…be they records, gigs, books, movies, videos, widgets or websites. We hope you’ll take some time to browse, and hopefully you’ll discover something new. And we are always keen to get recommendations in return, so feel free to tell us what’s rockin’ your boat.

If like us you still have a healthy appetite for discovering new music, we would cordially like to recommend a subscription to the very wonderful eMusic. You won’t (currently) find any releases from major records companies, although you will find some familiar names such as The White Stripes, Basement Jaxx, Thom Yorke, Joni Mitchell, Bjork, Miles Davis, Bloc Party, Richard Thompson, The Libertines and the Wu Tang Clan. You can even find some of our very own Paul Martin’s releases as Interfearence.

The eMusic Basic package, for example, gives you 30 MP3 downloads per month for £8.99, or 30p per download. If you want to sign up email us at citizensound.net, and we’ll introduce you. That way we both get 50 free downloads each when you subscribe.

So enjoy…

ALBUMS OF THE MONTH:
Shearwater - Rook
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

Rook is amazingly the fifth album by Jonathan Meiburg’s solo project Shearwater, a band so under the radar they had pretty much gone unnoticed here in the UK, apart from a small feature in the much missed independent music magazine, Comes With A Smile, way back in 2004. Even in the US it was only really with last year’s Palo Santo that the band garnered wider recognition, with the album acquiring enthusiastic reviews from the likes of the New York Times, Pitchfork and US music magazine Magnet; and provided the first indications that this solo project could outshine the music of his other band, Okkervil River, which he has only recently quit. Shearwater were formed in 2001, as as an outlet for the quieter and more introspective songs of Meiburg and Okkervil co-founder Will Sheff, with both bands running simultaneously for much of this decade. Sheff shared the vocals on the bands first three albums, up until 2004’s Winged Life, but has since taken more of an ‘instrumental’ back seat in the band. (more…)

Here are three for you all as the week-end approaches, so get ready to jump up and down and shout for joy or kick back and enjoy these ones.

First up is Dead Pop Stars, by Altered Images, by far my favourite track by them. Never troubled the charts but is a brilliant track.

Next up is Joni Mitchell and a performance of California on the BBC. The perfect voice with amazing string work…

Last up for the Friday selection is the ultimate boyband, The Temptations. Here is Papa was a Rolling Stone for you…

I love mashups when they do something really simple and really smart. Tim Bowman’s clear little mashup takes the technology behind Last.fm to recommend a whole load of videos for you to watch from You Tube. You simply type in an artist or a last.fm username and you get an instant video channel, rather than just listening to a a bunch of audio clips! It works pretty well, in the example (below) I put in 70’s UK art-punks Wire and got 70’s US art-punks Per Ubu! If you want to see what I’d recommend just type in nickwatt into the search box! Go check it out here

The weather’s been foul, the music’s been great. So dive on in!

ALBUMS OF THE MONTH:
Portishead - Third
White Williams - Smoke

Where do you go next when you seemingly can’t escape front the fact you’re your début album produced one of defining moment of a genre of music you hate - Trip Hop. You wait three years, then release one of the darkest and most suffocating records records ever made. Then you do virtually nothing for the best part of 11 years. Anyone expecting to find Portishead in the same place we left them in is for a big surprise. The filmic quality of their music may still remains, while the folkie tones of Beth Gibbons solo album with Rustin’ Man are added into the mix. But they haven’t stopped their, taking ideas from dark stoner metal, krautrock, weird 60s Psychedelia and Folk and Joe Meek records. The opener, Silence, sets the scene, starting with a metronomic Krautrock rhythm (no breakbeats on this album), with a guitar line straight from Metal Box era PIL, then Beth’s vocals come in…

Tempted in our minds
Tormented inside lie
Wounded and afraid
Inside my head
Falling through changes

So no change when it comes to the foreboding tone of the lyrics, but musically this album twists and turns. The single Machine Gun pitches the vocals against a barrage of drums machines and electronic distortion, while We Carry On pays homage to late 60s electronic duo Silver Apples. It’s hard to believe that they could make a record that is darker and bleaker than it’s predecessors, yet make it even more engrossing. This is definitely album of the year territory.

I’ve only had this album for a few days now, but this is one hell of a great record. White Williams music makes out like a 21st century Brian Eno, or at least the Eno of Here Comes The Warm Jets. You can hear everything from Marc Bolan and Roxy Music, to the likes of Hot Chip and Beck, all mixed up with afro-pop and glitter beats. This is the sort of music that the electroclash scene promised, but rarely ever delivered. His cover of the classic I Want Candy (133 cover versions and counting) is great, sounding like a noughties cross between Suicide, The Flying Lizards Money and Eno’s King’s Lead Hat. This is a little 21st century artrock classic.

