Remember MySpace? Remember how much fun you had mucking around with the layout and design for it? Remember writing on people’s walls and being friends with the mysterious Tom? Remember when Rupert Murdoch bought it and the entire world stopped using it overnight.

Fun times.

Well, Justin Timberlake – who was in a film about Facebook – bought loads of shares in the flagging service and now wants to tell us all how amazing it is now going to be. It isn’t, is it?

It’s pretty obvious that there’s still something you could do with MySpace. Nothing has come out since that has been as good for new bands. Maybe it would be good for propping a window open somewhere on the internet? Either way, Timberlake has plans!

Essentially, he’s going to revitalise MySpace by turning it into an interactive TV service.

In a statement, he says:

“We’re ready to take television and entertainment to the next step by upgrading it to the social networking experience. Why text or email your friends to talk about your favorite programs after they’ve aired when you could be sharing the experience with real-time interactivity from anywhere across the globe?”

“As the plot of your favorite drama unfolds, the joke of your favorite Snl (Saturday Night Live) character plays, or even the last second shot of your favorite team swishes the net, we’re giving you the opportunity to connect your friends to your moments as they’re actually occurring.

“This is the evolution of one of our greatest inventions, the television. And, we no longer have to crowd around the same one to experience it together.”

Like everyone already does on Twitter?! And what about licensing laws? They ALWAYS throw a spanner in the works when trying to make TV global. Besides, most of us have catch-up services, so… err… what’s the point of all this exactly?

Seriously. If MySpace became a Spotify for unsigned bands, it could take off… but a portal for watching television? Christ.

There are some songs that just shouldn’t be covered. A lot of people would agree that Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit was one of those.

But not Miley Cyrus.

Miley decided that she was the perfect person to belt out a borderline sacrilegious version of the Nirvana classic, on her latest tour.

Wearing a skin tight cat suit and stripper heels, Cyrus began to writhe and grind her way through the high tempo grunge track in front of a stunned audience comprising mainly of children who don’t have a clue who Nirvana were and parents who probably loved Nirvana and are now collectively picturing Kurt Cobain’s headless corpse spinning in its grave.

Maybe Miley is just trying to bring a long forgotten cultural identity back into the modern zeitgeist; after all, her father was very successful in doing the same thing to the mullet at the height of his career.

And let’s not forget that Miley herself has no doubt got a whiff of Teen Spirit about her too, what with all the pictures of her smoking suspicious looking substances from bongs and wearing less clothes than it’s probably legal for anyone to see in a photograph… even if it is on her MySpace profile.

Undoubtedly Courtney Love is probably calling in the lawyers as we speak, trying to figure out just how much of Miley’s fortune she’s now entitled to before she has her killed.

But until then, for those of you that can stand it, here is the video of Miley Cyrus breaking a generation of Achey, Breaky Hearts by covering Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Let’s just hope she can keep her head about her for the next few years.

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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

Prior to Wheels, the only time you’d have thought about this object musically would be the lyrics to “wheels on the bus”, which isn’t cool at all.

Don’t worry; we’re not going to give you a 2010 dubstep remix complete with reggae vocals. Instead, we want to turn our attention to some young guns called Wheels are making sounds to please our ears.

A bunch of lads from London may ring alarm bells as thoughts of another Busted or McFly could be possible. Thankfully, we are able to report that Wheels are nothing like a hastily thrown together tubby boyband. Instead, they claw together various musical influences and smash them together to create something that isn’t a remix or a cover version of a song released about five years ago.

When talking to people about music, you can always tell when someone is being a genre snob. Unless there some sort of depressed rock kid, their dress code of black laces with more black and an extra dollop of black means its glum grunge and metal.

However, raiding someone’s record racks will show how far they are willing to stretch in terms of varying sounds. Is there an ambient record next to a gabber compilation? Or is it just a collection of gangster rap sitting in a thirty year old’s bedroom in Reading?

It is daft to think that musicians don’t dabble in multiple genres to make a record that isn’t stale and sounds like the last four they released. Wheels have an interesting list of artists listed as influences that not only stretch across the decades, David Bowie, The Beatles, The Verve, and The Smiths, but more contemporary and experimental bands are also mentioned, MGMT, TV On The Radio and M83.

