Which of the following statements is true? A) Badly Drawn Boy made his fifth album with Smiths, Kaiser Chiefs and Blur producer Stephen Street. B) Badly Drawn Boy made his fifth studio album with wobbly, wobbly Lemon Jelly fruitster, Nick Fraglen. C) Badly Drawn Boy is still not sure  whether or not he has actually made his fifth studio album yet. With anybody. The answer, it seems, is all of these. Damon Gough ditched the 25 or so tracks completed Continue Reading

My oh my, Annabella Lwin and Bow Wow Wow. How the memories come flooding back. Not ones I can share, naturally, but bearing in mind that most of boys in the eighties caught their first glimpse of this heavenly caramel creature on the cover of the band’s 1982 EP where she and her pitifully thin cohorts had recreated Manet’s ‘Déjeuner sur l’Herbe’ (and the 14 year old Annabella is pictured nude), you have to assume the worst, I’m afraid. And Continue Reading

Up until very recently, most folks who had undertaken the gargantuan task of compressing a lifetime’s turn-ons and influences into twenty-or-so tracks on one mix-tape record often ran the risk of compromising themselves out of any meaningful plot by having to consider too many challenges: 1) You had to please the label. 2) You had to please the listener. 3) You had to jump through hoops just getting copyright clearance. 4) You had to avoid alienating your fans or embarrassing Continue Reading

A lot can happen in 15 years. In 1991 we knew nothing about Blair, we only had one Bush to contend with, we’d had only one Gulf War, Brucie’s ‘Generation Game’ was as close as it got to ‘Reality TV’, 911 was little more than a twinkle in the neo-conservative eye, Brit-Pop hadn’t arrived and Freddie Mercury (until October at least) could still be found curling and waxing his moustache astride the torso of a young boy. Weird, eh? 1991. Continue Reading

Not a Manchester lad at all, but born in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, t’other side of the lakes, DJ and producer, Andy Turner was discovered by Mark Rae and initially signed to Grand Central Records, home to Rae & Christian, Niko, Only Child, The Nudge, Broadway Project, Kate Rodgers and Tony D. But all that’s changed and as of May 2007, Grand Central is no longer trading as a label. In its place comes Atic Records who have pretty much mopped up Continue Reading

Tom Middleton’s new AMBA project should provide a pretty fair indication of the route we’re taking; ambient music featuring orchestral, choral and electro acoustic arrangements. And here’s the drafts, pulled from current ITune playlists that include Beautiful Music, Sextrax, Early 90’s Hip Hop+Breakbeats, Ambient-Prog, Soundtracks Without Films, Obscuriosities, 70’s TV Nostalgia, and Future Folk. Known for his recordings as Cosmos, Global Communication and The Jedi Knights (alongside Mark Pritchard) Middleton’s productions, remixes and DJ Sets have seen the former classical Continue Reading

You’d think ringing endorsements from Gilles Peterson and The Thievery Corporation (who did a remix of the track ‘Quicksand’ – the second single from this album) would somehow make null and void any decision yours truly could arrive it, but if enough people add their own twopenneth, pretty soon you’ll have lots and lots of pennies. Enough for something, gold perhaps, even enough for something platinum. And if the penny hasn’t dropped already, then let me make this patently clear; Continue Reading

There are some things that come along that you don’t know how to best quantify. Is it Latin, is it Rock, is it Folk, is it Jazz? See? I’ve gotten nowhere. But that’s good isn’t it? When you have no idea what it is, you have none of those nasty expectations to go and ruin the experience – and whilst the core of it is ostensibly ‘Latin-flavoured’ or ‘Flamenco’, there’s something more solid, more deliberate and more blues-based than any Continue Reading

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, but what exactly is all this sister chitter chatter about? Yes, yes, so we acknowledge that two thirds of the Rogers Sisters are in fact sisters, with a shared family name, Rogers. That’s Laura and Jennifer, drums and guitar (and vocals both) respectively. And yes, writing credits, lead voices and chiming, humming guitars clatter noisily across the record making reasonable claims for at least partial ownership, not to mention putting into Continue Reading

Look, there are some things you just can’t blag, and there’s not a way in hell that I’m likely to convince you that I know Jack about Grime. And why should I? I’m in my early thirties, I have a young family, I have a nice house, I live in the remote wilderness of the Scottish Highlands and I’ve spent about as much time on the street as a paraplegic hooker. It’s not in my soul and it’s not ‘where Continue Reading