Music

• Some people are getting very excited about And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead (they at least succeeded in overtaking GYBE! in terms of length of the band name). Matt LeMay from Pitchfork gives their album Source Tags and Codes a smashing rating of 10.0/10. Andrew Womack at neumu gives the top rating as well and they are on the latest SPEX cover. Never heard of them myself. "Mistakes and Regrets" from the older album Madonna at epitonic does not sound revolutionary but it is solid indie rock with a good noise factor. Discussion on them at ILM here.
• Soft music for stupid people on the Mountain Goats: "The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton"
• BeatBlogging: not so sure what this is about. Clips of electronic music can be downloaded as mp3s. Phil writes: "But what would happen if a culture did try to blog music, to create little fragments of rhythm and melody, to hyperlink through them?"
• Musicrag: good alternative music blog with many concert reviews
• Popshot Magazine says Punk Rock = Capitalism. I have only glanced over the article. It sounds interesting. The subtitle is: "the 'Anti-Capitalists' Have It All Wrong".

Non-music

• Google loves blogs and here is why.
• I try to read as many weblogs as possible. The problem is that I usually do not know if a weblog has been updated or not. A good way to make sure to read only updated weblogs is a site like blo.gs. It lets you define a list of your favourite weblogs. Weblogs must have been pinged to for example weblogs.com to appear with a correct timestamp in the list. The weblogs which have been pinged (updated) the last appear as the first in the list. In this way I know which weblogs have been updated recently. I use the Weblogs ping bookmarklet constructor. You just have to give it the URL of your site and then you can put the bookmarklet into your "Links" bar (IE). After publishing a new post you just click on the bookmarklet to ping to weblogs.com. Right now only 20-25% of the weblogs I read ping. It would be nice if more weblogs would use the pinging procedure. More infos either on blo.gs or weblogs.com.
• Budget traveller's guide to sleeping in airports (via DIE ZEIT Weblog): "For travellers who are REALLY on a budget and are looking for a way to skim a few bucks off their travel expenses, why not consider sleeping in an airport? " 1,388 personal accounts of people who have enjoyed one night in an airport.

Kings of Convenience: "Quiet Is the New Loud" in 102 beats When I‘m down and I put on this record, the dark clouds obscuring my mind are immediately blown away. I see the clear blue sky. A tender voice whispers lyrics of unrequited love and is accompanied by two acoustic guitars: „Every night she kisses someone new – never you.“ Kings of Convenience are two Norwegians looking like teenagers who made an album in the spirit of Nick Drake. The beautiful tunes are wistful and light at the same time. This is perfect music to fall asleep to or to wake up to. Equally soothing and refreshing. On the border of dream and reality.

Surfing for music news

• The Weezer blog on all things Weezer, you know this small neglected power pop band.
• Johnny Cash's new record announced. In American IV he will cover John Lennon and Trent Reznor (scroll a little down on the page).
• Article on Keith Jarrett who is on tour in the US.
• Winter in England - 20 albums for the coldest season: my personal favourites in Wisdom Goof's well commented list are the first Tindersticks album, Teenage Fanclub's Bandwagonesque, Felt's Absolute Classic Masterpieces and Joy Division's Closer. Though I only know half of the albums by name.
• Pere Ubu release new album St. Arkansas May 8th (I really liked David Thomas last album Surf's Up with the Two Pale Boys).
• Neumu's Michael Goldberg on All Hail West Texas the latest album by John Darnielle's Mountain Goats: "Lo-fi. Unique voice that is about as far from slick as you can get. Rough guitar playing. Amazing lyrics. Amazing melodies. And so intense."
• Brian Jonestown Massacre live in Chicago (by Phil from Glorious Noise): "In a world where digital manipulation of tones and click track drums can suck the soul out of any song, the Brian Jonestown Massacre slugged its way through perfectly crafted pop tunes and space jams and for two hours last night saved rock and roll."