Its Back!

Well apologies for not getting Anablogue back as soon as I'd have wanted, there was an initial delay getting the kit in and then when I tried recording yesterday I just wasn't in the right frame of mind.

So lets get the show on the road...

You'll notice a few things have changed here at Anablogue HQ and elsewhere in the music blogging world. First off the Hype Machine has had a major face lift. There have been mixed reactions with most of the negative comments being directed at the change in flash player. The flash player, for the less techy amongst us, was the little pop up in your browser mp3 player which for many people was a great radio replacement. The new player is a bit more aesthetic but lacks the ability to see whats coming up in the playlist.

The Hype Machine has gone social and has introduced the option to sign up and be a user. That includes nice things like Twitter integration and the ability to add certain tracks and blogs to your favourites - thats very handy as an aggregator so you don't have to keep checking the same blogs over and over again.

You can of course sign up yourselves and even add Anablogue as a friend. Just visit http://hypem.com/anablogue. There you will be able to find RSS feeds for my favourited blogs and favourited tracks [I don't thing favourited is a word is it?]. These feeds are handy for keeping up to date with what gets played on the show and they're in the feed list on the right hand side. NB they don't seem to open well in your browser but work fine in an RSS reader.

So first up was Jape - Floating which I sort of found at discobelle.net via the Prins Thomas Diskomiks and Alex Metric Remix, the former of which makes heavy use of the very much All Rights Reversed by the Chemical Brothers-esque vocal. It also happened to be that I saw this guy at the Liars Club as part of Nottingham's Stealth vs. Rescue Rooms. The live performance is very different from the recorded stuff, a lot more bashing of samplers. I was very impressed.

http://www.myspace.com/richiejape

A nod to Nialler9 who featured Jape on his award winning blog [he has a podcast too!] and pointed me in the direction of the fantastic video for floating and the rendition The Raconteurs performed at some festival somewhere [excuse my ignorance].

JAPE Floating by DADDY and M&E
Uploaded by MatthewANDemelie

Next up I returned to good old headphonesex who was raving about the recent Soulwax/2 Many DJs release, but moaning about the recent closure and raid of oink.cd [no fear boink.cd is on the horizon, its going to be hosting by the impregnable swedish boys and girls at piratebay.org]. I played Arthur Argent - Hold Your Head Up (Soulwhacked Remix) which I'd say was one of the album's lesser well known remixes.

http://www.soulwax.com/ [Warning this is a scary site for your browser]

No return of Anablogue would be complete without a good dose of Good Weather For Airstrikes. Derek was this week reviewing CMJ in New York, a sort of SXSW for the east coast as far as I can gather, but in doing so decided he doesn't really like reviewing live gigs. Nonetheless he did deliver a slice of Cut Off Your Hands - Closed Eyes, a New Zealand band who have been in the UK recently and featured on Anablogue's last Fuse FM broadcast.

http://www.myspace.com/cutoffyourhands

Plastic Operator - Peppermint was my favourite track from fluokid's posts of late. An international duo of sound engineers who met at Westminster Uni here in the UK, their Postal Service influence is definitely apparent.

http://www.plasticoperator.com/


I closed the show with a sample off of Daft Punk's new live album Alive. For some reason I want to say it was recorded at the O2 Wireless festival this summer, but don't take my word for it. It seems Daft Punk are harnessing the power of blogs, social media and the web to promote the new album by releasing a widget where you can sample tracks, watch videos and see photos of the Frenchmen themselves. I'd better feature it here then...