There are a couple of blogs that consistently prove useful in flagging up new stuff, and certainly stuff I haven’t heard of elsewhere – Ryans Smashing Life (lucky old Ryan, grimace) and the Silent Ballet a strangely poetic name methinks)

Earlier this week I stumbled through my RSS aggregator to some

recent Silent Ballet posts and tripped over a free download split sampler type album from The Mylene Sheath label (the news article seems to have disappeared unfortunately with its link for

the download). Some of the bands don’t do much for me but a couple do, namely If These Trees Could Talk and Caspian. If These Trees Could Talk in particular grabbed my aural attention becausen despite their math/post/experimental rock

labelling there really did seem to be somethng more there – Signal Tree being a particular favourite. Caspian too, even with their more obvious math rock leanings, are still well worth a good listen.

Maybe my fav though this week has been courtesy of Ryan and his blinking Smashing Life (yeuk). Norweigan band, Simon Says No! (not sure why they should be so negative really) are perhaps the source of my earlier rant about feeling 16 again. Much of the stuff on their Myspace site (save the opening Sleeping Heart) really rather takes me back to that early Hawkwind album (Warrior on the Edge of Time, 1975), not so much the vocal but that insistent muddy guitar track. Have been listening to these tracks a bit now and they have carved out a little niche with me.