some of it was true!

While desperately sad at the imminent closure of BBC 6 Music (everyone seems to be handling BBC Asian’s demise much better) – and the absence of a Sunday night spent listening to weird and wonderful Mexican flute rock or Japanese tango, of a radio station daring enough to play daring new music, and of non-cringeworthy live sets [...]

That’s the question on the chapped lips of Londoners at the moment, and it’s so urgent an issue than SOIWT is going to address it right bloody now.

Y’see, once upon a time Lovebox was a Victoria Park festival one relied on for chart-friendly dance music (Mylo), middling indie bands whose better days had long passed (Super Furry [...]

My weekly collection of randomly chosen tracks – some new, some less so – is about all I’ve managed for the past fortnight.  Apologies for the relative quietness; all should be livelier as of now.  Here’s this Monday’s quintet:

Weird Tapes – The Walking Dead
A old song from when Dayve Hawke – a man who is to SOIWT’s ear [...]

Oxford’s Foals made a huge splash when they arrived on the music scene a couple of years back; offering a growling, chaotic and murderously funky disco rock, they were the Klaxons but ten times dirtier.  But after the auspicious start, the quintet hated their album and a long period of silence followed.  Thankfully, Foals have just announced a second album, Total [...]

Having heroically overcome crippling internet problems all weekend, SOIWT! is back in the nick of time for this weekly digest of tunes rocking this blogger’s world:
Band Of Skulls – Honest
The TV show Skins continues to be one of SOIWT!’s most reliable musical dealers, and the most recent episode (Freddie & Effy) provided a particularly good fix.  This song [...]

 
More garagey punk today, this time courtesy of Eighteen Nightmares at the Lux, a louche quartet of young Londoners who apparently specialise in changing their name.   Less lo-fi and chaotic than the aforementioned Speak & The Spells, this chameleonic quartet’s melodies are immediately appealing via the worldly brogue of their singer.  Around him come careering guitars and tumultous drums, plus a dash of rockabilly and flashes of burlesque-style [...]

Tickets for the late-summer / early-autumn Offset Festival (4-5 September) in Hainault Forest are now on sale.  There’s no sniff of a line-up yet but Offset’s can always be trusted for a quirky carnival of alternative, mostly emerging acts.  Visitors to North London last year included The xx, Wild Beasts and Metronomy.  Weekend tickets in 2010 start at £45, or £55 with camping.

Like raucous, pedal-happy punk?  Then lend an air to Speak & The Spells, a new West London threepiece with a lo-fi sound drenched in reverb and intense drum beats.  It’s the stuff of bloody noses, and smashed guitars at the end of every show. Psychedelic debut single She’s Dead tells a garish tale of a girlfriend gone to the grave, and her screwed-up boyfriend’s B&E into the [...]

Time for Monday’s weekly delivery of five songs that are newly making me bounce my behind…
We Are Standard – The First Girl Who Got A Kiss Without A Please
When you hear that We Are Standard are from Northern Spain, thoughts of Latin jams and ay-yay-yays come to mind.  Incorrectly as it turns out: quickly building a reputation in [...]