Tag: Spotisfaction

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115 Spotisfaction Wednesday – 22nd September 2010 – Woody Whyte

Hey kids. Happy hump day for those labouring away at work. In my opinion, Wednesday is the perfect time to start planning your weekend, so if you’ve not yet sorted your plans for world domination, get yourself to CounterCulture‘s opening weekend under the capital’s London Bridge Station. It looks, frankly, intense – Friday night kicks off with live sets by The Subs and Man Like Me, along with DJ sets by The Whip, Sunday Girl, RightClickSaveAs and many other acts. The following 98 days are shaping up to be equally as awesome. I fully encourage you to give them some love.

Today’s playlist is by staff member Woody Whyte. He’s a bit ashamed of this playlist, and in the interest of being open and honest I’m also a bit ashamed to say I quite enjoyed it…

Laters,
Dave

Woody Says:

Rarely does anyone in the world think to themselves “Hmmm, I wonder what happened to Ashanti?”. However, one afternoon procrastinating in my room avoiding writing my dissertation, I experienced this dreaded thought. It bought back memories from when I was 11/12 going to an under 18s disco at a seedy nightclub, bump ‘n’ grindin’ somewhat inappropriately for my age along to many of the tunes in this here playlist. What dark times we (ok, I) was living in. But for a bit of nostalgia (and because I love public humiliation) I decided to make a playlist about it.

I decided to go solely for American female R’n’B singers and rappers from around ’95 till ’05 although that might be a few odd ones in there. Stand outs have to be Aaliyah or Kelis. These songs bring back many memories; the sticky dance floor, punch-ups every week and the smell of teenagers throwing up in the corners, *sigh* those were the days. Eventually the night got closed down and I discovered Muse and Less Than Jake, although I suspect a majority of the clientele didn’t move on. This will either make your skin crawl or you’ll laugh your face off. I do hope it’s the latter.

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114 Spotisfaction Monday – 20th September 2010 – Kev Atkinson

Hi folks. We’re a little busy this morning over at Spotisfaction HQ, but the net result is that we’ve got a great week lined up for your aural consumption. Today we welcome back staff members Woody and Richard who have been on holiday, and we’re now back at full strength again. Woop, etc. Expect good things incoming shortly.

Today’s playlist is by Kev Atkinson and is entitled “Bored At Work”. Thanks Kev.

Have a lovely day, kids.
Dave

Kev Says:

Ok I created this playlist during a brief quiet period at work recently when I was immensely bored. I thought I”™d try and create an upbeat, up-tempo playlist to lift my spirits. The problem with that was that the majority of artists in my collection are not upbeat or up-tempo so I didn”™t quite achieve my original goal. However I did manage to alleviate my boredom at work for a period so at least I achieved something with the playlist apart from realising just how much of a melancholy personality I have.

Some of the highlights for me include Machismo by Gomez simply because it is so unalike what you would normally expect from the band, Going Underground by The Jam which is one of my all time favourite Jam tracks, and Hysteria by Muse which for me was the stand out track on Absolution which was the last decent album that Muse have done

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113 Spotisfaction Friday – 17th September 2010 – James TAE

Morning all. I won’t keep you long this morning, since there’s a lot of blurb to get through. Hopefully I’ll see some of you tonight at Slak.

Today’s playlist is one I’ve been looking forward to for a long while. I still play the first installment regularly, and now consider the DZ remix of Feist/Boys Noize’s ‘My Moon My Man’ as one of my favourite tracks. So, here’s James TAE – hope you enjoy; I know I will.

Have a lovely weekend, folks.
Dave

James Says:

So, my first dubstep playlist, Dubisfiction, is perhaps my favourite of the mixlists I’ve done, because the genre is so vastly under-represented on Spotify, meaning I had to spend a lot of time unearthing tracks from the further reaches of the library.  Crafting a mixlist that worked was therefore an interesting and eye-opening project.

