Linfinity: Really Rather Good
Mrs. Toad likes these guys, so they must be good. I am joking, but only partially; for my midget companion to lift her head and break a lifelong habit of treating my musical adventures with total and utter disdain happens very rarely, and when it does she tends to be onto something so I take notice. She’s sort of a populism radar, I suppose.
Linfinity have finished recording a full length album, apparently, but shuffling through their various web stuffs there’s little sign of when or where we can expect it. If the four songs which are available for our perusal at the moment are anything to go by then we are in for something of an eclectic surprise. Holy Rain is reminiscent of a couple of things I’ve heard recently: Glasgow’s excellent The Seventeenth Century, and a more Eastern European relation of Kill It Kid.
Splendid, it is tempting to think, another lovely indie folk ensemble inspired by music from a little farther afield than their own country. They may be good at it, but that would hardly be a new approach, would it. Further listening, however, muddies the waters somewhat. Molly Mar of Rome is a far smoother affair, more of a piano ballad, occasionally railroaded by the other instincts within the band, but building to a big, bombastic Radio2 crescendo. Choo Choo Train to Venice brings a start which could easily come from The Clash covering an Elvis Presely tune, and then settles into a riff which reminds me somewhat oddly of Morrissey’s brilliant song You’re Gonna Need Someone on Your Side.
So what kind of a band are these guys and what can we expect from the album? Fuck knows, frankly, but large chunks of this sound incredibly interesting and I am really looking forward to hearing it.
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Linfinity – Choo Choo Train to Venice
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These are fucking brilliant. I LOVE them. I’ve been waiting for the album for ages – they’ve a demo/live album on emusic, which I really enjoy, & they seem to spit out new tracks all over the place without any worries about over exposure
We’re finally playing Chant des Resistance this Saturday & have a ton more lined up for the coming weeks. I love the vocals, but the music & production of is what I love most.
By the by, & speaking of Kill It Kid, it would appear Huw Stephens ‘discovered’ them last night…
Ach well. We are never truly first, and the likes of him have far more influence, so it’s not an entirely spurious claim.
I like this.
There. Caught up.
Phew!
Chop chop, Dylan!
i was excited whilst listening to Holy Rain….less so when listening to Choo Choo….hhhmmmm
DC – who discovers anything anyway?….and more importantly who cares?
sorry i forgot this
“insert smiley face”
Well a lot of people (mostly fucking insecure people, and including a lot of bloggers) make a big song and dance about who covered who first. For some reason this makes them feel good. There is a lot of points scoring involved, and frankly I find it a bit pathetic.
Personally, I can be so variable between when things end up in my inbox and when I write about them that there’s no point getting into that sort of shit, because I am unlikely to win any races; I’d rather wait until I’m confident in what I want to say about a band rather than just fire stuff up in an attempt to be first.
The podcasts and radio show are good for that though – I can play stuff on whim just because it sounds interesting, rather than having to wait for a fully-formed, coherent review to be ready.
Also, I try and wait until release day to cover anything, because I think people will forget about them and hence be less likely to buy if it’s on my front page before the album/EP/etc.. is actually available. If it’s just a band with some rough demos though, that’s a different thing.
The other thing is that some of us have more impact than others. I can claim to have given Broken Records their first ever review because they told me so at the time. That’s nice for me, in a pointless sort of way, but did my coverage make any difference to their success thus far? Almost certainly not. So who cares if I am first if my being first makes no difference to the band in question because my readership is too small. This means that being ‘discovered’ by Huw Stephens, however late, is a much bigger deal for a band, of course.
And then, of course, different publications have different aims. Mine is certainly not to discover new stuff as some sort of trophy collection mania. It is more to support grass-roots and DIY music, and as such, being first to anything is largely irrelevant, although if you are dealing with small bands I suppose it will happen from time to time.
You really didn’t want that long an answer, did you Chutters?
“SMILEY FUCKING FACE”
“SMILEY FUCKING FACE”
T-shirt!
Well, the first one is clearly brilliant. The second one is a bit incoherent in my opinion. It seems like it’s trying to be uncontrolled jumping around madness, and just comes off a bad version of better songs I heard 10 years ago.
