Beatdown In The Key Of Happy

Melodic pop-hardcore? Yes please!
Free download here...

Creature Comforts

Invisible Creature is the bomb. Seriously people, they have consistently kicked out some of my favourite design work for years - under various guises and in varied places (Asterisk Studio etc) Ryan and Don Clark (brothers, not lovers) who form the 'Creature also play in a band called Demon Hunter. More info on the band here Ryan somehow also manages to squeeze in Art Directing the Tooth & Nail family. Busy busy boys.

You can check out lots of their work and thoughts on The Creature Speaks, their blog.

I'm in the process of ordering some signed screenprints from them. Excited much? YOU BET. What follows is a varied selection of some of their beautiful output (click to make it BIG)

Drowning in a digital sea?

new Thrice video for Digital Sea. Nothing groundbreaking but a cool video for a very chilled track, nice work!

Thrice - Digital Sea

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The Banner

The Banner is a musical group from New Jersey with influences that range from late '80s hardcore punk and punk rock to heavy metal and "NYHC"-style metalcore...and they just put up most of their back catalogue for free download! sweeet.

ok heres the link... just click on it and then youll upload the zip file, then open that and take the folder out and all the songs are in there. If you dont have a program for opening zip files > www.download.com has free programs for it.

http://www.mediafire.com/?b3vnyyqxg0d

Icelandic back alley happenings..

Buck 65 - Live spoken word in an Icelandic back alley...

Free Saul Williams!

Saul Williams, the slam-poet/experimental hip hop artist has released his latest album, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggytardust. The record is a collaboration with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and has been released independently in the donation-suggested format popularized by Radiohead.

Unlike Radiohead however, Saul's album is being made available in very high quality formats from 192kbps-encoded MP3 to CD quality FLAC "lossless" format files.

You can get a free download or donate right here.

The Fest

Those of us not fortunate enough to be in Gainesville, FL (at THE FEST) this weekend can now enjoy some of the bearded sounds of some of the finest bands to be gracing its stages - for free!
Tomorrow punknews.org will be posting a compilation cd for download - currently streaming here

The album features some of the bands performing at this year's event, with many of the tracks being new or unreleased. Included are bands such as Radon, Dead to Me, Banner Pilot, Small Brown Bike, The Gaslight Anthem, The Falcon, Sundowner, Fake Problems, No Trigger, The Swellers, Shook Ones, The Menzingers and more. Unreleased cuts have been provided by O Pioneers!!!, The Riot Before, Landmines and Nakatomi Plaza.

Artwork for the cd is by Mitch Clem, the internet cartoonist responsible for the cult favorite Nothing Nice To Say

Hot Water

Ok so after seeing the mighty Chuck Ragan last week in Leeds i'm more than stoked to see that the legendary Hot Water Music are definatly reuniting!!

These guys are some of the most important and consistent people in punk.

National Edge Day

Happy National Edge Day everyone! no idea what im going on about? check out the punknews.org news story here

Livin' Small...

These dreams'll raise you up
Some kids wanna be rockstars, and some kids wanna be firemen

But those dreams'll mess you up
If you're in it for the bright lights and the battle scars
It'll turn you into a liar, man

I don't know if I've seen a million faces
I'm not sure if I've rocked them all
All I know is I've met a lot of people
Filled a lot of spaces
Learned to jump and learned to take a fall
And if that's not livin' large, then
I'm happy livin' small

Well, most of us, when we go out looking,
as we do, for our lovers and our friends
Yea, we know it's not just supposed to
be about what looks good
We know it's not really all about the benjamins
Yea, but business is a lot like love and
business is a lot like friendship, isn't it?
Yea, well either way, if you just go out
looking for what's rich and hot
You'll end up with a piece of shit

I don't know if I'll make a million dollars
Yea who knows, maybe if I return those calls...
All I know is when I tune in,
turn on and go out
It's not my radio
It's not my tv show
It's not my rock-n-roll
Looks like one big fashion show
All these punk rock pimps and hoes
Sellin' this and sellin' those
Sodas, cars and phones
I mean, what's the dilly, yo?
This channel isn't clear at all
And if that's what passes these days for livin' large
Then I'm happy livin' small.

Setting Goals

So two nights ago i went to see SYG's! in Leeds at the Subculture and the gig just blew me away. Some photos are up here bt seriously, WOW.

Hit The Beach!

