by a certain ex-Van Halen frontman, he hired a bass player.Who was better than him. Most people know Sheehan’s later project Mr.Big for the insipid ballad ‘To Be With You’. What they don’t remember is the ultra high velocity rockin propelled by Sheehan and his ridiculously dexterous down tuning.

Cliff Burton – Metallica

There’s a lot of middle managers out there that think latter day Metallica are great. They’re wrong. Want proof?Listen to what’s going on in the background on ‘Trapped Under Ice’. Now listen to ‘Load’(actually,please don’t).Cliff’s demise may have marked the start of Metallica’s supergroup status, but it also started a slippery slide into creative bankruptcy that left most original fans wondering what might have been.

John Paul Jones – Led Zeppelin

Hey hey mama gonna make you move. JP never quite seems to get the kudos afforded fellow mudshark incident survivors Page and Plant, but would Kashmir really sound so awesome if it wasn’t for the greatest rhythm section in rock history? Despite hanging out with a post Kyuss Josh Homme a little too much lately, he remains a down with the kids wrinkly talent,

Geezer Butler – Black Sabbath

The heaviest, Loudest member of the band. Oh-the band is Black Sabbath by the way. The awesome moustache and ability to create relevant, amazing albums outside his day job only adds to his brilliance and makes you realise just how far Ozzy really has fallen.

Colin Grigson – Bad News

His name is Colin Grigson,and he gets the fucking night bus home. Only in the band because he owns a PA system, Colin still managed to cobble together the middle eight’s to such all-time classics as ‘masturbike’ and ‘Warriors of Ghengis Khan’,he’s the only one here who’s playing resulted in his throat being slit at a major rock festival. Currently working as deputy branch manager for Crouch End Nat West.

Well, I know I’ve missed some -Les Claypool is up there, and what about That dude from UB40 – You know the one? Alan Partridge likes him? Plays a sort-of watered down reggea? Anyway, I asked some bass players I know and they said he was quite good apparently, and I wouldn’t want to (red,red)whine about including him here – and apparently one of The Beatles played the bass too… let us know if you think of any others (apart from any members of The Clash or The Sex Pistols -they are shit)

You know what the best thing about a CD or vinyl record is? It’s something physical you can actually hold and call your own. In the old days people used to go round to their friends house and even swap what they had bought! Who’d have thought that the power of watching a 12” record spin round and around whilst listening to some killer beats could be so thrilling?

Of course nothing lasts for sodding ever. In the so called digital age where everything is meant to be easier and supposedly more enjoyable to consume, the humble CD and vinyl suffered. People opted to stop buying records as the faceless MP3 had been created. Now you could own a lump of musical coding that could be stored on a mini music harddrive known to the majority of people as an iPod.

Big whoop indeed, where is the fun of displaying your music collection off? Instead of thumbing through faded record covers and marvelling at the artwork, you can now scroll through a digital collection in roughly one minute. Enjoyment factor? Roughly zero percent. However, the MP3 has become the victim of its own success. As we all know, the invention of swapping music files illegally was established way before some bright spark realised artists we’re being ripped off.

After a few years of battle, music lovers with a few morals used online retailers such as iTunes to purchase their music. Old songs then became remastered and bundled with all sorts of random crap. Often the misleading chance to win a competition to get exclusive gig tickets. Just when the dust is settling on this tediously new format, news has reached us that bigwig music chiefs want to flex their muscles and balls things up for all again.

It all gets spectacularly nerdy as reports all talk about something called BACH Techology. This sounds alarmingly worrying to begin with seeing that they can’t even spell back properly. That’s probably because it’s some sort of wacky European creation. Possibly by the Germans, they wear leather shorts for God’s sake. From the sound of what’s being planned, it looks like the humble MP3 might be getting an injection of intelligence as these details have emerged:

“The new media extension, MusicDNA, allows owners of an MP3 file to access additional updated content, including lyrics, artwork, tour dates, blog posts, videos, and Twitter feeds.”

