Hands on Heads
MP3: New Fiction

Hands on Heads have a split record out with The Sticks. The latter have clipped riffs, and guitar-wailing blues, but our current charge prefer something a little less low-key. Don’t take a breath or you’ll be get left behind: swim across the river, beat the obstacle course and run down the mountain. But God’s sake–don’t stop. Hands on Heads play with speed and dice with death in this tune balancing complete freedom and a unidirectional force: it sou: but when every word can be heard and this tempo is completely neccessary then that’s fine by me.

myspace.com/handsonheads

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Amongst finish dozens of things, visiting many places, saying goodbyes, hellos, I have written a couple of pieces for The Mornings News. The two mp3 digests feature music released in the last few weeks.

You can listen to a muxtape of the 10 tracks I choose, rather than downloading every track. And then read the reviews of Poni Hoax, the Hold Steady, Dr. Dog, Julie Doiron, and Broken Social Scene from 23rd July. And then you could always read the reviews of Beck, Bodies of Water, Paavoharju, the Flemish doing Abba, and Micah P. Hinson that I wrote for the 9th July edition.

Keep tuned to The Morning News for my writing. Every weekday I contribute to the headlines section: you don’t need to watch the news or read the papers when you can read Headlines.

Tags: UK Music by Mike Smith
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Mogwai are back. And Mogwai are good! The Sun Smells Too Loud can be heard over at The Listening Post: Guitar magic for the summer’s sunrises.

Slow, stark and bassy dub-step album preview over at Gorilla Vs Bear from the streets of London: digital bleeps and laser noise reverberates and echoes: it’s hardly comforting, but it’s ripe for still and hot nights.

The Crimea used a few blogs (including this one), to distribute exclusive b-sides after being dropped from their label, and giving their album away for free. It doesn’t seem to have done them any harm as they head out on a 10-date US tour, Brooklyn Vegan tell us.

I was recently in Brooklyn and was privileged enough to attend a Palms Out Sounds rooftop party. The finest purveyor of remixes, P.O.S is one of the best mp3 blogs out there, and they are all awesome people, who also have a label. Because that’s what mp3 blogs do: let music fans release records, and let people who had never done it before (Mr Palms Out) go around the world DJing. They share a lot of UK music, so if you want to dance: check them out.

Posting has been a little bit light as I spent a long time last weekend/ week putting together the mp3 digest for The Morning News: Go and see what I had to say about recent releases by Beck, Bodies of Water, Paavoharju, a Flemish Abba cover, and the fantastic Micah P. Hinson. MP3s of all the tracks are available.

Photo credit: Fortphoto

Tags: UK Music by Mike Smith
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Stricken City
MP3: Bardou

Snapping drum, twinkling stars, woozy guitar, and woozier vocals wobble their way towards a yawning great black hole at the worst time. Last time we heard from they were making lofi pop jams, now its been a little polished, it’s a more artful, and more risky.

But they avoid falling into obscurity and boredom by gathering up all their energy, and telling us one thing, projecting one image onto the clouds, to the moon, from the spaceships. No really–they got really high really fast–you may have missed the launch because those vocals are just to damn distracting.

Stricken City play Camden Barfly on Friday with previously featured Wave Machines. 7″ available at end of July.

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I am currently interning for The Morning News.

There are a lot of words written on the internet, rarely are they delivered so well. I am glad I found The Morning News in the last year and not in ten years time. There’s a lot to love, and lots to learn:

You should read their headlines everyday to stay on top the most important, relevant, and interesting news put together by half a dozen people who have a knack for reading hundreds of news sites and selecting the best 20 or so stories that deserves your attention.

This online-magazine really excels in the writing:letters from Paris, University romances with the locals, imagined holidays with your children, and the more light-hearted feature ‘The Non-Expert‘; you can imagine the sort of advice they give.

The weekly gallery features interviews with the artists. From Phone sex operators, to horizons, via the beautiful and secret identity of landscapes.

I’ll also be contributing to some of their culture output: Weekly digests of books, mp3s and videos are put together carefully, never tiresome.

I’m proud to be spending much of the summer working on something with attributes so rarely seen on the internet: warmth, consistency, quirkiness, with a witty and stylish kind of professionalism. I’ll spend the rest of the summer rejuvenating this lazy mp3 blog, and sharing a lot of really good new British music with you, spending a lot more time ‘working’ on this site.

Photo credit: Saipal

Tags: UK Music by Mike Smith
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