Released on the 6th December, debut single ‘Feel About Me’ is something that we’d simply call a jingly jangly pop song that has that feel good factor. Even we’ve managed to rise a rare smile. At present we can’t detect any hints of electronic influence, but with songs in the demo stage, we’re hoping to hear an interesting mix of Wheel’s already captivating sound with something funky.

Put it this way, Wheels are a lot better than Liam Gallagher’s ropey Beardy Eye project which doesn’t quite work without brother Noel.

For more: www.myspace.com/wheelsmyspace

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One of the most tedious aspects of so called “dance music” is the tedious amount of breakaway genres that will have most piss off record shop owners to no end as they attempt to categorise them.The more casual listener will be familiar with house, trance, drum & base and techno. But once chillwave, breakcore and IDM come in to play, it all gets a tad confusing.

Recently, we’ve stumbled across more acts labelling themselves under the genre of “death disco”. At first, this may seem like a Daily Mail nightmare as scores of ravers knock ecstasy pills like smarties before frothing at the mouth.

To us, discos are socially awkward affairs where boys and girls stand nervously at opposite sides of the room, waiting for someone to make eye contact or even cuddle.

It seems, death disco is a supercharged burst of energy to make disco’s cool, well before someone spikes the punch. Leading the way it seems is Ronika, who’s one sassy lady from Nottingham.

Crikey, it’s enough for us to oil ourselves up and slip in to a sparkly gold jumpsuit complete with rainbow sequins.

Tracks are crammed full of energy, pulsating beats and enough funk to even get the bouncers on the club door to move their feet. Normally we’d bleat on about which songs we sing in the shower or when we clean the house in a frilly miniskirt, but at the time of writing, MySpace had decided to fall out with us all. Thankfully, there’s a video you can watch below.

For more, if it ever works: http://www.myspace.com/ronikamusic

There’s a surge in purposefully badly recorded bands at the moment, all quivering under the umbrella of ‘Lo-Fi’. Personally, we prefer No-Fi. That probably already exists as a genre, but we can’t be bothered checking in with the hipsters that haunt our daily lives. In amongst these bands are some real gems (as most of them are shit) and one of them is the very pleasing Spectrals.

Spectrals cut a sound that has a great jingle-jangle, alongside a penchant for cute little melodies and road-movie slides. It’s all held together with an echoey ambience that sounds somewhere between ’50s rock ‘n’ roll and the sound of someone recording in a corrugated iron bunker.

‘Peppermint’ is the catchiest of the tracks heard by hecklerspray, with ‘Leave Me Be’ sounding like a vintage surf 45 that’s just been dug out of the soil. ’7th Date’ meanwhile is a spooky Lynch soundtracker, which is always a nice thing.

Listen to Spectrals here

Dinosaur Pile-Up are a trio from Leeds who REALLY like grunge. We mean they REALLY like it. They like it so much that they probably start their day with a big bowl of Grunge Flakes, and possibly a banana.

A grunge banana.

But they only like the really GOOD bits of grunge – that is the driving riffs, muscular drumming and basslines so powerful that they rearrange your organs through your ears.

They’ve no use for the hairy, plaid-shirted angst that comes with most of the genre – so they’ve just thrown that part out, and replaced it with a lo-fi, low-slung, playful approach, which should be obvious from their name (they’re named after the T-Rex fight in Peter Jackson’s King Kong), the name of their first EP (The Most Powerful EP in the Universe!!), and the fact that one of their songs is about being set upon by a gang of cats (Cat Attack!!).

The first single from their new album, ‘Growing Pains’, is called ‘Mona Lisa’.

It’s a hard-working, knuckleheaded loop of a song that grinds a groove in your skull that will have you nodding along in no time.

You won’t mind that the song doesn’t really go anywhere, because the pleasure’s in the journey.

Here’s the video for Mona Lisa. YOU’RE WELCOME:

For more: Dinosaur Pile-Up on MySpace

It’s not often a band comes along that manages to be funny. Y’know, genuinely funny. We’re not talking about some kind of knowing, winking bollocks by a bloke on a piano here. We’re talking razor sharp wit and the tunes to match.

