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Sad news: “On Saturday 6th May 2006, legendary Australian singer-songwriter and member of The Go-Betweens Grant McLennan died in his sleep at his home in Brisbane.”

The people of The Show Live made a name by offering high quality recordings of complete tours by The Pixies and Dead Can Dance. They now offer a new DCD mp3 of The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove, live in Washington in October 2005.

The Kagan Kalender, Kagan, which started as a paper newsletter 10 years ago, has completely overhauled its website.

Photos of the Triumvirat festival in Yverdon-Les-Bains.

Joshua Gentzke has offered to contribute a review now and then of albums he particularly liked, mostly leaning towards the folk or experimental side of the spectrum.

If you are more a quantity than a quality type of person, you might be disappointed to hear that this eBay auction for 60.000 assorted records has already ended…

If you have space left on your iPod, then here are some (free!) download suggestions for you. Courtesy of Polygon, Mirakelmusik, Bourbonese Qualk, Big City Orchestra and Cock Rock Disco.

While browsing some of my unordered bookmarks, I found a link to Floorshow, a band founded by some students from Delft. They only existed from 1985-1987 and played doom-wave, inspired by bands like Joy Division, Siglo XX, Bauhaus and the Sisters of Mercy. They erected a website (in Dutch) about their short history. You can […]

The Freesound Project is a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds. The project exists since a year and harbours now 16000 files, which you might use for your sampling pleasure.

Last Saturday I saw an excellent concert of the Nits, since 30 years one of the most interesting Dutch acts with an original sound and a cosmopolitan attitude. They played a mix of songs from their latest recommended album “Les Nuits” and classics like ‘Sketches of Spain’, ‘Adieu Sweet Bahnhof’, ‘Nescio’ and ‘In the Dutch […]

While switching tv channels I encountered a video on MTV: ‘Nth Degree’ by a fashionable new band called Morningwood. The trashy disco-rock song is funny if you don’t hear it too often, but I found especially the videoclip entertaining, with parodies of record covers, like Kraftwerk and the Ramones.

One of the most popular sites of the moment is YouTube, where users can upload and share video material. A comparable service is Google Video. Especially YouTube is a rewarding source for great musical material, like old videclips and rare live footage.

If you have space left on your iPod, then here are some (free!) download suggestions for you. Courtesy of Mothers Against Noise, Decisive Sound, Abyssa, Andrew Lagowski and 4MG Records.

Dutch webzine Kindamuzik has a review of the latest Whitehouse effort Asceticists, which they find quite convincing. Below the article they suggest: “Do you like Whitehouse? Then also read about Haus Arafna and Madonna.”

Just saw a rare interview with the enigmatic Scott Walker on BBC’s The Culture show. After his succesful period with The Walker Brothers ended in 1967, Walker’s music moved more and more away from the mainstream. His public appearances became sparse and his releases infrequent. His last album “Tilt” was released in 1995, but a […]

Tomorrow I will attend the first Depeche Mode concert in The Netherlands for 13 years. To get in the mood, I just played their new video Suffer Well, of course directed by Anton Corbijn. There is also another version in Simlish, inspired by the computer game The Sims. Furthermore I discovered an acoustic tribute by […]

I stumbled across an interesting looking series of music books called Thirty Three and a Third, “a new series of short books about critically acclaimed and much-loved albums of the last 40 years”.

A good way to spend my Sunday afternoon: a concert of H.E.R.R. at the Zware Plaatwerkerij in Vlissingen, an old factory turrned into a cultural meeting point. The venue was absolutely splendid and also harboured a nice photo exhibition of old factories.

On the CMI mailinglist, someone inquired if dark ambient creator Gustaf Hildebrand is an actual writer, after a phrase in a music review where he was called an ‘author’.

A rather curious act is the Belgian trio Telex. Formed in 1978, they played a sort of electro pop inspired by Kraftwerk and disco. Last month Telex was suddenly back with a new album called How Do You Dance.