I have been downloading stuff more than usual lately, using MP3 blogs rather than slsk which I have not bothered to install on my new mac yet. I like this way better as you don’t have to think about what you want, instead you just cherrypick from a rush of MP3s being flung at your ears. And, as a bonus, sometimes you get some good writing about the tracks. It’s even good for The Artists as MP3 blogs generally only post 2 or 3 tracks from an album, making me much more likely to buy the album than if I’ve got all the tracks off slsk.

So, here are some new things I have heard that I have added to my buy list.

…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead – So Divided (some MP3s here and here)
Oh, how times have changed. I didn’t even know Trail of Dead had a new album coming out! This is where MP3 aggregators are great. I spotted some unfamiliar TOD tracks, clicked over and discovered the new TOD album, complete with pretty cover art. By the sounds of things, TOD have finally made the major label album they always intended to. Where Source Tags was a bit too commercial and throwaway and Worlds Apart a bit too sprawling and bloated, So Divided sounds like it could be the one where they get their prog-pop in perfect balance. Stand In Silence, the only likely hit song so far, sounds so much like another band but who? Anyone?

Squarepusher – Hello Everything(some MP3s here)
These tracks are so good that after one listen I was all set to get off the bus and go buy the album before the shops shut. Except it’s not out til next week. I’m no major Squarepusher fan, more someone who picks up a cheap album here and there bt nothing I have sounds as great as this. It’s so clean and warm and layered. I love Hello Meow’s xylophones, like Tortoise gone pop and Welcome to Europe’s insanely clever interlacing, warped melodies. I am so excited about this album.

Joanna Newsom – Ys (some MP3s here)
I was pretty much in love with The Milk-Eyed Mender when it came out but I wasn’t entirely sure whether I’d buy her new one. A long wait at the bus stop on a rainy morning listening to these two 10 minute long songs and I’m thinking I probably will. These songs seem less attention-grabbing, more subdued but still sweet and strong. Sounds like it will be perfect for cold, damp autumn days.

Ellen Allien & Apparat – Orchestra of Bubbles (some MP3s here)
I’ve been pondering buying this for a while now but it hadn’t drawn enough attention to itself. I’m a big fan of Ellen Allien who I find so much more playful than your average techno artist and so far this is softer than her recent releases, sounding vulnerable and a little unsettling.

MP3 BONUS – Those of you who haven’t heard the wonder that is Gay Against You, you can now download their CDR album for FREE! Do it.

I will try and do this on a regular basis and if anyone else wants to join in please do. What have you been downloading lately?

Nice article in The Guardian today profiling the best 20 independent record shops in the UK. I’ve shopped in 8 of them, I’m proud to say.

It seems to be that time again, whether coincidentally or no, as we have Time’s 50 Coolest Websites and The Observer’s Websites That Changed the World this week. Time’s makes for good reading, full of links and giving props to our awesome pals The Morning News. The Observer’s is a little dull as it’s stuck with regurgitating info on the big names (Google, eBay, Amazon etc.) like those Best Albums Ever lists that are full of The Beatles. I did find it interesting to read some of the history of sites like Blogger and Myspace. My brain has started ticking though – maybe we should do a diskant version?

Incidentally, if you haven’t noticed, I am adding new links regularly to the diskant homepage (bottom middle column) via the magic of del.icio.us. One day I will find the time to add them all to the links section.

In case you haven’t noticed there’s a new article up with us going on about all the good stuff we’ve been listening to, playing and reading. It’s the diskant Summer Catch-up.

The article was getting a bit long so I left off a few bits and pieces including the following bunch of Flickr links from Chris Summerlin. Make sure you have a couple of hours spare…

Reptile House who, presumably, is some sort of guitar tech hence the gazillions of photos of bands’ equipment up close onstage. For a geek like me, it’s fascinating.They’re also beautiful pictures. Want to know what Franz Ferdinand play through? Want to know how Josh Homme gets his live sound?

Bruce who runs the Mike Watt fan site. He has endless photos of the 1980s SST era of bands like Minutemen, Dinosaur etc etc.

Alison from Southern Records who has some amazing old photos of stuff like The Jesus Lizard at Reading and the funny one of Nation Of Ulysses that I’ve linked…

Daniel Robert Chapman, a man who is always 5 steps behind Bilge Pump with a digital camera with frequently amazing results…

We even have a Damn You! page with lovely photos like this one.

Excellent article on The Morning News today about circuit bending – Bend Me, Shape Me. This sounds like lots of fun and probably what they should be teaching kids in science lessons. Music science! Lots of cool pictures of circuit boards too which is always a bonus.

I do take issue with his mockery of the Casio demonstration version of Wham’s Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go though. I have a keyboard featuring this and it’s totally awesome. It even makes an hilarious appearance at the climax of the only song I have actually made up and recorded (with my sister) back in the day. I should dig that out and see if it still makes me laugh.

