Ashley Metz

Genesis by Grimes

New track from Grimes, preceding her third album Visions, is as ethereal, sensual and chic as ever. Maybe moreso.

shared from exfm

The new single from The Mary Onettes is a characteristically poppy affair but the Cure-ism has been dialed-up a notch.  This is taken from the EP “Love Forever” out on February 28 on Labrador.  Sounds like it could be a sappy affair but I kinda like it…

Order the 12” vinyl from their store (but be quick since there’s only 1000 copies)

I discovered Escort through a club remix of the first track on this album, Caméleon Chameleon, which first appeared on an NPR podcast and then in my SoundCloud feed.  Now I’m listening to the full album, thanks to the power of the internet.  These guys are funky as hell, rediscovering the old disco roots of Brooklyn via the medium of gloriously upbeat tracks mixed with a sly sense of modernism.  Officially tipping Escort as a live band for 2012…

Dear readers…. you may have noticed something of a winter hibernation here on HotSpotMusic.  2012 has brought about many changes and how we run HotSpotMusic will be one of them.  It has always been my intention to write about music in the way that I consume it - full albums - and to find music to share with others in a simple, unpretentious way.  And so it must continue.   

Since I neither have the time nor energy to maintain the both the quality and quantity of output that this blog and you deserve I am forced to choose….  Therefore, from this week HotSpotMusic will continue in one of two ways:

1. If you love the current format (simple album reviews, on time and on the money) then come write for us!  Demands are simple: love music, love writing and have time for both.

2. HotSpotMusic will change - I will continue to post but will increase the scope - not just album reviews but videos, playlists, single tracks, remixes and more.  From all over the place too, SoundCloud, exfm, 8tracks, Spotify, Rdio and more.  Reviews will be shorter but more plentiful.  It won’t be the HotSpotMusic we’ve come to know, but it will still exist and maybe there will be more new music as a result.

Got an opinion on how to keep things afloat?  Let me know!  Otherwise, get ready for some unfiltered, unadulterated, unbelievable tunes coming your way soon.

extensionfm:

It’s a whole new week which means we have a whole new batch of Tastemakers for your listening pleasure. Press play on this tasty ear candy!

The Recommender

Potholes In My Blog

Crack In The Road

 

1146 Miles

Hotspot Music

Popstache

 

Honoured to be included on the exfm tastemakers list.  

What better way to kick off the new year than a whole month’s worth of songs by this humble blogger’s favourite English troubadour, Mr Darren of Hayman.  This time last year, he was just setting out on a valiant quest: to write, create and record a new track each and every day during January, which you can still review over on the blog.  Accompanied by the talents of friends and artists alike, January Songs is a 31 gun salute to endeavour and to new years resolutions.  He’ll even be performing them all in a series of gigs this month so if you’re lucky enough to be in England, be sure to see it.

Now seems to be the appropriate time to be sharing this record, given its title.  The echo of the summer is heard louder than the echo of Sin Fang’s last album, Clangour, a delightfully scatty collection of ideas.  This one is more focused, more of an album and more folky.   

Part of the 2011 winter clearout - albums not reviewed when they came out but still worth sharing before the end of year lists hit.

Original release date: 21 March 2011

Another one where serious questions have to be asked about this writer’s taste and dedication as to why it wasn’t posted 6 months ago.  Burst Apart is a sonically stretching follow-up to the cathartic Hospice (another of 2009’s sleeper hits) that elevates the themes to something less likely to make you bawl but soar instead.  The epic opener I Don’t Want Love sets the album off at the right pace as a heartfelt and yet self-undermining protest and the rest of the album continues just as brightly.  Great stuff.

Part of the 2011 winter clearout - albums not reviewed when they came out but still worth sharing before the end of year lists hit.

Original release date: 10 May 2011

The Rip Tide is an excellent album that, much like the rest of Zach Condon’s discography is something of a slow burn (whilst being characteristically recognisable).  Not sure why it took so long to get round to it here but with tracks like East Harlem and the title track, it’s strong enough to comfortably slot into the end of year lists.

Part of the 2011 winter clearout - albums not reviewed when they came out but still worth sharing before the end of year lists hit.

Original release date: 30 August 2011

I Want That You Are Always Happy is the full debut album of Australian septet, The Middle East.  It follows their sumptuous EP (cleverly titled The Recordings of the Middle East) from last year and follows that up with more downbeat folk that doesn’t sound dissimilar from what the blender would sound like if you threw a Fleet Foxes CD in there with a Low Anthem record and a Jet minidisc.  Just kidding about the Jet (ah, the fate of poor Australian bands) so maybe replace that with some barley.  Yes, that’d go quite nicely.  Much like this album.  Won’t hit the end of year top 25 but it’s a pleasant enough record.

Part of the 2011 winter clearout - albums not reviewed when they came out but still worth sharing before the end of year lists hit.

