RIP Stylus Magazine: 2002 - 2007

Sad news today as possibly the best online music magazine shuts up shop with no new posts as of the 31st October. As much as I like to think they are faking their own death and will reemerge the other side of the year meaner, tighter, sharper than ever I have a harrowing feeling that this really is the end.

The magazine? Stylus.

For those of you that don't know it, and those of you that do they have posted a Bluffers Guide To Stylus Magazine: 2002 - 2007

Being in a mild state of shock and a far inferior writer to errr..most? (haha) of the Stylus guys and gals I'll let you read about it all yourselves in their words. Seriously, some of the writing on this site has been as inspirational as anything I have ever read, coming from some of the most informed, passionate and measured music journalists around. I have no idea why Pitchfork is ever indulged more publicity than Stylus. One of the things most attractive about it is that there was never any ivory-tower attitude with it being one the very few sites with the balls to allow comments underneath all the reviews and features opening discourses in which writers were harried as much as they were congratulated. The range of music the site covered, the depth of features, occasional bouts of lunacy which affected it from time to time, the knowingly reader-baiting articles and both the authority the writing commanded and the antagonism it provoked were all second to none - an immense achievement.

Anyway, enough from me.

RIP Stylus. You will be sorely missed.


Meatbreak

Turning The Tables On Young Music

‘I hear that you and your band have sold your guitars and bought turntables.
I hear that you and your band have sold your turntables and bought guitars.’
LCD Soundsystem 'Losing my Edge'

In the ongoing battle between guitars and turntables, it would at first seem the bands are winning. The lack of musicians in my school is quite disappointing but those rarities who are in bands should consider this: what if that DJ Stigmatic (yes, you Zeek Braz) steals all the groupies that hang outside the music room, cause he can actually make them dance?

However (good) Indie bands do have the upper hand because not only are they live, with the interactivity of the perfomance, but have started incorporating that electronic, dancy feel to their music. Sitting behind some laptop with a ready-made playlist and some unnecessary headphones could earn one more credit than a slightly out of time cover of 'Valerie'. Which makes sense I suppose.

So what is cooler, the mysterious robots of Daft Punk, or the legendary riffs of the Arctic Monkeys? Picking up a guitar and finding that D chord to a mass of arms crossed audience seems far less productive than sticking on a bit of the Chemical Brothers resulting in a mass of bopping heads.

Your choice though.

Naomi Berrio-Allen (Longhill High School Future Music Reporter)

Ukuleles Or Just Giants With Acoustic Guitars?

We first saw them at the Big Chill in 2005, but a return to the Paramount Comedy Festival has reminded us how much fun the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain are. Check out the clever cloggery of their multi-layered performance below.


Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain Live

Kendall

Suited And Booted

Anyone wondering whether pop music has lost its bite just needs to consider Take That’s sartorial journey from S&M to M&S (they are modelling the new range of suits for Marks & Spencer).

Still, all that leather was not – as Heat magazine might say – a good look.

No More Sulking In The Studio For The Pixies

I’m really not sure how I feel about this one. The Pixies are my favourite band and I’ve worn out their old records and now Black Francis has revealed that Kim Deal has nixed any chance of a new album.
"While I may have tried to convince her otherwise, maybe she's got a point,” the son of incestuous union told The Gothamist. “She doesn't need a new Pixies record, so maybe there doesn't need to be one."

Mmmm… On the one hand you could ruin the legacy but on the other the four members have never really fired the way they did as the Pixies. Kim came close with The Breeders’ ‘Pod’ but since then things have been patchy. Black Francis/Frank Black clearly needs it more than anyone else – his song writing abilities have taken a massive dive since the glory days of band. He’s got a new album, 'Bluefinger', out now but much more excitingly The Breeders are apparently working with Steve Albini again. ‘Pod Pt.2’ is almost as exciting as ‘Doolittle Pt.2’.

Oh yeah, ‘Bam Thwok’ – their only post-reformation song – was crap. Best leave it to the excellent gigs then.

