Yo all, back again with HC6 – A change of direction from the past three sets of fresh, exciting new shit – Here’s a solid hour of fresh, exciting old shit :) – A good dig through the realms of 60s garage punk, proto rock and pumping mod. Most of the tracks date from round 1964-66, with a couple of later ones, and they’re mostly from the UK (the American equivalent deserves a mix in it’s own right, as does the rest of the world!)- Anyway, some you might know, some you might not, but just putting this together has got my pulse racing 10-20 BPM faster than usual, so hopefully it’ll have a similar effect on your good selves! Enjoy :)

Tracklist:

The Birds – Leaving Here
The Creation – Biff Bang Pow!
The Easybeats – Friday On My Mind
The Beat Merchants – Pretty Face
The Koobas – Face
The Boys Blue – You Got What I Want
The Clique – We Didn’t Kiss, We Didn’t Love, But Now We Do
The Attack – We Don’t Know
The Lancasters – Satan’s Holiday
Fire – Father’s Name Is Dad
Davy Jones & The Lower Third – You’ve Got A Habit Of Leaving
The Creation – Making Time
The Haunted – 125
Them – I Can Only Give You Everything
The Primitives – You Said
The Outer Limits – Help Me Please
The Movement – Tell Her
Cuby & The Blizzards – Your Body Not Your Soul
The Chasers – Inspiration
The Mickey Finn – Garden Of My Mind
Paul & Ritchie & The Cryin’ Shames – Come On Back
The Poets – That’s The Way It’s Got To Be
The 5AM Event – Hungry
The Beat Merchants – Messin’ With The Man
Ipissmus – Hold On
The Blue Stars – Social End Product
The Birds – No Good Without You Baby

Direct download: MP3 or FLAC

Okay, here be HC3c – The third and final installment of our favourite tunes of 2006. It’s been a lot of fun compiling this lot, have to say, and it’s reminded us that this year has been rather good all round for fine music. Our hats come off to all the artists featured over the past three weeks – Thanks!

Since you ask, if we had to pick out a couple of albums and say they were the best of the year, it would fall to a close tie between these three, we reckon:

The Joe Beats Experiment – Indie Rock Blues

Guillemots – Through The Window Pane

Spank Rock – Yoyoyoyoyo

Brains, balls and soul all present and correct in the highest of levels within all three of those, which is just the way we like it. You really should listen to them from start to finish, if you haven’t already. Well worth it.

Anyhoo, tracklist for HC3c is:

Brightblack Morning Light – Everybody Daylight (from their eponymous album)
Scritti Politti – The Boom Boom Bap (from the album “White Bread, Black Beer”)
Guillemots – Through The Window Pane (from the album of the same name)
Lupe Fiasco – The Instrumental (from the album “Food & Liquor”)
Ty – Don’t Watch That (from the album “Closer”)
Cunnilinguists – Hellfire [Joey Beats Mix] (unreleased)
M.Ward – Sad, Sad Song (Joe Beats Experiment Mix) (from the album “Indie Rock Blues”)
The Grates – Rock Boys (from the album “Gravity Won’t Get You High”)
Subtle – Midas Gutz (from the album “For Hero For Fool”)
Union Of Knives – Opposite Direction (from the album “Violence And Birdsong”)
Scuba – Twista (single)
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Phenomena (from the album “Show Your Bones”)
Mew – The Zookeeper’s Boy (from the album “And The Glass Handed Kites”)
Cynic Guru – Drugs (single)
Extra Golden – OK-Oyot System (from the album of the same name)
Eliot Lipp – Rap Tight (from the album “Tacoma Mockingbird”)
Trentemoller – While The Cold Winter Waiting (from the album “The Last Resort”)
Matthew’s Celebrity Pixies Tribute – Wave Of Mutilation (website)
Jarvis- Running The World (from the album “Jarvis”)

That’s yer lot for ’06 – Hope you enjoy!

Direct download: MP3 or FLAC

We’re not ones to blow our own trumpets too often (curse that missing vertebra), but it’s damn, damn fine to find out that “24 Hours” has been voted one of the 10 best albums of this year by the good readers and forumites of The Big Chill website. Many, many thanks to everyone that voted for us – Yay!

Not only that, but we also get several mentions in the list of DJ gigs of the year, singling out my set at Mutation in Birmingham over the summer! – so eeeeextended thanks to the peeps at that one!

The full Big Chill Top 10 in alphabetical order:

Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
BiggaBush – BiggaBush in Dub
Bonobo – Days to Come
Gotan Project – Lunatico
Hot Chip – The Warning
Kleptones – 24 Hours
Laroca – Friends in Faraway Places
Nathan Fake – Drowning In a Sea of Love
Thom Yorke – The Eraser
Trentemoller – Last Resort

Honored to be in such exalted company, really!

You can see the full results for yourselves here.

OK – Trumpet back in case now.

Happy New Ear, y’all :)

…well, I don’t think Laurence Lessig will ever say good night. Not at this rate anyway.

I could stick this up on a del.icio.us link (over there –>>), but I thought it worthy of a post. So if you have forty-five minutes or so to spare, I’d say you could do a hell of a lot worse than go and watch Laurence’s speech from last week’s 23rd Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin. If you’re in a hurry, or have never watched LL speak before, either just grab the start for a taste, or skip to around 43m in to get the summary, but if you can spare the time, try and catch the lot, including the grilling he gets at the end of the Q&A (was that John Gilmore asking the last question?) - it’s great to see that there’s some very interesting new (at least to me) insights within the presentation that indicate Laurence’s current sabbatical away from his professorial role at Stanford is doing him a considerable amount of good. Or maybe it’s the just the fine German beer… ;) Either way, it’s the first worthy watch of 2007.

(via BoingBoing.)