New New Musical Express - January 2008

* Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - DIG, LAZARUS, DIG!!!
* My Gang 08 - Featured Artists Tag Radio / Connected Artists
* BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music A to Z
* My Gang Streamers
* BBC's Top 10 Artists to watch in 2008
* Video: Kotki Dwa - Robin's Clogs
* Video: Crystal Castles - Air War
* Sunday Times Songs of 2007
* Video: Freemasons - Uninvited feat. Bailey Tzuke
* Entertainment: Copying CDs could be made legal
* Album: Disrupt - Foundation Bit
* Entertainment: Violinist offers recording for free online
* Entertainment: Radiohead top album chart
* Sci/Tech: Pandora radio to stop UK broadcasts
* Goldfrapp - new single A&E
* Sia - Some People Have Real Problems
* Tom Baxter - Skybound
* Beggars Group content removed from Last.fm for legal reasons
* Video: Anja Garbarek - Stay Tuned
* Video: Goldfrapp - A&E
* k.d. lang - Watershed
* Adele for 2008?
* Gabriella Cilmi
* Katy Carr

Page 2

* Exposure: Hercules and Love Affair
* Tea Break: The Who - I Can't Explain
* Tea Break: Dusty Springfield - I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself
* Video: Supergrass - Diamond Hoo Ha Man
* Exposure: Thao Nguyen
* Video: Electrovamp - I Don't Like The Vibe In The VIP
* Souad Massi - Best of, live and acoustic
* The Lionheart Brothers - Dizzy Kiss
* British Sea Power
* Video: Lupe Fiasco - Superstar (featuring Matthew Santos)
* Mystery Jets - Young Love
* Interview: Mark Oliver Everett - aka. E From Eels
* Exposure: Mark Edwards - Balance
* Video: Lupe Fiasco - Dumb It Down
* Album Review (BBC): Lupe Fiasco - The Cool
* Exposure: Throw Me The Statue
* Video: CRS (Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West & Pharrell) - Us Placers, dir. Va$htie
* Exposure: Tinie Tempah
* Exposure: School of Language
* Video: Pete Shelley - Homosapien / new Buzzcocks live album
* BBC Documentary: Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives
* Business: Last.fm 'free' the music
* Tea Break: Oasis- Slide Away
* Dexter
* Tea Break: Elvis - Crawfish

Page 3

* Sci/Tech: Qtrax admits it has no deals
* Sci/Tech: ISPs new role in network control
* Sci/Tech: Record labels blame ISPs for piracy
* Sci/Tech: RAJAR finds 8m use internet radio weekly
* Entertainment: Last.fm nominated Best Website by NME
* Video: Erykah Badu - Honey
* Video: The Ting Tings - Great DJ
* Radar Bros. - Auditorium
* Business: Amazon to Begin International Rollout of Amazon MP3 in 2008
* Tindersticks
* Neil Young To Release Archives on DVD, Blu-Ray
* Last.fm Exposure: k-shan
* Hans Joachim Roedelius & Tim Story - Inlandish
* Exposure: Dawn Landes

Just a reminder I start my music year in September, in line with the music industry's Christmas releases, not the calendar year. There's more to be added but I've made a start. I will add a link to my sig when there is more material.

http://www.last.fm/user/Babs_05/tags/my%20gang%2008

If there are albums that should be featured that I have missed, please let me know in this thread.

I will also be removing all connected artists to the group to start anew with this year's. Very sad, I know.

The new playlist is, as usual, a work in progress till the end of the month. So far, I have a few new tracks by Sia. Just added Crystal Castles - Air War but as it's a gold triangle track, I thought I'd note it here too.

My Gang Streamers Jan 08

Contemporary experimental artists Kotki Dwa video for their current single Robin's Clogs.

Sunday Times Songs of The Year.

I don't agree with them all, but some good picks here.

hahaha! They've listed Rihanna's 'Umbrella-la-la' song as "unavoidable". Well yay me achieving the impossible! Still haven't heard it!

Copying music from a CD to a home computer could be made legal under new proposals from the UK government.

Millions of people already "rip" discs to their computers and move the files to MP3 players, although the process is technically against copyright law.

Intellectual property minister Lord Triesman said the law should be changed so it "keeps up with the times".

Music industry bodies gave a cautious welcome to the proposals, which are up for public consultation until 8 April.

The changes would apply only to people copying music for personal use - meaning multiple copying and internet file-sharing would still be banned.

Owners would not be allowed to sell or give away their original discs once they had made a copy.

Sales concerns

"To allow consumers to copy works and then pass on the original could result in a loss of sales," the proposals warn.

UK music industry body the BPI said it supported the move to clarify the law for consumers, but warned that any changes should not damage the rights of record companies.

The Association of Independent Music (Aim) said the proposals did not go far enough - pointing out that CDs could become obsolete in the next decade.

It said that, once CDs are replaced, the law could be misused to "open the floodgates to unstoppable copying", adding that it would like to see copyright holders compensated when music was copied.

Lord Triesman said the proposed changes would explore "where the boundaries lie between strong protection for right holders and appropriate levels of access for users".

The proposals also suggest schools and libraries should be given greater flexibility in how they use copyrighted material like CDs and DVDs, and suggests parodies of songs and films could be made exempt from copyright law.

The consultation follows the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, which recommended that aspects of the intellectual property system should be reformed.

