Beard Radio shakes its rump

Epic visonary punk, Italian death jazz, Brooklyn hipster nonsense, lo-fi scuzz, West Saharan guitars, Japanese koto, turntable drone, early 90s hip-hop, wonky and some huge rump shaking bass: it's another exciting edition of Beard Radio!

Wipers - Youth Of America (Morphius)
Silver Jews - Tennessee (Drag City)
Telepathe - Devil's Trident (V2)
Zu - Beata Viscera (Ipecac)
The Bug ft Tippa Irie - Angry (Ninja Tune)
Chieko Mori - Tokyo Light (Important)
Sic Alps - Sing Song Waitress (Siltbreeze)
Group Doueh - Wazan Samat (Sublime Frequencies)
Phillip Jeck - Chime Again (Touch)
Main Source - Snake Eyes (Wild Pitch)
Neil Landstrumm - Shit Daddy Bass (Planet Mu)

Feast your eyes and ears on this short film about the incredible Western Saharan band Group Doueh!

Fuck Mixing Let's Dance

It's been rather quiet on here of late, so you may have been wondering what we've been up to. Writing essays and moving house mainly. Lack of internet access has restricted my postings too. There was Beard radio last week, but we did do a show the week before, and we'll be back on air tonight. Keep an eye out for some tasty new posts - reviews, features and think pieces - as well as further episodes of Beard radio. Details of our first show of 2009 as follows:

Beard radio 12/01/09

Laurie Anderson - Sharkey's Day (Island)
Animal Collective - My Girls (Domino)
Zomby - Fuck Mixing Let's Dance (Werk Discs)
Arthur Russell - I Couldn't Say It To Your Face (Rough Trade)
The Meters - Just Kissed My Baby (Reprise)
Wino - Release Me (Southern Lord)
23 Skidoo - Kundalini (LTM)
Groupe Inerane - Kuni Majagani (Sublime Frequencies)
Black Sheep - Flavor Of The Month (Mercury)
Pavement - Stereo (Domino)
The Stooges - LA Blues (Elektra)

Bit of a boring post this, so let's liven up proceedings with some interesting links!

Beard mag regular Ben Haggar has an epic roundup of his favourite albums of 2008 at his Stereosanctity blog. A great read as usual, with plenty of interesting choices.

Over at the Quietus, Luke Turner takes the annual industry led hype orgy to pieces, exposing the complicity between PR and editorial and the cynical careerism of acts like Florence & The Machine and White Lies.

Great tribute to Ron Asheton by UK DIY underground renaissance man Chris Summerlin at Diskant.net. Chris also has a new blog, which is well worth a look.

And finally, the sad news that David Berman has brought the Silver Jews to an end. His posts on the Drag City forum are pretty remarkable. Berman reveals that his estranged father is a right wing corporate lobbyist. For years Berman sought refuge from this in music and academia. Now he wants to take him on. I'm sad there will be no more Silver Jews music, but I look forward to new projects, whether it's more poetry, or, as he suggests, muckraking investigative journalism or screenwriting.

I've seen or heard some great new bands recently, so I'll be back soon with links in a few days. An antidote to the corporate tipster frenzy.