Category Archives: Music

Music related blogs

mflow aims to make music social

It’s been described as musical Twitter. It’s been described as Facebook meets iTunes.

However people describe it, mflow is making digital music a social experience again.

If you just want to buy music, mflow works just like iTunes. You fire up the application, you browse, you buy, you download high quality (320 kbps, DRM) MP3 files and that’s that.

But mflow is an online music retailer with a twist.

Everyone has a profile on mflow. From it, you can follow people who might share your taste in music. You can also follow DJs like Zane Lowe, Phil Jupitus, Matt Everitt, Greg James, Cut La Roc, MistaJam, Ben Watt, magazines like NME, Clash, Q and Metal Hammer and even musicians like Lauren Pritchard and Pete Lawrie.

And all those people send you recommendations – or flows. Like Tweets with a track attached, flows drop into your mflow inbox. You can listen to the track in full to find out whether you like it. And if you buy it the person who sent it to you gets 20% of the price that you pay in credit on mflow to buy more music.

Vice versa, you can send recommendations to people who follow you – and you can recommend anything from the mflow store (or can reflow recommendations sent to you to your followers). And if people like what they hear, you get credit if they buy what you’re recommending.

mflow has deals with labels including Sony, Universal, Beggars Banquet, IODA, PIAS, Skint, XL which means that its catalogue will boast both quantity and – more important – quality tracks from leading acts.

It’s a way to connect through music and is making it good to share the music you love and to discover music you might never otherwise find.

As an exclusive offer to new users, mflow (in association with Q mag) is currently offering 5 free tracks – available when you sign-up for a free account:

Florence & The Machine: ‘Blinding (Live)’

Mumford & Sons: ‘Sigh No More’

The Drums: ‘I Felt Stupid’

I Blame Coco: ‘Ceasar (Ft. Robyn)’

Tinashe: ‘Mr. Presumption’

To take advantage of this offer all you need to do is download the app from http://bit.ly/mflowq

Mflow launches officially on 15th April – http://www.mflow.com

History of vinyl

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The history of vinyl records is a long and interesting one, this is a brief run down.

The earliest idea to record sound was possibly in 1806 when Englishman Thomas Young recorded the vibrations of a tuning fork onto a rotating drum covered with wax.
It wasn’t until 1877 that a realistic approach to both record and playback took place. Thomas Edison experimented with an answering machine for business men, as part of this he ran paraffin coated paper under a stylus while shouting into a telephone speaker, the vibrations left a faint impression of his voice which he could later play back. The paper was then replaced with a rotating drum coated in tin foil which ran underneath the stylus, a clearer speech like noise emanated which gave Edison the idea to be able to record and also play back a sound source – “Mary had a little lamb.” Later that year he built the first Phonograph choosing the rotating drum over flat discs as a format.

The idea of using a flat disc to record audio probably first came about in 1877 when Frenchman Charles Cros described a recording and playback device although this was never built. The first successful recordable discs came later in 1881 when Charles Tainter made the first lateral-cut records in the Volta laboratories of Alexander Graham Bell in America but there was still no method of playback.
In 1888 Emile Berliner perfected playable 7? Lateral-cut disc record as the format for his “Gramophone“, these discs were initially only used in toys, but were later to become the dominant music format for many decades and still exist today in a similar form.

Various materials have been used for making disc records, from shellac (taken from a species of beetle) to rubber but the most successful format came from Alexander Parkes invention of plastic. Shelac was the more popular format until plastic vinyl took over in the early 1930’s, vinyl success arrived through it’s flexibility, better sound quality and strength.
Three main record sizes have remained popular throughout the history of recorded discs, 12″, 10″ and 7″ each with their own niche markets.
Other formats have challenged vinyl over the past century, from rotating cylinders, plug-in cartridges, cassette tapes, compact discs and more recently digital media such as the i-pod and mp3 downloads. Vinyl remains popular due to it’s great collectibility and superior sound quality to all of these formats as well as being the DJs choice for dance music.

DJing came about during the second world war as a form of cheap entertainment for U.S. military troops, people started using two record decks to create a continuous flow of music for dances and night spots, from this the disco was born.
Beatmatching came about in the late 1960’s when Francis Grasso counted the tempo of two records with a metronome and looked for records with a similar tempo. Later a mixer was built for him by Alex Rosner which allowed him to listen to any channel in the headphones independently of what was playing on the speakers; this became the defining feature of DJ mixers.
DJs took vinyl to new levels in the 1970’s when hip hop DJs started to experiment with two records at a time, from scratching the record (with the needle) to repeating drum breakdowns with two copies of the same record.