Source: BBC News

Acclaimed British violinist Tasmin Little will give her next recording away for free as a digital download in an attempt to popularise classical music.

The 42-year-old took inspiration from a headline-grabbing initiative by pop group Radiohead, which last year allowed fans to choose what they wanted to pay online for its latest album "In Rainbows".

"I've done this with no intention of making money, but I feel very strongly that classical music suffers from misperceptions, and someone should be doing something real about it," Little told Reuters.

"I want to make it more accessible without downgrading the product, because you don't need to put a beat to this music to make it work," she added in an apparent reference to popular cross-over acts that blend classical and pop genres.

"Just the fact that people can listen to it on a computer means that hopefully they won't feel a need to have an education or be from a particular background or a certain sector of society."

The album, called "The Naked Violin", will feature three pieces for unaccompanied violin -- Bach's Partita No. 3 in E Major, Luslawice Variations by Paul Patterson and Sonata No. 3 ("Ballade") by Eugene Ysaye.

It will also include commentary from Little and is available on Web site www.tasminlittle.net from Monday.

Full story: Reuters

Internet radio station Pandora will stop broadcasting to the UK next week after it failed to secure the rights to music online.

The switch-off, which takes place on Tuesday 15 January, follows a year-long battle with the music business over licensing here and abroad. The issue has arisen because record labels and music publishers levy fees to broadcast music online - fees internet radio stations say they can't afford.

Pandora founder Tim Westergren says he plans to fight for fair licensing for internet radio stations, which are usually broadcast free and supported by advertising revenue, Out-Law says. Westergren told Pandora subscribers:

"There may well come a day when we need to make a direct appeal for your support to move for governmental intervention as we have in the US. In the meantime, we have no choice but to turn off service to the UK."

Source: Tech.co.uk


The Guardian:

In an email to subscribers this week, Pandora founder Tim Westergren said finding agreement had proved impossible.

The UK version of Pandora, an online music streaming service based in California that lets people build personalised stations, will close on January 15.

"Both the PPL (which represents the record labels) and the MCPS/PRS Alliance (which represents music publishers) have demanded per track performance minima rates which are far too high to allow ad-supported radio to operate and so, hugely disappointing and depressing to us as it is, we have to block the last territory outside of the US," said Westergren, a former professional musician. He condemned labels and music publishers for pursuing a course that was "nothing short of disastrous for artists whom they purport to represent", and said Pandora introduced listeners to new music while being "totally supportive of paying fair royalties to the creators".

"The only consequence of failing to support companies like Pandora that are attempting to build a sustainable radio business for the future will be the continued explosion of piracy, the continued constriction of opportunities for working musicians, and a worsening drought of new music for fans." Pandora would "keep fighting for a fair and workable rate structure" that would allow it to resume operations in the UK.

Source: The Guardian

Sia has uploaded her forthcoming new album, Some People Have Real Problems, in its entirety on her MySpace.

If her last album, Colour The Small One, was a cry for help, Some People Have Real Problems is what happened when nobody came.

Great Sunday Times interview.



There are some outstanding tracks, including Buttons, Death By Chocolate and Electric Bird but the one that shines for me is her cover of I Go To Sleep originally by The Pretenders. In fact, I would so far as to say I prefer it to the original, which I've loved since it was first released in 1981.

I already had Electric Bird in the Nov 07 playlist, but have added it again to the new one for Jan 08.

I first noticed Sia when she was a guest singer with Zero 7. She isn't technically all that good, but who cares about technicalities when there is so much heart and soul to relate to instead? Her voice is about humanity, fragility, vulnerability. It's about not being perfect and not being ok with that. It's about loss, disappointment and learning to get on with it. Her albums are diary entries, not superficial claptrap from the X-Factory.

Sia herself directed the video for Buttons, which was one of the most watched videos on YouTube last year:




I Go To Sleep





Babs _{My Gang}

From the support forums.

In the last couple of days, people started to notice albums that used to be streamable were suddenly no longer available.

Russ said "We've had to remove all Beggars Group content due to legal issues. Hopefully we should be able to restore these soon."

Maybe we can help by contacting Beggars Group and asking them nicely to upload their lovely music again.

Goldfrapp - A&E

What do you think? I'm disappointed. (In the video I mean. Love the song).

I saw Adele on Later... with Jools Holland last year and didn't like her. I still don't.

Adele's debut album won the Critics Choice Brit Award last month... and it hasn't even been released yet. Hype gone mad? Will everyone be over her before she releases her first single? If Radiohead changed how artists release new material, maybe Adele will illustrate the fickle nastiness of hype for us in 2008. I feel sorry for her. Still don't like her.

New album, 19, will be released 28 Jan. The single, Chasing Pavements is due out on 21 Jan.

ADELE will receive her award at the BRIT Awards with MasterCard on 20th February 2008 at London’s Earls Court.

Adele - Chasing Pavements

Thanks to IanAR for the reco.



No new album from Katy Carr, but she is a good example of interesting artists who are overlooked because other acts get all the hype. Very sad.

Tags: electroacoustic, electronic, electronica, acoustic, folk, alt-folk, experimental, singer-songwriter, chillout

Katy is a London-based artist who has had two albums released, Screwing Lies [2001] and Passion Play [2003], entirely self-funded. I can't tag her 'my gang 08'(as that is for '08 albums) but I have connected her as one of our artists for this year.

MySpace