Nearly every week, another music conference springs up from nowhere and tries to convince us that the crop of artist playing in a disused airfield will be the acts of the future.

For the unknown bands and singers playing at these gatherings, it’s pretty much the first chance they’ll get to have people hear their music properly, and not in a horribly compressed MP3 shoved on some corner of the internet.

Don’t think of them as festivals so to speak, more a chance for A&R people and record label executives to see what talent is actually out there. One of the most diverse conferences on music is held in Austin, Texas. Gone are the days when the state was simply known for oil, executions and idiotic politicians. To honour the conference known as SXSW, here a band who hail right from the city itself, Love Inks.

We don’t like calling bands “mysterious” – that makes them sound like part-time Mexican wrestlers, but after skimming through the internet, we don’t really know much about Love Inks. All we generally found were testaments from people about their love of tattoos; something we assume isn’t connected to the band.

Though we do know they are comprised of three members who makes glorious tiny pop songs that clock in under a couple of minutes.

The only song we can find from Love Inks is entitled “Blackeye.” Due to all the fear and scary shit in society, we’d probably witness someone giving or receiving a black eye, the dialogue would drop and the music would consist of some throbbing baseline or hectic drum and bass chaos. But no, Love Inks aren’t like that, instead of a beat crazy song, we have a song that has a steady guitar riff twinkling throughout the warm fuzzy female vocal.

It will most certainly be chopped up by TV producers as the song that’s used when Sophie Dahl does her weird cooking show under an artificial night sky of fairy lights.

As ever, we wouldn’t give our humble opinion without letting you lot get your lug holes around the song. Because we’re feeling extra loved up because it’s soon to be Valentine ’s Day, we’ll give the song as a free download.

We’d offer a hug, but frankly, we don’t know where half of you have been and no amount of anti bacterial wipes would make us feel cleansed and free of dirt.

Listen, love and download here

No you silly dyslexic person! This isn’t some sort of crazy side project by M.I.A or a failed attempt by record label EMI trying to reinvent themselves after speaking to some art students in London’s Brick Lane. These initials make up the full name of Erika M. Anderson. After hearing just a singular track, we are already hooked on a musical approach.

Weirdly, we are crying out for a badly coded MySpace here so we can listen to more EMA songs in poor quality audio. Sadly, all we can find is a singular song on Sound Cloud and some basic blurb on the singer who we have high expectations for.

A South Dakota native, she moved to LA when she was just 18, because she really liked ‘Welcome to the Jungle’. Each to their own we guess.

We hate the ever expanding range of genres which seem to double in numbers almost everyday. However, with EMA, we might have possibly been left with something that borrows from the techniques of post-rock and mixes it up with the tuffness of lo-fi. Confused? We’ll offer a comforting pat on the head as we badly attempt to explain.

The art of releasing guitar noise is a delicate procedure, as the majority of the time, it literally sounds like a confused mess after someone angrily threw the instrument on the floor. Mastering specific notes and so-called melodies can be dismissed by many, but the sketchy pops and hisses can combine well for an almost organic listen.

With the single ‘The Grey Ship’, the first striking detail is the songs impressive length. Seven minutes is unusual for a song to come from the indie/alt genre. The song is almost split in to two pieces. In the beginning, a twinkling but almost saddening guitar squeaks and chimes through, creating a sketchy, cinematic effect.

But don’t let our pretentious words put you off, the song is seven minutes long remember and as the song gathers pace it changes tempo around the three minute mark. Once the bass kicks in, The Grey Ship casts off and explodes in to life with glorious energy, building and building like a post-rock track before descending back in to calm and beauty. Think the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ at their most skitchy and you’re somewhere close.

Listen to The Grey Ship here and follow the link to download. The early months of the year are usually slow for new musical offerings, but EMA has made us thankful for this slice of emotive lo-fi guitar fuzz.

More on EMA can be found here: http://cameouttanowhere.com

Definitely one to keep an eye on.

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Okay ear owners! It is time to punish yourself in the most fuzztastic way possible. Scorching guitars, white-boy soul howling and drums being hit so hard that the snare wishes it could grow arms just to blow its brains out.

