Foxon's Thoughts #5 - The Internet

Do you remember, before Google and Spotify, that we used to have to use other means for finding music. Some unspecified (not me) friend of mine would hear a song on Kerrang TV and then head to his (or her. It isn't me) computer to illegally download the song. “That song was great, what was the band called? A? Just A? Seriously? I'm never gonna find them. I'll search by song, what's the song called? Nothing? NOTHING? Thanks guys”.

This unspecified friend of mine was also a fan of 90’s synth-wave-goth-metallers, ‘Orgy’. They were a hard band to find music videos of.

Thank god the world has changed. Google makes everything so easy to find, and Spotify means that I can… i mean, my friend can listen to all his (or her) music legally, before shelling out 25 quid on the pretty orange vinyl. But, i am most grateful that I don't have to search the internet for The Internet, who brought out a new album on Friday. Its called 'Hive Mind'. I don’t normally talk about Soul music, but The Internet are really really good. I urge you to go check it out, I've listened to it a couple of times this weekend, and it really suits this bright weather. I personally think it's their finest work so far for a great group of people at the top of their game.

Pale Waves would have been so easy to find on the old school internet. Not only because they have a super unique name, but also because they are starting to get really big. They are about to embark on their biggest tour so far, you can assure we will be there, and they have also treated us this weekend. The music video for their summer banger ‘Noises’, that guitar drop is epic. The video features front woman Heather Baron-Gracie as you've never seen her before, channelling her inner Bjork with makeup and sellotape.

It's good, and the tune, as you'd expect, is brilliant. Be sure to catch them live towards the end of the year, we saw them at Dot to Dot in Manchester, a solid live show, and a band who are on the grow!

Speaking of bands on the grow, Yonaka. We seem to mention them every single week. It's just so that, when they get huge, we will quickly be able to find one of these blogs and say “we told ya”. Michael mentioned them yesterday, we all love them here at ALOMR, and they keep churning out tune after tune and they keep getting better and better. ‘Fired Up’ came out on friday, it's on Spotify and its already approaching 100,000 streams on there alone. It's so infectious. Yonaka are also all over the place this summer, playing Leeds and Reading festivals, among others, and a massive headline show at London’s Electric Ballroom in October.

Another thing you could never find on the old school internet, was memes. The biggest meme of them all, Rick Astley, brought out a new album too. I listened to it. It's really good. It's like a walk through a meadow with the one you love. It's happy, it's a bit soppy, but its sweet. I'll be honest, I had no idea he was still making music, but it seems there is more to Astley than THAT song, the album is lovely, and he plays every single instrument. What a guy!

A busy weekend for music then? Those are the best weekends.

I believe The Vamps did some kind of album this weekend, too. I'll probably give that a miss.

Imagine Dragons also hit hard with a new single ‘Natural’, I reckon you'll hear it on adverts and trailers all over the place, so I’m not gonna say too much about it.

One you might have missed last week, though, is the adorable debut album from Aussie singer-songwriter Amy Shark. A emotional flutter of an album, a wonderful collection of lyrics delivered beautifully with feeling and a bit of melancholy. If that's not enough, Blink 182’s Mark Hoppus makes an appearance on the track ‘Psycho’. Well worth a listen. For fans of Christina Perri or Skylar Grey.

That's it. For now, internet friends.

Be good.

Song of the week: Pale Waves - Noises

Michael's mini post #7 What a week for singles!

Well what a week it's been for me and for releases!
Over in my life I think Mike Skinner laid down the right lyrics - "It was supposed to be so easy..."
After all the interviews and new Job secured, life dropped another option (good options, but now I have hard decisions to make!)

Anyway over to the release! This week:

Alkaline Trio - Blackbird
Yonaka - Fired Up
MUSE - Something Human
Offspring - Down

Well Offspring's track goes a little intense, in an OTT way to start but later into the track it gets the decent Offspring we know.

Alkaline Trio! Well, it doesn't feel like that long since we heard from Matt (mainly because it's not, with his place firmly in Blink history now). It's certainly nice to hear Matt back with the gang, giving us the dark and somewhat depressing tones we're used to from recent Trio albums.

