Chelsea Light Moving - s/t (Matador)

http://boomkat.com/downloads/663793-chelsea-light-moving-chelsea-light-moving

This is as good as 80s Sonic Youth.

Just thought I'd mention that first in case you were liable to skip over this review due to the phrase "Thurston Moore's new band".

I nearly gave Chelsea Light Moving a miss because of this but I'm glad I didn't. Definitely worth taking a leap of faith to get over that gut feeling it's just going to be average at best.

It's got a slightly more punk feel to it than Sonic Youth and I'm not just saying that due to it finishing with Communist Eyes. It strips out the slightly nicer pro-sound and becomes a lot more jarring and heavy without descending into just some self indulgent guitar noise noodling.

There's some really great bits where it almost reaches Caspar Brotzmann Massaker or High Rise levels of glorious, horrible atonal guitar riffing. At other points there's actual chug riffs.

And, of course, there's plenty of bits that don't sound a million miles away from 80s Sonic Youth.

Absolut demo (ex-Left For Dead/Midnight)

Holy shit this is good!!!

Noise punk with blazing wailing metal guitar solos.

It's as if Sarcofago and GISM joined forces.

Think of all that current killer hardcore coming out of Spain like Glam and Destino Final but with the metal ramped up to 11.

If those references are a bit obscure then just think of 80s Pushead.

Seein Red/Mihoen 10" (Opiate/Tadpole)

Opiate Records have just put all their releases up for free download

I'll quickly mention this one. Even if you've only a passing interest in fast hardcore then you're probably more than aware of Seein Red. Dutch thrashers that have been going for years and years. Plus they started the whole thing off when they did Larm in the early 80s.

Mihoen are top stuff too.

Basically, it's punk. Worth checking out the Wreck Of Old 98 album. Bit of Minutemen worship going on.

iTunes accounted for 60% of total music industry digital revenues in 2012

Hypebot have got an interesting article about this here - http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2013/02/itunes-payments-account-for-60-of-total-digital-music-revenue-analysis.html

It's only a quick read but quite informative.

Point I want to bring up is that iTunes sold $4.3 billion of music in 2012. That's $4,300,000,000. That's roughly £2.9 billion. As a comparison, £2.9 billion would be 1/25th of the UK's entire retail sector.

Whichever way you look at it, that's a fuckload of money.

It certainly demolishes the "people don't want to pay for downloads" argument that's popular amongst DIY/indie labels that still refuse to offer downloads for sale.