This week’s HecklerPlay is offering you free tunes from the outrageously great Irish outfit, The Bonnevilles. Fans of The Black Keys, MC5 and shit-kicker blues, apply here.

A sick minded two-piece, The Bonnevilles take the blues by the scruff of the neck and give it a motorcycle booted kicking before buying it a round of drinks. Then beating it senseless again. We’re talking white-hot, knuckle cracking garage punk rock ‘n’ roll that aims to hit the floor so hard that the floorboards move out of the way. The Bonnevilles’ ‘Good Suits and Fightin’ Boots (which you can listen to here) is a firm hecklerspray favourite. And the gruesome twosome are giving away an EP for free! Merry bastard humbug readers.

The Bonnevilles Facebook or The Bonnevilles Bandcamp for more details and free stuff!

Over the years, there’s been a whole host of mash-ups and, quite frankly, most of them are terrible. However, something that always kinda works is when rock and hip-hop collide. Hardly surprising really when you consider that hip hop is, essentially, a genre that embraces the mash-up culture more than any other.

When Run DMC mashed with Aerosmith, the results were astonishing. Years back there was the fun ‘Grey Album’. Jay-Z’s Glastonbury performance came from leftfield to meld classic rock under existing tracks of his. Even more recently, one of the best albums in years came out under the guise of Beatles Versus Wu Tang Clan.

And now, we’ve got the White Stripes verses a whole host of hip hop greats.

Now, before we get going, it isn’t likely that this release is totally above board, but we’re not sure. Either way, if you want it, act fast because it won’t be around forever.

But basically, what we have in this Adrian Champion production is a fistful of White Stripe riffs backing some firebrand raps.

Outkast, Biggie, Mos Def, Kanye, Tupac, Busta and Monch all appear, backed by great slabs of sludgy rock. The combination of those two things is always fun. In some cases on this album, it’s a bit clunky (which is a shame in the case of the album opener which splices Outkast’s ‘B.O.B.’ together with The Stripes’ ‘Blue Orchid’) but never dull.

But when it works, in the case of Mos Def’s ‘Ms Fat Booty’/White Stripes’ ‘My Doorbell’, it’s irresistible.

As ever with mash-ups, it is better if you come to the table as someone who isn’t pathetically precious about the music being meddled with. If you’re a crazy eyed White Striper, then run away as fast as you can. No-one needs to hear about how hip hop isn’t real music (it is) and how you couldn’t ever improve on Jack White’s playing (you can).

This is a free download and a whole lotta fun. A nice twist on some familiar tunes and, maybe, just maybe, in some cases, there’s improvements on both the originals re-edited.

The only thing that could really grate is Adrian Champion’s insistence on putting his name (literally) over every track. It’s okay. We geddit.

Click here to download

Have fun!

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Many of your were keen to outpour your grief and disappointment when Liam Gallagher’s new band – Beady Eye – released their new single on the world. Chances are, you were hoping for something that sounded like Oasis and, sadly for Liam, it sounded more like Alvin Stardust.

However, that won’t stop you from carrying some hope that he’s got some decent tunes in his back pocket. Andy Bell was in Ride, and Ride were really great!

This means you might be interested in watching Beady Eye play some gigs, provided you’re willing to overlook just how shot Liam Gallagher’s voice has sounded for the past 5 years.

Tickets for the first ever Beady Eye tour go on sale this morning (November 26th) and this will be the chance for many to see just how Liam fares on his own and, quite possibly, enhance your reputation of Noel who managed to get this performing sealion of a man to sound as good as he did.

The full scale UK tour has been booked up and arranged, taking place in a three cities across the country – Glasgow, Manchester and London – tickets for the shows in March next year are now on sale. If you live in Birmingham or Northern Ireland, the message seems to be “tough tits”.

Lines open right now (10am), so start hitting refresh and furiously dialling numbers under the impression that these shows will sell out in seconds.

In fairness, they probably will thanks to Oasis’ fans curiosity over the project. Just don’t expect a rendition of Wonderwall at these gigs, okay? Click here for details and phone numbers.

