Update: The most useful site in this category is the mp3 blog aggregator. You can even add your own mp3 blog there if you like. Right now (22/07) there are 45 mp3 blogs covered in the digest.

Another aggregator: Web Nymph Aggregator Music, MP3s Headlines.

There are quite a lot of blogs out there which host mp3s or links to mp3s somewhere on the internet and whose authors usually write something about the music. A small selection:

• gabba / POD with short texts on a wide spectrum of music like soul, electro, house etc. including older heroes like Robert Wyatt, Roxy Music, Josef K, Tocotronic and the latest hip stuff like M83, Pluramon...
• fluxblog by Matthew Perpetua with a good mix of indie and pop. Usually 1-2 mp3 links per day. Concise writing. Blogroll with mp3 blogs.
• The Mystical Beast. Probably Definitely my favourite mp3 blog. Posts usually covering one artist. Older stuff ranging from Ride, Swans, Divine Comedy to the Jazz Butcher. And lots of bands I have never heard of but which are always worth to check out. Indie heaven. The writing is spot-on as well. Someone with a huge record collection who knows what I like. If the Mystical Beast pinged weblogs.com I'd be even more grateful. (thank you for the pinging and the link!)
• said the gramophone: Sean from Montreal offers one to two mp3s per (almost daily) post. Usually on the mellower side of indie. Pretty expressive and poetic writing.
• Kingblind, a very busy music blog focussing on news with several mp3 links per week and capsule reviews on the songs. Indierockish.
• TalkieWalkie with indieish audio music links and short texts.
• PopNose is Freaky Trigger's mp3 blog. Pop-oriented of course. What else would you expect from Tom Ewing and friends? Sound writing. Version 2 now integrated in NYLPM.
• Burned By The Sun. From LA. Occasional mp3s in the classic (as opposite to dud) realm.
• .: chromewaves.net v5.0. Frank from Toronto posts one mp3 per week. The last song is a Madonna cover by Teenage Fanclub.
• 75 or Less album reviews.: Collective album review site. 75 words max. per record with audio links.
• fruits of chaos // a sampler mainly with Asian music. At least four songs per week. Rather new site I guess.
• --Razor Blade Smile--. I have never heard of most of the music. Some Japanese stuff but also Placebo and the likes.
• empty-handed.com: any similarities are purely coincidental concentrating on bad music like Heino, Kung Fu Fighting and everything you never ever wanted to listen to in your life but you couldn't escape.
• largehearted boy, a boy, a girl, and his radio. Hardly any writing on the songs but lots of mp3 links to songs, shows and rarities. David has a soft spot for Guided By Voices.
• totally fuzzy. Same thing. Mp3 links galore. Blogroll with many further pointers to mp3 blogs.

P.S. I forgot The Catbirdseat with links to external mp3s of usually new albums.

P.P.S. March, 9th and April, 4th. Some more which I discovered in the past month:

• badgerminor has turned into an mp3 blog! Ca. two files per day and nice personal writing on exciting pop music which is usually not from the charts.
• de subjectivisten mp3check is in Dutch and collects links to mp3s of music off the trodden paths. From Dutch rock, jazz to folk and back.
• bubblegum machine offers two songs per week concentrating on 70s/80s pop preferably released on K-tel or Ronco.
• soul sides with jazz, hiphop and soul tracks. And some indie goodness too.
• tyrone shoelaces from Hongkong with music I don't know about. Probably young people's music in the field of dance, electronica, disco etc.
• new(ish). Same story. The only band I know are Franz Ferdinand.
• zerogweb.net. That's more like it. External links to Throbbing Gristle, Barbara Morgenstern etc.
• punkassbitch hosts indie mp3s without reviews. Evan Dando, Beta Band, Sunny Day Real Estate, q-tip are downloadable right now.
• Dream Chimney: Track of the Day is a collective mp3 blog featuring lots of goodies. Recent tracks by among others Eno, The Cure, Linda Thompson, Pavement, Beatles, Penguin Cafe Orchestra.
• tofuhut with a very eclectic selection concentrating on world and jazz. Extremely busy site with oodles of music blog sidebar links organised by genre.
• links to music blogs organised alphabetically

There are few musicians whose words on music are as exciting as their music. Brian Eno is one of them. Paul Schütze's interview with him in The Wire 139, September 1995 is full of interesting insights.