Original release date: 

Landing right at the beginning of this year, HotSpotMusic missed out on Anna Calvi.  Despite having the unfortunate albatross of one of the BBC’s Sound of 2011 acts hanging round her neck (although this was perhaps offset by Brian Eno referring to her as the best thing since Patti Smith), her tightly composed debut is a grand work.  There are definite elements of PJ Harvey but it is the dark, dense power of this album that makes songs like Desire and The Devil stand out amongst other contemporary female performers such as Florence & The Machine or EMA.  This has only spun a few times but it may well get a few more… and if that’s not enough, she’s covered Wolf Like Me too.

Part of the 2011 winter clearout - albums not reviewed when they came out but still worth sharing before the end of year lists hit.

Original release date: 17 Januaruy 2011

Trust Bjork to release her latest album not as a traditional record but as an ever unfolding series within an iPad app.  Always at the forefront of music and innovation, Bjork’s album was beautiful and somewhat revolutionary.  The music in it was less pioneering than the format perhaps, but that’s only because we set such high expectations on her.  Sumptuously constructed and genre hopping, Biophilia is an experiment in what sound represents in the third millennia and it delivers strongly.

Part of the 2011 winter clearout - albums not reviewed when they came out but still worth sharing before the end of year lists hit.

Original release date: 11 October 2011

Six years after Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!’s definitive, eponymous debut and four years after the disappointing, loud and nonsensical followup, Some Loud Thunder, came Hysterical.  A marvellous collection of quirky indie pop that returns to the lighter side of CYHSY! whilst bringing a more well-rounded maturity to the track list.  

Part of the 2011 winter clearout - albums not reviewed when they came out but still worth sharing before the end of year lists hit.

Original release date: 

Much has been said of Real Estate’s ability to effectively simulate the halcyon days of the past.  But in today’s nostalgia-addled, originality whirlpool that is no longer the key skill - what makes Days really work is the consistently enjoyable songwriting.  Clearly a homage to early REM jangle as much as it is to the summer houses of their youth (and the guitar effects pedals that take them back to both those time periods), the ten tracks here are the equal elixir for memory and ignorance.  A great follow-up to 2009’s self-titled debut from the New Jersey based trio.

Part of the 2011 winter clearout - albums not reviewed when they came out but still worth sharing before the end of year lists hit.

Original release date: 18 Oct 2011

Soaring above the rest of its indie brethren, the bold, majestic eagle doesn’t have time to think about such trivial things as itself or the complexities of being alone.  It must fly to stay alive and it must kill to stay strong.  And that is why, the eagle is the not-so-indie-animal.

Click here: Not-so-indie Animal: The Eagle

A universally epic sound, gradually swelling songs in a rare-double length LP and the controversial use of a saxophone marked out M83’s return to the public sphere.  Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming could have been the album title for about 40% of all indie releases since the summer of 2010 but at least Anthony Gonzales’s effort tries to capture the urgency in the beginning of that statement whilst letting the latter drift as your imagination wanders the way of the second part of the album (i.e. into the distance).  

Part of the 2011 winter clearout - albums not reviewed when they came out but still worth sharing before the end of year lists hit.

Original release date: 18 October 2011

When you have such a classic, long-awaited album such as Smile released why would you even need any more music that month?  Well, despite trying otherwise, a few more notable releases went up on HotSpotMusic including the bewitching debut effort from Still Corners, Atlas Sound’s Parallax and the sunniest record ever to be released in November, Summer Camp’s Welcome To Condale.

Click here: HotSpotMusic. - November 2011

Wild Beasts are one of those bands who have very slowly progressed into being silently quite brilliant with each album.  The British band’s sound has evolved from simple pop songs to rather complex and thoughtful compositions still backed up by the marvellous (and impressively replicable in a live setting) Jeff Buckley-style warble of lead singer Hayden Thorpe, only now with more nuance and subtlety in its delivery.

Part of the 2011 winter clearout - albums not reviewed when they came out but still worth sharing before the end of year lists hit.

Original release date: 10 May 2011

Oh Panda Bear, how were you ever supposed to live up to expectations on Tomboy?  The critical success of Person PItch weighed heavily and the seemingly-forever postponed recordings (due in part to the success of Merriweather Post Pavilion and Animal Collective’s touring) that led to the release of this album 4 years later didn’t help.  Tomboy is certainly not a bad record, indeed there are quite engaging tracks in there, but really not enough to keep you returning and certainly nothing nearly as inventive as he’s delivered before.

Part of the 2011 winter clearout - albums not reviewed when they came out but still worth sharing before the end of year lists hit.

Original release date: 11 Apr 2011

I saw this and thought of you.

It’s a known affair, but today I can’t help but comment on the beauty and inspiration I find in the convoluted world of social media and everything digital.  A few days ago, I posted this: 

That was after I heard the song Maps on David’s blog, which referenced the Ann Arbor SoundCloud local post (written by Jami aka Seams). Chris sent me a thank-you tweet and suddenly I felt a rush of understanding why creators and consumers alike feel a deep love for companies like SoundCloud.  

