B Is For Blog

I’m usually pretty dubious of MP3 blogs that share whole albums, feeling it’s not just a raw deal to the artist but part of a process that leads to music overload, encouraging skim listening and meaning you never quite give any record quite the time it deserves. When they’re put together with the care and attention of Sickness Abounds, though, it’s hard to deny they’re an art form themselves. Updated daily, with a remit covering the genres of noise, dark ambient industrial and power electronics, it’s slowly grown into something resembling an encylopedia of the grimmer end of the avant-garde - all the more essential because vast swathes of this history are out-of-print. Go take a look.

it’s grown into something that feels practically encyclopaedic.

Just a quick note to exhort you to come to the first in Plan B’s hopefully ongoing series of screening/lecture/seminar type things… we’re hoping to put on a few of these in 2009, but we kick off this Friday with an evening dedicated to the life of New York experimental disco producer Arthur Russell. (more…)

Holy Roar will be issuing a new compilation just in time for Christmas. Following the success of last year’s Happy Holy Roar collection – which featured cuts from Rolo Tomassi, Tubelord and Tortuga – the label decided to make the release an annual affair, and will put out 100 copies of Volume 2 on tape in December.

Looking to get you firmly in the festive mood, the 20 jams featured on the comp come from the likes of Pulled Apart By Horses, Tropics, Calories, Throats and the magnificently christened Suffocate For Fuck Sake. Many of the contributions are previously unreleased, including one from Cutting Pink With Knives; there, presumably, in the hope that they’ll continue to lay low for a while before reforming sometime around Easter. (more…)

Of Montreal will return to the UK and Ireland next year as part of a European tour. The dates were confirmed this morning and coincide with the release of a single; ‘An Eluardian Instance’, pulled from recent album Skeletal Lamping, and due for release on January 26 through Polyvinyl.

Audiences have been warned to expect “nothing less” than orgiastic satyrs, giant body-popping Buddhas and tiny, gold lamé pants though it is not yet known whether that rather bashful looking gray will rejoin with Kevin Barnes’ psych pop motley, who were over just last month and feature on the cover of November’s Plan B.

Of Montreal will make the following stops in the new year:

Brighton Digital (January 24), Glasgow Oran Mor (26), Belfast Kitten Tree (27), Dublin Button Factory (28), Manchester Club Academy (29)