Some Christmas Presents

It’s Christmas Eve! I’m sat on the sofa by the fire waiting for some relatives to come round so we can start drinking and playing board games. There’s been a serious lack of board games so far this Christmas, and I won’t let it continue!!

Anyway, to put off wrapping presents a little bit further, I’ll assemble these digital audio presents for y’all…

Rather good music site The 405 has lots of free festive content up at the moment, but in the spirit of discovering new music, the part that most appealed to me was their free Ones to Watch 2011 album. Its 18 tracks feature songs from such rockin people as Jonquil, Group Love, Tall Ships, and lots more, 15 more actually. Check it out HERE.

Liverpool’s psychedelic blues monsters The Cubical have blessed us with a free new festive ditty showing their softer side, not dissimilar to tracks like Would Be Lovers and All Is Well from debut album ‘Come Sing These Crippled Tunes’. The Golden Rule is available for free now from their Bandcamp page HERE.

Domino Records have been terribly nice and given us a free Compilation of some of the standout tracks from their artists this year. Get your 14 tracks of Domino goodness, including music from Archie Bronson Outfit, Fourtet & Villagers, from the widget below.

Lovely folky blog For Folks Sake have also put out a Christmas compilation album. This one features Xmas covers from a host of their favourite folk artists including Laura Hocking, Emmy The Great & our pal Sam Airey. The album is for sale from their Bandcamp page HERE on a pay-what-you-can basis raising money for the Integrated Cancer Centre at King’s College London.

Sheffield loonies The Heebie Jeebies have just released a new EP, ‘All Our Friends Are Hardcore’ is available for free if you sign up to their mailing list on their music glue page HERE.

Leeds Pop Noir outfit Insect Guide have released a new EP with netlabel Ear Drums Pop. ‘5 O’Clock Recordings is available for free HERE. And check out the video for Grey Sky:

Leeds Music Scene have put together a whole host of Christmas presents on their Audio Advent Calendar HERE. Notable freebies include tracks from Just Handshakes (We’re British) on the 5th, Loose Talk Costs Lives on the 6th, Gary Stewart on the 11th, Buen Chico on the 19th and a splendid Christmas mixtape from Juffage on the 14th.

Music & photo ‘intraview’ blog A Negative Narrative is currently closed for business over the holidays while they redesign the site. We can expect the relaunch in a few weeks, but in the meantime they’ve zipped up a collection of some of the best tracks they’ve hosted this year. Get it from their homepage HERE.

Transgressive Records have teamed up with Turnstile to release a free ‘Bento’ mix EP featuring Pulled Apart By Horses & Johnny Flynn which you can get by putting your email address into the widget below.

We//Are//Animal, taking time out from causing trouble at muso parties, have given us some treats of new material showing some new sounds and hinting towards what the next record might be like. There’s a decent sized EP’s worth of material available to stream from their soundcloud page HERE, and we also have an exclusive free download of new track ‘Ah Ha Oh Haoha’ for you HERE. The band have got plenty of shows lined up for next year, make sure to go check them out live if you’ve not already, no doubt we’ll be bringing them back to Leeds soon.

…and there you have it! Lots of festive freebies to listen to over the holidays. Have a very Merry Christmas everyone!

And have a Happy New Year too, if any of you have anywhere near as much fun as this freaky party looks, let us know!

End of 2010

So we’ve come to the end of another year, and I thought it would be right to sign off by taking a look back at all the fun we’ve had and the music we’ve enjoyed. 2010 has seen Dead Young proudly release our second 10” compilation record: the Dead Young Club Volume 2 featuring The Cubical, Gringo Star, Paul Thomas Saunders & We//Are//Animal. We also went on a short tour to celebrate the release back in May travelling to Bangor, Leeds, Brighton and Liverpool having lots of fun on the way.

In Leeds we put on shows for tons of great acts such as The ABC Club, Blue Roses, Gregory & The Hawk, Insect Guide, Let’s Buy Happiness, The Lucid Dream, Lupen Crook, Mirrors, Moody Gowns, TeenagersInTokyo, Thomas Truax, The Victorian English Gentlemens Club, Young Rebel Set, Zoey Van Goey & many more. From October onwards we were especially busy, promoting at least a gig a week at Oporto, ontop of The Gaslight Club acoustic nights every Monday.

