Under the Radar Indie Labels

Guest blog on 'Under the Radar Indie Labels' for Virgin.com/music...

As another week of the X Factor bites the soporific dust, in its wake 21st century music aficionados could be forgiven for feeling a little left out.

Simon Cowell owns the airwaves; High Fidelity-esque niche independent record stores continue to close at an alarming rate. Oh, and Phil Collins is back in the top five of the charts. These are dark days, are they not?

Well, actually no. The charts may seem like a watered down recreation of a Friday night playlist at a cheap club, but that hasn’t stopped independent record labels springing up left, right and centre to get great underground music out into the public domain.

Some of our best loved bands of the past decade – from British Sea Power to Best Coast – have been housed by efficiently run and artistically fertile ‘indies’. Beyond these, however, there exist scores of tiny labels who put out records purely as a labour of love. Here are a few of the best under-the-radar UK independent labels you might never have heard of...

Read the rest of this blog at Virgin.com/music

Interview: Gang of Four

Go and check out my interview with post-punk legends Gang of Four for my politicsSLASHmusic column in Notion magazine...

http://theenvironment.vfolio.co.uk/notion/64/ - Page 40 of the Digital Reader

Interview: Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin

Some words I did for Spoonfed.co.uk after a chat with SSLYBY...

They are firestarters, twisted firestarters

Being as easily amused as small child at Christmas, I’ve always tended to love bands with faintly amusing names – ‘The Yummy Furs’ (snigger), ‘Japandroids’ (guffaw), ‘Roy Division’ (somebody stop me). Presumably the exact same strand of my uncomplicated DNA encourages a partiality to hummable, easily digested power-pop.

Imagine then how palpably excited I was upon learning that Springfield, Missouri tykes Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin had returned with a brand new record, the ripsnortingly catchy Let It Sway. Excited enough to hunt them down and ask them about it (and a bunch of other things), that’s how.

Important matters first: what’s in the name? I’m sure you get this one a lot.

We were teenagers. We thought it would be good idea to have a really long band name. Boris Yeltsin was in the news a lot because everyone was making fun of his alcoholism and political ineptitude. We used his name without thinking anything about it. He was a terrible president, so I'm sure we've offended a lot of people.

You guys are originally from Springfield, Missouri – is there much of a burgeoning indie scene there? Do you think you found it tougher not being East or West coast boys and tied to a big city?

In the 1950s there was a nationally televised music show in Springfield called The Ozark Jubilee. Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash appeared on it regularly. Also, Jonathan Richman recorded an album here with a Springfield band called the Skeletons in the '80s. It's called 'Jonathan Goes Country' and I recommend it highly.

Anyway, I think the internet makes it somewhat irrelevant where you're from. My life has been too busy lately to think about the scenes in Brooklyn and LA. I'm sure they have cooler jeans, but mine were really cheap...

Read the FULL INTERVIEW here