Hello readers, how nice of you to join me.

I’m going to be doing things a little differently this week. Instead of presenting your ungrateful little faces with 2 or 3 artists that I hope you will like, I am going to give you 1 artist that I think you should listen to because they’ve caught my attention for all the right reasons and another that represents everything I dislike about music. I don’t know how long this method will continue, but hopefully it will make these weekly postings a little more interesting.

If you would like your music to be featured in future posts then please get in touch on twitter @monkeyhotel

Whenever I hear someone telling me about a songwriter that spends most of their time alone in a bedroom recording all their music themselves I uncontrollably roll my eyes and make a noticeable sigh, expecting to hear some idiot whinging about their pathetic life over some strumming.
Robin Plays Chords (Robin Johan Jax) has been a wonderful surprise to me this week. His songs feel homemade in all the right ways and when listening to them you feel as though you are being openly invited into his life.
The mixes feel very rough, and in places some instruments are very obviously sequenced with very little attempt to make them sound human, but all of this adds to the intimacy of the record. Please take a listen to his album Red Admiral LP below, visit his MySpace page and follow on twitter.

Red Admiral LP by RobinPlaysChords

And now for something considerably less pleasant. Before I go any further, I want to say that Macchina Del Tempo are obviously fairly competent musicians and are quite good at playing around with meter and harmony. Sadly, top musicians very rarely make great composers or writers of music, and my god is that apparent here.
Describing themselves infuriatingly as a “Progressive Jazz Fusion” band, the shortest instrumental number on their MySpace page stands at a staggering 7 minutes and 34 seconds.
Clever chord changes, playing across the pulse and the odd adding of a beat is all very interesting to the band, I’m sure, but I can’t see its purpose other than the enjoyment of playing it – if you’re a complete nerd. If that’s why they make this sonic shambles then fine, I hope they’re having a blast, but I find it hard to believe that anyone could honestly sit through all ten minutes of the track below ‘Long Way To Go’ without developing a small desire to drown at least once.

That is all. Goodbye.