I realize that I post a lot of news and finds on my twitter @eardrums that never gets published on the blog. I’ll try to post some of it here and also some of the stuff I get in my mailbox that I never manage to do something about. I’m hopeless with continuity, but I will at least try to do this weekly.

Let’s start with some “VERY SHORTIES” and below this, you will find a lot of free goodies:

- Math and Physics Club is recording their second album, according to their myspace status.
- The Ruby Suns has named their third album “fight softly”. it’s coming out in march of next year.
- Lali Puna is finally in the studio again, working on a new album. While you wait, you can check out Yukihiro Takahashi’s “Page by page”, where Valerie sings on two songs. It’s on iTunes and Spotify.
- I knew it, and here’s the evidence: MY LITTLE PONY (the Norwegian indiepop band) is evil! (video from german TV)
- DNTEL posts a free song for October, a new song from a future album, “Soft Alarm”: http://bit.ly/4gZkRF (click audio) Beautiful!
- R.I.P. The Besties. The band has decided to call it a day. Sad.
- R.I.P. Friendly Noise, the Swedish label (link). Sad.
- R.I.P. Norwegian pop-stars A-ha. Although it’s kind of sad, it was about time to end it now. They would have celebrated 25 years next year…
- Check out the side-project from Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor, Can’t, on Stereogum. I really like the song they feature!
- You can now buy Apple Orchard‘s brilliant indiepop via Bandcamp (mp3), and the money goes directly to the band. I just did!
- Lightspeed Champion makes a collaboration-symphony with his fans. LC publishes the score, the fans play and record (link)
- Our former Music Alliance Pact participants Casa Murilo has now made their entire EP available for free download on NRK Urört.

Wild Honey will release his debut album on cd/vinyl + for free download next Monday, on October 26. The free version will be released on bandcamp, and we will make a feature on it here on Eardrums when it arrives. You can already now go to bandcamp and download his brilliant EP from last year, – highly recommended! Get it here: http://wildhoney.bandcamp.com/
Here’s a premiere of the first single of the album, “Hal Blaine’s Beat”, released today, and presented here with permission from the band:
Wild Honey – Hal Blaine’s Beat

Holiday Records, who is run by the people behind Horse Shoes/The Drums, release free mp3 singles/eps every friday, and their latest release is really good. It’s the 4 track ep “North End/South End”  from a band called The Young Friends, – catchy, quite rhythmic guitar-based jangle-pop. Very, very good! Get it from here: http://www.holidayrecords.net/

Jeremy Warmsley has joined Kristin Hersh’ Cashmusic project, and released a very good free acoustic ep called “5 Versions”. It includes new versions of several of my fav Warmsley songs, and the tracklisting is “How we became”, “Lose my cool”, “5 verses”, “One of us (Abba)”, and “Dirty Blue jeans”. The mp3 version is free, and can be downloaded from here:  http://jeremywarmsley.cashmusic.org/
The EP is also for sale in a physical format (cd) for 5£ from here: http://jeremywarmsley.bigcartel.com/

Wool Strings, the project of Ryohei Ameda, will make one ep every month the rest of the year, one for October, one in November and one in December. These Eps will be available for free download for one month. The three eps will afterwards be put together into an album, with some changes on the songs and the tracklisting. The first ep is available now, and it’s called “From the morning”. Beautiful, as everything Wool Strings do. You can download the EP from Wool String’s Myspace blog.
Here’s a track from it: MP3 – Wool Strings – The Garden

Trev from Odd Box Records (previously from the indie-mp3 blog) has started a nice little social website for DIY musicians, labels and music-people in general. It’s called DIY Music Resource and although it is small and new now, I hope this may be a good resource for bands and labels to discuss strategies and get help releasing their music.

Speaking of Odd Box records: They have recently released a free single by The Melting Ice Caps, a band I’ve enjoyed a lot for some time. Check it out here: http://oddboxrecords.com/?p=259 . The single includes two tracks, ‘Between Eros and Agape’ and B side ‘Nobody’s Leaving”.

Mayer Hawthorne’s album “Strange Arrangement” is still on high rotation on my stereo, and one of our readers, Antony, wrote to us yesterday to tell us about a video he has made for the song “The Ills”. He says “I have literally been listening to that track almost non-stop for the last six weeks.  So much so, that as no video seemed to exist, I felt compelled to make one for it.  People seem to really like it, including Mayer Hawthorne’s record label Stonesthrow who have put it on their website.  Stonesthrow.com”. We like it too, and here it is:

SOME RECOMMENDED RELEASES I HAVE BOUGHT LATELY

Most of these should be available in digital format on either iTunes, 7digital, eMusic, AmieStreet, Klicktrack or from the labels/artists websites.
Afternoon Naps – Parade
The Very Most – Autumn (buy it from indiecater records) MP3: Autumn Air
Egil Olsen – Nothing like the love I have for you Mp3: Nothing like the love I have for you
Friska Viljor – For new beginnings
Solander – Since We are pigeons
Headlights – Wildlife
Karen O and the kids – Where the wild things are (soundtrack)
The Leisure Society – A product of the ego drain (ep)
Megaphonic Thrift – A thousand years of deconstruction MP3: Acid blues
Mumford & Sons – Sigh no more
Nat Johnson & the figureheads – Wonderful emergency (single)
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Higher than the stars (ep) MP3: Higher than the stars
The Tiny – Gravity & Grace
Younghusband – idiot son (single)

more shorties next week!
(…and please tell me what you think of this feature, – should it have been done another way?)