Difficult to believe given her recent brush with death but the former Neighbours star and all round chart nymphet was only recently honoured by the Queen with an OBE for her services to music and for having what is ostensibly one of the cutest butts in British and Australian chart-history (Rihanna having already coveted this particular accolade in the US). Naturally, it’s more likely to have been Prince Philip who recommended her for this honour, rather than old Lizzy herself, Continue Reading

You know the kind of man we’re talking about. Can’t unzip his fly to have a piss without the cold hard crunch of a gun clip being loaded by way of a soundtrack. Plays Grand Theft Auto a lot. Loves Manga and Spike Lee and is sadly more likely to talk about drugs than abuse them with any real conviction. These boys love the unpredictability, the sex and the stench of the ghetto but their University educations mean they’re unlikely Continue Reading

Preceded by an album party launch at London ‘s End and AKA complex that saw Joaquin ‘Joe’ Claussel headline The End’s main room for the first and the last time ever and Maurice Fulton head up the AKA, the Need2Soul crew kickstarts what is a reluctant diaspora for the home crowd by releasing a second volume of tunes synonymous with the clubnight and co-host Benji B’s weekly radio show. Recently The End and its sister venue, the AKA announced that Continue Reading

There’s something encouragingly apt about American Soul and Gospel-singer (and reluctant Disco Diva) Candi Staton rediscovering her form on Damon Albarn’s multi-ethnic melting pot, Honest Jon’s Records; a Poor Law Union workhouse of old school R n B, funk, soul, African and Latin American and based on the legendary record shop of the same name. The old Ladbroke Grove record store, located on a street that the local Caribbean-Iberian lags would call ‘The Town’, plied its trade on the rag-and-bone Continue Reading

The History of the World in Band Names, Part One: The Underground Railroad was a network of escape routes organized to help slaves reach safe states in nineteenth century America . The actual band itself is a much more modest proposition, though it’s still managed to engineer its own escape (well, in comparative terms, more of a Thomson’s mini-break) finding its way to a Seattle studio via Paris and a one room flat in Whitechapel. The Railroad has a New Continue Reading

Plushgun is another one of those bedroom-studio-to-myspace-and-beyond stories. I can imagine writer/producer/arranger Daniel Ingala in another time wearing a paper general’s hat and sitting amidst the massed ranks of toy tin soldiers – it’s that sense of a self-created world in miniature that comes across, something that for better and for worse the internet has helped to flourish. Ingala’s world sounds a lot like The Postal Service, or perhaps a bookish OMD with soft but driving synths and vocals that Continue Reading

The last time we saw our intrepid anti-hero he was appearing, it has to be said, remarkably upbeat. Dan Michaelson, the baritone rudder of twee but firm-handed post-Britpoppers Absentee, had been somewhat befuddled by love and life and had dragged himself through acts cynical, trying and tongue in cheek on their debut album ‘Schmotime’ before climaxing with the ticker-tape parade of ‘Treacle’ and its repeated “love – it gets sweeter every day!” refrain. The sun came out, it was undoubtedly Continue Reading

Everybody will have their own story to tell about the boy who was the first in the class to buy (and even use as it was intended) a Commodore Amiga 500 home computer, but they’ll all roughly feature some boy who always sat at the front of the class, who always had their hand up and was inevitably the only person in school who had a dog that never chewed their homework. And whilst many of us were able to Continue Reading

The Walkmen have already earned their place in history by releasing the single most acerbic bout of unhinged brilliance to beat its way out of Strokes-era New York in ‘The Rat’, a lean couple of minutes of the most infectiously propulsive post-punk and a voice that sounded like it might snap at any given moment and send serotonin levels through the roof. Casablancas’ mob even had a go at emulating its raw power on their third album to a much Continue Reading