Dubstep has had a very big summer, culminating in the release of the Skream album (which still isn’t on Spotify – I told you it was an under-represented genre) which sadly hasn’t been particularly well received.  I can sort of see why.  What the genre needed, at a time when its sub-mainstream momentum was at its peak, was not a wimpery stab at the popworld from one of the genre’s primary representatives.  It was an empty step too far.  I thought, then, it was time to hunt out some more of the truly great dubstep that’s out there.

I give you, therefore, Dubisfiction 2.

Continue reading “113 Spotisfaction Friday – 17th September 2010 – James TAE”

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112 Spotisfaction Wednesday – 15th September 2010 – Becky Mogg

Morning folks. This week sees the return of The Cheltenham Underground, Cheltenham’s premier live music night. The Wilderness of Manitoba are headlining this Friday at Slak, so please do go check them out. We’ve got a brief feature on Ch’underground incoming shortly.

Today’s playlist is by regular contributor Simon “Moggy” Mogg‘s lovely wife, Becky Mogg.

Love, etc.
Dave

Moggy Says:

So I was wondering what the theme of my next playlist should be. I couldnt think of one so I got lazy and got my wife, Becky, to do one instead. So here it is (entitled Wifeisfaction) and her blurb to go with it. Enjoy.

Becky Says:

This is a selection of some of my favourite songs. There are reasons for all which range from making me happy to reminding me of stuff and occasions. Enjoy

[A note from Moggy: A few tracks Becky chose weren’t on Spotify. Imagine these were present! –
Pendulum – Slam
Moloko – Mother
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Give It Away]

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111 Spotisfaction Monday – 13th September 2010 – Dan Herlin

Morning all. This week is shaping up to be one of the most exciting of the year, in terms of album releases. New to Spotify today we’ve got one of the albums I’ve most been anticipating, Interpol – Interpol. There’s also Les Savy Fav – Root For Ruin, Weezer – Hurley and Summer Camp – Young EP. Between our regular Spotisfaction playlists and these beauties, I’m pretty sure my headphones will adorn my head for the entirety of the week. We’ll try and get reviews to you as soon as possible, which reminds me: if you would like to review for us, please get in touch.

Just wanted to quickly apologise for not getting our newsletter out this week. As I mentioned on Twitter and FB, we weren’t overly happy with the software package we were using, so decided to postpone instead of releasing something we weren’t 100% happy with. It’ll be back soon, and we’ll even throw in a little subscriber-only competition for you, too. In the meantime, please feel free to signup here.

Today’s playlist is by Dan Herlin (his Spotify Social profile is here). It’s a lovely, nostalgic mix including some of my favourite tracks from years gone by. Thanks, Dan.

Take care, folks, and happy listening.
Dave

Dan says:

In any PL, all tracks should be connected by some common denominator, a theme, a niche, that does not necessarily need a name but that shines through out the whole list. It might be that such subtle similarities that makes up affinity are subjective in nature, however I am sure that you all can get what I mean here.

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110 Spotisfaction Friday – 10th September 2010 – Dave Christensen

Hi kids. So, Friday. Your loving embrace warms the very extremes of my cold, worn heart… or something like that, anyway. I hope you’re all well today.

We’re sending out the first of our brand-new Newsletters today [rain delayed play, so to speak – once technical difficulties are sorted we’ll get them out], so if you’ve not yet subscribed then you can do so here. After you’ve read it, please feel free to let us know what you thought – it’s a new format for us, so your suggestions on what to include in the future would be appreciated.

To business! Today’s playlist is from guest author Dave Christensen, and is hugely enjoyable in my opinion. Without ruining Dave’s blurb, I shall certainly be watching the show based on his recommendation so thanks hugely for the submission!

See you Monday.
Dave

Dave C Says:

Ordinarily I don”™t really get playlists for TV series, but Treme (the latest offering from David Simon ”“ one of the guys behind The Wire) is no ordinary TV series. Treme (pronounced treh-may) is about New Orleans in the months after Hurricane Katrina and tells this story through a mixed group of people and through the music they play and love. Even though there are some quite depressing storylines, the spirit of the characters and the enjoyment they get out of their music keeps the programme watchable and uplifting. Sorry, I”™m not really supposed to do a TV review here, so I”™ll focus on the music… It”™s great. And quite a few of these artists in this playlist also appear in the show, including Elvis Costello, Dr. John, Kermit Ruffins, John Boutte and Steve Earle. Listen to this playlist, but more importantly watch the TV show.