Beady Eye have confirmed the following shows:

March
3 Glasgow Barrowland
4 Glasgow Barrowland
6 Manchester O2 Apollo
7 Manchester O2 Apollo
9 London Troxy
10 London Troxy

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When Oasis split up, many of us breathed a massive sigh of relief. They’ve been churning out toothless, thundering-pain-in-the-stomach rock for so long that it really did seem like they would fulfil Damon Albarn’s prophecy of becoming the new Status Quo.

However, they did the right thing and split up before one of the Gallagher brothers killed each other. But that wasn’t the end of it.

Of course, Liam has now formed Beady Eye, a band that imaginatively features the Oasis backing band put together by Noel. And their new single, ‘Bring The Light’, came out and thrilled as many as it confused. And now, there’s a promotional video to stare at.

The track itself, is clearly Liam digging into the vaults of John Lennon’s mind, this time, going toward Lennon’s obsession with Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran (notably the latter, making a hash of ‘Somethin’ Else’).

However, this track does serve a purpose. It still retains a certain swagger that made everyone take notice of Oasis in the first place… a thing that is, even at its most irritating, is still more fun that watching mewing shagsacks like Florence and the Machine, Coldplay and Mumford and Sons all staring at their feet and meeeeaning it maaaaan.

And so, with OasisLite chugging through some ’50s-meets-’60s indierock, with a dash of added ‘Proud Mary’ Tina Turners in the background, they’ve got a video to show you and…

…you’ll probably hate it if you didn’t like Oasis in the first place and… well… if you did, Christ knows what you lot think. We haven’t got all day to try and work out whether you just like posturing singers or whether you genuinely are the thick-skulled hooligans you pass yourselves off to be when you go down the indie disco with a liver full of Stella.

Here’s Beady Eye’s new video.

It’s a good thing that Oasis split-up. This is because, should the band have continued, Liam or Noel Gallagher would have probably killed each other, which would have meant a reappraisal of Oasis’ back catalogue and dreadful, sycophantic mewings over just how ‘great’ they were.

Instead of becoming rock martyrs, they’ve been left to shuffle around some pub-rock world for thick-headed simpletons to thrill over each misguided swagger and V-sign.

However, the music won’t stop as Liam Gallagher and his new band Beady Eye are releasing their first single ‘Bring the Light’ as a free download.

That’s right – following in the footsteps of Radiohead and others (loads of others in fact – Radiohead are far from the first band to give their music away, however, they are a handy shorthand example of a band who did), Liam will be giving his new single away for free.

If you’re daft enough to care, the song will be available from 10.00am (GMT) or, if you’re American, 5.00am (ET) on their website www.beadyeyemusic.com on Wednesday, November 10, while the album, which was recorded over the summer, will hit stores in 2011.

To clarify, the single is given away for free, tomorrow. Okay? Got that thickos? Good.

Liam has, of course, joined forces with former Oasis bandmates Gem Archer (formerly of Heavy Stereo), Andy Bell (of the formerly brilliant Ride) and Chris Sharrock (a million bands).

And, to give you a sneak peak, here’s a video of the new band with a riff playing over it which could well be a snippet of the new single.

We just don’t know or care enough to find out.

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Steve Mason, the voice of the Beta Band, has been quietly release the same record over and over again for years. Weirdly, all of them are as enjoyable as the last. Now, he’s back with some solo stuff and details of an Autumn UK headline tour.

Mason will be playing with full band all over the UK, which includes a special and free stripped back acoustic in-store on Tuesday 17th August at Monorail in Glasgow. It kicks off at 7pm so get down early.

This all ties into Steve’s new record, Am I Just a Man, which will hit shelves on Monday August 16th.

The single is released on 12” and digital download, with two remixes from Swedish duo Studio, and Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip. You can listen to both remixes here, and download the Alexis Taylor remix for free.

CLICK HERE FOR FREE STEVE MASON STUFF

Am I Just a Man is taken from his well received solo LP, Boys Outside, which was released in summer.

