MySpace Trawl

At a time when the music scene is seemingly dominated by so called girls with 'attitude' like Lily Allen and Kate Nash we strongly disagree. All they seem to do is complain that their ex-boyfriends are twats and no-one takes them seriously.

What a shame, we are almost compelled to get out our violins and attempt to scratch out a tune of sorrow. The popularity of the 'mockney' genre is almost a joke in itself, there’s nothing mega exciting going on. The only difference is that they're not dolled up and told to look sickly-sweet for men to perv over. 

So where have all the female musicians gone? Well the older generation seems to be still knocking out bland easy-listening records, and Leona Lewis is only doing so well because of her competition win, otherwise she’d be dishing up batter on your chips on a Friday night. We want to find some women with a no-holds barred attitude and a group that oozes appeal. Having a cool band name also helps and Ping Pong Bitches prove this. 

Fusing together a mix of rock, electro and hip hop, the sound generated is seriously fucking cool and will confuse the indie-scene kid as they won’t know what the hell this is. Fans of The Prodigy will have heard Ping Pong Bitches before, as they appear on a few tracks on their last album.  

We aren’t really sure what genre these girls fit into, but the tracks on their MySpace page have everything from punishing rock anthems that piss over CSS’s funk-filled rhymes to the seductive kinky boots. Click, listen, enjoy. 

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Ping Pong Bitches MySpace Page

MySpace Trawl is a weekly guide to music that is exciting, fun and just so happens to tell the mainstream to fuck off.

We like to think we’re open-minded people and on this page we’ll try and cover everything from mind-bending white noise to moody-sounding guitar sounds laced with electronics and other oddities. After going on a recent bender with stuff that may not to be to everyone’s taste, this week we thought it was about time to go back to the instrument that nearly everyone loves. The good old guitar. Even supposed 'fake' music like electronica uses it, contrary to some people’s impressions. This week, we bring you Slow Club - a band that makes us smile and want to run around like morons. 

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If we were to do an award ceremony for bands we feature in this feature, we would definitely consider featuring Roys Iron DNA as the winner for best band name.

Sometimes it's sad to see that a band that will use swearing in their name to gain attention. Calling yourself Shitting Robots, for example, might be funny when Zane Lowe says it on Radio 1 once, but it also automatically eliminates you from Top 40 airplay as it’s deemed to offensive. It’s a shame we weren’t in charge of the chart laws - we’d include all sorts of stuff that's not currently allowed. Not that there’s anything offensive about this week's band Roys Iron DNA, but we’d have them on constant heavy rotation on the radio nonetheless. 

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Today marks the first of November, so therefore the next major globally-celebrated festival is Christmas. If you work in a department store or anywhere else that has a CD player connected to a tannoy, expect to hear endless Christmas songs being belted in to your brain non-stop for the next two months.

Although Noddy Holder must love this time of year, chances are if you're not him you probably won't. But do not despair; we will not be showcasing tacky cash-in Christmas records that are released just in time for Christmas. Instead, we still aim to bring you unique-sounding artists that are sadly not getting the attention they are worthy of. Hopefully our mini-reviews will inspire someone out there to invest in some undiscovered musical talent. This week we focus our attention on the London based The Real Tuesday Weld.

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OK, we're gonna try and badly set this week's MySpace Trawl band to reflect what's going on around us. If we look out the window we'll see that the leaves are starting to peel off the trees and change to their various autumn colours of reds, golds and murky greens.

Ooh, it's almost depressing knowing that the nights are going to get here quicker and we'll be freezing our socks off trying to get home via the long commute from the office. It doesn't make for the best of times. What we need is some moody ambient music to help us battle through these dark evenings so we can quickly warm our hands on a nice hot cup of tea while settling down by the fire. That is unless if the gas company haven't cut you off like they have done with us. Anyway - Kwoon!

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Despite this feature running for God knows how long and covering all sorts of odd and colourful musical genres, we have sadly been neglecting something quite big - female solo artists. Now it’s not because hecklerspray hates women or anything.

Hell, we love women so much that Thursday afternoons at our HQ are 'bring favourite pole dancer/ female vagrant to work' time. Unfortunately, there has never been anything that has ever really inspired us on the female solo artist scene. Hooray for people like Regina Spektor and Kate Nash who are different, but they're big enough without us writing about them. Other massive female artists include KT Tunstall and - if you’re an American - Reba McEntire, but you don't need an explanation about why we don't write about them. However, we are relieved to have found a female artist with a no holds barred attitude to what she’s doing. M.I.A.

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It’s time again to dip our fingers into the world of MySpace music and try to find something of real quality. In some respects, a lot of stuff on MySpace is almost like going down the car boot sale. Tons of stuff looks really attractive, but when you look closer it’s either a knock-off or knackered. What, you mean you can’t buy a Rolex watch for £5! This is what MySpace is like.

Lots of people send us messages like “Yo dude, you may not have heard of me, but people say I’m really good and just like Oasis/Blur/Kaiser Chiefs.” It almost makes us cry when we see they're just a horrible clone of someone like Oasis with a slightly-altered Wonderwall with a slightly-altered chord arrangement. While we find a lot of bands doing the same stuff, sometimes we miss out on artists doing better than someone in the same field. Just like M83. 

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Once again MySpace Trawl is here again to help you discover the most interesting and different sounding music out there, be it a group off old men beating bits of metal off generators to people doing odd things with children’s toys, it’s all good to us. 

This week, we know you'll be as excited as us when we tell you about our featured band Turisas. Hailing from Finland, Turisas are a death metal band that serves some seriously heavy audio action. It’s not the fact that Turisas have an orchestral feel to them that makes them stand out. A metal band with an accordion and violin player! What’s next? Well, we’re not sure - but fucking hell, this band rock purely because their lead singer is called Warlord. 

Yup, while record shopping the other day, we discovered a promo with the track Rasputin on it. The music was top notch, but seriously, a guy called Warlord? That really is the shit and we give him total respect. Just listen to Turistas and appreciate the sheer awesomeness of them. Anyone who saw Eurovision winners Lordi will know them, as they both toured together a few years ago.

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Turisas MySpace Page 

MySpace Trawl returns from its brief holiday to hopefully bring you some exciting music that will make you really hip and cool amongst your peers.

We still get spammed with utterly dire shite musical crap on a freakishly regular basis that quite frankly is an embarrassment to the word music. However, we do sometimes shed a tear when we discover something that hasn’t been influenced by the other 3,563 bands that are all doing exactly the same thing. It's good to see that this week's choice band We Are Meg have some balls and are doing something different. Well, we’re sure Meg personally doesn’t have balls because, er, that would make her a him. Oh shit, this is getting out of hand. So let’s quickly clear this up from our dodgy introduction - no members of We Are Meg are pre-op transsexuals. We think. Ahem, anyway - We Are Meg are named after an irritating black cat, apparently.

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MySpace Trawl is one of the few music features not about sucking corporate cock and promoting certain bands because we’re told to.

This is one of the rare features where we sift through all the crap on the internet to bring you the best stuff we can find. For the year and a bit we’ve been doing this feature, we’ve found bands that push the boundaries or just generally produce interesting noises that makes us happy. 

This week we are going to keep it pure and simple. If you read last week's feature, you know were going crazy for post rock. All sorts of stuff is coming from across the world from England to Canada. We hadn’t found anything from the crazy world of Japan until now, but this has changed - The Retail Sectors have shown this. Simply indescribable, the solo artist who makes this stuff - Kentaro Togawa - makes us want to cry with the sheer beauty and depth of his work. Just listen to Riverside Sunshade – it’ll all become clear. 

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Retail Sectors MySpace Page