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109 Spotisfaction Wednesday – 8th September 2010 – Dave Prowse

Hey guys. I trust you’re well this fine morning? So, The xx are Mercury winners, eh? I’d like to say I called that one after they featured on my very first playlist for Spotisfaction ;). In all honesty, though, I would have liked to have seen Foals win it, but that might just be because Foals ”“ Total Life Forever is one of my top 5 albums of 2010 so far. The xx are relentlessly hard workers and by all accounts pretty nice boys and girls, so fair play to them.

Today’s playlist is one of my own (I do like to get a bit self-indulgent every now and again, as you may have noticed!) and I hope you enjoy it.

Take it easy,
Dave

My blurb:

This playlist is simply some of my favourite tracks at the moment. Very few of them are cutting-edge new, and very few of them are particularly challenging or esoteric. This is, probably, the most accurate representation I could come up with of my current taste in music (which, of course, is in a constant state of flux as I discover more and more stuff). I’ll quickly mention one or two particular tracks, and then let you get on with your day.

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108 Spotisfaction Monday – 6th September 2010 – Rhys Howell

Morning folks. I trust everyone had a lovely weekend? Last night was pretty fun for me – at least 4 streets in my neighbourhood were plunged into darkness for the majority of the night due to a power outage, which was a bit surreal. There’s always some light around, whether that’s streetlights or otherwise, so being able to see stars was a treat… even if I did stub my toe trying to find a torch, and never did manage to heat up my treacle tart…

Today’s playlist is by Rhys, and as themes go it’s a great one. My normal exercise regime involves doing as little as possible as often as possible, but if I were to go running every now and again this’d be the playlist I’d use!

Hope you enjoy,
Dave

Rhys Says:

Good Evening one and all. I’ve crafted a playlist to listen to when you go running. Some of these tracks are on my own personal running mix but as that mix tends to be a couple of albums all muddled up it wouldn’t make the most interesting mix for Spotisfaction.

Hit the jump for a talk through of the workout and also some shameless plugging. (If you don’t see any shameless plugging then the editorial gods have come from on high and excised it.)

Continue reading “108 Spotisfaction Monday – 6th September 2010 – Rhys Howell”

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107 Spotisfaction Friday – 3rd September 2010 – James TAE

Good morning all. Not much to talk about today. A quick reminder to sign up for our newsletter (link above) if you fancy the odd email about what we’re up to, and another reminder that we’re always really keen to feature stuff that you’ve written -whether that’s a playlist like this one, an article or a review, anything you’re passionate about we’d love to publish.

Today’s playlist is by Spotisfaction editor James TAE.

Catch you all on Monday.
Dave

James says:

No words for this one.  A purely ambient, relaxed, chilled blisslist simply entitled “Ambient” to calm you this Friday morning.  Enjoy.

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106 Spotisfaction Wednesday – 1st September 2010 – Mike Sheldrick

Hi folks. Oh man, Wednesday came about quickly, eh? But, I’ll tell you what, I’m very glad we had the Bank Holiday this week. Who doesn’t love a 4-day work week? Not us, that’s for darn sure.

Today’s playlist has the potential to split opinions down the middle. We’ve always said we’re all for diversity, and we really, truly mean that. We don’t want a hundred playlists all identically sounding and made up of ‘in’ bands. So, I for one am very excited about today’s effort by Spotisfaction contributor Mike Sheldrick. I encourage you to listen to this one even if it’s not normally your cup of tea. If you still don’t approve, fair enough, but feel free to let us know why in the comments!

Anyway, I’ll hand over to Mike for his blurb below:
[Dave]

Mike says:

Greetings, fellow travellers of the sound waves. And in this episode, we”™re going to do things a little differently. In a break from the more traditional style of playlist we”™ve come to know and love, I wondered perhaps if you”™d like to join me on a little journey, back to the oh so simple days of childhood (well mine to be precise). Back to when I were a wee young lad. Times were simple back then, I”™d go to school, come home, do my homework (yeah right), rinse and repeat as necessary. But I digress. Back then, I also played the trumpet. I spent many of my former years attending local orchestras and brass bands, and because of that, I was exposed to a lot of classical music.