As for Muse... Well this track gives a different sound than the classic Muse. With the presence of Steel Drums Matt Bellamy calls it retro, it's certainly different! To be honest, it wouldn't be a miss in a Disney or Pixar film during some song break out! Take that as you will.

YONAKA, I love it! But I'm going to leave that one for Chris to tell you about later!


In other news False Heads laid down a glimpse of their latest track Yellow which we can't wait for, sounds awesome!
We also heard Able's Army are about to drop their next track and we can't wait to get on that!

Chris is going to take a deeper listen into Yonaka and Able's Army and relay back for all you excited people!

That's all for now!
Michael

Michael's Mini Post #6 - Delayed Return.

Ahh erm. Yea. Not coming home just yet... Anyway that's my input on football for 4 years.

On to the task at hand, the real reason we are here. So what's happened in the 5 days since my last post?

Well a number 1 challenge has been laid to get pop punk legends Green Day to number 1 with American Idiot... And I doubt Frank Skinner will remain top for much longer, so will we see this Music protest to the presidential visit take off?
For anyone interested it's here:
https://open.spotify.com/track/6nTiIhLmQ3FWhvrGafw2zj?si=K6ht0NE-R_WQzlEXS28ZIQ


This week I've also been mixing up my playlist. Which is something I do very often, but when it comes to here I tend to keep all things Guitar and Drums based. Today I'm going to drop a playlist of a difference - Dance, Deep House, Trance & more... yea we're going all things Electronic!

We have some new, some old, some classics, some remixes and (in blog style) some upcoming artists!
Featuring: Gala, Florence & Calvin, Storm Queen, Marc Kinchen, Oliver Helden, Maya Jane Coles, Becky Hill, M-22, Felix Cartel and N.A.N.C.Y

These are some names you know some you might not, if you only listen to one track check out N.A.N.C.Y. She's got a handful of tracks and always dropping some live beats on Facebook & Instagram  as well as SoundCloud. Very talented and having seen her progressing over the last 10 years from residentials across the UK & Ireland to Closing major Festivals & massive gigs over in Ibiza, I can definitely recommend!

In other news : 

On the Synthpop front Years&Years released their 2nd album Palo Santo. Which is pretty decent, certainly a few good tracks on their which they haven't released as singles: All For You, Karma and Preacher to name a few.

On the Indie/Pop front: The Hunna release their 2nd Album Dare tomorrow. Their singles so far have been 50/50 some sounds a little too similar to last album see Summer/Brother. And Flicking Your Hair sounds a little sell out see Flicking Ur hair - Far too One Direction! However some of their tracks sound decent and hold that Hunna love we got from 100! 
Hope Dare holds more of the latter, especially since Warner have plugged it so much for 6months.

Finally - The Killers play Bolton Stadium this week and we're going :D. More on that over the weekend.

Foxon's Thoughts #4 - It's Coming Home

We've been rather quiet at this blog as of late. A mixture of amazing weather, hard work and football every single day, is my personal excuse. I've not found the time (or the need) to put pen to paper, or rather, thumb to phone screen lately.

I've still been listening to music though, lots of music. The sun does something to music. The sun makes punk rock faster, it makes metal heavier, it makes music more fun. Obviously it doesn't work for everything, I couldn't imagine listening to 50 Cent’s ‘In Da Club’ while sat in the garden, or ‘Mr Writer’ by Stereophonics isn't exactly BBQ music. Great tunes though.

Let's talk Spotify. Isn't Spotify brilliant? You want summer songs? Just type ‘Summer’ into Spotify and you will find endless playlists with Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince, Sum 41, and Bruno Mars. My personal favourite summertime song is at the bottom of this post, and it's not up for debate, it's objectively the best summer song of all time, you will agree, and if you don't, you're stupid, wrong, and probably ugly!

On the subject of Spotify, and I realise I am just rambling on by now, have you ever had a school crush? A boy or girl that you fancied? Then you get on Facebook years later and have a little look for them. They are rarely how you remember. They are either absolutely stunning and living a life of pure glee, or they are a mess, and when you dig deeper, you realise they were always a mess, you just had bad taste. Well, Spotify lets us do that with records.