Ug. I did it, i finally caved in and built a proper myspace page.

I don’t know why, i’ve never like myspace from the beginning. It smacks so much of sheer marketing ploy, it gives me the jeebies. I know about the Robert Maxwell Rupert Murdoch buyout of Intermix Media who own myspace and all that, but i mean even before then.

I jumped onto the friendster bandwagon pretty early. It seemed fun, it seemed like all the san francisco and uk indie-kids and hipsters had effectively taken over a dating site. I like mis-using things, i like other people mis-using things, finding new uses for something the original creator never intended. Then came tribe.net, which i reluctantly also subbed up for. It did seem like a genuinely better community site, more geeky and less fratboy. But still.. i got bored entering all that information in a second time. I got bored after that with community sites.

Then i got my audioscrobbler plugin, and when that merged with Last.fm, here was a true community site that really kicked ass, was genuine about the music, innovative with the features, and i instantly fell in love with it.

Flickr is my other online obsession these days, since i upgraded my camera a few months back. Same story, innovative and easy to use website, and seems genuinely passionate about the content and the users.

So, back to myspace. Whats not to like? Its pretty easy to use, up-to-date features (nothing truly innovative there, just seems like the best features from what has gone before), and i guess thats it. Its the ease of use i guess that gets everyone on board, and now that the whole world and their granny is on there, they pretty much have the dominating force for any would-be music community site challengers to the throne. So what am i griping about? i dunno! Myspace is just ugly and full of too many ads, and i feel like i’m selling out by building my own page, so i guess i’m just venting/justifying/whining!

The thing is, what makes a good community site is having a large community, and myspace now has it, with so many members. Everyone i know is up there, and its good people, its people i really do know and share a life with outside of inter-web-land, people doing and making and promoting great independent music.

But still i can’t shake a sneaky image of boardroom meetings and brainstorming sessions behind the myspace origins, rather than bedroom or garage hackers, and *splutter!* thats, thats just not indie-rock!

( http://myspace.com/highpointlowlife in case you were wondering.. )

Well, I am back from my holidays and will post some thoughts on them soon. However, I see that the only two things of major interest that I did have already been written about elsewhere. Stu Fowkes has an in-depth review of Audioscope 05 over at OxfordBands while Alistair Fitchett once again has stolen my thoughts in his almost perfect post on Tangents about the Turner Prize exhibition at the Tate. Nice of them to do the hard work and leave me free to write some kind of flippant top ten list instead.

UPDATE: You can now look at some photos I took.

A new series whereby we call out anomalies in the diskant group charts on Audioscrobbler/Last.fm and let you the reader guess the answer. The exciting part is that only the person who is the answer knows the answer (i.e. the asker doesn’t)

Today: Who else (other than me, obv) has been listening to Girls Aloud this week?

Also, as Simon P rightfully demanded the other week: who the hell’s been listening to Dire Straits??

Make your guesses in the comments. Hopefully the accused will come clean (otherwise this will die a quick death, I guess).

I am finding the whole Audioscrobbler thing fascinating. Do I really like Rachel Stevens more than Hood? Is it surprising that 7 out of my top 10 artists are female-led? Are the RIAA secretly monitoring the stats to see who’s listening to albums that haven’t been released yet, you dirty music stealing pirates? How relieved am I that I listen to my own band less than other people in the diskant group listen to theirs? And why do we willingly give so much information on our lives to the public?

The creator and founder of Infiltration zine and website, Ninjalicious, has passed away. According to the site:

It is with unexplainable sadness that we announce that Ninjalicious, the founder of this website, and the print zine Infiltration, passed away on Tuesday, August 23, 2005. He had been battling – valiantly, and with optimism, gentleness and a zest for living – terminal illness for several months. Ninj, while far too humble to have ever thought of himself this way, can essentially be credited with founding much of the modern day urban exploration subculture. Many kind people are remembering him here (Thanks, Av.) Rest assured that the website will continue to be maintained in his memory. He has opened so many eyes so wide… it’s the least we can do to carry on his legacy.

He will be missed so very much.

For those not familiar with Infiltration, it was a zine, and later a website, dedicated to urban exploration–exploring buildings and areas not usually accessible to the public: drains, tunnels, abandoned sites, hospitals, and more. Infiltration was perhaps the best known zine and website dealing with urban exploration and its excellent writing and photographs were always a fascinating and inspiring read. I know that the zine was influential to me, and I’m sure that many other readers felt the same way.

Yesterday I found not only Fugazi’s rejected Steve Albini-recorded session for In On The Killtaker, but also the legendary original Albini mix of Nirvana’s In Utero. This is why file-sharing will never die!