If any of those verbose and praiseful descriptions I wrote interested you, then check out a couple of songs from each of the bands here:

http://bit.ly/2010spotify

The only ones mysteriously missing are Surfer Blood. Their album isn’t available in the UK yet, perhaps that’s why…

(1) Beach House
We had the chance to film Beach House at their recent Bush Hall show, and I was completely blown away. Their new LP, ‘Teen Dream’ is a sure-fire contender for album of 2010, and you shouldn’t be without it. In the meantime you can get a few songs of them live in session for free over at Daytrotter (who do awesome sessions – check out their completely free back catalogue). They’re the sweetest people, and they make incredibly focused, completely overwhelming music.

(2) Field Music – The new Field Music album (oddly titled ‘Field Music (measure)’ parentheses and all) landed on my desk about 3 weeks ago, and there’s never more than 2 days between plays at the moment. It’s a glorious and OTT prog record, it sounds like Yes and ELP having an intellectual debate with Steely Dan and Tortoise. It’s the other surefire album of the year. How awesome is it that there are two already?

(3) Music Go Music – speaking of OTT, these guys are genuinely preposterous. Fronting the band is Gala Bell, who’d fit somewhere between Florence and the Machine and Blondie. Which is a horrifically trite thing to say, but sometimes it helps. The band make balls-to-the-wall pop music in the vein of Abba and some kind of late 70s hair-metal band. There were times in their last show, at ULU, where my only possible response to what was being presented to the audience was bemused and uncontainable laughter. And times where I was literally leaving my jaw hanging open. A completely astonishing and fairly unbelievable band. You shouldn’t go see them if you’re not a fan of ‘pop’ music. But then, you shouldn’t go see anything, if you’re that silly.

(4) Laura Gibson – Laura’s just amazing. She did a session with rockfeedbacl that we’ve nearly cut – I’ll probably put it up here once we’ve done it. She writes beauttiful songs with a heart of yearning optimism, unclouded by conceit: her lyrics run liltingly under the fingerpicking with a kind of childish honesty, tempered against a wisdom-aged depth of perception. All of which makes me want to write hugely pretentious sentences about her music.

(5) Surfer Blood – Dan Monsell, our Head of Live at rockfeedback, books some awesome bands. And the best ones for my tastes fall into two categories – sometimes he goes folk (the Peggy Sue boat show was perfect for me!), and sometimes he catches trendy and quirky bands from the ‘States just before they break. Surfer Blood are in the latter camp – uplifting melodies, a sprinkling of Vampire Weekend, maybe a little Pavement, but basically a core of great songs sung by a great new band.

(6) Johnny Flynn – I’m lucky enough, so far as Johnny Flynn goes, to share an office with his management at Transgressive, and so have heard a good few of the songs on the next LP. It’s going to be absolutely astonishing. ‘Nuff said.

(7) Caitlin Rose – From Nashville, Caitlin feels like one of the ones who grew up on the other side of the tracks in that divided city. Her latest EP, Dead Flowers, holds the promise of somebody who’ll be able to bring country music through to a different audience. ‘Answer In One Of These Bottles’ is just brilliant – a bold voice and slightly careless sense of humour…

(8)  Lawrence Arabia – Lawrence (or James really, isn’t it odd when singers become the name of their bands?) was playing support at the Beach House gig I mentioned at the top there. I’d heard his album ‘Chant Darling’ already, but wasn’t prepared for quite how beautifully it all came across live. There’s a similar mastery of dynamics to fellow kiwi Liam Finn, but the songwriting is taken in a different direction. I’m going to add ‘Chant Darling’ to the albums of 2010 too. I’m going to have trouble figuring it out by the end of the year…

And that’s all for now! Let me know what you think of them if they’re new to you… and if not, let me know if you agree!

