Happy Birthday Dear Bandcamper

Today is the Bandcamper's birthday! (The Blogger's, not the Blog's.)

Which means that today we're not going to give you the waiting world any free music, but instead are going to be somewhat cheeky and ask you the watching world to give us something instead.

What's the best free music you've discovered recently?

Answers on a postcard to THE BANDCAMPER, BLOGSPOT, THE INTERNET, or if you prefer, in the comments at the bottom of the page.

Or if you're one of the incredibly cool and with-the-times kids on Soundcloud, then here's my drop-box:
Send me your sounds
And to celebrate, we've saved up to hire the Beatles to come all the way back from the grave to play Happy Birthday:

Soundtrack for a Wasted Life

Okay, so the above music video is cinematically terrible. But as they used to say back in the days before the Amazon Kindle killed the book: "Don't judge a book by its cover". So don't judge the Sea Pinks (whoever they are) by the gaudily vomit-inducing colours of the aforementioned video.

Instead, sit back and use the Bandcamp widget below to start playing the Youth Is Wasted album (which you can also download, in its entirety, for the generous sum of zero pounds and zero pence):

Now let the jangling guitars wash over you, together with all of their lo-fi annihilation of whatever lyrical ability there might or not be in these songs.

And as you do so, see if you can remind yourself of who on earth the band 'Girls [sic] Names' were. Because apparently, the drummer of that band is the man responsible for this band. Now, I know that by this time you've been won over by the mesmerisingly hypnotic way that this man can croon the same not-quite-audible line over and over again over a surprisingly pleasing commotion of guitar noises. So won over that you are no doubt tripping over yourself trying to do the by-no-means-easy task of sifting through the multitude of websites dedicated to choosing the perfect name for your sweet little newly-born double-X-chromosoned child to find out who the Girls Names are.

But fear not, we have done the hard work for you, and can inform you that the apostrophe-hating Girls Names consist of the rhyming couplet Neil Peel (that's the man we're appreciating now) as well as Cathal Cully and their friend, Claire, and are a Belfast band who released two EPs in 2010 and an album in April 2011. And if you can still bear MySpace then good luck to you.

Anyway. All that was by way of context. There might come a day when the Bandcamper reviews something by Girls Names. But for today it's 6.5/10 for this enjoyably forgettable album.

And before we go, whether you're a youth on whom Youth Is Wasted, or a retiree collecting shells, remember: DON'T WASTE YOUR LIFE.

A Song For Secret Superheroes

And for today we present to you a very charming and likeable song.

'Wake Up Dreaming' is a dreamy, ruggedly optimistic piano ballad about an office suit who doesn't let the dreary boredom of his job in telemarketing destroy his dreams.

Now, if I was a cynical robot who had been swallowed up by the corporate machine (by which this song refuses to be intimidated), then I might be tempted to dismiss this song as just a needle in a haystack of generic pop ballads sung by Phoebe-lookalikes, and give it a hum-drum three stars out of five.

But fortunately, I am not a robot thus enslaved, but a (mere) human determined "to keep believing" -- just like the song would have us do. And so, as a way of saying a loud AMEN to the conviction of this anthem of hope, and because I really do like the superhero cartoons that decorate both the Bandcamp page and the blog of this artist, I'm going to give her FOUR STARS OUT OF FIVE.

And I'm also going to give a public encouragement for you, dear reader, to offer a helping hand by donating some money towards her upcoming album:

A Puritan Endorses Unholy Hip Hop

This is the sort of music that I wasn't allowed to listen to as a kid.

Profane, explicitly violent, totally disillusioned with life -- no, I'm not saying that this is music I should have been allowed to listen to as a kid.

But -- of course -- just because I wasn't allowed to listen to this sort of thing, that didn't mean that I didn't. Not this particular artist, no. But to explicit lyrics rapped with anger-fuelled energy and the cynical conviction borne from experience -- that I listened to. And like every other teenage boy frustrated with the failure of the world to live up to my expectations, I liked it.

And some people -- the sort of people who you would call 'puritanical' -- think you shouldn't like this sort of thing. And here I am, someone who you might even describe as a 'puritan' -- I do in fact believe that the Puritans were for the most part right about the big metaphysical questions of life, the universe, and everything: I believe that there is a God, and I believe that the God-Who-Is-There is a holy God, and I believe that we the great mass of mere humanity therefore need to guard our hearts by setting our minds on whatever is true, noble, right, pure lovely, admirable, excellent, praiseworthy; I even go to a church that would still quote the great Puritan theologians.