Actually, pathetic as you think it is & as it may sound or appear, it does gall the fuck out of me that people like HS (who rely on researchers to compile their output) cherry pick from other people’s hard work & passion.
I know a number of blogs that’ve been source-raped in this way, & it does fuck me off that the radio ‘poisonalities’ don’t have the balls to say where they got their day’s work from — regardless of how ‘big’ they are. Most of the time their ‘work’ is undertaken by researchers, anyway.
I recently had a conversation with a BBC R1 DJ who was ranting about BBC Bristol shutting a show down because of swear words in a song after the guidelines had been made ever so crystal clear & easy to understand (following the Brand/Ross hoohah) to every BBC DJ. He explained what a tragedy it was that a 20yr+ experienced producer was sacked over a simple mistake/accident.
I disagreed saying the rules (whether you agreed with them or not) were there & in breaking them he & his host were either (a) arrogant enough to think the rules didn’t apply &, therefore, deserved the sacking, or (b) suggested the host/producer didn’t listen to the songs on the playlist before or after it was compiled &, therefore, they were useless cunts & deserved to be sacked.
This last possibility, I said, suggests the playlists are being scheduled by researchers in prep for each day’s broadcast. Therefore suggesting the host/producer have no input in their own output.
The R1 DJ got a bit animated at this & stated quite angrily that he listened to everything he has ever played on his show. Which is interesting for 2 reasons: (a) we weren’t talking about him & I certainly wasn’t asking him to justify his career choice to me, & (b) I know from his researchers that he doesn’t choose his playlists & only listens to them on the day of broadcast. Everything is farmed out to the unnamed gofers to make ready for air. His researchers, in turn, listen to (& have done for nearly 2yrs now) on-line stations, podcasts & trawl a select hundred or so blogs cribbing & filching content.
Now I don’t mind that process in the slightest, but it fucks me off when some gormless fuckwit claims to have ‘discovered’ an exclusive when 9 times out of 10 it will have gone through at least a 3 tier ‘discovery’ process before it even hits their ears & they don’t have the bollocks to acknowledge it.
That’s like a cobbler spending a week cutting & sewing & making a pair of shoes & then a market stall holder lacing them up & saying ‘look what I made’. That’s also like Toad claiming the Meursault EP was written by him because he hand-stamped the covers.
That stand point might be pathetic to some but I put in fucking hours & hours of work into the TWR shows, & I know Toad puts in hours hours of work into the SbT empire, & I know, too, that other bloggers put in a lot of work also; so, frankly, having some high paid chancer come along & pick & choose which bits of your endeavor he’s going to exploit for his own gain is simply not on in my book.
oh….it must be Thursday…i’ll just check…yep it is….
“insert smiley face here”
I’m Facebook friends with Huw Stephens.
who finds who and discovers what is irrelevant. bart put me onto a lot of the bands that play trampoline and i’m more than happy to give him the credit for it. i’m late to the table all the time. but that’s ok.
I mean that people arguing about having discovered something is pathetic, not taking issue about someone pinching your work without acknowledgment, which is somewhat different.
There are a lot of bloggers who make a big deal out of the fact that they, not some other random blogger or writer or whoever, were the ones who ‘discovered’ someone or wrote about them first and it gets on my nerves because, frankly, who cares. These arguments are generally about egotism and scoring points and, yes, insecurity.
I’ve heard so many cases of people saying ‘aren’t such and such a band good’ and hearing ‘oh yes, I saw them a month before that gig and thought they were excellent’ or ‘well yes, I wrote about them last year and thought that they were excellent’ or ‘yes, and they were so pleased when I invited them to do an interview last month’ and the sly inference that they were there first is bubbling under the surface and it gets on my nerves something chronic.
The radio scenario you describe is simply a case of not acknowledging your sources, presumably in part out of fear that your public will abandon you for a more up-to-date medium, and I guess also because of BBC Radio marketing strategy. Failure to acknowledge sources is bad form, end of story.
I guess they think it would ruin the ‘magic of radio’ if a presenter had to announce that ‘one of my dozen or so junior researchers found this on Music Blog X and put it in the playlist, but I’ve never heard it before’. They’d probably be right, but I can see how you’d find it annoying.
“insert”
“smiley”
“face”
….
————————————-> “HERE!”
Scratch that, I can see how you’d find it very annoying.