Continue reading “106 Spotisfaction Wednesday – 1st September 2010 – Mike Sheldrick”

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105 Spotisfaction Monday – 30th August 2010 – Kev Atkinson

Hello everybody out there in the big wide world music-loving world. It’s a bank holiday over here, nobody’s at work, making it all the more important we give you a playlist to peruse, consume, and enjoy to your hearts content today. We’ve got a good one for you all, with Kev Atkinson’s 2010 So Far – it’s been one hell of a year so far hasn’t it, and there are still… 1.. 2.. 3.. 4 months to go!

Incidentally, we’ve got a particularly eclectic week planned over the next 5 days, so make sure you’re keeping up with us! If you’re just too busy to check, be sure to sign up to our Newsletter, and we’ll email you the occasional update of all our favourite recent content!

Now, here’s Kev’s rundown of this fantastic year so far.

2010 So Far – Blurby stuff

Ok so we are now halfway through 2010 and to be honest there has been a lot of great music released in the last eight months. Here I have put together a collection of tracks from some of the albums that I have been listening to in the first half of the year, but it”™s by no means a comprehensive collection.

Coming into the year there were two albums that I was really looking forward to, the first was Intriguer by my all time favourite band Crowded House, unfortunately this isn”™t currently on Spotify so I couldn’tt add a track, but I do highly recommend the album so check it out if you get a chance.

Second was the sophomore release from The Depreciation Guild. I think Spirit Youth is a more mature and accessible album than In Her Gentle Jaws and on first listen there were many great tracks but November was one of those that initially stood out for me.

I wont go over every single album in the playlist but I will give a run down on some of my personal highlights of the year so far.

Continue reading “105 Spotisfaction Monday – 30th August 2010 – Kev Atkinson”

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104 Spotisfaction Friday – 27th August 2010 – Paul ‘Fozz’ Foster

Morning folks. I’m not actually here today – I’m on a mini holiday in Stratford, and am posting this via the magic of scheduling. The weather is wonderful / atrocious (delete as appropriate), and I’m having a great / crap time.

Today’s playlist is by the wonderful Fozz, author and curator of our Gig Rig feature, and it’s a doozy. I hope you enjoy – this is one of my personal favourites.

Take it easy and see you all next week,
Dave

Fozz says:

These are a few tracks that I’ve been listening to lately, found either off the back of other people’s playlists or from trawling through the related artists section on Spotify. Here are a few of the stand-out tracks. Hope you enjoy.

Interpol ”“ Lights: this is the first track to be released from Interpol‘s forthcoming self-titled album and it’s made its way onto Spotify, so it would have been rude not to include it really. If the rest of the album is as awesome as this track then it’s gonna be absolutely phenomenal and I’m really looking forward to it.

Graffiti6 ”“ Stone In My Heart: I bloody love this track, it’s one of the best things I’ve heard in ages. Hopefully these guys will keep churning out stella tunes like this.

Crystal Castles ”“ Baptism: I could never really get into Crystal Castles‘ first album but I thought I’d give their second one a go, and boy am I glad I did. Baptism, for me, is definitely the most notable track on the album ”“ it’s shouty, beepy electro at its finest. I’m gonna give the first album another chance.

Continue reading “104 Spotisfaction Friday – 27th August 2010 – Paul ‘Fozz’ Foster”

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103 Spotisfaction Wednesday – 25th August 2010 – Simon Mogg

Afternoon all. Weird to think that this time last week we relaunched the site. Lots of things still going on behind the scenes but as always if there’s anything you’d like to see (whether that’s an improvement to the site layout, a specific album review, or an idea for a feature) we’d love to hear from you.

I’m going to see Scott Pilgrim vs. The World tonight, which has me incredibly excited. It’s rare that a soundtrack to a movie gets as much hype as the movie itself, but in this case I think it’s probably justified – just check out the OST! Fun times!

