The web is full of things to waste your time with, and here are two timewasters for musiclovers. Both do almost the same thing, - make virtual mixtapes out of the music you love. I want you to make one, and post the link in a comment to this post, or send it to us by email (info@eardrumsmusic.com). We’ll comment on it or maybe give it a special post if we like it a lot. No prizes involved, - just do it for fun!

You can use one of these services:

MIXWIT: Make your tape by using Mixwit’s searchengines or add a url to the song. Make a nice design for the cassette (you may do it easy, using the templates, or make your own design). Then, when it’s finished, send it to us. It’s very easy, and I had no problems finding the songs I wanted, except for some Norwegian ones that I would love to have included (f.i. some songs from Thom Hell’s new album). Mixwit tapes can be sent to friends via email or via any (almost) social services, like facebook or myspace.
In about 20 minutes, I made this Mixwit Mixtape. (or just look below in this post)

MUXTAPE: Or you can use Muxtape.com, a service that is probably easier to use because you can upload songs from your own computer, but more boring to look at (they’ll give you just the mix, not the “tape”). This is the most popular of the two, much helped by a post from the Boing!Boing!-blog. I haven’t made one here yet, so you will probably beat me if you post your tape here in the coming days. Mixes from Muxtape can be added to your blog, your website, facebook, myspace, sent to friends via email or added to your iPhone. Support for last.fm will also come soon.

So, come on: MAKE US A MUXTAPE or A MIXWIT!

Here’s the Eardrums Mixwit mixtape:

I have a fondness for music that isn’t over-produced, - music that isn’t "perfect". I love hearing the noises that exists in the recording room, - the squeak of a chair, some hiss from the cheap recording equipment or the sound of fingers touching guitar strings. In most recordings these sounds are cleaned out of the finished product, or they don’t exist at all because of the  sound-proof studios or the hi-tech equipment.  For me, these sounds add a quality to the music. Call it warmth, friendliness, a human factor, - whatever. Everything is supposed to be so right these days, - in every aspect of the world, even music blogs, - and I’m really enjoying to hear people just playing MUSIC, - having fun while they are recording, and not spending too much time thinking about doing it right. I might be wrong, - maybe this is "the right" among some people, - I don’t know.  For me, it is a refreshment.

Recently, I’ve found lots of these wonderful little recordings, - very lo-fi, very here and now -, on myspace or on last.fm. Many of them are found because of a brilliant podcast called "5…4…3…2…fun!!", - originally a radioshow from a Santa Barbara student radio station, but luckily for me also available as a podcast. I’ve also found some through a nice netlabel called the 001 Collective, which releases several fine artists for free on the net. Here are only a few of the ones I’ve enjoyed lately, and if you like these ones, I might dig up some more. A tribute to all the lo-fi-ness in this hi-fi-world! Let’s go!

WATERCOLOR PAINTINGS

I’ll start with Watercolor Paintings, a project that’s actually led by the people behind 5…4…3…2…fun!!. Rebecca Redman makes nice, acoustic, intimate indiepop songs together with her brother Joshua, and this time it was the music of Watercolour Paintings that led me to the 5…4…3…2…fun!!-podcast. I’m not sure how I found this band, but I guess it was through some recommendation on last.fm. The songs are wonderful, - often played on acoustic guitar, harp, ukulele and various toy instruments. Rebecca has a bunch of songs available for free on her myspace, and I think this is the one I love the most:

Watercolor Paintings - Happyships

SHELBY SIFERS

Shelby Sifers plays wonderful songs in much of the same style as Watercolor Paintings. Her style has been described as "Cutesy" or "Love Core", which in many ways describes her work very well. Her vocals is the main element in her recordings, and she spices it up with acoustic guitar, banjo, keyboard and melodica, always arranged very minimalistic. The lyrics are one of the things that really makes me happy when I listen to Shelby Sifers. They’re  about the small things in life, that  sometimes becomes the big things in somebody’s life.Another nice thing is that she often lets friends and familymembers join in on the songs, like on this cute and lovely song:

Shelby Sifers - Things are Beautiful

…and if you like this, there are a lot of free songs by her on her last.fm page and on her myspace page.

 FRAGILE FAWN

Fragile Fawn is another of these wonderful small bands. They’re from Oak Park, California, and I think they are a duo. I also think their names are Dani and Devon … or Dani and Clarke…, but I’m not 100% sure. Are you? Anyway, - nice music! Cute-Country? UPDATED! The band is definitely a duo, and their names are Devon Clarke Geyer (who goes by Clarke! for his solo stuff) And Dani Fine. Dani lives in Oak Park and Devon has moved to Boston, so the band is currently only working together when he’s home for holidays. Some digital recording software and the internet would have been the sollution for many bands in this situation today, but I guess a digital recorded version of Fragile Fawn would not be the same. I’m all for digital recordings for other bands, but please Dani and Devon, work hard with the songwriting and recordings during the holidays instead! 

