Lana Del Rey Cyrus

As usual, South Park says it better than I ever could. I had planned to write a little something on the subject but it appears the entire internet has beaten me to it by about 6 months. Nevertheless, this nugget of uninventive verbal vomit from TinyMixTapes more or less sums up everything I hate about online media right now.

Irish Battle Rap Round-Up (#1 of 1)

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. With half the internet blacked out – the interesting parts at least – to protest SOPA, and Twitter clogged up with people making crap jokes about Wikipedia being offline, I was supposed to get a lot of work done yesterday. Instead, I spent half the day searching out battle rap videos on Youtube and the rest watching that mad cunt Pepe do his damndest to chop down Messi in his prime.

 

Just about every night these days, I seem to get sucked into a kind of Youtube Roulette, where watching one video leads me to a dozen more via the related videos list, and I’ve been returning to the above track more and more the past week or so. ‘I’m Back’ features Redzer and Terawrizt of Dublin crew Class A’z and, though it’s a pretty straightforward track with ordinary enough self-congratulating lyrics, the muted guitar and choral sample are the perfect backdrop for some really precise rhymes delivered at breakneck speed.

Choice Music Prize 2011 Shortlist

Here’s the full list of shortlisted albums for the Choice Music Prize 2011. Northern Irish three-piece Two Door Cinema Club won 2010′s prize.

And So I Watch You From Afar – Gangs (My review) (Stream)

Bell X1 – Bloodless Coup

Cashier No 9 – To the Death of Fun

Lisa Hannigan – Passenger

Japanese Popstars – Controlling your Allegiance

Jape – Ocean of Frequency (Stream)

Patrick Kelleher & His Cold Dead Hands – Golden Syrup (Stream)

Pugwash – Olympus Sounds

Tieranniesaur – Tieranniesaur (Stream)

We Cut Corners – Today I Realised I Could Go Home Backwards (Stream)

Judges:

Brian Adams (Today FM)
John Barker (98FM)
Stuart Clark (Hot Press)
Siobhan Maguire (Sunday Times)
Naomi McArdle (Harmless Noise)
Lauren Murphy (The Irish Times)
Nadine O’Regan (RTE/Phantom FM/Sunday Business Post)
Colm O’Sullivan (Red FM)
Ed Power (Irish Independent/Irish Examiner/Metro Herald)
Rigsy (BBC 1 Northern Ireland)
Penny Rose-Hart (RTE Radio 1)

I’m A Blogger, Not An Executive Producer

A few years ago, I went to a large music festival in the States where I witnessed the frontman of some American indie band (whose name and music I’ve now forgotten) ranting about how people who drive SUVs suck to rapturous applause. The fact that many of the thousands there – myself included – had traveled there in some manner of gas-guzzling people carrier was neither here nor there. Everybody hates people who drive SUVs – it’s self-evidently true and we don’t challenge it.

The story came to mind over Christmas and New Years when I read a blog post by Handsome Young Stranger with the somewhat snarky title: “How to win friends and influence people.” The blog, without going into any specifics, said that Irish music blogs aren’t critical enough and basically act as PR outlets for the musicians they write about. Fair enough. A couple of days ago, Irish Times blogger Jim Carroll came back from his Christmas holliers and +1d it on his blog, adding that certain unnamed members of the music writing clique are band whores.

I thought it was funny because I’ve said much the same in the past myself. I think everyone has. It’s self-evidently true. It’s especially self-evidently true when you avoid going into specifics, and even self-evidentlier true when you imply you have an inside track on what’s really going on but you won’t name names out of respect or whatever. It may even be more self-evidently true than the existence of god. But is it actually true? And if it is true then why can’t you go into specifics – who is not holding up their end of the deal?

5 Christmas Songs That Make the Baby Jesus Cry

Last year, I counted down the 12 Days of Christmas with a new song each day. I didn’t get through half as many as I’d have liked to – and as many of the entries were added as I went as had been planned in advance – but I did remind myself of just how obsessed with Christmas music I am (or at least used to be).

In No Particular Order // My 10 Favourite Albums of 2011

What a year it’s been.

Having spent most of my adult life writing for and basically running Sputnikmusic, a couple of months ago I decided I had to make a clean break and leave the organisation in my past for good. Money was the main issue at the time, but the time since has taught me just how dysfunctional my professional life had become (through my own fault).

When the time came to submit year-end lists earlier this month, for the first time I found myself struggling for 10 records to fill the quota. It’s not that I haven’t listened to a metric tonne of music this year (I have) and it’s not that it hasn’t been a great year for new music (it has). The fact is that so much of my time this year was spent listening to records once and discarding them. For somebody who loves music as much as I do, it’s an appalling situation to find myself in, and it’s only since I took my editor’s hat off and started being a serious music fan again that I’ve been able to start enjoying myself.

So, with the caveat that I’ve spent the past couple of months gorging on music in an effort to reconnect, here’s a list of the 10 albums that have inspired me the most this year. I won’t present them in any particular order as I don’t have them ranked in any meaningful way in my head – they’re just 10 records that meant a lot to me. There’s a lot more music that I’ve featured on the blog, and a lot that I haven’t, that has inspired me too.

New Music // Driveway – ‘Reginald Circumstance’

(Photo by Seanie Cahill)

“Those headaches are getting worse aren’t they?”

“Three, four times a day sometimes.”

I knew I recognised that sample from somewhere – it’s from the Dead Zone, the 1980s adaption of Stephen King’s novel starring a slightly younger-looking Christopher Walken.

I stumbled across Driveway’s Bandcamp a couple of weeks ago and have been addicted ever since. They seem to have only been around for a year or so, but they’ve already contributed three tracks to a split EP with American band Loud? (check out the phenomenally catchy ‘Embassy Suites‘) and have a couple of other bits and pieces up on the site.

While the split is a proper, poppy post-hardcore record in the Say Anything vein, new track ‘Reginald Circumstance’ is much more stripped back and abstract with haunting Slint-like guitars and strained vocals. I’m not too sure about some aspects of it – similar to the Lecs Luther debate a while back, I think the singer tries to hard to affect an American accent to suit the style of music, and the lyrics are a bit OTT – but that’s relatively minor considering just how fucking good it sounds.

I’m not sure which way they’re planning to head – the punky pop style of the split or the more oblique style of ‘Reginald Circumstance’ – but they’re gearing up to release a three-track EP early next year.