But I'm going to give this FOUR STARS OUT OF FIVE. Because this music is ferociously honest, philosophically aware and lyrically skillful. I won't give bore you with detailed exegesis -- because that's not what this blog is for. But here are just two poetical snippets which could trigger a far more honest and insightful theological conversation than more conventional Christian contemporary music:

Something has broken my TV //
It keeps telling me I need to be worshiped //
And followed to fill this void -- //
I don't know who I am.
(From 'Junk')

Maybe we’ll evolve to a point where //
Fear as an experience is no longer instinctual //
But rather an emotion we use to enrich our understanding of //
Why our human ancestors killed each other when they could have loved each other//
One day we’ll be holding hands instead of grudges//
We’ll eliminate our territorial circuits and know what love is//
One day we’ll be holding hands instead of M-16s//
Until then every human being is controlled by the fight
(From 'This Story')

Let me make this clear though -- the honesty of the music (as I perceive it) is in its awareness of the total meaninglessness and misery of this life if indeed it is true that we are randomly evolved creatures in a universe otherwise empty of intelligent life. In fact, if we take into account the whole tragic story of Michael 'Eyedea' Larsen, the rapper of these songs, who died aged 29 due to an accidental drug overdose, the tragedy of the meaninglessness offered by a God-less worldview becomes even more apparent.

But this is where we need to come back to the Puritans. And to the message that tells us that it's not ourselves that we need to worship, but Someone Else, and that in worshipping Him we can know who we ourselves are. And then that knowledge -- and not random evolution -- is the thing which can set us free from the controlling urge to fight and bring us to the point where we are able indeed to love each other.

Review: 'Cotton To Fabric'

Wow.

Generally I'm not a fan of electronic music, in spite of all William's attempts at converting me to his faith, but this is more than just futile techno squibbling.

This is music so compelling that it can lure into an irresistible flourish of swing dancing even that cool cotton-suited character who stands on the cover of the EP looking nonchalantly blank towards any potential listeners.

This is music that not only can but does.

It does so slowly at first, as the tentative opening notes draw him tip-toeing out from the flat image that he so completely inhabits, before persuading him to throw caution to the wind and dance. Delicately at first, then more boisterously -- and at last, out into the streets of Birmingham he goes.



And so the music takes us, through those Brummie streets, all the way even to Teresina (judging by the video that would be the Brazilian municipality rather than the Polish village) until we are brought at last to the climactic confrontation with the mysterious Xavier and the music ends in an apocalyptic flourish.

Five tracks, all wonderful. The maths is therefore simple: FIVE STARS OUT OF FIVE.

And the moral of the story? We all need a Xavier.

September 11th

Today is the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

And you will no doubt hear conspiracy theories and criticisms of the USA's retaliatory reaction, as well perhaps as music inspired by the event that is strong in sentiment but weak in song-writing skill.

What is there to say ten years after the event?

There is a proverb which counsels "Where words are many // Sin is not absent" -- so with that advice in mind we are going today to leave you with this instrumental track, inspired by that "most powerful image of despair", the iconic photograph of the Falling Man tumbling from the top of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Constant like -- sunlight?

Many things in this world are constant. The ratio of the perimeter of a circle to its diameter, for example, is the particular constant known as π. The brilliance of Janelle Monae's music could also be called a constant, albeit in a somewhat looser sense.

Now sunlight is quite obviously not, by any stretch of the imagination, in this category. You need proof? Go stand outside your door and look at the sky. (But mind you don't look straight at the sun or you'll destroy your eyesight). Now remain standing like this for twenty-four hours. And what you will discover (unless you are in Iceland in the middle of the summer, but we can safely assume that the Funky Homosapien known as Del is not in Iceland, and even if he were, we could prove our point by choosing some larger number of hours than twenty-four) is that the sunlight is not constant. Night falls. The sun disappears. Wait long enough and the seasons change. The amount of sunlight that you experience will NOT be constant.

But someone will say, Maybe he's not talking about our subjective experience of sunlight, maybe he's talking about the objectively constant flow of sunlight from the sun towards our funky-homosapien-inhabited planet. Which sounds like a valid defense. But such a defense can be shattered by two simple words: solar flare.

So TWO STARS OUT OF FIVE. Needs to improve his grasp of metaphor. And let's be honest, the "electric juice" which is being looped is a bit repetitive.