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Monday, November 23rd, 2009

This Monday it’s the turn of Camera Obscura.  A band I’ve known the name of for a few years, but never known any songs of. I’m sure my colleague Calum Shanlin will pop up and inform me he knows the bassists cousin or something, he has his finger in every Scottish musical pie.

I was sitting patiently in the cinema last week waiting for The Fourth Kind to start. As ever Emma and I were there about an hour before the film began. I was enjoying the pre film CD that VUE cinemas pipe in to the auditoriums.  On came this 60′s sounding, almost Motown-esque track.  Thanks to the wonders of Shazam on my phone, I found the answer.

Shazam, by the way, is a service which has been around for about 6 or 7 years.  In the past you’d hear a song you like, phone 2580 on your mobile, play a bit of the song down the phone and it would text you back the name of the song.  Now a days modern smart phones can handle the Shazam application. Same idea in theory, except the application listens to a bit of the song, uploads it via the internet to the Shazam server and almost instantly gives you a response.  6 years on and I’m still impressed every time I use it.

The result that came back from Shazam was Camera Obscura, If Looks Could Kill. A track from January 2007. If I’d read January 1967 I’d have believed it.

Camera Obscura – If Looks Could Kill Get Adobe Flash player

By the way, for people who read this blog through Facebook, if you click the View Original Post link below, you will be transported to my blog where you can listen to these tracks that I post.



Monday, November 16th, 2009

I’ve always enjoyed Bernard Sumner’s work.  Joy Division, New Order, Electronic, all fantastic bands.

I happened to come across Bad Lieutenant, Bernie’s newest band while listening to the excellent Radcliffe & Maconie show on Radio 2 a couple of months back.  Very Electronic-esque, but that’s no bad thing.

Sink or Swim is the first single from their debut album Never Cry Another Tear.  Like a lot of New Order’s most recent work, it’s hardly ground breaking, but it’s a nice, catchy, pleasant song that you enjoy hearing every now and again when it pops up in your music collection while in shuffle mode.

Sink or Swim Get Adobe Flash player


Monday, November 9th, 2009

This is a trend I’ve noticed a few people do on Twitter, so I’m going to do it here on my blog. Every Monday recommend some music I like… and call it Music Monday.

So we’ll start today. With Idlewild. Seems only right seeing as my last blog post was about them.

These two tracks are from their latest album Post Electric Blues.  As I said in my last blog post, it’s not had the greatest reviews, but I think it’s up their with some of their finest work.

Post Electric Blues by Idlewild

Readers and Writers is probably the catchiest and most mainstream sounding song since You Held The World In Your Arms.

Take Me Back To The Islands shows a folky side to Roddy and Idlewild that I quite like.  If you like Take Me Back To The Islands then you should check out some of Roddy’s solo work.  I like to think this song is about Shetland, although it’s probably certain to say it’s not.

Readers & Writers Get Adobe Flash player

Take Me Back To The Islands Get Adobe Flash player

Hope you enjoy. More next Monday.