May 2012
2 posts
HotSpotMusic relaunches tomorrow!
Get excited.
April 2012
2 posts
March 2012
11 posts
WatchWhat Goes Up - a HotSpotMixtape.
New-tones. (Part 1 of 2).
February 2012
11 posts
Watchvia yvynyl
1 tag
WatchI Travelled A Long Way is the latest HotSpotMixtape. I’ve been cooking it up for the past few weeks and it’s really more of a journey than a mix. Not all that you hear is new, but it is all part of the ride. Let me know what you think!
5 tags
Sharon Van Etten - Tramp →
Tramp is a ridiculously good album from Brooklyn’s Sharon Van Etten, that was released just this week. In a sense the album title should be swapped with her previous record, Epic, since this is not an austere collection of tunes but a rather soaring and complex masterpiece that maintains the emotional majesty that is her hallmark but adds new depth to the music itself. Produced by Aaron...
January 2012
8 posts
1 tag
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...
5 tags
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...
5 tags
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....
5 tags
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...
5 tags
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...
6 tags
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...
1 tag
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...
5 tags
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...
5 tags
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...
5 tags
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...