All Around The Houses

Okay, so the plan is to do a weekly(-ish) round up of stuff I find interesting in the music world.....beginning now. I don't get to write about a lot of stuff because I like to keep a good, clean posting structure so I'm going to try to cram everything else in here. I endorse everything I post in here, I just haven't been able to fit them in under the normal posts. Whether this lasts more than two weeks or not is debateable. Anyways, here we go.

EXCESSIVELY AWESOME YOUTUBE VID OF THE WEEK
Via Popjustice.com, the award goes to The Trons with 'Sister Robot'. No egos to contend with here. Only hardware malfunctions:



Excessively awesome Youtube vid of the week #2 sees Weezer teach us how to play their songs. Or as Rivers calls them, "sawngs" [Youtube]

PLUGS
Play It By Ear hold their monthly club night tonight (21/06) at The Monarch Bar in Camden, London featuring John & Jehn, Let's Wrestle and Le Tetsuo. Which will no doubt be amazing. More details at their [MySpace].

Speaking of gigs, fanzine turned blog Transparent are putting on the quirky but excellent Videohippos (part of a short UK tour) at Push in London tonight and all [link].

Check out Joel's deranged ltd ed 'Spiky Logo' t-shirts, which he's made for the likes of Colon Open Bracket and Enter Shikari [MySpace]

London's best new festival Offset have announced The Maccabees to their line-up. Only 200 earlybird tickets left, I strongly suggest picking one up! Typically, this is the only weekend I'm working all summer. Bastards. [Website]

Mercury Rev will be giving away an 11 song album away for free to mailing list subscribers on September 29th to compliment their new album release [Website]

BLOGS
Web 2.0 continues its meteoric rise and artists have a new home for blogging. The Royal Artist Club features blogs by Emmy The Great, The Futureheads (who I bizarrely saw in the pub the other week) and the one and only, Tim Westwood [link]

Transparent (see above) point us towards a new blog written by Imran Ahmed, ex-NME journo and now of Abeano Records [abeano.com]

Sweeping The Nation interrogate Alexei of Johnny Foreigner [link]

funfunfun directs you toward the new Moshi Moshi-centric episode of Jeremy Warmsley's 'Welcome To Our TV Show' [link]

MFM notes the recent glut of bands that have gone splitsville [link]

Neon Buzz interrogate twee jivers Cassie & The Cassettes [link]

Nialler9 has a first listen to the Esau Mwamwaya and Ezra Vamp Weekend collab [link]

MUSIC
Listen to Tokyo Police Club's cover of The Rentals in aid of lupus charity, [Friendsofp.org]. Download their recent BBC6 Music radio session [here]

German dream poppers The Notwist preview their new album at [thedevilyouandme.com].

Stream the entire King Khan & The Shrines album on [MySpace] even if it's a bit weird. Or especially because it's a bit weird.

Conor Oberst is previewing two of his new songs off his forthcoming not-Bright-Eyes-honest-guv album (drops in early August) on [conoroberst.com].

Greg "Girl Talk" Gillis "does a Radiohead" for his new mash-up album. Pay what you want for 'Feed The Animals' [Website]

AND FINALLY...
Potentially the best news ever, the BBC are remaking the Japanese Human Tetris tv gameshow! [Article]