At the moment, CD’s and vinyl purchased back in the mid nineties are just sitting on a shelf collecting dust. With the introduction of this technology it means that when JLS announce a new tour, a bare chested member from the X-Factor losers could personally tell us that they’re playing our local leisure centre or rehab centre. How terribly exciting.

For more information which will no doubt chew up your brain, visit the website where all of these proposals are being pitched:

www.musicdna.com

Everyone loves colourful flow-charts, they’re just so reassuring, here at DT we’ve spent months turning Immortal lyrics into pie-chart form – but our efforts pale next to those of Beatles fan and designer Michael Deal, who’s spent way too much time creating a series of obscure Fab Four graphs and charts, and from the looks of it, it’s amazing they ever had time to release any music:

The project isn’t finished by any stretch, so get on over to MD’s site and get involved – anyway, here’s your linky for the full gallery – we demand T-Shirt versions!

Has any real innovation in music production happened in the last few years? Sure, it’s got simpler, to the point where any Tom, Dick or Harry can create something on a home computer. Unfortunately it is mostly Dick being produced. And making things simpler isn’t innovation per say, it’s simplification. People can’t do anything new, they can just do things better and cheaper.

Luckily there are people out there pushing the boundaries of music production. And pushing it into strange new directions. Those people are RjDj – and they’ve produced an augmented reality music app.  I can attempt to explain what that means (and probably get it completely wrong), but I can go one better and have got Robert Thomas – a Reactive Music Producer from RjDj explain it to you!

Hey Rob, can you explain what exactly RjDj is?

RjDj is an iPhone and Andoid application which enables reactive music. This is a way of experiencing music which changes with what you are doing, how you are moving, the sounds around you can be part of it – even where you are on earth or what time of day or night it is.

Also, here is a video, because video explanations are ace.

Who came up with the idea? What was the inspiration behind it?

Michael Breidenbrucker founded RjDj, and had the initial ideas for it in 2001 but felt that the technology and market wasn’t ready yet. In the meantime he co-founded Last.fm. He then came back to the concepts of RjDj as devices like the iPhone became available and it was possible to run that kind of software in your pocket to control music in this way.

Music and the technology that delivers it is becoming ever more intertwined. Do you foresee more apps like RjDj being developed?

We feel that the future of music is as software, and that artists and labels will increasingly take advantage of the wealth of possibilities that this format for music affords.

Are apps like RjDj the answer to the supposed crisis in the music industry?

They certainly present a fantastic opportunity for the music industry to deliver outstanding engaging content. We believe its an important part of the future of music in the digital age.

We love the idea of RjDj Sprints – Where RjDj users/producers get together to produce new music – could an RjDj ‘Supergroup’ ever come out of one? Do you think they could release a hit single?

Ah yes ! Quite possibly. We have seen some wonderful scenes come out of the sprints. I think the great reactive music will come from the community of scene makers. Especially as we introduce our new scene making software targeted at all musicians and producers – codenamed the RJC1000. This enables anyone who makes music to drag their own music into the software and start to add reactive elements and very easily get it on the phone as a scene.

And finally…augmented reality music app or live gig?

I think the augmented reality music app is in many ways somewhere between a music recording and live gig. With RjDj and artist can give the listener multiple possible experiences of the music much like a gig and also the listener is part of the experience. In this way the experience is unique and personal each time. I think RjDj, and reactive music is actually a new thing, something different from both recordings and live music.

You can get the RjDj app for iPhone and Android now – for free! Amazing!

Everyone knows that listening to Motley Crue at dangerously loud volumes makes you look a lot cooler when you’re cruising in your shitty old Mark II Escort, and thanks to Ford’s in-house boffins you can finally ditch that 8-Track and get with the now, yo.

The latest version of Ford’s SYNC system -the trendingly titled MyFord Touch – now supports Pandora radio, giving you the chance to annoy people at junctions with weird Boris remixes.