Today’s playlist is by Spotisfaction contributor Simon “Moggy” Mogg, and is quite lovely in my opinion.

Peace,
Dave

Moggy says:

Here is my latest submission. I was listening to Flogging Molly and I realised that the only Irish style music I listened to is played by Americans, so I decided to look into actual Irish musicians. While doing this I discovered a lot more music that originates from various places throughout the world, hence this playlist with no real theme. Not a good explanation but there it is… Anyway, onto the actual tracks.

Starting with a nod to my love of Rugby and a New Zealander I recently encountered, first up is The Haka. Then Bellowhead, who are a lot better live (the vocalist doesn’t half put some welly in). Neck were also amazing live (except the bleeding nose but thats a hazard of a pit I suppose).

Also on this list is more Johnny Cash and Cat Empire. Both featured on previous playlists, but both deserve lots more playing so here they are again. Skindred are generally known for their Reggae Metal but this is an acoustic bonus track off their Babylon album and is definitely worth a listen. The whole album, that is. And finally, Ladysmith Black Mambazo. I first heard this group on Paul Simon‘s Graceland album. I like the style. Right thats it I’m done. Enjoy.

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102 Spotisfaction Monday – 23rd August 2010 – Dan Herlin

Good afternoon, folks. You may have noticed that our new logo has gone live today. We like it (obviously), but let us know what you think!

This last couple of weeks have been crazy busy, but it’s all been made worthwhile knowing that we’ve got a whole bunch of new ears for our musical evangelism. We’ve even had a number of playlist submissions from all over the Europe, including today’s by Dan Herlin.  This is a fantastic mix, and it’s incredible to be given a glimpse of people’s lives through a playlist – more of this please, interwebs!  Thank you Dan.

Before I hand over to him for his explanatory blurb, I just want to mention that if you have a playlist idea of your own we’d love to publish it. Please do check out our submission guide for info on how you can do that.

Have a lovely one,
Dave

NB. One or two of the tracks don’t work in the UK. I’ve left them in the playlist for our European listeners, and also to help maintain the flow of the playlist if you happen to have a local version of those tracks.

Dan Says:

I believe in niched playlists, where there is a flow between each song and you remember it just like you remember an album. I composed this one during a train-ride between Stockholm and Copenhagen and its named after the Swedish governmental railroad company, Statens Järnvägar.

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101 Spotisfaction Friday – 20th August 2010 – Woody Whyte

Today’s playlist is courtesy of Woody Whyte, and is entitled “2010 So Far…”. If you like what you hear and are inspired to create your own playlist, check out our submission guide above. Let us know in the comments if you’d have included any other tracks in your 2010 list. Don’t forget to subscribe to our Newsletter either, to keep up to date with us!

Love, hugs and mealy bugs.
Dave

Woody Says:

With over half the year gone, it felt like the right time to have a little re-cap on what the best of 2010 has had to offer us so far. This is, of course, a subjective list, I don’t claim to have the holy grail of music taste but I hope there is something for most people in there.

What conclusions can we draw from my list? Well, British music is at a low ebb. With a yawn-worthy Mercury list (except The xx), folk-for-all-the-family bands and artists plaguing the airwaves and nothing in the way of a stand out breakthrough British artist, I have mainly had to look elsewhere for something to my taste.

Of the American bands; Perfume Genius, Best Coast, Beach House and Aerial Pink have all released fantastic albums this year. In Europe and the UK, Delorean, Charlotte Gainsbourg and M.I.A have also released some of my favourite albums.

Pop music and ‘surf-rock’ bands seem to be my main fascination and, unintentionally, there is more than a whiff of Pitchfork endorsed music in there. Embarrassing (though I bet you all read it too!).

The promising thing is that there is still some brilliant albums to come. Zola Jesus and Washed Out are on my wishlist, as well as S. Carey (who isn’t on this list) but worth a mention. Classically trained drummer for Bon Iver is releasing a solo album this month. No doubt I shall write a review if it makes it’s way over to Spotify.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy and feel free to comment your favourite albums of the year so far.