Personally, I don’t care, but it isn’t that side of it that I find pathetic, more the bickering about who was first to what which is so common in the music press.
If there were a blog as influential as BBC1 and the “discovered” My Gold Mask, a local band that I blogged first and love, I would be very put out, yes indeedy. Especially if this BBC1 level blog were reaping loads of advertising revenue and I were not (even by choice).
You have to compare apples to apples here and that is where I feel DC has a point. He has a RADIO show. It wouldn’t kill BBC1 to fucking mention WOXY/The Waiting Room now would it?
xoxox
I think most BBC staff are ao terrified of crossing the corporation’s strict endorsement rules, that they run a mile from mentioning anything that even resembles a Trade Mark.
My other point, made obscurely, is that there is no blog equivalent and we bloggers should just stop squabbling over the crumbs off the table. Face it, we don’t have the influence of the major press and I kind of hope we never do.
actually, Toad makes a good point that I failed to acknowledge earlier: the word ‘discovered’ is being taken out of context here, mainly because I didn’t really clarify my point properly.
Forgive me, I’m in work & writing in between phone calls & meetings, so my point is all over the shop.
I’m not bothered about who found what first – I used the word ‘discovered’ with a healthy dose of tongue in cheek. I was merely pointing out to Matthew that HS had, again, ‘discovered’ something that has been public knowledge for some time now. I was laughing at the big, fat, ginger Welsh moron, is what I was doing, for being so stupid.
In general, my rant was what Toad followed up with – the lack of acknowledgment in the act of utilizing other people’s research as one’s own. That’s the bit I’m bitching about above, rather than ‘I got there first, motherfucker’ element.
Tart – I don’t care about a WOXY/TWR mention per se, but I do think a ‘I happened across this band on 17 Seconds blog’ or ‘I first heard oif these through Loveshack, Baby in the States’ etc. Common courtesy, no?
&, also, I don’t expect the personalities to be at pains to list everyone in the playlist construction procedure, but if you listen to Steve Merchant (I’m not even sure if he’s still on the radio/station, as I’ve not tuned in for some time) he cheerfully acknowledges all his sources – researcher/blogger/TV show or advert/other radio program alike. So, it’s not that hard to engage.
Firstly, Tart, I’d better remind you that I agree with you and DC that the BBC failing to acknowledge sources is a bad thing, before you start attacking a point of view which I am not espousing (Dylan’s endorsement point is a good one though).
However, with the exception of a handful of specialist shows, I’d imagine that most of the time a presenter has no clue where the music comes from, and therefore can’t acknowledge it, whether they want to or not. In this case, maintaining the illusion that presenters pick their playlists entirely by themselves becomes a little dishonest, but it really was ever thus, and I think it’s a bit pointless to complain about it. Although DC’s point about good form is spot on of course – kudos to Mr. Merchant.
Secondly, how the hell could you complain about another blog ‘discovering’ your favourite band when you have no idea what their source is? They might have stumbled across them themselves, they might have been tipped off by a Chicago friend, or the band themselves may have emailed them.
I really hope you don’t expect people to scour the internet whenever they write about a band just in case someone, somewhere, might have covered them first, because that would be ludicrous. I agree that if they get it directly from your blog then they should acknowledge that, but that seems like an unlikely circumstance 99% of the time, and how would you know anyway?
Would you really expect every blog who writes about Broken Records to acknowledge that I wrote about them first? I don’t expect that at all, in fact I think it would be silly.
& there was I mentioning Kill It Kid specifically because I came across them on this blog, I think, originally. I take it all back, Toad…
The point about researchers etc is really just a dig at the lazy fucking personalities rather than a moan about dishonesty; the culmination of which being, I spend hours & hours & hours listening to new music & make sure I have a good working knowledge of it in order to make an informed choice when I put a playlist together. That’s part of my ‘job’. If I turned up & TWoTH had done all that for me & written me a ream of notes to accompany each song, then I haven’t done a job at that point. If you don’t know what you are playing, or anything about it, as a radio DJ, then you have no fucking business being on the air*. That was my point.
