 | Best for covers Cover Freak www.coverfreak.com US blogger Steve McIntyre is, by his own admission, “obsessed” with cover versions. “I’ve been giving covers CDs to my friends as Christmas presents for years,” he says. “The site is an outgrowth of that.” Every Sunday since October, 2006, McIntyre has posted five cover versions on a particular theme, be it war, ukuleles, Johnny Cash, drinking or California. One post a week may seem sparse compared to many blogs, but for McIntyre it’s about quality, not quantity. “A good cover is different from the original, for better or worse,” he says. “The artist needs to put something of him/her self into the song and give new meaning to it. Otherwise it is a waste of time.” Luckily, McIntyre has a seemingly never-ending collection of genre-straddling covers to fit both his manifesto and his weekly themes. “It’s great fun to foist your musical tastes on an unsuspecting world,” he says. Download: Tricky: The Love Cats (posted 30/12/07)
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 | Best for tomorrow’s big names iTunes Store www.apple.com/itunes Having sold 3 billion downloads since opening for business in 2003, Apple’s iTunes Store is more famous for making millions from music than for giving it away. However, the site still offers its Single of the Week as a free download. In fact, because iTunes has such an enormous share of the global digital music market (around 80 percent) the slot has become a much sought after way for labels to break new acts. But insiders insist that iTunes still decides each week’s track purely on the music’s merit. If that’s the case, their taste appears to be improving; after providing valuable early exposure for dreary mainstreamers like James Blunt, Paolo Nutini and Scott Matthews, recent free downloads have tended towards the credible (Simian Mobile Disco, Battles, Yoav). But whatever the quality, it’s always nice to get something for nothing from an organization that makes a fortune out of you. Download: Palladium Happy Hour |
 | Best for old gramophone records Turtle’s 78rpm Jukebox turtleservices.com/jukebox.htm As a rule, the older the music, the less well-represented it is online. Which is why Turtle’s 78rpm Jukebox is a rare treat. Although it isn’t updated often, the site now contains more than 120 MP3s, which have been lovingly converted from dusty old phonographs dating from 1909 to 1928. The scratches and hisses that remain on the recordings add to the evocative experience, as do the song’s excitable titles — Yes! We Have No Bananas and Oh, Gee! Say, Gee! You Ought to See My Gee Gee from the Fiji Isle being two particular highlights. The tracks are divided between sentimental slowies and breezy comedic numbers, all with the tinny Dixieland trumpets and syrupy vocal harmonies you’d expect to hear on a vintage cartoon. The site also provides a telling lesson in US social history, with a small handful of songs labeled as being potentially offensive because of their less than enlightened portrayal of black characters by white minstrel performers. Download: Yerkes Novelty Five with Arthur Hall Yes! We Have No Bananas
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 | Best for discarded vinyl Vinyl Orphanage www.vinylorphanage.com “I’m a huge fan of things like self-produced recordings, school band albums and records by cruise ship and cocktail lounge performers,” says Pastor McPurvis, the Florida resident behind the terrifically off-kilter Our Lady of Perpetual Obsolescence Vinyl Rescue Mission and Orphanage blog. Describing his site a “safe haven for forgotten and downtrodden record albums,” McPurvis shares the fruits of 20 years scouring thrift shops by offering a full album for download each month. Last month, it was Sing for Lovers by husband and wife duo Kathy and Tony Rich, who apparently entertained holidayers in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains in the late 1960s. The record is typical of McPurvis’s ability to unearth obscure, but extremely worthwhile music. Elsewhere in the Pastor’s archive, the three early-1970s albums by the Bellport High School Jazz-Rock Ensemble posted in April 2007 are particularly worthy of your hard-drive space. Download: Bellport High School Jazz-Rock Ensemble Long Train Runnin’
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 | Best for Swedish music Swedesplease www.swedesplease.net Blogger Craig Bonnell lives several thousand kilometers from Sweden, in Illinois, US. Which is why it’s so remarkable that he writes a blog that carries weight in the Swedish music scene. Swedesplease grew out of Bonnell’s “main blog” songsillinois.net. “I was continually finding great Swedish music to post about. So, eventually, I decided to set up a separate blog devoted to Swedish indiepop.” That was in January 2005. Since then, Bonnell has proved his fine ear for the for the best new Swedish sounds by helping to break acts including Jose Gonzalez, the Shout Out Louds, Hello Saferide and, recently, Ida Maria. “I’m always getting e-mails from people in Sweden asking me how I find so much great music in their backyard,” says Bonnell. The answer is by trawling the Web and, as the site’s profile has grown, by checking his e-mail inbox. Amazingly, though, Bonnell has still not been to Sweden. He deserves a very warm welcome when he does. Download: Friday’s Bridge Literature (Rubbah remix) (Posted 26/12/07)