Eno, the electronic/recording wizard comes up with a surprising explanation why synthesizer music is often so pale in comparison with real instrumental music. The player simply has no physical relation to his instrument:

The way he sees music programming tools like ProTools (or Cubase in 1995) is that they give everyone the skills to create music and therefore move the focus from skill to judgement. Nowadays every idiot has the technical skill to make music and the important question now is what to do with the skill. Where to go. And this is the first question to ask yourself before starting with beats and stuff.

Another interesting idea concerns the value of a piece of music. He thinks that it is not intrinsic but coming from the interaction with the listener. That there is a I Ching quality to music. It only has a meaning if the listener can connect to it, can integrate it in his universe. It is even possible that the listener embellishes the music. That it can become better than when it was created by him listening to it.

I also liked the reflections on artists who don't censor their output and who let the market decide if it is good. Eno names Picasso, Miles Davis and Prince:

A weird thing: the interviewer mentions a track on Another Green World with children's voices in the background. Eno says that he had completely forgotten about them and that they were from a playground. I just relistened to that album and I didn't hear those children anywhere. Anyone an idea where they could hide?

Mp3 over here from Fluxblog:

I am getting totally hooked by this new single (release date February, 16th) of Blonde Redhead which is very different from the noisy and arty stuff similar to Sonic Youth they have made before. They have signed to 4AD and Elephant Woman has this dreamy ethereal flair which stands for 4AD artists like Cocteau Twins or Lush. It is an opulent pop tune descending right from heaven with Kazu Makino's angelic soprano. Her vocals are extraordinary. Hers must be the purest most innocent voice in pop music and at the same time it is extremely erotic. This may be a cliché-ridden male phantasy but I can imagine her uttering those high-pitch tones when making sex. There is a screaming quality to them though they do not feel out of tune at all. On past albums her voice used to be more like Yoko Ono's shrieking; now it evokes the sensuous Jane Birkin in her prime time. Makino's singing sounds as if she was having a permanent orgasm. In the second half of the song there is this keyboard sequence going higher and higher. It is like a carpet moving up towards the sky rolled out for her voice to return back to where it came from. The new album Misery Is a Butterfly will be out on March, 9th.

Another brilliant pop song of theirs: In Particular featuring an amazing clapping intro from the last album Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons at Epitonic.

Kevin Shields in a twelve minute interview at NPR about his activities after Loveless and the songs he recorded for Lost in Translation (via ronsens).

P.S. Another Shields interview from last summer in Manhattan with Hua Hsu. It is pretty long and Shields tells us everything you ever wanted to know about his growing up in New York and Ireland.

P.P.S. A translation of the important bits of a recent interview with Les Inrockuptibles over here at Paper Bags on Microphones.

I am listening to Euroranch Radio. Ten songs chosen randomly from the Euroranch real audio archive with thousands of tracks. Usually very sound choices and even when a song is not so great you can skip to the next one. And when the playlist is finished you can start anew. Right now I am testing how many songs I have to listen to before a song is repeated...

The last playlist:

• Verschärft - Schwankende See
• Guther - Boys Do Not Think
• Freakwater - Dream Girl
• Nicolai Dunger - When Harmony Is Heard
• Fantomas - Experiment in Terror
• Pia Burnette & Felix Kubin - Enemy
• The Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-la-la Band with Choir - American Motor over Smoldered Field
• Yo La Tengo - Take Care
• Zigarettenrauchen und Rosa - Männer
• Xbrxrx - Go Ape

A kind of reader's request which fits in well with this series:

When you meet me next time please don't offer me a cigarette, will you?

Interessanter Anfang einer Diskussion mit Herrn K. über das Verhältnis von Texten und den Kommentaren dazu.

In den Minima Moralia (Anmeldung hier) geht es gerade um Sex und Tauschwert und so Zeugs. Der Aphorismus ist von Proust inspiriert und nicht ganz simpel (quelle surprise!). Ulrike hat bereits vorgelegt und ich weiß mal wieder nicht, was ich dazu noch hinzufügen kann.

Roland hat Lost in Translation und den Soundtrack dazu gemocht. Ich auch.

Und hier sind die Texte der Stuttgarter Blogger-Veranstaltung. Und hier</a

das vorzügliche Vorwort von Peter Praschl.

Jetzt erst gesehen, wie sich bei malorama die Farben der Sterne verändern, die oben "malorama" darstellen. Von rot zu blaugrau. Und wieder zurück. Ziemlich langsam und fast stufenlos. Sehr schöne, diskrete Animation, die man als solche kaum wahrnimmt.

Longish article on one of the most exciting bands in electronic music: The Wire #230. Autechre: The Futurologists.