I Don’t Want A Rock Star Boyfriend

Us muggles find ourselves stiff competition in the midst of musicianly marriages. The über-cool and attractive seem to want to stick with their own. Or maybe they just don’t get out enough.

Recent couples include, Lily Allen and Ed Simmons aka Ed Chemical. Lovefoxxx of CSS and Simon of the Klaxons, have announced their engagement (sorry, a bit of sick came up). Meanwhile Jamie Reynolds of the Klaxons and that keyboardist Lou Hayter from New Young Pony Club acheive golden new rave couple status.

But maybe we should consider ourselves lucky. Their inbreeding fashions have procured weird and wonderful creatures such as Peaches Geldolf and Jack Osbourne. Hurrah for the Hillbillies.

Naomi Berrio-Allen

Stock Markets Crash, Worldwide Riots, Moon Out Of Orbit...

Hot news from U2 manager Paul McGuiness: "We're great fans of the Spice Girls but rumours that Bono is to join them as a sixth member are sadly not true."

Thank fuck for that.

Kendall

All You Need Is Dove

How fucking good is this photo?! We saw it in The Argus Lite the other day and thought we’d share it with you. Basically the monkey was rescued but wouldn’t eat or look after itself. The dove took it under its, erm, wing and it got better. We still can’t decide between rolling on the floor laughing or shedding a tear or emotion. So we’re currently rolling on the floor crying. Anyway we can’t say it any better than Kim from Alabama on the Daily Mail’s website:

“We humans could learn a little something from this unlikely twosome: Tolerance, unconditional love, and respect for someone or something that's very different than us.”

Could this photo mend our broken world?

Kendall

New MySpace Player Tunes

Yes. I changed the songs on the MySpace player, so we now have Coin-Op, Robot Ninja Dinosaur Bastards, Palm Springs and Monsters Build Mean Robots. Some pretty different and worthy songs there if you ask me.


Meatbreak

Why Can No One Spell Arctic?

So, Q magazine spelt the Arctic Monkeys name wrong on their kinda undeserved award for Best Band On The Planet (or something). Now the subbing is normally pretty good on Q – better than the choice of bands they cover anyway – so how come ‘Arctic’ came out as ‘Artic’? Well, for some reason no one can spell this terrible but simple band name right. I was guilty of missing out that pesky c when they first arrived too, so this isn’t a bit of finger pointing, but we see it misspelled everywhere – from shop windows to The Guardian. A mystery for sure.

Incidentally what is going on with the Q Awards categories? Q Lifetime Achievement, Q Merit, Q Inspiration, Q Idol, and Q Icon? What is the difference in all of the above? Answers in the comments section please.

Kendall

Six Of The Best: Simon & Garfunkel Songs

They might not get the props of Dylan, Neil Young or some of the other classic 60s songsmiths but S&G have written some unbelievably moving and intelligent tracks. If you only hunt out a handful, skip ‘Mrs Robinson’ and try these:

1. ‘The Only Living Boy In New York’
Epic and uplifting but at the same time fragile and personal, this orchestral folk is cruelly missed off the Best Ofs even though it’s much better than Bridge Over Troubled Water. It’s about Art Garfunkel going to Mexico to act in a film btw.

2. ‘The Boxer’
It took six months to make and included dangling a drummer down a mineshaft to get that massive snare sound. But this would have still sounded great with just an acoustic guitar thanks to lines like “In the clearing stands a boxer, And a fighter by his trade… ‘I am leaving, I am leaving,’ But the fighter still remains”.

3. ‘America’
A brilliant, cinematic tale of the journey into adulthood. Loads of scenic detail but the “‘Kathy, I'm lost,’ I said, though I knew she was sleeping” line is the one that really hits home.

4. ‘A Hazy Shade Of Winter’
Acoustic rock that sees Paul Simon put his foot on the monitor. A great riff, but the melancholic lyrics remain. Later covered by The Bangles for the Less Than Zero soundtrack.