Vinyl record discs remain a popular format in the 21st century, some record decks now incorporate vinyl, CD and digital media such as MP3. Vinyl records remain an intrinsic part of the music industry.

This article is courtesy of Nick Byng of Dance music specialist site HeyDJ.com a longer version of this article can be found here

United Abominations from MEGADETH!

The long awaited album from Megadeth is going to hit the stores on May 15th!! Dave Mustain after signing up the contract with Roadrunner United and breaking up with David Elleffson have had us waiting uncertain about the new album. With the countdown almost finished, one thing is for sure – Dave keeps the high quality of his band – some of the tracks and a new video are available on the website of the band: www.megadeth.com

Yes, A Tout Le Monde!! After 20 years Dave decided to record it once more and… he is not singing solo! Just see the clip, it is worth it!

Birmingham Music Scene

Nick Byng a musician and online music store owner has just written a definite article about Birmingham music scene for Unsigned City and the BBC. Excerpts from the article can be found below.

Although Birmingham has often promoted an industrious image, music has always pulsed through the heart of the city. From concrete urban landscapes to leafy suburban sprawl, the city continues to inspire some powerful musicians and bands.

Radio Caroline, The BBC and ‘A Whole Lotta Love’

Since the late 1950’s, young Birmingham Rock n Roll wannabes played along to the same American R&B records as the Beatles, Kinks and Rolling Stones, but the Brummie twang wasn’t really picked up on by the media until the mid 60’s.

Radio Caroline used the Fortunes ‘Caroline’ as their signature tune, The Move became the first bad boys of pop and provided BBC Radio 1’s first record ‘Flowers In The Rain’,
The Spencer Davis Group kept on running and The Moody Blues gave us ‘Knights In White Satin’.

“The whole scene in those days, was known as the ’Birmingham group scene’ and lots of musos, would meet after gigs, at such places as the Cedar, Rum Runner, Opposite Lock, Rebecca’s and after at Alex’s Pie stand, there was great camaraderie, and I just hope the present musos have something similar!” – writes Keith Law of 60’s Brumbeat group ‘Velvet Fogg’.

One such music venue to fuel this scene was ‘Mothers’ in Erdington, one of John Peel’s favourite nightclubs during the late 60’s. ‘Pink Floyd’ recorded much of “Ummagumma” there (Nick Mason being born in the city), The Who performed “Tommy”, Steve Winwood’s ‘Traffic’ staged their debut gig and ‘Black Sabbath’ aired some of their earliest songs.

It was also during this interest in the city that Jimmy Page recruited Robert Plant and John Bonham from The Band Of Joy to form Led Zeppelin.

You can read the full article at Brumbeat:: Discuss this article at Haabaa Forum

They ‘Attack’ with ‘Hypnotize’!

The new album from System Of A Down called ‘Hypnotize’ is out and rocking! It is the second part of ‘Mezmerize’. I know this is not a news as Hypnotize is out from November 2005, and Mezmerize was out on May 2005. But I think this is really an event that is worth to write about.

Firstly, because it is one of the best albums I ever heard! My favorite track? Well: Attack, Dreaming, Kill Rock ‘N Roll, Hypnotize, Stealing Society, Tentative, U-Fig, Holy Mountains, Vicinity Of Obscenity, She’s Like Heroin, Lonely Day, Soldier Side. Yes, that’s the full track list 🙂

As usual they touch moral and ethical problems of our lives, social diseases and politics of war. The music which stands for the very meaning of the message it carries in unique style. This is System Of A Down. Straight from their first record, through outstanding Toxicity until now. The last two albums are a bit comercialised which usually doesn’t bring any good to the music itself. On the other hand you can now hear the progress they made. All the tracks sound perfect, there is no more any slightly-raw bits like there were in previous albums.

But who am I to judge! There is a lot of artists who say similar things in different kinds of music. But there is not that much of music which goes straight to our own hearts and minds. The variety is a spice of life. Listen to it yourself. You can hear a free sample of new album on the ‘SOAD’s’ official website at systemofadown.com.

Breathing each other’s lives
Holding this in mind
That if we fall, we all fall
And we fall alone

‘Attack’ from ‘Hypnotize’

See you,
Piotrek