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!