Add in Stitcher for Podcasts and even Openbreak so you can bellow tweets while on the move, and Ford are all set to provide us with an all new, net-savvy generation of music loving drivers. Now they just have to fix that weird leaky breaks thing and they’ll be good to go.

First up: Slayer – Reign In Blood

Pixies: Doolittle

Public Enemy: It Takes a Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back

I’ve always had a soft spot for Peaches. She just seemed dirty, but in a good way. Not the Christina Aguilera way, but a wholesome, fun kind of dirty. Smutty even. Like a rude postcard playing electro. However, now she seems to be morphing into the mum of the one vegetarian kid in school, you know the one, always wore over sized wool jumpers and smelt a bit like soil.

But we can forgive her that. Because of LASERS. LOTS OF LASERS.

It seems that Peaches wanted to make her live show more awesome, and went down the only obvious route. Six laser harps. Built by a strange German man who looked like he’d have no problem cooking and eating a man he met on the internet.

The show actually looks pretty amazing, but I know I’d be tempted to throw stuff to break the beams and mess up the song. Because I’m a dick like that.

Anyway, I’m hoping for more laser based instruments. Hopefully Johnny Borell or whoever is the hate figure du jour will shoot themselves with a high powered version.

Video comes courtesy of Vodaphone 360 and VBS

Google is all powerful! It knows who you are, where you live and what you watch when you’re jerking off. Luckily there’s still a way for rock n’ roll to stick it to the man – even a man that will happily make naked ladies appear on your screen whenever you like – form a band even the big G can’t track down! DT ignores the spellcheck and checks ‘em out:

1: The Band.

The masters of post-modern irony. It’s fairly obvious these days that Bob Dylan is an alien time traveller, which explains how, despite dying before the spread of the internet, Richard Manuel managed to utterly confound the combined powers of Google and..erm..Ask Jeeves..with this name, which returns just about every MySpace page on the planet. Good work alien Bob!.

2: !!!

Sacramento, California, has it’s fair share of funk/dance/post-punk ensembles, all dying to get talked about. Unfortunately !!! seem to have chosen their name based on the sound their maternal grandmother made upon finding porn in their bedroom.

3: MP3

A brilliant name unfortunately hoovered up for use by some bloody politicians -Members of Parliament… and there’s three of them..do you see what they did there? Do you get it? How we laughed at the DT office as we spent 3 straight hours trying to find a website almost as elusive as D.A.D’s  (before realising we could find them on wiki. Strangely, they recently changed the name to MP4, which made sense with the extra member, but must have halved the number of hits these guys were getting.

4: Torrent.

It seems like a great name doesn’t it? It’s fresh and modern sounding, with a bit of an edge, some meaning behind the name. Until one of your fans wants to know more, and is faced with 248,000,000 results, most of them for knocked off copies of The Wedding Crashers. Not helped by that terribly familiar logo..

5: James.

Luckily no one in their right mind would bother searching for the baldy Manchester egomaniacs, but try googling them – or indeed their hit Sit Down – and see what you get: More adverts for beanbags and office furniture than you can shake a lazy Madchester shoegazer at.

6: Sunn0)))))))

A bit of an anomaly here, as the titans of drone doom can actually be googled. What they can’t be however, is downloaded. Go to BT or Kazaa or whatever –try typing that name in. It can’t be done! So underground they refuse to believe anyone would be able to share their music – probably because they record it on wax cylinders.

7: 404 Forbidden

A band so difficult to find, that after an hour of looking for a picture, I though “ah fuck ‘em” and instead used an image of Bay Area Thrashers Forbidden (Partially because I vaguely resemble singer russ)! 404 encapsulate the frustrations of legions of garage band users, as evidenced by similarly named associates 403 and 405. Face it Casio-centric noisecore-ists everywhere, you’d be better off with a moog.

8: A!

Proof positive that the Aaron A. Aardvark trick may mean you’re first on the shelves in HMV, but when the entire music marketing game changes overnight, you’re fucked. It also doesn’t help that A! are fucking awful.

Any more? Send ‘em in and undermine their undergroundness!