New Year Resolution

Now I know my New Year's resolution should be to post more but you know what? I'm not going to fall in to that trap. I've read enough "I promise I'll post more" comments on blogs only not to hear from them for many weeks / months. It just applies too much pressure. Trust me I'd like to post more, I'd like to discover more new music and that brings me nicely on to my New Year's resolution. Inspired by Schonberg I am going to buy a new album each month or more accurately I'm going to buy 12 albums in the next year. So what have I got to look forward to? In January White Lies' follow up their debut album To Lose My Life with Ritual. Download the single being played live below:

Then in February we have Frankie and The Heartstrings touring to support the release of their debut album Hunger. Tour dates below:

February

11 - Live Lounge, Durham
12 - Metropolis, Middlesbrough
15 - Cluny, Newcastle
16 - Cockpit, Leeds
17 - Academy 3, Manchester
18 - Fibbers, York
19 - James E Brown Room, Liverpool
21 - Heaven, London (NME Awards Show)
22 - Cellar, Oxford
24 - New Slang, Kingston
25 - Dempsey's, Cardiff
26 - O2 Academy 2, Birmingham
27 - Fleece, Bristol

Anyone fancy a Sunday night in Bristol to go to the Fleece?

Then in March we have the return of Elbow with Build A Rocket Boys. It's a great title but I do worry. I really enjoy all their albums but I worry that their new fans will be looking for an album full of One Day Like This. That's not how Elbow work. The album will be great, I have no doubt about that but they may not find themselves on Radio 1 so often but I guess they were used to that with the other albums. Listen to the title track below:



That's enough to get me excited about my album buying but let's look back at 2010 for a second. Regular readers may have noticed that I didn't produce an end of year best of list / awards. That's mainly because I didn't come across enough music in 2010 to warrant it. I will tell you that my most listened to album in 2010 was Mumford and Sons' great Sign No More. The fact that it was released in 2009 should give you some guide to my music consumption recently - my commute to work has gone from nearly an hour when I started the blog to 20 minutes now. I guess I should also mention Cloud Cult's Light Chasers which was released in 2010 and ran Mumford and Sons close by just a handful of plays less.

One site that does the whole looking back thing well is Bootie Mashup who every year post a best of mashups compilation CD. I've been pillaging the site for new tunes for years and I thought I'd provide a few off their best of to give you a taster. The first one I can't stop listening to, the second one is purely because I keep singing The Fresh Prince tune to my daughter in the bath (when a couple of ducks they were up to no good, started making trouble in my bath tub) Remember to listen with tongue firmly placed in cheek and you'll get it.

MP3: DJ Lobsterdust – Knock Out Eileen (LL Cool J vs. Dexy's Midnight Runners)

MP3: Rad Bad – Moving Da Royalty (Will Smith vs. Daft Punk)

MP3: DJ Fox – Club Can't Use Somebody (Kings of Leon vs. Flo Rida ft. David Guetta)