AUGUST
12th Louisiana, Bristol
13th Summer Sundae Festival, Leicester
17th Monorail, Glasgow (Free acoustic in-store)
18th Liquid Rooms, Edinburgh
19th Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
20th Green Man Festival, Brecon Beacons
SEPTEMBER
4th Electric Picnic Festival, Ireland
11th Bestival, Isle of Wight
25th Village Green, Southend
OCTOBER
13th The Fleece, Bristol
15th Bodega, Nottingham
16th Warehouse Project, Manchester
18th The Harley, Sheffield
20th The Grand, Clitheroe
21st XOYO, London
22nd Kazimier, Liverpool

Tickets for the headline tour are priced at £9 (£12.50 in London)

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Remember José González? Yeah, he’s the guy who soundtracked all those coloured balls falling down that hill in that TV commercial. Well, him and his lovely voice are back with his new band Junip. Well. We say ‘new’, they’re actually his old band as they were formed in the late ’90s… but chances are, you haven’t heard of them before.

Junip is González on guitar along with drummer Elias Araya and organ/moog player Tobias Winterkorn. They’ve done a mini tour of the States in June and has been playing the European festival circuit all summer.

Now they’ve got a record out one Mute/City Slang and will be touring North America… and you can have a listen below.

If you visit Junip’s new website, there’s videos and things to look at and listen to… www.junip.net. Better still is that, there, you can download the group’s Rope & Summit EP for free.

That’s nice isn’t it?

If you want to suck it and see, you can stream the new single, “Always,” from the band’s new record, Fields, which is released on September 14, 2010.

To hear, “Always,” click HERE

If you live in North America, then here’s some tour dates to read:

November

1 Philadelphia, PA World Café
2 Boston, MA Royale Nightclub
4 Montreal, QUE Belmont
5 Toronto, ONT Lee’s
6 Chicago, IL Lincoln Hall
7 Minneapolis, MN Cedar Cultural Center
10 Seattle, WA Neumos
11 Vancouver, BC Venue
12 Portland, OR Doug Fir Lounge
13 San Francisco, CA The Independent
14 Los Angeles, CA Music Box At The Henry Fonda
16 Phoenix, AZ Rhythm Room
18 Austin, TX Mohawk
19 Houston, TX Fitzgeralds
20 Baton Rouge, LA Spanish Moon
21 Atlanta, GA The Earl
22 Carrboro, NC Cats Cradle
23 Washington, DC Black Cat
24 New York, NY Irving Plaza

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Whether we like Florence and the Machine or not is a moot point. For the record, we don’t… but since when did you ever listen to us? Never. So if you like Florence and the Machine, then you might not only be profoundly deaf, but also, interested in this free download they’re giving away.

Of course, Flo & Co are giving music away to celebrate the fact that they’ve been nominated for Video of the Year and Best Rock Video at MTV’s VMA Awards for the track ‘Dog Days Are Over’.

You fans can vote for Best Rock Video and Video of the Year from now till Aug 24 over at MTV’s website. This, presumably, counts as some kind of bribe… but you probably don’t give a fig as you’re getting free music out of the deal.If you haven’t seen the video, here it is… and of course, you’ll be wanting the all important link to free music.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE’S ‘COSMIC LOVE’ (SHORT CLUB REMIX)

There you go.

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Doves are utterly brilliant, but have sadly failed to register on more peoples’ radars.

People can’t get away from Oasis and The Happy Mondays. So talent like Doves has to sit in the shadows of acts who’ve had their day but who are still strangely popular.

Back with a new album entitled The Kingdom Of Rust, Doves are offering you Jetstream, the record’s first track, for free. Visit their website, pop in your email address and the song is yours. The band have said that Jetstream was their attempt to soundtrack the end credits of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.

Whilst you enjoy Jetstream, we’re going to sync the two together and see if the desired effect has been achieved. Though we won’t be doing it in an LSD v The Wizard Of Oz v Pink Floyd kind of way.

Download Jetstream by Doves here

“Song review? Don’t you mean CD review, morons?”

For once we decided not to leave ourselves open for getting something wrong and remembered that you can’t physically get hold of this new tune from the UK’s worst drug-taking band, Keane.