Fragile Fawn - Love to love to love

BARE KNEES

Behind the Bare Knees-moniker is Kasper and Kathrin from Gothenburg, Sweden.  The duo write funny lyrics and lo-fi songs about kassettendecks and underwear, and their acoustic popsongs have so far been released on an  EP called "Bare knees bit my daughter!" and an album called "Pump up the lump". Both of these releases are available as free downloads on the band’s website. Bare Knees will soon release another album, - a split album recorded together with  Ray Rumours. The album will feature 7 songs from each band, and it will be released on Cosy Recordings.

Bare Knees - Always on your side

That’s all for today. Maybe more later, if you want me to…

Wet, dirt, and too much rain?

This summers festivals has experienced a lot of bad weather. Glastonbury and Roskilde almost got entirely lost in the mud, and the pictures seen from the festivals alone is enough to frighten the most experienced festival goer.

It was high expectations for the festivalsummer in 2007. Glastonbury was back on track, and there were exciting things happening in Norway as well. Toffen Gunnufsen, a man who created the Quart festival in Norway, decided to leave Quart, and create a new festival in Norway at Hove, Arendal. The vision behind this project was a big festival where the festival goers could camp right next to the concert area, creating a small Roskilde festival in Norway.

The expectations to Hove grew strong when the line-up was announced. Queen of the Stone Age, The Killers, My Chemical Romance where only some of the headliners, and the interest for the festival certainly grew high.

I travelled down with some friends from all around Norway, and our expectations were high as well. Could Hove even be compared to Roskilde?

Our first impression were mixed. We arrived a couple of days before the festival started, and after the tent were raised, we were hungry for food and beer. But as it turned out, the shop was closed for the night, and it was a long way to travel down to the nearest shop, or Arendal city. This would never happen at Roskilde! Hungry and pissed we decided to take a look around, and the evening was saved when we met some friendly neighbours with food and beer.

Then the festival started, and along came the rain. The newspapers were full of pictures of mud, deserted camps and people who were leaving. My mom rang and wondered if I was alrigh, and i was like; “yeah, it’s just a bit of rain!”. Well, the rain continued for some time, and I must admit, it ruined Amy Winehouse and Queens of the Stone Age a bit, but that was just because I was soaked, and not nearly drunk enough. One of my friends had an excellent time!

To sum up my first experience with the Hove festival, I have to say we were lucky. Yes, we had a couple of rainy days, but compared to Glastonbury and Roskilde it was nothing. I suppose I choosed wisely this year. This being said I think I’m going back to Roskilde next year. Not because I didn’t like Hove. Hove was great in lots of ways. It is a smaller festival than Roskilde (ca. 13000 visitors pr. day), and that is good in lots of ways. Shorter lines, much easier to meet people and so on. That being said, Hove was expensive and you could tell it was the festivals first year. The food could have been better, and the organization as well.

Even though, I’m proud of Toffen and his guys for creating Hove. It contributes to make the festival offer in Norway more exciting , and I certainly had some excellent times at Hove 2007!

Canadian Stars’ new album “In Our Bedroom After War” has been long awaited here in the Eardrums-office, and TODAY we can buy it legally, two months before its original release date, the 25th of September. This announcement came from Stars’ label Arts & Crafts today:

” Friends, fans and supporters of Stars …

On September 25th, Arts&Crafts will release Stars’ fourth studio album, In Our Bedroom After War.
We love it and are excited and proud to be bringing it to the world.We enlisted Joe Chiccarelli to mix the album. He finished in early June, passing the tapes along to Emily Lazar at the Lodge for mastering. Last Friday, July 6th, a final master was delivered to us.Traditional music business practice says we are to begin sending out copies of this album now. We give advance copies to print publications in hopes of securing features that coincide with our September date. We meet with radio stations in hopes of securing airplay. etc, etc.

Inevitably someone will leak the album.

Throughout this process, the most important people in this value chain, the fans, are given only two options - wait until September 25th to legally purchase the new album or choose from a variety of sources and download the album for free, at any time.

We hope you’ll choose to support the band, and choose to pay for their album. However we don’t think it’s fair you should have to wait until September 25th to do so.

We believe that the line between the media and the public is now completely grey.
What is the difference between a writer for a big glossy music magazine and a student writing about their favourite bands on their blog? What differentiates a commercial radio station from someone adding a song to their lastfm channel? or their myspace page?

As such, we are making the new Stars album available for legal download today, four days after it’s completion. The CD and double vinyl versions of the album will still be released on our official release date, September 25th. We hope you will continue to support music retailers should a physical album in all it’s packaged glory be your choice of format.

It’s our hope that given a clear, legal alternative to downloading music for free, you will choose to support the creators.

We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Sincerely,

Stars and Arts&Crafts”

I have looked through several download shops, and the only place I find the download is at Arts & Crafts own download shop.
Get Stars’ new album there now.

Listen to a song from the album here:

Stars - the night starts here

We’ve mentioned the upcoming release of Menomena’s debut album on City Slang records in passing, but the recod has been out in the US since January (on Barsuk records). It’s probably my favourite record of the year so far, for two reasons you can see after the cut: the entertaining video for first single “Wet and Rusting”, and the artwork by cartoonist Craig Thompson.

Menomena - Wet and Rusting (from Film Guerrero records)

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