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 | Best for mash-ups Get Your Bootleg On www.getyourbootlegon.com The mash-up scene isn’t as hot now as it was at the beginning of the decade, but with virtually anyone now able to mess about with music editing software on their home PC, there are more amateur mash-up artists than ever. Many of these bedroom bootleggers congregate on Get Your Bootleg On, a vibrant community site with more than 14,000 registered members. Every day, budding producers post links to MP3s of their latest masterpiece in the Bootlegs forum. Some of them are terrible, but the quality on GYBO is generally high; as a vague rule, the more replies to a posting, the better the track tends to be. To keep its members inspired, GYBO also runs regular challenges to create a bootleg around a particular theme — be it the Charlatans or dancehall/reggae — which is where many of the best mash-ups surface. Download: mARKYbOY Deee-liteful Milkshakes (posted 29/12/07)
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 | Best for B-sides The “B” side redkelly.blogspot.com “I don’t think B-sides are a dying art,” says blogger Red Kelly, “they’re already dead.” Perhaps so, but Kelly does a sterling job of keeping the memory of old flipsides alive. About once a week, the New Yorker thumbs through his extensive collection of classic soul and R&B 45s and picks a B-side to post on his blog. But Kelly’s work doesn’t stop there. Each MP3 is accompanied by a well-written and meticulously researched essay on that particular artist’s career. “You know when you hear a song on the car radio and you pull into your driveway and wait to hear who the artist was, but the guy never bothers to tell you?” asks Kelly. “Well, my site is kind of like the opposite of that experience. You may not want all of that information right now, but, hey, it’s good to know it’ll be there for you when you do.” Download: Kim Tolliver I’ll Try To Do Better (posted 28/12/07) |
 | Best for electro/techno ill-ec-tro-nic ill-ec-tro-nic.blogspot.com/ When London blogger Langer started ill-ec-tro-nic two years ago, there weren’t many MP3 blogs dedicated to writing about underground electronic music. These days there are plenty, but Langer’s (which he co-edits with his friend RAW) still stands out as one of the best. The site has a catholic remit, with experimental electronica, techno, remixes of indie tracks and even the odd slab of psychedelic rock thrown into the mix. “No cheesy house, though,” says Langer. “And we’ve gradually steered away from the whole electro house/new rave stuff as every other blog seems to be posting it and most isn’t very good.” That focus on quality over fashion is one of ill-ec-tro-nic’s strengths. Another is that it’s able to write about electronic music in a way that’s informative and entertaining without being overly technical or scene-y. In fact, the only pity is that they don’t post a little more often. Download: Thom Yorke Harrowdown Hill (Ripperton Dub) (posted 30/12/07) |
The canonical shot of an East Asian city is a night skyline studded with towering apartment and office buildings, bright with neon and plastic signage, a landscape of energy and modernity. Another classic image is the same city seen from above, in which identical apartment towers march across the city, spilling out over nearby geography, like stylized soldiers colonizing new territory in a board game. Densely populated dynamic conurbations of money, technological innovation and convenience, it is hard to see the cities of East Asia as what they truly are: necropolises. Why is this? The East Asian development model, with
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When Lisa, 20, laces into her ultra-high heels for her shift at a strip club in Ukraine’s Kharkiv, she knows that aside from dancing, she will have to comfort traumatized soldiers. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion, exhausted troops are the main clientele of the Flash Dancers club in the center of the northeastern city, just 20 kilometers from Russian forces. For some customers, it provides an “escape” from the war, said Valerya Zavatska — a 25-year-old law graduate who runs the club with her mother, an ex-dancer. But many are not there just for the show. They “want to talk about what hurts,” she
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