MySpace Trawl – Stuff We Liked From 2007

Simple things please the simplest of people, and in our case it really couldn’t be any truer. The thrill of finding £1 down the back of the sofa despite it being caked in dust and mouldy chocolate often sends us in to a spiral of glee for days on end.

Other crap we get kicks from are buy one get free offers from Asda and a game of Uno. Who needs a console named after piss and the thrill of playing tennis with your remote control? But what we do like is music. Ah yes, without the chirps and bleeps coming from the office stereo, we’d actually have to talk to each other. Instead, when communication is needed, we just tap away on MSN to each other and display our emotions in the form of :- ) :- ( or :————————-. Work the last one out for yourself. 2007 saw a lot of music come, go, get laughed at or just plain confuse us.

Just like sitcoms when they run out of ideas run one week, we're going back in time to look at some of our favourite moments from last year. 

January saw us investigate a couple of artists who, in our opinion, were creating music that was so different it had to be heard to be believed. DJ Scotch Egg made granny-unfriendly Gameboy based gabba using old cartridges to get you dancing your little socks off too. Likewise Kid Carpet failed to see the fun in using grown up instruments. Instead, this Bristol-based artist produces all of his music with the aid of children’s toys and gadgets. Never before has a Furby been  as accepted by us on a 7” record.

In February we thought we’d try and change people’s opinions a little bit. Folk music sometimes has the reputation of being enjoyed by old people, hippies and naturists whilst our German neighbours are seen as power ballad lovers courtesy of burger-munching pisshead David Hasselhoff. Folk music suddenly got cool again with Tunng. This English band combines a gorgeous mix of guitars, crackly samples, subtle electronics and laidback vocals to create something different. Likewise, Like A Stuntman had a very DIY edge to them proving that slick polished production does not always make for a brilliant sound. 

Plundering on into March, it came to our attention that punk rockers Medusa may have done horrible things to Russell Brand involving urination, shitting and the thieving of prized gnomes. We guess the spirit of rock ‘n roll is still alive. For a spot of anti-loudness, we came across Sketches For Albinos after browsing his record label's Myspace page. With a few web-only MP3 albums under his belt, this musical maestro is our big tip for 2008. Sandwich him somewhere between Explosions In The Sky and Sigur Ros and you’re halfway to understanding him. 

The Christian month of chocolate celebration known as Easter happened in April and we went back to finding some wide-ranging artists for your pleasure. From one bloke with enough styles in him to do as he pleases to some cool Samba beats, it was a good month for electronic music. Dressed In Wires showed that a man making music out of a laptop doesn’t need to alter the pitch and tweak the synth to make an album. Instead, he gave us noise, calmness, craziness and some other stuff we’re not sure about. Zero DB even gave us some filthy basslines that even prompted several writers to attempt something they call a 'dance'. 

May saw us do something quite out of character and push you in the direction of something that was utter bollocks. So rubbish that we can’t dare reprint the name for fear of being sued by the music-loving public. One of the better finds of that month was be your own PET. Despite being young enough to still be at school, this American rock band blasted our ears with a mix of shouty lyrics and imaginative song titles. 

When the month of June comes, it’s that time when Europop takes over and the charts get even worse with crap music from countries that only really shine at the Eurovision song contest. The antidote to that? Four Tet combining electronica with folk to create something that sounds impossible to like but leaves everyone happy and joyous. Dextro provided the post-party grooves with their lush downtempo sounds that will leave anyone wrecked off their face quite happy and with a funny feeling inside. 

As we all waited for some sun to hit our shores for those few hours in July as we’re promised every year, we thought we’d show you an apparent musical wonder for the UK and an act so deadly they upset a lot of people. They say that anyone can make music. But when it comes to rap, it seems to us that only black American people from the ghetto hood can do so. And the minimum requirement is to have at least four bullet wounds. However, a breed of rappers from the UK has slowly crept in and we stumbled upon Example. He even made an entire song taking the piss out of himself being white, rapping and being from the UK. Our second favourite act of this month was the noise band Whitehouse. Being in the business for over twenty years, the duo make harsh sounds with lyrical content that would shock and scare many. Pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable in a lyrical sense, we are long term fans of their heavy discography. 

As we all gave up for summer to get its arse over from other European destinations, in August we finally got round to telling you about a band with one of our favourite albums from 2007 and a very crazy American outfit who like insects. The godlike Amimal Collective created their best album yet this year and Strawberry Jam was loved by us all. Hell, we’d try and spread the CD onto our toast if we could. We love it that much. Likewise, The Locust are one of those Marmite type bands. You either love them or hate. Making music known as Grindcore, it’s literally very fast and in your face guitar music. After investing in one of their albums, we loved the fact that a 23 track album only clocked in at 21 minutes. Work it out for yourselves.  

September saw us go all post rock on people’s asses and unearth another discovery from the depths of the murky MySpace world - Japanese artist Kentaro Togawa aka The Retail Sectors. He made us all stop and gawp like children when they see their first pair of boobs. His songs had the power to make us put everything on hold and listen to the beauty he had created. Meg – as opposed to We Are Meg like we accidentally called them - restored our faith that the UK can produce weird indie lo-fi music like the departed Grandaddy and the genius that is The Flaming Lips. Lots of happy zany touches all over the place made us think this lot could go far in 2008. 

It’s not because we’re sexist or anything, we just haven’t found any decent females doing music that we think is doing anything different. But this changed in October. MIA doesn’t ponce around like so many famous female artists. Nor does she strop around with a guitar or tell us how much of a twat her ex-boyfriend was. Instead, she lays down some killer beats incorporating musical cultures from around the world. From Bollywood to hip-hop it’s all there. M83 was a duo but it's now reduced to one member. The three previous albums combined electro, house, ambiance and lots of other interesting elements. The release of this year’s album saw a rapid departure from form as a soundscape album was taken on. It worked. We liked it. Not since the days of Massive Attack and DJ Shadow have we been so bothered about the genre of trip-hop.

All this changed in November as we realised one group was still fuelling an apparent forgotten scene whilst we also got all happy and joyous. Roys Iron DNA didn’t really tell us anything about the style of the band and what they did. This almost mysterious element led us to some uber-cool beats that could be slotted into place at any swanky club. Slow Club made us want to get up and dance like nothing else since The Go! Team emerged on to the scene a few years ago.

Drawing to a close in December we went raving with a Polish superstar and cried out for another band to get some much needed recognition. Bogdan Raczynski comes from Daily Mail hate-land Poland. We might be musically ignorant of what is out there but listening to the fast-paced all-out action in his music makes us wonder why he isn’t in higher demand. As the first line of our article on Stars said, we like them a lot. The Canadian band are oozing with class and style. A million miles away from fellow countrymen/women Godspeed You Black Emperor, Venetian Snares, Arcade Fire and er… Celine Dion they just need one song to be played on prime time radio/TV to become massive. And, yes, the temptation was there to write 'massive stars'. 

So there you are. A brief selection and reminder of what we picked from 2007. Can we do better this year? For more on the artists, just search any of the names that take your fancy in the bold writing. Please don’t Google the months of the year or hecklerspray, you’d just be a fool to do so. 

Next week we begin all over again, and we start with a band with a well-known sweet in their title. Any correct guessers will win said product. And no, it’s not the Mars Bar Orient Express Experience 2046.