(* or you consign yourself to local radio & simply play the hits from yesteryear…. cue Cardiff’s Real Radio… Real Music for Real People…)
the joy of listening to music is the sharing of whatever sublime track you’ve heard with friend/s…..and aren’t blogs just an extension of this
all the other stuff is irrelevant and quite honestly bores me…..
i went to the second ever Broken Records gig….yes i was dragged there screaming by Bart who said that i’d love them….. of course, as always, he was right.
“insert smiley face here”
No and I wasn’t attacking your point at all dearie, just backing up DC’s. And if a blog were the equivalent of the BBC1 then I’d not expect them to find a little band such as my fave any other way than from the three blogs that have put up their name and music. Or from seeing them at a gig, and then they should say so because to see them is to fall in desperate, undying love for them.
If, upon “discovering” or “breaking” this little duo they said they did the finding, then I’d be put out, yeah. But would I do much more than grumble on other people’s web pages about it? No.
*insert big fat smiley face and kisses here*
Tom, you’re just a grumpy old Northerner really, aye?
“If, upon “discovering” or “breaking” this little duo they said they did the finding, then I’d be put out, yeah. But would I do much more than grumble on other people’s web pages about it? No.”
Put out? But they could easily be telling the truth. These organisations do hear from bands all the time, and they have loads of researchers who could easily have happened across them on MySpace. And they do genuinely have a remit to find and discover new music before anyone else, so it is what they are “supposed” to be doing.
It may hurt your pride a little, and I guess it would hurt mine too in the same situation, but I doubt we’d be justified in sulking about it.
Unless we genuinely had been ripped off, I guess, but that’s a slightly different story.
Agreed and we’re talking about an alternate universe where blogs actually matter, hahaha
I see Dengler, Kessler, and Fogarino. I strongly suspect that the other three will combine to make Paul Banks.
DC – if by grumpy northern git, you mean and honest chap who is not bothered by his own self importance, then yeah i’m one of those…..
“insert smiley face here”
Tart: your blog, along with Toads and fair few others, matters to me!!!
Tommy, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy, Top Shop.
You know’s it’s all in the spit & the sawdust, really. Passion’s only passion if you show it, no?
I just discovered this band called Linfinity. They’re really rather good.
yep
I wish I had never let Matthew discover The Lovely Eggs for me. My teenage memories of Angelica are well and truly destroyed. A pretty sad event.
But aren’t Second Hand Marching Band great?
Second Hand Marching Band are awesome! I got their CD a long while back and never reviewed it…. damn time I did! Thanks for the reminder, Becky xoxo
oh and Winstonszen is soliciting for a band to fill a spot in a gig night in North London the last Thursday of June. Just thought I’d shoot it over to you Scottish folks! xoxo
But aren’t Second Hand Marching Band great?
Damn. I forgot you said you were going to Limbo tonight, Becky!
Second Hand Marching Band were good, weren’t they..
O yes, The Lovely Eggs – cheers Toad. mad find. mad find. We’ll be having them on this week’s splylist fer sher.
Tart, tell old Winst I have a handful for that timescale if he be interested in dropping me a line. Ta.
last night i discovered that i need more sleep
Chutters – didn’t one of your junior researchers discover that, and you’re just taking the credit?
As usual.
maybe it was my researchers that are tired…..i dunno
Not sure what to make of The Lovely Eggs.
And that’s probably just how they like it.
An omelette, perhaps, with parmesan and fresh herbs. Or why not some tasty Huevos Rancheros?
this is worrying…..Dylan is talking to himself
Matthew,
Are you sure the wife didn’t say that she liked lipfinity?
If you think she would ever say something like that then you don’t know her very well. She probably doesn’t even know what it is.
I’m off sick today, but I can’t claim that as Toad did it first last week.
(by the by, I had to phone in too, not at all sounding unwell, caught in over-explaining the illness & sounding like I was reading from a DIY Diagnosis book. My colleague didn’t even bother to say ‘get well soon’…)
Speaking of being discovered on the BBC, did you know that Vic Galloway played Meursault on his BBC Scotland show on Monday night? You can listen to it about 1 hour 10 minutes in.
And impressively, he even acknowledges who “discovered” them.
But I didn’t really discover them, in this case, funnily enough. The first time I even spoke to the band was at their album launch (the first one, where they self-released Pissing/Kissing, but unfortunately forgot to do anything like, say, send copies to press people or generally let anyone else know that it was there).