Did I tell you about the stycast? Probably not. It's my new favourite digital radio station. The one I listen to in my car when I go to and come back from work. It's about a twenty minute ride to work. Enough for half a stycast. Which is a workdaily mp3 consisting of often exciting new and old music plus commentary by someone from the stylus magazine team. Right now this is how I find out about good music. Back in the 90s it was Bernard Lenoir's France Inter program.

That's good to know but somebody has to mention Spacemen 3 in that competent article. The author does not seem to be very familiar with rock music. I had always thought drones were the apotheosis of rock.

The return of Kevin Shields:

What the hell is Shipbuilding about?:

Are there any Joy Division songs that are not in a 4/4 time signature?

Syd Barrett speaks French, sings in French and lives in France(!?). 10' Arte Radio stream from April. Found on the sofa.

An old bootleg from 28/10/1970: Joni Mitchell and James Taylor at the Royal Albert Hall (BBC In Concert. Introduction by John Peel. 72 minutes, i.e. 80 megs.) Some song beginnings are repeated on the mp3 but overall the quality is fine. Via the audio link treasure chest regynouth archives. The best as always in her concerts is what she says in between songs. Amongst other things she talks about the origin of the Appalachian dulcimer and the inspiration for Circle Games. Her voice of course is not yet tinged by too much smoking.

Songs:

1. That Song About The Midway 2. The Gallery 3. Rainy Day Man (Taylor) 4. Steamroller Blues (Taylor) 5. The Priest 6. Carey 7. Carolina In My Mind (Taylor) 8. California (with Taylor) 9. For Free 10. The Circle Game (with Taylor) 11. You Can Close Tour Eyes (by and with Taylor) 12. The Good Samaritan 13. The River 14. My Old Man 15. A Case of You (with Taylor)

I just discovered that Aimee Mann performed on Morning Becomes Eclectic recently. 40+ minutes. Most of the new songs are less compelling than the ones from Bachelor No. 2. The Forgotten Arm is nice and I think I prefer it to the rather disappointing slick Lost in Space but still it's all a bit samey. Too many ballads. The thrill seems to be gone a little.

Yat-Kha, a band from Tuva in South Siberia covering Love Will Tear Us Apart over at the WFMU blog. Brilliantly weird.

resonance fm rocks. Right now I am listening to Adventures in Modern Music hosted by The Wire magazine.

Do you remember the good old times before mp3 blogs? When there were only a handful of music webloggers around who just wrote some plain text about the music and ignited your phantasy without feeding you those fast food mp3 links? That was just two or three years ago.

One of those weblogs has returned from the ashes: angryrobot.net. Subtitle: destroying all music since 2002. More or less daily personal succinct posts on what is happening in contemporary pop music with a penchant for experimental, indie, electronic and the good old bands (New Order for example). Recent posts were about Architecture in Helsinki (don't know them), Autechre, Prefab Sprout and the new Simon Reynolds post punk book. My weblog rediscovery of this month. Thanks to somnolence another old school music blogger who posts not too often but when he does it is always worth a read.