• COUNTLESSS Club Rockfeedbacks and other shows at THE LEXINGTON. Literally beyond counting. Highlights included Underground Railroad, The Subways (January), Todd [VIDEO] & Part Chimp [VIDEO], The Rakes (February), Acoustic Ladyland (April), Miles Benjamin Antony Robinson [VIDEO FROM SXSW] (May), Blue Roses [VIDEO] (July), Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes [video below], Health [VIDEO inc footage from a gig at Tufnell Park] (August), Pulled Apart By Horses, That Fucking Tank (massive Bruce Springsteen fans) (September), Cymbals Eat Guitars (November), Rumble Strips (December)
• My personal favourites, the ROCKFEEDBACK SESSIONS, this year’s highlights being Alessi’s Ark, J. Tillman [video below], Jess Bryant [VIDEO], The Dodos [VIDEO], Mumford and Sons [VIDEO], Laura Gibson (absolutely awesome).
• SXSW 2009 – Austin, heat, music, cigarettes, music, frozen margehritas, music, Austin… we filmed Graham Coxon in a hat shop and a record store [VIDEO]. We interviewed Daniel Johnston in a park, and he played us an acoustic song or two there. We filmed A Hawk and A Hacksaw on the porch of our B&B [fricking AWESOME VIDEO]. We talked to the old school too – Echo and the Bunnymen, New York Dolls and Dinosaur Jr. And I chatted to Buck 65 for nearly an hour (personal hero). AWESOME.
• Camden Crawl 2009 – the most intense city festival. Was introduced to new favourite thing ever, Peggy Sue, in a park [video below]. Kasms and Pulled Apart By Horses blew the roof off everything [VIDEO]. And the Rumble Strips played in a pub [VIDEO].
• Pulled Apart By Horses – deserve their own bullet point. We caught up with these guys at the Camden Crawl, for the xbox show we booked with them, at the Lexington for a rockfeedback show, for a session, playing on our festival stage at Leeds, reviewing albums for us with facial expressions alone, and being found on our office floor the morning after a heavy night at the Lexington downstairs. Best band of 2009.
• Hinterland Festival 2009 – we stayed in a terrible youth hostel in Glasgow, but the upside was the excellent music in Glasgow’s astonishing array of awesome venues. Filming Fanfarlo under a bridge [video below] and Slow Club in the back of their tourvan [VIDEO] were highlights, though.
• The London Eye – we filmed four acts (all signed to the wonderful Bella Union) whilst on The London Eye… we caught awesome acoustic sets with The Low Anthem, My Latest Novel, The Acorn and Ohbijou. Video coming soon!
• Primavera Festival 2009 – the best festival on the planet. We filmed and chatted to Sonic Youth [VIDEO]. And Lightning Bolt’s first show on a stage [VIDEO]. A whole Sunn 0))) set, plus their first ever video interview. Deerhunter in their hotel room [video below]. And a thousand things too amazing to list. If there’s one place I want to make sure I visit in 2010, it’s Primavera and the wondrous Barcelona (surely the world’s best city?)
• The Pixies – we filmed the bloody Pixies. We can rest now.
• iTunes Festival – we filmed the first two weeks of the iTunes festival – an easy highlight for myself was Oi Va Voi, who are brilliant [video below].
• Field Day & Underage 2009 – both in Victoria Park, London; both brilliant. Mogwai were awesome, if slightly too quiet really. Toumani Diabate was astonishing [VIDEO].
• Bell Orchestre – a random but captivating find, we filmed them at The Garage. Two members from the Arcade Fire, and absolutely brilliant. A lovely interview too, although I was a bit nervous in this one! [video below]
• End of the Road Festival 2009 – this is my influence on rockfeedback – I bring the folk! Bob Log III was an eye-opener, and a full set from Fleet Foxes was awesome (as well as seeing J. Tillman in the teepee tent). It was also here we discovered Laura Gibson – our director nearly lost his legs when she stated singing, and we promptly booked her for a session. We also interviewed a convicted murderer, in the shape of T-Model Ford.
• Transgressive 5th birthday at Union Chapel – Johnny Flynn, Jeremy Warmsley, Mechanical Bride, Dan Michaelson and the Coastguards, Graham Coxon. One of the best shows of my life. Followed by the DJ set to end all time, with fellow conspirator Tom Hannan, at the Buffalo Bar.
• Xbox Reverb Shows – there were loads of these, we’ve been booking the acts and filming them, but my favourite was the Pulled Apart By Horses show, mostly because I got to see a whole Sky Larkin show, and was promptly thoroughly converted.
• Jarvis Cocker Makes An Exhibition of Himself – one of the odder ’shows’, this involved burlesque dancing, poetry recitals, a circus, hula-hooping and all sorts. And an awesome Jarvis Cocker set at the end of the three days.
• Rockfeedback On A Boat – an awesome show, which cemented my love of Peggy Sue. And it was on a boat!

This first draft is in the run up to my NYE celebrations, and I’m running over! Posting now, and will update with links later! Links now in place. Phew – there were a lot of them! Hope you enjoy, looking forward to what 2010 holds!

UPDATE 1st Jan, 5pm – added a load of embedded video links – it looked pretty boring without!

• Make More Lists – this is a start
• Make an acoustic EP by the end of March 2010
• Run another IKTOMS event at the end of March / start of April
• Play a set of my own material once a month
• Go to a gig on the old IKTOMS scene once a month (starting with TABARNAK, The Great Indoors, We Love…, MNYC, Folkadot, BAOBABS etc)
• Give an album its ‘proper listen’ once a month (sitting down with an appropriate beverage and doing nothing but listen and sip)
• Keep reading (I’m on a book a week right now, and loving it)
• Write more – I wrote a few pieces for the Rockfeedback end of year and end of decade articles, and really enjoyed it. Plus, as you well know, the world needs my opinions.
• Drink less. Smoke not.

And some more I’m sure, but I’ll be happy if I make the above happen. It helps that most of them are fun, and it’d be a sad failing indeed if I can;t make myself do things I actually want to do.

So – let me know if I’m failing!

But then, I want every gadget I come across, and I’d probably never use it. For now I’ll stick to the online version…

Give it a shot for some musical divertisment (is there an english version of that word?). And when it gets old, try to play Ohio like a piano.

