This week we went and saw Bastions play live at The Old Blue Last here in London. It wasn’t the best show we’d seen from the band – vocalist Jamie Burne admitted onstage that he was losing his voice, and given his vocals are such a major part in Bastions’ appeal, it was always going to hamstring the band a little bit – but we were still blown away by just how good this band is even when they’re not at full strength. Man, this bloody band.
It’s cold. We don’t want to go outside to the shop to buy milk. Our old, old bodies hurt with the mere stress of getting out of bed in the morning. Perhaps that’s why we’re feeling all nostalgic for a time long ago when that wasn’t the case. Well, not that long ago – 2010, in fact. For this week’s Sunday Spotify Slaylist, we’re throwing a spotlight back on a record that came out five years ago today exactly – Blackjazz by Shining.
And so we come to the final Sunday Spotify Slaylist of 2014. We’re going to use it to celebrate all of the great music that was released in 2014, with all the artists we’re featuring this week being nominated for our end-of-year list by our contributors.
As we start to wind down for the year and reflect on the past 12 months, we thought it was important to remember that not everything abut 2014 has been about brilliant music or amazing gigs. As with every year, some of our favourite musicians who were with us back on 01 January will not be with us come the end of 31 December, and this week we wanted to take the time to remember a few of them, and their works.
Look, we bloody love Christmas. If you’re not on board with that, then it’s probably a good idea to stop reading now.
For those of you who are left, you’ve probably noticed that over the past week we’ve been posting daily videos on Facebook and Twitter of some of our favourite Christmas-themed songs. And we’re going to keep doing it right up until Christmas Eve. We’re only going and doing a whole bloody Advent Calendar, aren’t we!
Earlier this week, the sad news was announced that Alexis “Leki” Gotts, drummer of Baba Naga and formerly of Wet Nuns, took his own life after a long battle with depression. It goes without saying that Wet Nuns were a fantastic band and the tributes and eulogies (particularly this one) that have poured in since the news broke show just how much he meant to so many, many people.
21 years ago this week, Nirvana recorded a now-legendary acoustic performance in New York City. Taped at Sony Music Studios for MTV’s Unplugged series, Nirvana’s rendition of eight of their own songs and six cover versions would go on to eclipse every other performance recorded by MTV – not just for the Unplugged series, but pretty much every MTV recording ever.
Today – Sunday 16 November 2014 – marks the 44th birthday of one Logan Mader, founder (and former) member of Machine Head, Soulfly, and Medication, and now a successful engineer, mixer and producer. We’ve decided that the best way we could mark the occasion was to put together a Sunday Spotify Slaylist of all of Mr Mader’s best bits.
Take a look at your calendar. See the date? It’s November.
Yes, that flimsy rationale is all the justification we need to make this week’s Sunday Spotify Slaylist a spotlight on November Coming Fire’s superb album Dungeness.
Last week’s Sunday Spotify Slaylist got us thinking – horror films and heavy metal have a long and established history together, and while Judgment Night is definitely an interesting soundtrack to look at for its historical significance in pairing modern rap and rock together pre-nu metal, it definitely wasn’t a horror film. With this being the last Sunday before Halloween proper, we figured we needed to address this by looking at the soundtrack to something unashamedly Halloween-ish.
We’re going full schlock. We’re diving in to the soundtrack for the nadir/logical conclusion of the supernaturally-endowed slasher villain genre. We’re talking Freddy Vs Jason.