New Feature Alert!!!

Soundcheck is a new column brought to you by Father Guido Sarducci IV, the same musicologist extraordinaire who brings you the critically acclaimed Snobcast.

Soundcheck will provide a weekly concert guide featuring local bands as well as a podcast which will allow you to hear the bands before they play their show.

This week's calendar can be found at Donnybrook Writing Academy.

Due to the Flu...

I was unable to find you any new music for this week so I've compiled some classics. Starting it off is the "supergroup" The Raconteurs.

Fun Fact: In Australia the band is forced to go by the name The Saboteurs due to conflicts with an Australian band with the name Raconteurs.

OK, that's enough. I'm heading back to bed. I need to get healthy before SXSW. Have a good week, bitches!!

See the rest of this blog at Donnybrook Writing Academy.

Soundcheck is a new column brought to you by Father Guido Sarducci IV, the same musicologist extraordinaire who brings you the critically acclaimed Snobcast.

Soundcheck will provide a weekly concert guide featuring local bands as well as a podcast which will allow you to hear the bands before they play their show.

Read the blog and see the calendar at Donnybrook writing Academy.

2008... the year for Hipster-hop?

Maybe. I've been thinking about and using that term for a while (about a year now) and I was only a little surprised to see Blender use the hipster-hop phrase to describe the scene bubblying up in places like Chicago, Baltimore and NY.

Read the full blog at Donnybrook Writing Academy.

It seems funny that just two weeks ago I was denouncing electro-pop by playing Hot Chip and Boards of Canada, and this week I'm bringing you new UK synth-pop in the form of "Pink Squares" by I Was A Cub Scout.

The first US released single from this band was dropped on the states last week. The former-one-man-now-two-man-band has been racking up air time on BBC Radio 1 and MTV 2. Although Todd Marriott's voice could easily front a run-of-the-mill emo band, he sounds more in the range of a new wave inspired Connor Oberst.

Read the rest of the blog at Donnybrook Writing Academy.

Here's what everyone else is saying:

“A masterpiece of epic proportions” The Word

“Brilliant songs… stirring anthemics… the glorious sound of a band going for broke” The Guardian ****

“Dangerously epic” Daily Telegraph

“Genius… a guitar laureate’s masterpiece” Maxim *****

“British Sea Power return in style” Mojo ****

“CD of the week… neo-orchestral grandeur” The Observer

Here's what we said:

Do You Like Anal Music? ***1/2

Armed with passionate anthems, brainy Brits rise up and take it in the ass.

Yeah, we can be pretty crass, but it's all in fun. Now go enjoy this weeks Snobcast and then head over to Donnybrook Writing Academy

Electro-pop.

I’ve never liked the word. Like a cigar, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth and yet I always take one when offered. I feel like an amnesia sufferer when ever thinking of the topic. I will swear up-and-down that I can’t stand the genre and then I catch myself enjoying, ugh, Moby. Well, finally I have a band that doesn’t force me to contradict myself. Hot Chip is that band.

Maybe the reason I can get behind this five-piece electro group is because they have soul. Their second album, 2006’s The Warning, sounds like Kraftwerk being influenced by Afrika Bambaataa, rather than the other way around.

Read the full blog at Donnybrook Writing Academy

This week's feature artist is new to me, but may not be new to you.

Cass McCombs first released his recordings in 2002 on Baltimore's Monitor Records and he's lived in about as many cities as years he's been recording his music. Going from California to Baltimore to New York to Michigan back to Cali and, finally, to Chicago (for now). His new album Dropping the Writ, an informal term which Wikipedia defines as “the procedure in some government systems where the head of government goes to the head of state and formally advise them to dissolve parliament”, is released on Domino Records of London.

See the full blog at Donnybrook Writing Academy

Lupe Fiasco hasn't been able to "Kick, Push" his way past the early hype that surrounded his first effort, '06s Food & Liquor. This is unfortunate considering he's this generations answer to the eminent group, A Tribe Called Quest. His rhymes are fun and intelligent and never plummet into the usual benighted and boorish blather that most MCs rely on today. That is probably why you haven't heard him. Too bad his new album The Cool probably won't change that.

With that being said, I kick off this weeks Snobcast with his new single "Superstar" and end it with another song called "Superstarr Pt. 2" by my favorite Canadian MC, k-os. Make the jump to see the rest of this weeks play list.

Read the rest of this blog at The Donnybrook Writing Academy.

Father “Born Cipher Cipher” Guido has graciously let me hijack this week’s Snobcast to bring you a sampling of pre-1990 New School hip hop that I think is still as exuberant, fresh and thrilling as the day it was made. If these joints give you even a fraction of the pleasure they have given me, I shall consider this endeavor a wild success. Thank you for listening.

Colonel Hector Bravado

From Denver, Colorado

Read the full blog at Donnybrook Writing Academy