Last night i drove to Leeds with my friend Ben to see some bands play.. The Common Place (venue) is a autonomous, radical social centre (apparently) comprising of vegan cafe, diy venue, cinema etc.. 4 bands gave it there all to the tiny crowd (comprising mostly of the other bands plus a few friends) and a jolly time was had by all. I took the opportunity to play around with some simple long exposure and colour bias settings on my digital, the results of which can be found here. I also got to rock my new Hit the Beach tee (as above), designed by HorseBites Design honcho Richard Minino - you can also check him out on myspace

Topsy Turvey

Elefant Art have just done this awesomevideo for a new Bright Eyes track... very cool. Go looksee.

"We were idle so long..."

Punk-rock-super-group is a moniker thrown around all too easily these days.. but this one i have high hopes for!
Current and former members of Rise Against, Ignite, Reach the Sky, Spark of Life have come together in a new project called Last Of The Believers. The band draws from the hardcore influences of their previous endeavors with a more melodic style of vocals and choruses. Featuring vocalist Steve Jennings, guitarist/vocalist Chris Chasse, bassist, Brett Rasmussen, guitarist Nik Piscitello and drummer Phillip Lee, the Los Angeles based group promises to have demos available soon.

You can check out 2 tracks here.

Spot the difference..

Pelican's latest album 'City of Echoes' i posted about recently landed on my doorstep quite expectedly this morning - a gift sent by an awesome girl from back up north (Lucy:D)
Aside from being an excellent instrumental album its a thing of beauty and wonder to hold, designed by Aaron Turner, possibly the smartest man in metal. His label(s), HydraHead (he also owns a share of Tortuga), has become the benchmark for quality in the doom/metal community, boasting a lineup that includes Pelican and Jesu as well as my favourites Cave In (who totally shred live). His design firm, Feral Pig, consistently pushes the boundaries of good taste/personal freedom with its art-as-crime scene manifest. And then there's the little matter of his band, Isis, kings of prog-metal.
So anyway, here's some quick pics of the CD in hand, City of Echoes, with always-delicious spot UV on matt stock...

Post-emo

A number of musicians from influential early post-hardcore/emo acts have formed a new band dubbed House & Parish.

The band features Jason Gnewikow (Promise Ring), Brian Malone (The Gloria Record), John Herguth (The Love Scene), and Scott Winegard (Texas is the Reason). I have been listening to a lot of GOOD emo recently (Christie Front Drive, Mineral, Jawbreaker, Hey Mercedes etc..) so i am particularly happy about this news!

You can find four songs on their myspace page. and you can download some of them here, kindly ripped for your convenience.

le 65ism

Buck is back!! new album come September 18th (Situation) and a tiny tiny UK tour in July - anyone want to go to London to see him on the 20th July? i want to go soooo bad. For those reading this not in the know, Buck 65 is a Canadian Hip Hop artist, MC and Turntablist, (although recently he has moved away from Hip Hop in a stylistic context, now attributing more of his sound to Blues, Country, Rock, Folk and Avant Garde genres). That said, his new direction is seemingly still underpinned by an extensive background in abstract Hip Hop, his trademark rhyme-phrasing and lyrical presentation even evident in his altered timbre vocal exuperations displayed in more recent releases. He is also outstanding live and one of my all time favourite artists. I am soo stoked for this album, 'Secret House Against The World' was pretty hit and miss for me, so im hoping for a another blinder like 'Talkin' Honky Blues'

PELICAN

Eclectic metal instrumentalists Pelican have launched a full album stream of their highly anticipated new full length. The record is titled City of Echoes and is came out on May 22, 2007. The Chicago-bred foursome is a perfect fit for their label home of Hydra Head Records, which is owned by Isis guitarist/vocalist Aaron Turner.

You can check out the whole record right here.

Hydra head also have a blogspot blog

Loudness

In August of 2006, music legend Bob Dylan made some controversial statements decrying the state of modern recorded music, particularly as relates to the overcompression frequently used by studios to make records sound louder on the radio.

A number of music producers have begun rallying to the same cause, noting that:
Record companies are competing in an arms race to make their album the loudest. The quieter parts are becoming louder and the loudest parts are just becoming a buzz. This could be the reason CD sales are in a slump.

Whole layers of sound are missing. It’s because record companies don’t trust listeners to decide themselves if they want to turn the volume up.
Britain’s leading studio engineers have launched the campaign to make records range in levels. To explain, dynamic range is the difference between the softest and loudest sounds on a CD. Using compression, producers can minimize this difference and the result is that albums sound louder, even at lower volumes.

Interestingly, due to technical limitations of vinyl, this kind of "loudness-based" mastering is not possible, and the records tend to sound better than their CD counterparts.

For more information on this, you can check out this article.

22

A limited edition, hand printed and finished set of Mix CDs.
22 Tracks. 22 Recipients. My 22nd Birthday.