“By the fans, for the fans” is a motto that sits well with the new Radiohead ethos these days, and this project certainly wears that motto well.

A large group of Radiohead fans descended on their Prague show last August with the specific intent of filming the concert from a number of different crowd-based angles and producing their own film of the event. Using hand held cameras of all descriptions, the entire concert was captured and edited together and a rather neat fan based film was made. But here’s where it gets cool… Radiohead, upon hearing about what was going on, then decided to hand over the master audio of the show for the fans to lay over the top and soundtrack their film. Quality.

So here it is, downloadable for completely free, no money, nix, nada, nothing, ZERO!! And in a variety of different formats too… http://radiohead-prague.nataly.fr

The camera work may be a little shaky, but the audio is impeccable. If you need any further convincing, check out Exit Music (For A Film) from their universally acclaimed opus OK Computer.

As the website says “Please share and enjoy”.

I reckon it’s really important to travel. Whether its in a Rolls Royce or with a rucksack…
Travel gives you perspective and frees you up from the day-to-day. For me it gives me a kind of sense check of what you are doing, where you are going and what’s really important.

Even though I’m in my late 30’s… I am a hopeless case with spending at least part of my holidays on one (or many) of my favourite artists. There is always music involved. I can’t see that ever changing… Add in some of your favourite people in the world and I’m pretty damn contented.I’ve done most musical festivals in the world but for me, Coachella is the best and most intelligent. Goosebumps on multiple occasions. Hairs on arms standing up – check. Really – it’s that good. Imagine, a dream line up… backdrop it with a lush green space in the middle of the California desert. Surround that with palm trees… Then back drop it with an intense mountain range. Cap it with some snow at the very top just off in the distance. Then add a picture-perfect blue sky and you are getting close. This is music lovers festival heaven. At night the palm trees are underlit with different colored spotlights…and 5 massive Hollywood-style spotlights are planted around the parameters of the festival shooting into the sky and meeting up in the middle of the festival space. The sunset at the end of each day is something to behold as the sun rests for the night behind the mountains. And when the bands play, they play to a surrounding backdrop of palm trees or a hint of desert… it’s hard to explain in words but hope you are feelin’ me on how good it was. Although there were 60,000 people each day, it doesn’t feel suffocating or over-crowded. It’s clean and well-run. Yep. It’s pretty impressive. And if you believe in energies and spirits and those kind of otherworldly touchpoints… well I think it has all of that going on as well. But most importantly, I have never seen so much incredible music and such a musically-forward line up as this year. I highly recommend it. More at coachella.com but here’s my round-up: LCD Soundsystem Gorillaz Jonsi The Middle East Hot Chip Deadmau5 Yeasayer More tidbits and Radiohead Read the rest of this entry »

How did it come to this? Ten short years ago I was dancing to TLC’s No Scrubs (judge ye not!) on Manly Beach for the countdown to *gasp* The Millennium.

Suddenly, we’re at the other end of the decade, and we never did work out what to call ‘00-10… “The Noughties” didn’t really cut it. We’d better come up with something quick sticks, because the tunes from the last ten years have been incredible and future generations are going to need to refer to us somehow…

NME’s Top 100 albums of the last decade has some mean contributions, not the least of which is the man of the hour Emperor Luke Steele’s early effort, Lovers from The Sleepy Jackson. The Empire defining epochs, even way back when!

Other EMI faves from the list you can regularly hear blasting around the office are below:

One very notable absence however… WHERE IS THE DAFT PUNK!?!?

Whilst we greatly respect NME’s all-seeing UK hipster stylings, stay tuned for The In Sound’s very own and very wise Best Of 2009 album list – coming soon to a browser near you!