Dead Confederate

This bunch of chaps from Athens, Georgia certainly aren't in the market for making happy-go-lucky, jolly stuff. Intense and doomed-laden their music is, but often enjoyable for all that.

A mix of southern sounding, slightly psychedelic, rock with some guitar sounds that are remiscent of Pink Floyd. The grunge meets psychedelia works best on tracks like The Rat and their debut album has a distinctly other-timely length track Flesh Coloured Canvas clocking in at over 12 minutes.

Some tracks from The Wrecking Ball album are streamed on MySpace and they have a clutch of videos on their own YouTube site of course. KEXP in Seattle are obviously fans of Dead Confed given that they had a video as their video of the week on the KEXP blog recently

Photo credit: Skylar Reeves

Mp3 Dead Confederate - Goner

Max Richter - Music for Mobiles

Max Richter is a UK based composer with references to Philip Glass, Arvo Part and the like and has produced music for films and and an claimed set The Blue Notebooks with readings by people like Tilda Swinton, available through Amazon etc

His most recent work is called 24 postcards and is a fascinating set of work centred around writing music for mobile ringtones. Some really beuatiful pieces that make so much more sense than the usual rubbish most of us have on or phones.

Simon Says No! Podcast

After a couple of little mentions about Norweigans Simon Says No! I was lucky enough to have chat with 3 of the lads about their forthcoming EP, playing in the states and a few other bits and pieces.

Podcast Simon Says No Podcast

VP Technical Advice and General Wizardry: the Peeblemeister

Photo credit: Petteri Lamula

Automatic Drawing

An LA band that bubbled up courtesy of mp3hugger and about whom I can find little information but there is a certain slightly shambolic nature which reminds me in curious ways of Salt and Samovar although they are clearly from different camps. The vocals have tinge of Death Cab about them which may or may not be a good thing, and there is a definite 'californian' air about them.

They have a new EP called The Captain and The Sea, the title track of which I am particularly drawn to. Two tracks of this EP are streamed on their MySpace site and there appears to be another, older, EP called Streets on Fire which apparently was their previous name.