So ladies and horriblefolk, let us introduce you to the ludicrously talented Onions. They arm themselves with a kind of psychedelic rock found in the first two Super Furry Animals LPs, with a dash of XTC’s missile wordery. They’re Manchester based, not that this matters one jot – there’s no lazy Factoryisms here, rather, pop shot through an entire record collection, rather than an outright lifting of one particular band.

One song deals with the pair of arse-pains Bob Geldof and Bono, with the line: “Me, Bob and Bono in a room – I have a gun and just one bullet.” It is, as of right now, hecklerspray’s official anthem. There’s more to them than decapitating holier than thou slebs. In I Want To Be A Dancer, we have one of the best and quirkiest pop songs released in decades.

Cynicism and self-deprecation never made you smile so much. A wonderful band that’s worth catch now before they get too famous and start going wrong on ket binges or whatever it is the kids do these days.

Click here to visit Onions MySpace and listen to them with your ears

Because summer has been a big lump of cack, resorting to summery pop records has been the only way we can imagine the sun is beaming down on us and turning us a golden red colour.

If global warming is real, then it hasn’t hit our houses, or the route it takes to get to hecklerspray headquarters.

Dishing out spoonfuls of blissful pop music, if you know a good thing when you hear it, you’ll be lapping up these tracks and desperately wanting more. Unlike a sugary bar of chocolate, Bighands Bigheart won’t end up giving you diabetes either, so everyone’s a winner really. Simplistic songs, constructed with love and care to produce something no magical studio trickery could imitate.

For more:

Bighands Bigheart MySpace

Anxieteam have pretty much made writing this trawl amazingly easy. Normally we try and write our own view of why a band/artist rocks, but it’s been done for us. They are on a mission, and say they “are here to fill the void left by the recent passing of the King of Pop.”

We don’t know if they own pet monkeys and have peeling facial features, but they the songs are fantastically brilliant.

The songs are great and will literally be the most fun thing you subject your ears to this year. We never thought it would be possible to make a song about being a vegetarian fun. Now we fancy cramming soya down our necks and giving up meat altogether.

Confused?

Visit Anxietaam’s page for songs comprised of light electronica and indie tinges.

For more: http://www.myspace.com/anxieteam

Being an unknown in the music world has been made much more difficult with that invention called the internet.

You know, that huge information monster that swallows up data and spits it out leaving just coding and html behind. Musicians can now host their songs on the internet in hope of gaining maximum exposure. Or in our case, falsely tag our lo-fi indie pop tracks as brand new Beatles EPs to generate interest. And to upset the fanboys.

Yes, these days you can plonk an entire back catalogue of material on the internet and hope someone who isn’t related to you buys it. So how does someone undiscovered gain some attention? In the case of Nikita, it was quite easy really. She just bagged herself a support slot with the mighty lords of synth pop, Depeche Mode. That might guarantee you a tiny bit of interest.

We’re also amazed that The Daily Mail didn’t pick up on Nikita before us. As she hails from Poland, it’s strange that a ludicrous campaign hasn’t started against her, since she’ll no doubt be stealing music from innocent British producers. However, the key difference here is that Nikita has been producing a sound that we can’t really label Euro Pop because it’s better than that tripe.

As it stands, the original material from Nikita has been replaced by one song, a remix of her track Tonight by Franzy Scanner. The soft wispy vocals sound like they could be messed up with the climaxing rise and uptempo synth, but when the tracks explodes into life, it is for the better and far more sophisticated than the usual generic electro guff.

Still starting her musical career, Nikita is one to watch and one of the hidden gems of the electronic world. Also proving that the genre isn’t for sweaty blokes couped up in their bedrooms lactating over the newest piece of hardware with extra knobs to twiddle.

For more:

Nikita MySpace

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Sometimes when band members decide to go solo, they always assume that what they’ve released is the best thing since the invention of music itself.

Sadly, it couldn’t be further from the truth once the experimental reggae album starts to blast from the speakers.

