January 2012
7 posts
5 tags
Escort - Escort →
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...
1 tag
HotSpotMusic must live on.
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...
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.
5 tags
Darren Hayman - January Songs →
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...
December 2011
15 posts
7 tags
Sin Fang - Summer Echoes →
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...
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The Antlers - Burst Apart →
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...
7 tags
Beirut - The Rip Tide →
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...
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The Middle East - I Want That You Are Always Happy →
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....
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Anna Calvi - Anna Calvi →
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...
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Bjork - Biophilia →
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...
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Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! - Hysterical →
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...
Real Estate - Days →
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...
2 tags
Indie Animals Collection: The Eagle
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
7 tags
M83 - Hurry Up, We're Dreaming →
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...
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November Playlist
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...
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Wild Beasts - Smother →
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...
6 tags
Panda Bear - Tomboy →
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...
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Laura Marling - A Creature I Don't Know →
The inimitable Laura Marling’s third album was once again a marked progression from her previous work and surely solidifies her position not only as one of England’s brightest young talents in indie/folk but one her best songwriters 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...
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PJ Harvey - Let England Shake →
Already the recipient of the Mercury Music Award this year and likely to be right up there in a lot of end of year lists, Polly Jean’s latest album is an epic barnstormer.
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: 15 Feb 2011
November 2011
14 posts
4 tags
Korallreven – An Album by Korallreven →
An Album by Korallreven is an album by Korallreven. Their first in fact. Korallreven are a duo from Sweden (including one former member of the Radio Dept.) focused on making blissful electronica, something you could probably deduce by the titles of their preceding mixtapes: A Dream by Korallreven, Another Dream and A Dream Within a Dream. It holds within it a powerfully hypnotic set of tunes...
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Blouse - Blouse →
When the good people of Summer Camp go to sleep at an angle, this is what you get. Beautiful, dreamy synth-pop that’s slightly too off-kilter to call pop and slightly to charming to call shoegaze. The twisted dream state extends beyond the rather ethereal ephemera that is each song but into the content too, covering everything from the complications of time travel to the distorted...
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Indie Animals Collection: The Big Cats
Roaring into this week’s edition of the Indie Animals Collection are the large, prowling beasts we pretend to call cats. Only they’re far more dangerous. Just look at those teeth.
And that’s why all indie music names after such feral beasts is bold, fearless and toothy of course. Watch out for the delicious red herring in this one.
Click here: Indie Animals: The Big Cats
6 tags
Emmy The Great & Tim Wheeler - This Is Christmas →
I hate Christmas records so much. But this is a Christmas record with Emmy The Great and Northern Ireland’s Ash’s Tim Wheeler. I am feeling so conflicted right now. And that is why I will leave it up to you, dear reader, and your impeccable taste to make the judgement on this one. I do urge you to at least listen to Christmas Day (I Wish I Was Surfing), an inspired Wheeler take...
6 tags
Gospel Music - How To Get To Heaven From... →
Imagine the Moldy Peaches on their most introspective days. The days when the wacked-out, crack-finding urges were gone. Now imagine a pineapple. Forget the pineapple. What you’re left with is Gospel Music. Anyone who listened to the EP Duettes will know how How To Get To Heaven From Jacksonville, FL is going to sound. Charming little pop ditties with witty lines such as “I...
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Summer Camp - Welcome To Condale →
It’d be easy to dismiss Summer Camp as lazy 80s revivalists but beneath that veneer of sneer is a heart of gold. Sounding like the soundtrack to the John Hughes movie that was never made in, let’s say Condale, this album is a pop masterpiece of sun-reflecting-off-the-newly-polished-surface-of-that-sailboat-you-took-out-once-as-a-kid-style-glistening quality. This is an album about...
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Atlas Sound - Parallax →
Parallax is probably Bradford Cox’s 1,057th album in the last three days, such is the man’s impressive output. And it’s good. It’s like a collection of postcards from a constantly shifting destination, a time and space undefinable but defiantly refined. But not only does Parallax contain a misty mystery but it is also contains some great songs - from a conceptual and a...
