The Hunt for Good New Music

As a DJ and fanatical music fan, I'm always on the hunt for new music, anything that I haven't heard before. Anyone who knows me is aware that I'm unashamedly retro in my music tastes. There's a huge goldmine of music in the past that even a prolific listener like myself has never heard, or maybe heard decades ago and has forgotten about.

But recently, I've started to cast my net around and look for modern and relatively recent music that I missed out on, but that I might like. And it's here that I come up against a big problem. I absolutely despise modern commercial chart music. With a vengeance. The vast bulk of it is formulaic, homogenized garbage, aimed at kiddies, while weirdly, at the same time, flooding TV screens with music videos containing countless over-sexualized images of women and the airwaves with obscene 18+ lyrics. Sexist, homophobic, foul mouthed hip-hop by moronic rappers like Kanye West, dirge-like, virtually unlistenable "r'n'b", and bland, boring X-Factor type music by artists that are forgotten five minutes after you hear them. With the exception of the VERY occasional surprise decent song, there is absolutely nothing in the modern commercial charts for older fans or those with more discerning tastes in music.

However, despite my retro tastes, I'm the first to admit that even though the charts are total rubbish, there is a lot of very good modern music out there. You just have to look hard for it, as you won't find any of it in the charts. There are lots of great bands, mostly totally unknown to the general public, and many of which I'm only just beginning to discover myself. Many of these bands and artists are without any recording contracts or links to the big music companies, and are doing their own thing, playing live, recording their own albums, and bypassing the music industry altogether, dealing directly with the public via the internet, selling their music as digital downloads, CDs, or vinyl albums, as well as other merchandise such as T-shirts, mugs, badges, etc.

I've only just begun to really hunt for good new stuff in recent months. My usual tactic is to haunt Youtube for interesting new music videos, jumping around from link to link to link. When I find anything that I really like, I follow any available links to their home page or wherever they've uploaded their music to, and I take it from there. Other good places to find good new music are Soundcloud, Bandcamp and Mixcloud. And these are only the tip of the iceberg. There are countless other sites out there, and that's before we even start tracking down the websites of individual bands and artists.

So what have I found in my recent travels? I've been on a bit of a retro-surf, garage, blues binge, so most of my recent finds tend to be of those genres. Some of my favourites are the Aqualads, Southern Culture on the Skids, The Swamps, The Caesars, The Taikonauts, Los Straitjackets, and The Nebulas.

I've also recently acquired the first album by The Everlasting Yeah, which should be of great interest to older indie fans, particularly fans of classic late-1980's/early-1990's indie band That Petrol Emotion, grand old favourites of mine. The Everlasting Yeah are basically the entire membership of That Petrol Emotion, minus lead singer Steve Mack. They've put a lot of time and hard work into this new first album, titled "Anima Rising" and I wish them the best of luck with it.

Reviews of "Anima Rising" and other new stuff from some of the above bands to come in future posts.