Tracks of the Week – 21 November 2011

Matthew Britton is our human blog-music aggregator, kind of like Hype Machine but with feelings and shit. Every week he goes, puts on his rubber gloves and trawls the darkest sewers of Soundcloud, reporting back to TLOBF with his findings. Sometimes he strikes gold, sometimes just faeces, but one day, maybe, just maybe, a band covered here will play an actual gig in front of human people. We continue to live in hope.

And so it begins. Flick on the music channels of your terrible freeview box and you’ll see it in all of it’s horror: Christmas tracks. Horrible, unflattering, mind-numbingly catchy and sickeningly centred on novelty. This is how life is going to be for the next two months, as you slowly begin to hate your family all over again, questioning the meaning of western civilisation and quickly getting to the limit of your overdraft purely to make distant, vile relative feel happy. Merry Christmas. It’s fucking November.

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Tech Coast – Tough Lately

A wonderful antidote to the disgusting world of cheaply produced guff by comedians that you’ll be asked to listen to over this ever-extended festive season. Tech Coast is the work of a man name Cooper Rivers, seemingly designed purposely to make sure the few thousands bloggers who always get excited about this kind of stuff will go absolutely crazy for it. So far, it’s worked.

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Halls – I am now who you want

This column usually centres on bands and artists that don’t exist outside the bubble of their bedroom and a couple of mp3s burrowed away on a laptop harddrive. Halls is making the leap from digital to physical with his next release – though he’s already broken the fourth wall by playing live to actual people and making them enjoy his sounds. I am not who you want is going to committed to wax by Sounds of Sweet Nothing, who are on a hot streak at the minute – speaking of which…

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Tashaki Miyaki – Heartbeat

Another from the Sounds… stable, though this is more likely to remind you of being bored on a Sunday night, dreaming of a day when you’d be able to afford satellite television and free yourself from the doldrums of ITV1 enforced drama gloom. The L.A. group do an excellent job of reclaiming the classic, the tarnished edges somewhat salvaged – though it’ll take decades until the shame of Heartbeat the TV series wears off.

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BLACKHOodS – Live at Bradford Polish Club

The one place in the whole of Bradford that has a clue what it might be like outside of the glum city. BLACKHOodS and Sly and the family drone recently embarked upon a tour together and managed to convince some lucky Yorkshire soundman to record their sets in the forgotten curry capital of the region, perfect if you’re wanting to lose yourself in sound for an hour or so.

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Former Bullies – Golden Chains

Manchester’s great survivors live on to fight another day, putting out an album in the meantime. Whilst being in about 400 other bands, they’ve found time to record a few songs, and these latest efforts are surprisingly hi-fi compared to some of their other tracks. Golden Chains is the pick of the few numbers that have been made available so far, showing the band still have the ability to make you ache after all this time.