2010 has been a brilliant year for music all round, with so many great new bands coming through and great records being released. Best Coast supplied the soundtrack to the summer with their California sunshine filled guitar pop. Sleigh Bells grabbed our attention by making music louder than anyone else.

Locally we’ve also done well with two great debut albums coming from Leeds bands Dinosaur Pile-Up & Pulled Apart By Horses. These two have clearly had a significant impact across the country as Niall Doherty, editor of The Fly, noted that 'Leeds is singlehandedly saving British Rock music' in reviewing the DPU record. I also took much pleasure listening to the latest efforts from Archie Bronson Outfit, The Black Angels, Black Mountain, Foals, MGMT & Weezer.

It was also a strong year for electronic music, with brilliant releases by Caribou, LCD Soundsystem & many more. Check out Club Mariachi’s review of the year on the Neon Cactus blog HERE.

… but here are my favourite albums of 2010:

Surfer Blood – Astro Coast

Released waay back in January, Astro Coast is the debut album from the five Floridians known as Surfer Blood. The record is full to the brim with catchy guitar riffs and hooks, from which hang the vocals doused in reverb, with lyrical themes of loneliness and confusion. Mixing the African melody & rhythm used by Vampire Weekend, and the powerchord rock of Weezer, Surfer Blood play a fun fusion of American alternative guitar music, and do it well.

Videos for ‘Floating Vibes’ and ‘Swim’ can be seen on previous posts HERE and HERE.

Tame Impala - Innserspeaker

This great record was described quite accurately by one reviewer as having the sound of a 21^st Century Sgt. Pepper’s. Whilst not as eclectic for some it was dismissed as 60s throwback psych rock. But for me Innerspeaker’s hazy slacker feel, and fantastic production enhance Tame Impala’s joyus songwriting to create a brilliant psychedelic rock record. It was self-produced, and mixing duties were handed to Dave Fridmann, who also worked on The Flaming Lips phenomenal record from 2009 Embryonic, to bring some sonic modernity to a record otherwise inspired by the past. A modern approach was also taken to their imagery and media as their latest video for ‘Expectation’ shows. Directed by Clemens Habicht in a forest just outside of Paris on a day off during Tame Impala's European tour, the video shows the band spending a day in the autumn wild with a 360 degree camera and a few flares for company.

Additionally the video for 'Solitude Is Bliss' can be see on a previous post HERE.

Warpaint – The Fool

This is four women from Los Angeles making ‘experimental art rock’. To be honest it doesn’t seem particularly experimental, but while I found The XX a bit boring, Warpaint create a sexier, more interesting, psych-rock influenced version of their style of delicate guitar music which has become popular this year. The ethereal female vocals also remind me of School of Seven Bells, who’s debut I enjoyed hugely in 2009, but Warpaint are a straight up guitar band so I’m sure it sounds just as great live with no over-reliance on electronics that I thought hindered SoSB’s live show. Hugely regret missing them live this year, must catch them in 2011. One thing they could do better with though is their videos, I was going to put one up here but they’re all a bit boring!

We//Are//Animal – Idolise

If you’re reading this you’ll probably be aware Dead Young is no stranger to the //Animals. We’ve featured their track ‘1268’ on our Dead Young Club 10” series which came out earlier this year, and put on shows for them several times. I heard early demos after getting a Myspace friend request before Owain had even recruited his band. Between that and fully releasing their album in November their sound hasn’t changed much. Recording to a broken Boss 8-track machine infused their sound with a raw punkish energy, and the lo-fi production goes without saying. All finished by April (less than 5 months into their existence), Idolise may be the sound of a band in their youth, but the tenacity & creativity it captures is truly exhilarating. Their progression can be heard in their prolific output, new tracks are regularly made available online, and a free EP will soon be posted up here.

Check out videos for ‘1268’ and ‘Black Magic’ on previous posts HERE and HERE.

...and you can listen to these four albums as a Spotify playlist HERE.

Happy listening!

What are your favourite records of the year?