Horses & Japan

When you listen to albums really closely, you sometimes start spotting patterns. Perhaps you'll hear the same line in two different songs; perhaps you'll notice some sort of loose running theme; perhaps you'll even come across a nice, juicy ROPSWED. 'Easter Eggs' like this are fairly common at the movies - if you spend enough time on the internet, you'll already be familiar with Pixar's insane mass of ongoing in-jokes, or Martin Scorsese's use of the letter X to signal that  somebody's about to die in The Departed.

The difference, though, is that Scorsese almost certainly planted those Xs on purpose. The patterns we hear in songs and albums tend to be far more subtle, and so they are far less likely to be intentional - Pixar didn't accidentally give the Pizza Planet truck a cameo in every single movie, but it's entirely conceivable that a songwriter may re-use an old line without realising it.

EP Corner: Chronic Town

It's time once again for EP Corner, where the album's little brother gets to enjoy the limelight for a little bit. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Of The Night, a four-track oddity by the Guillemots; today, I'm going all the way back to 1982, when a group of young men from Georgia kick-started their musical careers with five songs and a blue gargoyle.

Who Says The Magic Numbers Aren't Cool?

Last Friday, shortly before departing for the Knee Deep Festival, I tweeted the following:

Clockwise from top left: Violent Femmes, The Afghan Whigs, The Magic Numbers, Woodenbox with a Fistful of Fivers, Cake, Modest Mouse.

Now, I was pretty happy with the six CDs I had chosen for the drive to Liskeard - in fact, all of them are still in my car now, partially due to laziness but mostly because they're such good driving albums.

Sarah, on the other hand, was kind of surprised that I was willing to share that photo with the hoopy bunch of froods who presumably run Knee Deep's Twitter account. "You can't show them your Magic Numbers album," she said, demonstrating a touching concern for my online street cred. "The Magic Numbers aren't cool enough!"

Knee Deep '14: My Top 5 Acts

Well, as promised, I spent my weekend at the Knee Deep Festival in Cornwall. It was only two days long, but they managed to pack a lot of great bands (most of whom were completely new to me) into relatively little time. Here's a countdown of my five favourite acts from across the weekend; Scriber, the band I was there to play drums for, are obviously disqualified from the running, lest this competition descend into farce.

Knees Up!

To be honest, today's blog is going to be a bit quick and rubbish because I'm preparing to hit the Knee Deep Festival for the second consecutive year (I'll be playing the drums for Scriber, just one of the many brilliant people mentioned on my new 'Friends of This Blog' page).