Mala is from the terribly good act Digital Mystikz where, with his fellow dubstep producer Coki, he’s released all sorts of records that have cemented the outfit as leading pioneers in this ever-expanding genre. Continuing on his own, the production is as tight as ever and makes perfect sense as to why he was asked to headline the evening part of the electronic festival Sonar. Forget your typical festival in a crappy, rain-soaked English field, it was in sunny Barcelona.

Listen, like and enjoy the varying styles of dubstep, from bouncy and lazy to stabby and fast.

For more:

Mala MySpace

Despite your possible concern over our wellbeing, we haven’t got everything totally muddled up and confused.

Yes, we know that the majority of you may thought we’ve confused Joy Orbison with Roy Orbison, but the two couldn’t be more different. One of them is an old American who sings songs about pretty woman and California being blue. The other is an up and coming electronic star from that London place, making records that are selling out instantly.

We’re keeping it on a dubstep/ambient/feelgood vibe again – this is the sort of music we’d listen to whilst burning food on a barbeque, or injuring ourselves with a frisbee in the park. On his MySpace player, the track So Derobe is described as “bad” by Radio 1 man Gilles Peterson. We assume that in street terms, he means, so bad it’s good? Oh we don’t know, it just sounds ruddy marvellous to our ears.

For more:

Joy Orbison MySpace

At the moment, the genre that gets savvy media types and scene kids all whipped up in excitement is the electronic offshoot known as dubstep.

Made popular to the commercial masses since Burial gained himself a Mercury music prize, this brand of lazy sounding music has continued to grow in terms of producers and fanbase.

With the good comes the bad and annoyingly, comes the utter gash. Sifting through the offerings, Mount Kimbie are a break from the releases we’d rather use as CD coasters.

Instead of presenting a bass heavy melody and shoving it through the wobble effect filter on fruity loops, the duo create elements of songs that could be released on their own before weaving extra elements in.

Added touches of synth or extra drum kick with a dash of vocal makes the listen that little bit better. Mount Kimbie are ones that you will hear about, it just might take a while before they get picked up.

For more: myspace.com/mountkimbie

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Stagecoach have been famous for many years, but not in the musical sense.

Many a late night drunken evening has seen us thumbing through our pockets for change in order to sling our bodies over the back seat. Of course, the warm vehicle and overwhelming stench of piss sends us off to sleep, accidentally making us miss our stop and walk miles to our original destination.

However, the bus companies and their ever-increasing ticket prices can move aside! There is another Stagecoach on the scene – one we believe everyone will find enjoyable, even the aging pensioners who gloat about getting free bus passes. If soft rock is your bag then you should probably go somewhere else, because Stagecoach provide music with actual backbone. They give genuine credibility back to rock, which has been diluted with rubbish pop punk bands.

Ever since films like Twilight hired mainstream artists for their soundtracks to make them look vaguely credible, there has been a surge in big-sounding anthemic songs. You know the sort, our action hero is pinned down by donkeys in a circle of death but after remembering his daughter needs a birthday cake, he gains a boost of strength and survives. Accompanying this incredible scene, sombre guitars play before exploding into a sonic wall of noise and drums.

But forget about that, it seems a struggle to find a song with a structure that doesn’t fit the needs of what’s popular. At times Stagecoach’s songs sound like they could erupt into chaos as the enthusiastic vocal shouts crash around with a sound we can only describe as bouncy, fun and joyous. What else do you want? Music to clip toenails to?

In particular, Hieroglyphics rolls in at under three minutes but still gives the impression it lasts a lot longer. Supercharged and ready to jump around the room, when cranked up people will want to party with you. Though we can’t quite guarantee that Stagecoach will make you popular.

What’s that? You’d not only like to hear the music of Stagecoach but also download it so you can dance along when feeding the ducks? Simply point your mouse clicker here to download the Death Metal Disco Scene remix of the Hieroglyphics track we just praised.

Once convinced of their aceness, go purchase some of the music for a stupidly low price. Not only will you gain novelty of owning a record, but it will enable the band to make more quality recordings. It’s a win-win situation for everyone really.

Stagecoach MySpace

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