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At citizensound we enjoy listening to all sorts of music, so we decided to share some of our current favourites with you for our special Venice Festival of Media podcast. You can find out more about our panel at the event here.

All these acts are either unsigned, or with small independent labels from across the world. The podcast includes artists form the UK, US, Canada, Australia, Brazil, France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Sweden, of course the home nation of the event Italy…

To listen now:

To download the podcast:

You can find out the track listing click (more…)

After a great January of great new albums, I was expecting a pretty quiet period up to Easter. How wrong could I be. As always, only a few of this month’s music recommendations come from anywhere near what you might call the mainstream. But hey that’s what this column is for, helping you discover some of those rare musical nuggets buried in a miasma of mediocrity.

ALBUMS OF THE MONTH:
Sian Alice Group – 59.99
White Rabbits - Fort Nightly

The Sian Alice Group have one of the worst band names ever. But their debut album 59.99 (the time it takes to listen to the record) is anything but dull and predictable. Their music mixes pop melodies with improvisation to create music of epic proportions, not dissimilar to the best of Spiritualized or My Bloody Valentine. While, the band claim inspiration from Jeff Mills’ Detroit techno, the soundtracks of Angelo Badalamenti, and the minimalism of Steve Reich. Although London-based, they are signed to a small US label, which may suggest why the British music press have been particularly slow on the uptake (although they did play an NME showcase gig at SXSW recently). You can listen to some of their music here.

If you want to put a bet on the next US indie to break through Arcade Fire-style, then the 10-1 favourites are White Rabbits. Their début album has just got its UK release via the label responsible for Coldplay and Keane’s earliest output. The album garnered rave reviews in the US on it’s release last year, and deservedly so. Opener ‘Kid On My Shoulder’ bounds alone on a two-note keyboard riff, then grabs you by shoulders and drags you along, as it gallops towards the finale. While ‘March Of The Camels’ sounds like some bastard-son offspring of the Specials ‘Ghost Town’.

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This month sees the arrival of the first citizensound podcast. We decided that we wanted to share with you some of the vast array of music, from every genre imaginable, that makes up citizensound’s combined record collection of some 25,000 albums and singles. Our aim is to expose you to some great new music, including some of the best unsigned music around, but also some classic gems that you may not have heard before from times gone by. It will also give you the chance to hear some of the music we’ve been sounding off about in the ‘Stuff We Like’ section of our website, and we might even sneak in a few tracks that would make a great soundtrack for the odd advert or seven.

So let’s get down to volume one of It All Ads Up…

To listen:

To download the podcast:

For those of you who are PC users, or are not iTunes users, the MP3 version can be downloaded by right clicking your mouse, here

You can find out the track listing by clicking (more…)

The music release schedules at this time of year is more likely to compound S.A.D.(Seasonal Affective Disorder) amongst music fans, than alleviate them. Traditionally this is not a good month for music junkies in need of a fix. All the ‘BIG’ albums came out pre-Xmas, so all we are left with were a few straggly turkeys that labels didn’t dare chuck out into the market last November, worried that they would sink without trace. But come January nothing much happens, so those very same turkeys get a chance to be released into the shops, in the hope that a starved music public may be suckered into buying them. And what could have turned into very poor sales and a pretty embarrassing chart placing, ends up looking half decent! And don’t tell me this cynical ploy doesn’t happen. Does anyone remember the less than inspiring First Impressions Of Earth by The Strokes? Thought not! It was released on the 2nd January 2006, and pretty quickly sank without trace. Even the music press, who hate January just as much as the rest of us because they have nothing new to write about, couldn’t find it in their hearts to say anything particularly nice about it. But good citizens, something has changed!

January 2008 has already seen an inordinate number of great records appearing on the shelves of your favourite music emporium. The pick of the crop include These New Puritans, Vampire Weekend, One More Grain, Michael Dracula, Cat Power, Thao, The Chromatics, Glass Candy, British Sea Power, The Dynamics, and Black Mountain. Agreed none of them are exactly household names, but all of them have made cracking albums. (more…)

I saw Tawiah at the Gilles Peterson Worldwide Awards last week at Cargo in London. She completely blew me away. She has everything. A great band, well crafted songs, an amazing presence on stage, confidence unlimited (for a second performance no less!) and a voice that drifts from Carmun Lundy to reggae, back to Jill Scott and then to dubstep with Radiohead thrown in. This girl is London Town, but deserves to go global.