6 tags
The Decemberists - Long Live The King →
The King Is Dead… Long Live The King! A fitting companion piece to the Decemberists fine album from all the way back in January. ’twas so long ago this record almost sounds vintage now. So old that it’s cool again. Well okay, it’s actually one of the few records of 2011 that’s stuck all the way through the year so having a little fill-up on that is more than...
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WatchHolding Pattern - a HotSpotMixtape
Every so often I put together a mixtape of new and not-so-new tracks. I used to put them up on a second blog, cleverly entitled HotSpotMixtapes but I’ve decided to just add them onto here for now so y’all can find and enjoy them. So here’s the latest one, Holding Pattern. If you like it, check out some of the older ones over on 8tracks.
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Still Corners - Creatures of an Hour →
Still Corners have taken the concept of pillow talk to another level - listening to Creatures of an Hour (and we can only assume that that hour is the Twilight Hour) is like being transported to the top of a mountain, shrouded in the clouds with lead singer Tessa Murray whispering delicately in your ear. The atmospheric paradox the band creates from behind the covers is a simultaneous equation...
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Active Child - You Are All I See →
You Are All I See. It taps into everything that’s cool about 2011. Heavenly yet ghostly vocals (like a zombie archangel doing celestial karaoke) mixed with ethereal, spacious sounding electronica, slightly off-tempo beats, R&B undertones and even the knowing lyrics. It has something fairly unique in its use of the harp to decorate the album in a way that is a more refined, shiny...
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The Beach Boys - The Smile Sessions →
The world has only waited around 44 years to hear these recordings. It’s like the Kennedy files of pop music. The secret stash of unfinished but certainly not unfurnished studio takes of this infamous album have finally surfaced and now you can experience the maddening frustration of Brian Wilson’s attempts at perfection which ultimately drove him slightly mad. Each track on here...
2 tags
Indie Animals Collection: The Wolf
The idea of a lone beast, howling into the midnight sky with only the extraterrestrial objects for company is something of a fitting metaphor for most indie-based warblers. Although I’ve never seen a wolf playing electric guitar that doesn’t mean they can’t.
And yet there are no actual wolves on this playlist… simply your run of the mill Wolfmother, Wolf People, Peter and...
1 tag
October Playlist
Welcome returns from Ryan Adams, Jens Lekman and the absolutely stellar Wilco album lit up October. And the super effort from super-group Wild Flag wasn’t bad too even if Radiohead’s remix album didn’t quite match up to expectations.
Click here: HotSpotMusic. - October 2011
October 2011
13 posts
5 tags
Youth Lagoon - The Year Of Hibernation →
This disappeared just before I had a chance to blog it but it has just returned. Not really with a bang of course because this album is entirely about the slow burn, the subtlety with which things creep up on you in life is reflected delicately in the songs of Trevor Powers. Each song is a carefully considered meditation, drenched in so much reverb and echo that you feel like you’re...
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Givers - In Light →
In Light, the inaugural album by Louisiana’s young Givers, is not a new release but it has recently hit Spotify. Fusing the indie-pop-afro-beat of Vampire Weekend with a more exuberant undertone and some lush, tropicalia-inspired rhythms, In Light is an infectiously-melodious record. This is no more evident than on Up Up Up, their rabble-rousing album opener and set closer but also...
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Jeffrey Lewis - A Turn In The Dream-Songs →
Jeffrey Lewis is more like licorice than he is like Marmite - I don’t think you can be brought up to like him… you either do or don’t. And if you’re already a fan, then this will be like Marmite to your ears. Gritty, witty and pithy, A Turn In The Dream-Songs is at its best on tracks like Cult Boyfriend or When You’re By Yourself which tells the unwinding tale of...