Unless you’re one of those posh industry types, this song is unavailable to buy on CD, vinyl or even from one of those fancy digital downloading services. Though we assume it’s on file sharing sites alongside the mis-titled new Elvis and Frank Sinatra album.

Usually we don’t bother telling you how awesome or shoddy a single is, but seeing as it’s free release that didn’t get that much publicity compared to other free downloads, offered by the likes of Radiohead and Sigur Ros, we thought we’d make you aware. Spiralling is taken from Keane‘s yet to be released (but probably available illegally on the internet) third album Perfect Symmetry.

Gone are the earlier vocals of fatter-looking lead man Tom Chaplin, who previously sounded like a choir boy whose angelic vocals had crashed head on with him breaking into puberty. 2008 sees a different and experimental sounding vocal style – maybe it was the cocaine, we don’t know, but he seems to be taking on a bit more of an aggressive edge to his singing style. Gone is the quite timid whimper that was sometimes a bit awkward to listen to, but still delighted thousands of Radio 2 listeners.

When trying to work out the reason for this change, it may not be down to him snorting cocaine off the arsecrack of a model. Tom may have been given peppermint tea before the vocal take instead of mint tea. It would piss us off, that’s for sure.

Following strange lyrics from Feeder and their single We Are The People, Keane have managed to arrange the lyrics into questions for fans to answer. Hooray for interactive fun! Instead of the song breaking down and building back up again as per usual we are instead hit with a barrage of questions. Don’t worry, they won’t fry your brain – Chaplin asks if we want to:

“Be a winner, Be an icon, Be Famous, Be the President, Start a war, Have a family, Be in love.”

Because we’re nice, we’ll give you the answers:

“We already are – ask Alan Mcgee, only if it involves free things off PR people, only if we didn’t have to campaign for a year, no – because we struggle to even start a computer up sometimes, we are one happy family and yes – but not with the people from Keane.”

The lyrics are a bit too kooky for a band as commercial as Keane, and they would work better coming from some pissed off communist rapper who is integrating you through his lyrics and why you are a sucker to globalisation.

Not from a posh podgy boy and his mates whose idea of fun on a Friday night is ringing doorbells and running away whilst laughing like people who’ve just seen a pair of tits for the first time.

So what about the music? Well the two bods who no-one seem to know about are still performing. Richard Hughes still bangs the drums and Tim Rice-Oxley is still on the keyboard.

After two albums of just using the boring piano and not even altering the pitch Rice-Oxley has discovered the effects button and decided to jazz things up a bit. Sadly this new direction of incorporating diluted electronic sounds and vocal tweaks doesn’t work.

At best the song sounds like a shoddy remix using the successful song formula that Keane constantly used with songs such Somewhere Only We Know and Everybody’s Changing. With so much free music software for bedroom producers to use, it really just sounds like someone has attempted to remix the older tracks and failed badly.

Oh, and let’s not forget that the daring leap of going hip and copying the dying trend of indie bands with synthesizers simply falls flat on its arse. As this is a free release, we can only hope that the real version suddenly appears and those crazy Keane boys have pulled an early April fool on us, or it’s never going to be anything more that poor.

Still, it’s only a free download. If you don’t like it, e-mail the song around as one of those crap joke chain messages. Title it as “best thing you’ll ever hear” before deleting the song off of your computer and freeing up the space it took up for porn or a better sounding track.

There are a lot available. Trust us.

We like free things, and this week has been brilliant for poor people like us getting things for nought.

CSS are the ace Brazilian band who emerged a few years ago with a feisty record full of no-holds barred indie electro complete with equally feisty lyrics. Proving that girls can actually rock out, their live gigs are full of energy, confusion and the occasional flash of nudity.

CSS have served up a new single called Rat Is Dead (Rage) as a taster for their second album Donkey. We don’t know if it’s a tribute to Shrek’s bumbling sidekick, but we won’t let that put us off. Interestingly enough, this download sees a distinct lack of electronics and a heavier use of guitars. It’s still bloody class, and if you don’t like it, just go and listen to the dire Coldplay offering that they made available today. Honestly, funeral music was a non-existent genre until they made Violet Hill available.

Visit www.csshurts.com now for a tasty music treat.