Evening Cleaning...

I've removed links to a few blogs that are no longer being updated. Seems like a lot of MP3 bloggers are throwing in the towel these days. Wonder why?

My Current Favorites list has been updated!

Spanish band Metropol is sweeping through bloggerland! Chris has already mentioned this in a post earlier today.

Molotov over at A Plague Of Angels has a fine post on Moi Caprice. It's great to see that the band replied to his pleas and sent him two songs in a decent quality (and apparently gave him permission to post them as well). One of them is the new single Drama Queen, which you should grab NOW!

Cleaning out the mailbox......

Dave Martin of folk-pop duo That's Him! That's the Guy! has sent me a mail asking me to check out his band. The second half of the duo is Joe Scott of (the band) Canada, which I mentioned (in a positive way) a while back. Two tracks are available as downloads, and Love Again is a nice up-tempo acoustic track, while These Days is a slower and more electronic one (with a banjo!). I'd probably enjoy both tracks even more, if they were performed live down at the pub.......
+ Love Again
+ These Days

Another quite interesting mail, but of a completely different genre, comes from Australian (but London based) musician/mixer/etc. The Scar. I mentioned the energetic and somewhat Garbage inspired Kill Her Off by The Ropes in this blog at the beginning of the year, but now The Scar has finished a pretty cool mix of this already very cool track. Originally I thought the song would be nothing but a smash hit, but it seems like I was wrong? Actually I've just learned that the first pressing of the EP (1,000 copies) has been sold out and that the second pressing is in the making. Not exactly a smash, but the band seems to be doing quite well!!
+ Kill Her Off
+ Killer (The Lemmy Remix feat. Miss Odd Kidd)

Wasted Time in the Metropol?

Probably no point in repeating that the songs you can download from Myspace these days are of a really poor quality. Unfortunately a lot of bands continue to use this service, instead of hosting the files themselves, even though the disadvantages are multiple. Not only are the quality awfully low (96 Kbps), but the tags are not working meaning that the band names and song titles aren't listed properly in the various MP3 aggregators (thus missing out on some free publicity). However I have to admit that so far I haven't found anything better than Myspace, when it comes to exploring new bands. And I really like that all pages are (more or less) the same, meaning that you don't have to click through various welcome pages and intros before finally reaching the songs! So I guess the ideal solution would be to stream the songs at Myspace and then have the opportunity to download the songs from the band's webpages? Hopefully more and more bands will realize that this is (close to) the perfect set-up.

Today's music comes from 3 bands found at Myspace (2/3 of them thanks to J.A.), so as always be prepared to see some funny looking titles when you try to download the songs.

Spanish britpop inspired band Metropol has written some really nice and quite catchy tunes, which definitely would be a lot better if the band decided to change the lead singer (not meaning to be rude - just don't think the voice match the otherwise fine quality of the songs). The music is heavily inspired by bigger acts like Embrace, Coldplay, Snow Patrol etc.
+ My Own Gravity
+ 515 AM

Wasted Time by Starcrossed Lovers from the UK is a terrific indie pop tune, sounding like B&S teaming up with The Divine Comedy. Unfortunately the rest of their songs sound quite boring and uninspired.
+ Wasted Time

The Flamingoes from somewhere in the UK are currently working on their second album, eleven years after their debut. Good Feeling is a really fine indie pop/rock track, but just like Starcrossed Lovers I'm not overly impressed by the other songs.
+ Good Feeling