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Big Deal - Lights Out →
Mixed gender duets (especially over limited instrumentation) can generally go one of two ways: either charming (Slow Club) or trying (Ting Tings). Luckily, London-based Big Deal fall into the earlier category. Led by 18-year old Alice Costelloe and assisted by Kacey Underwood, the pair play opposing guitars while their singing complements each other as they yearn for something fulfilling out...
6 tags
Ryan Adams - Ashes & Fire →
Why, why do they leave? On the day that you needed them the most.
… you may ask. On Ryan Adams’s first album for 3 years (last year’s III/IV was recorded in 2008 and the metal record he released last year, under the nom de plume Orion, doesn’t really count) he has parted ways with the Cardinals - the backing group he had so effectively recorded with on some of his most...
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Radiohead - TKOL RMX 1234567 →
After Radiohead dropped The King Of Limbs into the world at such short notice, there followed a slow trickle of remixes. Released a couple at a time as singles, these 19 tracks make up a diverse take on that intense beast. However, depending on your predilection for spaced out electronica, these remixes are a mixed bag. There are some superb reinterpretations (Jacques Greene’s take on...
5 tags
WILD FLAG - Wild Flag →
On the Merge website for the long awaited debut album from WILD FLAG (which finally hits the virtual, floating shelves today) you’ll find the following description of the band:
What is the sound of an avalanche taking out a dolphin? What do you get when you cross a hamburger with a hot dog? The answer is: WILD FLAG.
Now I’m no expert on any of those things but this sounds more...
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Jens Lekman - An Argument With Myself →
It may only be a 5-track EP but it’s been 4 years coming so we’ll take anything we can get from Mr Lekman, the mercurial and elusive Swede that he is. Musically this sounds pretty similar to his last record, Night Falls Over Kortedala: a wide-ranging set of instrumentation garnishing simple and charming pop songs. There are some iffy moments, New Directions so very nearly manages...
2 tags
Indie Animals Collection: Bears
Stay very, very still. If you don’t move, he can’t see us. The only real question is whether he can hear us.
Of course he can hear us, he’s an Indie Bear! This furry beast has one of the finest tastes in music history, be it a grizzly, a panda or a teddy. Here’s a playlist featuring all of the best Ursidae there is.
If you can bear it: Indie Animals: The Bear
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September Playlist
HotSpotMusic went on holiday in September so updates were few and far between. But that doesn’t mean that there was nothing to listen to. Indeed, if you can’t focus on quantity, hit the quality marker - that’s what September managed to do.
Two of the year’s best albums came in the guise of Girls’ Father, Son, Holy Ghost and Strange Mercy, the beguiling...
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Wilco - The Whole Love →
The Whole Love opens with Art of Almost - a ripping, epic, 7-minute long experimental rock track that breaks you in to the latest Wilco album like Jack Nicholson enters a room, axe-first. And it’s a shining example of the direction Jeff Tweedy & co have taken here - exhilaratingly mixing their experimental tendencies whilst managing to maintain a sense of craft and songwriting....
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Steven Malkmus & The Jicks - Minor Traffic →
Steven Malkmus and his assorted Jicks returned recently for album number five, Minor Traffic. Written as he was reuniting Pavement and exciting indie rock nerds the world over last year, they then hit the studio with none other than Mr Beck Hansen whose producer credits are beginning to appear rather distinguished. Beck’s touches make Minor Traffic a more accessible affair as...
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The Zombies - Odessey And Oracle →
Welcome to psychedelia everyone. But the most beautiful, serene psychedelia you can imagine. The Zombies, originally famous for their 1964 hit She’s Not There, were perhaps behind only The Beach Boys when it came to mellifluousness in this era of pop music. But on Odessey And Oracle, one of the best albums of the 60s, the harmonies were bittersweet and the songs the same. Care of Cell...
September 2011
8 posts
4 tags
Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost →
The thing about the new Girls record is that it’s just so very, very good. From start to finish it’s quality. In a way you could see this coming - the progression from the debut album Album (yes) to last year’s Broken Dreams Club EP was astounding (especially given the catchiness and enjoyment that the former offered) and this is one step further. It is aided immensely by...