Perhaps it’s the constantly fluctuating nature of my own attention to any given influence - friends, professional or personal interests, the companies that I love and listen to (sometimes literally) that makes this seem at once direct, yet distant. Though we are constantly in reach of all the music, media, art, literature, (etc., etc.,) that could be meaningful to us, it continues to amaze me when a direct connection is made between any combination of creator, influencer or consumer. The digital world is ever-more resembling, mapping even, the world we live in - the animate and dirty yet mathematical organic world. 

This morning, I came across this and felt even more fuzzy because Amen was involved:

I had been playing the Bass Farmers’ Avicci - Levels remix in the office on Friday, was really digging it and Amen’d it, which sent to Twitter.  Bass Farmers found it and one of the guys re-posted it to Facebook.  I am excited that something on Amen has gone out into the world and affected someone - and hopefully listeners/consumers as well.

 Amen is about the best and worst of everything.  When I listened to that song, I wanted to say something about it, so I did, on Amen.  Though our service is not currently directly connected to SoundCloud, I made the comment for two reasons: because it was exactly the sort of listening experience that makes me want to say, “This is the best ever! Amen!” and also because I thought maybe someone would be curious and find the song and Bass Farmers could get some extra exposure.  When I saw Matthew’s Facebook post this morning, it was another click for me - that Amen is beginning to make strands in the giant digital web - between consumers, creators, influencers, content and experiences. 

There are already many, many formats and iterations of social media services for personal expression and many others for curation, transmission and consumption - of course, I hope you’ll choose Amen (which is the best).  However, I believe that as the Internet and its companies grow and evolve, service usage will expand and contract on an individual basis. It doesn’t matter that Matthew from Bass Farmers found my comment about his song via Google nor that he may or may not care about Amen. The point is that I had an outlet to say what I wanted to say (Amen), I have a group of friends and listeners on Amen who may have discovered something new because of my comment, and most interestingly to me at the moment, that Amen was a format - an entry point - and my comment flew into the messy, wonderful digital sphere and landed somewhere.

I guess it didn’t hurt that the refrain is, “Sometimes I get a good feeling.”  

nevver:

I am writing on some paper.

This reminds me of the time I went phone shopping with an elf and we both bought phones.  I guess it was a little different because his hair and my dress weren’t color-coordinated. 

Amen, Josh.  Ship it good. 

joshdevins:

A well put piece by our CEO Felix on the state of affairs in the Berlin tech community, particularly with regards to some “journalists”. Time to put all the negativity behind us and move along. Ship it!

fiahless:

Over the past few months Amen has been lucky to receive a lot of favorable, critical and honest German press coverage. We are very grateful to the amazing people at Spiegel, Welt, Zeit and the diligent bloggers at Techcrunch, netzwertig, deutsche startups, TechBerlin and

penelopethepembroke:

Penny the elusive corg-shark! Ironically, she isn’t ferocious and hates water very much.

Perfect for a baby, too!

thebestandworstofeverything:

Big Amen. BIG.

getamen:

EXCITING NEWS!  The object page is almost here.  Many of you have asked for this feature and we have longed, nay craved to build it. Here’s a super-special preview for you.

Let’s say you want a cappuccino - just like the sort of thing you could buy at THE BEST coffee store in Berlin.  But how will you find this store?  Look no further than its Amen page.  Pretty nifty, eh?  We are excited… and hard at work building it.  Get excited and keep the great feedback coming!

This made my day.

nevver:

+1

Probably my favorite moment in stage 14.

Sophia Coppola seems to have gotten the gig reporting Glastonbury 2011.

hotspotmusic:

Boldly named after Margaret Atwood’s post-apocalyptic romance, the nine-member band plays a memorable folk/acoustic/experimental/indie rock/pop, as it were.  The songs are superbly surprising combinations; soft tension, halting, pivoting music released in spurts of movement.  The cello and violin play unique characters rather than push themselves into too traditional of roles, completing the picture with successive layers of vocals, beats and color.

My doggelganger results.  hehhehheehee awwwww

Recently I went to the Apple website and saw this.  I felt like measles had been eradicated.

soundcloud:

LOL

Yoda intergalactic blues! by wahlforss

smarterplanet:

Leafsnap: An Electronic Field Guide

Leafsnap is the first in a series of electronic field guides being developed by researchers from Columbia University, the University of Maryland, and the Smithsonian Institution. This free mobile app uses visual recognition software to help identify tree species from photographs of their leaves.

Leafsnap contains beautiful high-resolution images of leaves, flowers, fruit, petiole, seeds, and bark. Leafsnap currently includes the trees of New York City and Washington, D.C., and will soon grow to include the trees of the entire continental United States.

This website shows the tree species included in Leafsnap, the collections of its users, and the team of research volunteers working to produce it.

OMG  @thomcummings and I were talking about this (as a joke), but then kept finding instances where it would be useful. FINALLY, a reality

Eh, you want W7 phones, I got W7 phones. What’s the problem?