5. ‘For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her’
A love song for an imagined girl Paul Simon longed to meet, what seems to the sadness of loss is actually grief for love yet to be had. It seems like the song could fall in on itself at any time, especially on the famous live version.

6. ‘Wednesday Morning, 3am’
What starts out as a gentle love song (watching his love sleep) turns into the saddest song ever as it transpires that the narrator is calmly waiting to be arrested after robbing an off license. Absolutely heartbreaking.

Kendall

TechnoViking WTF

This might be the best thing we've seen on YouTube since that dominos-though-the-whole-house thing from Japan. If anyone has even the slightest clue what on earth is going on here, please enlighten us. Is it serious? We hope so.
Thanks to Pat for the find.

Kendall

A BRIT Of A Shambles

The organisers of the BRIT Awards have announced that this year’s bash will take place, and be televised live, on February 20th. This is good news for two reasons – firstly it’s live so you won’t know the results while watching it, and secondly it’s not on bloody Valentines Day like last year. Now all they need to do is sort out the voting.

The pedestrian nature of the nominees is the biggest problem with the event now that they’ve decided edgy presenters like Russell Brand, and live televising is the way forward. Remember those years that Annie Lennox won Best Female without releasing a record. How does that happen? Who votes for this mediocre stuff?

Actually, I know the answer cos I voted for a few years. Anyone who is a member of an music industry body can vote, which means people at record labels, in publishing and some retail. So you’d think that there’d be loads of quirky stuff on then, but two things get in the way: the fact that the people at the top of the industry are old and they’re self interested. Clearly a public vote would just have Westlife walking off with the awards so how to correct it? Simple – stop people voting for their own acts which will end block voting.

Right, sorted. Next stop electoral reform in Zimbabwe.

Kendall

Radiohead Invent Download Busking

The surprise news that Radiohead are releasing an album next week (did anyone even know that they were even close to finishing?) brings with it two important issues. Firstly, unless you want the £40 deluxe pack, the band are only asking you to pay what you think it’s worth [non-Radiohead fans insert own joke here]. Clearly this altruistic stance is easier to do when your loaded but it gives more credence to the idea that there’s no money in putting out records these days. Other news today says that The Charlatans are going one stage further and giving away their new album on XFM’s website. This follows The Crimea and, most famously, Prince, who both decided that getting more people down for gigs was the way to support themselves. Even Travis’ free best of in The Mail On Sunday this weekend had their new single on it.

The other issue raised by Thom Yorke and co is that by putting the album out on release themselves (although a supermarket/high street-friendly CD could appear through EMI next year) they are bypassing the record label completely. They’re probably the highest selling act to do this since Simply Red went it alone. Could this – with the other bands mentioned – be the end of record labels? Quote-happy Alan McGee (former Creation boss and current Charlatans manager) puts it thus: "Why would you volunteer to join the army for 10 years unless you had no choice? Record companies are kind of like the army; very regulated.”

Whatever, it’s an interesting time for music consumption. But no, it doesn’t mean you can download any band’s music guilt free. Consider it try before you buy.

Kendall

Give Me Coxon And TV

More on that Coxon/Blur reformation: apparently the reunion will take place this week with a lunch. According to the Parlophone big cheese we spoke to at Brighton Live, a studio is booked but the label aren’t banking on anything. Repeated enthusiasm from us (“But it look very positive, doesn’t it! It’s bound to happen…”) were met with stoic understatement. As Alex James says, "If we can all agree on where to have lunch that will be a good start". A long way to go.

PS The label boss, on table-wide agreement that the Babyshambles LP is actually pretty good, said that Pete Doherty “really wants it” and to this end has been clean longer than he has in the last three or four years. Admittedly that’s only three weeks, but, hey. The boy is definitely more interesting straight, so here’s hoping. Check the video below to for a glimpse of what Pete might have been like without the narcotics.


Young Pete queues to buy Oasis’ ‘Be Here Now’

Kendall