I recently gave it a go. I listened, for the first time in 10 or something years to ‘Californication’ by the Red Hot Chili Peppers in its entirety. I know you're probably thinking “Why has it taken this long for you to listen to it?”, and my answer is, I don't think it's Chili’s best album, probably not even in the top 3.

‘Californication’ came out at the right time for me, I was 15, music was the most important thing in my life. I was also hooked on awesome 90’s sci-fi films, and I had a crush on almost every single female on the planet. My hormones were a bit crazy and I liked a lot of things I probably shouldn't. So this listen to Californication was me searching through the Facebook profile of a girl I fancied, to see if she is still fit.

She is gorgeous! Californication is a wonderful album. A strange change in shape for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, they stopped rocking and started to roll. This is a chilled out, funky album, with a set of lyrics as deep as the North Pacific. It almost doesn't sound like a Chilis album, it's something else, maybe that's why I didn't want to like it. Personal highlights are ‘Parallel Universe’ and ‘I Like Dirt’. The album was the comeback for guitarist John Frusciante, and it sort of reignited the bands fire after the drug-fuelled shit-fest that was ‘One Hot Minute’, and it kicked off the bands later years, preceding their masterpiece ‘By The Way’. But 15 year old me didn't care about this. 15 year old me cared about these funky guys making catchy, soppy and almost spiritual music. 15 year old me had the right idea. It's not always about the bigger picture. If you like it, like it! It's a summery album, and it's fantastic.

Of course, there is always a flip side. The girl you fancied in school who, looking back, wasn't all that! You think about her and smile, but after a bit of research, she is a hot mess. In this case it's ‘The Gift Of Game’ by Crazy Town. Wow! I loved this album back in 9T9. I remembered that ‘Butterfly’ was a nice, summery song. It's shite, the whole album is shite. What was I thinking? ‘Revolving Door’ is degrading, its childish, it's disgusting. I didn't care when I was 15, she was a skank, and I fancied the pants off her.

Of course, I don't go through Facebook, stalking past flames. I don't even have Facebook. I just wanted to write a funny blog. I've grown from that 15 year old, I've matured, I accept people, I'm not shallow, and I take nothing at face value. However, that 15 year old loved music for what it was, never feeling the need to dig deeper, read between the lines or get involved in the politics. In that respect, that 15 year old was more grown up than this 34 year old.

Oh, and the best summer song ever?

Len - Steal My Sunshine

Told you you'd agree!

Michael's mini post #5 - MxPx - Let's Ride & BST2018

It's been a few weeks since the last post. As usual life takes lead, on Job hunt and then Interview's / Presentations became life.

Now I'm back, new job in tow, ready to party. This week is ending with a smashing line up over at BST2018 in London: Pale Waves, Goldfrapp, Editors, Interpol & The Cure.
I'm looking forward to Interpol's latest single The Rover live! More from BST next week.

On the topic of 'coming back', MxPx did a Kickstarter a few months back and now they return with their 10th album. I donated, obviously, this is MxPx - I just hope they do Manchester UK on tour!

They release their first single - Let's Ride, and it's fucking awesome.

Check it out here:

Lyrics:

About the time that I turned 14
I got a job doing landscaping
Those days were long and my old boss was mean
About the time that I turned 16
I got a car and no place to be
I’d fill up the tank and drive out to the sea

The Rockies ain’t too far from here if we drive all night
The cold air will do you well in the mountain morning light

So let’s ride
Let’s ride on through the rain
Come on and take me anywhere that you want to be
So let’s ride

By the time that I turned 19
I’d seen so much and I was still green
It’s taken me a time or two
To learn the things I watch you do for me
There I was at 29
I can’t believe I’m still alive
Though it was never easy, yeah
You and me were born to survive

The Rockies ain’t too far from here if we drive all night
The cold air will do you well in the mountain morning light

So let’s ride
That was my escape
A way to change the tape
That was playing, that was playing in my head

The Rockies ain’t too far from here if we drive all night
The cold air will do you well in the mountain morning light

So let’s ride
Let’s ride on through the rain
Come on and take me anywhere that you want to be
Let’s ride, let’s ride
Let’s follow the skyline
And when we make it to the other side
We’ll find all the bluest skies