Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

After the wonderful self-titled album of 2008 Fleet Foxes are back. Their new LP Helplessness Blues will be released on May 2nd in the UK and the band are kindly giving away the album's title track (just click below), a lovely Monday treat.Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues by subpop

Ballboy - A Day in Space

With all the excitement of the much talked about band Tennis and the final of the Australian Open looming it seems fitting to keep things in theme by having a listen to Edinburgh band Ballboy. Formed in the late 1990s Ballboy have released five albums and were popular with John Peel. Gordon McIntyre, the band's main songwriter, has a great way with words. Enjoy.

The Holidays - Post Paradise

Happy Australia Day! My copy of Post Paradise arrived this morning, very timely. The Holidays have picked up a whole host of awards in Australia over the past month or so for Post Paradise, and fingers crossed we can expect UK dates for 2011 to be announced soon. Listen to the Sydney quartet here, watch an album teaser here and for all the latest news click here.

The Decemberists by Autumn de Wilde

The Impossible Project got hold of Autumn de Wilde to take photos of The Decemberists during the recording sessions for their latest release The King is Dead. The exhibition opens tomorrow night in

NYC. To see what else Autumn de Wilde is up to click here and for the latest from The Decemberists go here.

Atherton Lin

Atherton Lin - Correspondence Paper Goods Made in England. These guys are encouraging us to write a letter and make a mix tape. A nice way to start the week, click here and get involved, or maybe this is just the inspiration for you to get creative and make your own.

One Day

In 2008 David Nicholls released One Day, a superb book that charts an extraordinary relationship. Emma and Dexter meet on the night of their college graduation – July 15th, 1988. She is a working-class girl of principle and ambition who dreams of making the world a better place. He is a wealthy charmer who dreams that the world will be his playground (taken from the official synopsis). One Day is being adapted into a screenplay and will be released later in the year.

Anne Hathaway & Jim Sturgess during filming.

For those familiar with the story you may remember Emma has a much better music taste than Dexter. During their relationship Emma makes two mix tapes for Dexter, David Nicholls has compiled the songs and has made them available to us here.

Enemies of the People

30 years of silence has been lifted on the brutal Khmer Rouge regime with Thet Sambath's (Director/Producer) and Rob Lemkin's (Director/Producer) film documentary. Enemies of the People is Thet Sambath's personal journey to the heart of the killing fields of Cambodia. Having lost his own family to the killing fields Sambath, one of Cambodia's finest investigative journalists, is on a quest to discover not how, but why his family died.


UK Screenings

Tuesday 25th January Regal Picturehouse, Henley-on-Thames Plus Q&A with director, Rob Lemkin
Friday 28th - Sunday 30th January The Lighthouse, Wolverhampton
Wednesday 2nd - Thursday 3rd February Glasgow Film Theatre, Glasgow
Tuesday 8th & Wednesday 9th February Ultimate Picture Palace, Oxford
Thursday 10th February South Hill Park Cinema, Bracknell
Friday 11th February Little Theatre Cinema, Bath Plus Q&A with director, Rob Lemkin
Saturday 12th - 14th February Queens Film theatre, Belfast
Tuesday 15th - Thursday 17th February Eden Court, Inverness
Sunday 27th February Alhambra Cinema, Keswick
Tuesday 1st & Wednesday 2nd March The Dukes Theatre, Lancaster
Wednesday 30th March Clwyd Threatre Cymre

Wanda Jackson & Jack White

Wanda Jackson (pioneering female rock & roll artist known as 'The Queen of Rockabilly') and Jack White have covered Bob Dylan's 'Thunder on the Mountain'. Superb.

Jack White has produced Wanda's forthcoming fantastically titled album 'The Party Ain't Over' released on January 25th. In the meantime you can find the album made up of covers & band members hand-picked by Jack White on npr.org (track 6 is Wanda's version of Amy Winehouse's 'You Know I'm No Good'). Awesome.

Glasvegas

Glasvegas are back with a new single 'The World Is Yours' and you can have it by clicking here. Not much has been released by the band since back in 2008 but April 4th will see the release of their second album entitled EUPHORIC /// HEARTBEAT \\\. The album is set to open and close with spoken word piece's, and by all accounts James Allan's mum features on the final track 'Change'. For now enjoy The World Is Yours.

ANALOG trends in sound and picture

Richard Nicholson's images take us into the last of London's photographic darkrooms. There were 214 professional darkrooms in London when the projected started in 2006, now four years later only 5 remain. The ANALOG exhibition at Riflemaker, Soho which runs from January 11th - March 5th shows the impact of digital technology. Download the 'ANALOG trends in sound and picture' book here.

Gordon Bishop Associates, Paddington St. 2006

Peter Guest, Foley St. 2006

Roy Snell, Earlsfield, 2006

Every Now And Then

Lucy & Gareth of Every Now And Then have started something nice in two thousand and eleven, they run a supper club in East London and it looks awesome - check it out here.

GRAMMY Awards

The GRAMMY Awards have an awesome interactive project; 'Music Is Life Is Music' it's an online map connecting people, places and music. Music has the power to transport us back to special times in a unique way, this site allows you to tag the sound of your memories. I'd like to have a website like this for friends and family so that we could share each other's musical journey. Go visit here and sign up to put your musical stamp on the world.

Beach House

The sounds of Baltimore's Beach House, this time last year they released the album Teen Dream. Now they are about to play their last Teen Dream live shows so if you're close to LA or NYC go, for those that aren't this will have to do:

2010/11 Ashes victory

"Put the Beer away, put the champagne on ice. Twenty-four years of pain in Australia, finally they're beaten at home by England. Look what it means to the players. They've out batted, out bowled, out fielded Australia, they are the better side." N. Hussain in the early hours of this morning. Superb!

Watch it again here. (not sure whether sky will let this clip stay online for too long)

Iron & Wine

Sam Beam is back with more music and storytelling to take us playfully away into dreams of love rich imagery. Iron & Wine played their new album 'Kiss Each Other Clean' in full at The Greene Space in New York City. The session was recorded and you can watch and download it for free here. Awesome!

RRCA

Exciting times at Richard Rose Central Academy as the new building opens. Article in The Independent today, read it here.

I am always hungary

Came across this website the other day, it's not new but it's cool. Visit it here, loving the drag navigation. (Make sure you click on the full screen view, it's the 3 boxes in the top right as shown in the bottom picture)

Kisses

Los Angeles duo Jesse Kivel and Zinzi Edmundson have exciting names and are part of Kisses, who have an awesomely titled song 'people can do the most amazing things' go get it for free from here (also some good remix versions out there).

If you liked that then more freebies from them here.

Albums of 2010

Junip - Fields // Tame Impala - Innerspeaker // Local Natives - Gorilla Manor // Jonsi - Go // Phosphorescent - Here's to taking it easy // 
I Blame Coco - The Constant // Arcade Fire - The Suburbs // Kings of Leon - Come Around Sundown // in no particular order //

Granma's gloves

Granma's gloves were a big hit this christmas...