Golden Hour Book II

The book is put out by the publishing arm of the rather splendid Forest Cafe – one of my favourite places, ever. I’ve played some of the best gigs of my life in the forest cafe, at the Edinburgh Fringe with Soundbites (now known as Unstable Promotions), then the next year on the IKTOMS Tour, and by myself for a Golden Hour show (which happen once a month).

This is only the second ever Golden Hour Book and compilation, so I’m incredibly happy to be featured. The track was ‘Goddess of the Rain’, it sits alongside tracks from 19 other acts, including good friends of mine and yours – Robin Grey and Jonny Berliner.

I’m looking forward to settling into the written word too – I know I’ll love what Benjamin Morris and Ryan Van Winkle have to offer for starters. And a big shout out to Ryan, who’s the reason I know about the cafe and what they do. If you’re ever in Edinburgh, make sure to make a stop to Bristo Place and the Forest Cafe – the most supportive artistic community I’ve found.

And if you are feeling flush, and would like to support what the Forest do, please do feel free to buy a book – all the profits go to making more cool artistic projects happen

The complete win-over was being wowed by their barndance hoedown of a launch paty (they hired out a barn in Hertfordshire, and coached us all out from Kings Cross to the middle of the countryside for a night of cider, festival burgers and hay-raising stomping). Along with the line dancing, the revelry and general gorgeousness of being out in the middle of the countryside in such a great setting, we also got treated to collaborations with Laura Marling, King Charles and even Chris Pollard, who we only previously knew as being the loveliest tour manager on the planet.

It started, other than listening in to the growing hype around the band, with their their set at the iTunes Festival (earlier this year at the Roundhouse in Camden), and their opening set for the incredible End of the Road festival in between (more on End of the Road soon!).

Somewhere in between all of those gigs it became a good idea to do one of our rockfeedback sessions with the guys too. Where I’ve not successfuly edited it out, you can sometims see my face asking the interview questions between the songs… Check it out below

And if you’ve not already – buy the album! It’s a rare folk gem, and well worth doing that whole physical format thing for. Who cares about internet streaming anyway?

I was pretty weirded out by this at first. I’m naturally the least organised person in a room… I procrastinate, prevaricate, pontificate and do various other things with letters coming between p- and -ate (prate, pollenate… ummm…). I’m doing it now look. Thinking of clever words to say instead of writing a blog post. And I’m fairly confident this blog post is a justifiable form of procrastination, away from another, more important, real-world task I have on.

But I eventually came to a realisation. I’ve pretty much found my own, personal, oft-touted and never-achieved nirvana state of organisation. I’m right on the balancing point between utter chaos on the one side, and mind-numbing databases and spreadsheets on the other. I’ve done it! I’m here! I’m organised and creative at the same time!

The other realisation was that this blissful situation (trust me when I say it won’t last long) is the result of no particular creed or strategy. In fact, this halcyon hinterland has been reached by straying from the path a number of times, each time taking just a little of the old method with me, whilst learning a new discipline. I temporarily feel like a GTD ninja.

So whilst I subscribe to the overall theories of none of the below, training in their ways has always left me a level up in the way of the GTD. Now I just have to concentrate not to look down, and to keep on training.

(1) GOOGLE TASKS – Google took over what I used to use RTM (Remember The Milk) for – namely the actual LIST of things to do. The genius thing about google tasks? You can use it straight from your gmail inbox (as you could with a RTM plugin). And even better – you can quickly and simply make a task from an email – and whenever you access that task in your todo list, you can click straight through to the relevant email you need. Google Tasks supports multiple lists, but I find I get confused doing this, so I stick to just the one list. I also don’t use it for everything. I use this task list for long-term jobs: things that need explanations, where you need to go and see what was said in an email. I still don’t feel like I’ve juiced google tasks for all it’s worth though – the fact it ties in with my google calendar is something I’m yet to make use of. Google have some great tricks up their sleeves, I’m sure.

(2) EMAIL POLICIES – I’ve been getting a bit better with how I act on emails. I get around 50 to 60 legitimate emails a day. Some of them take an hour to prepare for and reply to, others 2 minutes, and still others I don’t need to reply to at all. So the new policy? I archive anything I don’t need to reply to as soon as it’s been read, so it’s out of my hair. I also reply to anything that will take me less than 2 minutes straight away, no matter what I’m up to at the time. This second policy has got me into some difficult situations (10 emails at 2 minutes each is 20 minutes out of whatever I was working on, and sometimes I shouldn’t really be dropping the ball for that long). However, I find policies work best if you stick to them in all cases except where it’s obviously paramount you break them (at which emergency point no policy will be helping you anyhow). And 90% of the time, replying straight off to these emails removes 90% of the tasks on my list. A short list of 10 tasks is much easier to prioritise than the longer one of 100. Even if it took 2 hours to clear the first 90 emails, at least they’re out of your hair.

(3) PAPER LIST – It’s old fashioned, it’s messy, and it’s deeply, deeply un-GTD, and possibly even luddite. But I need my paper lists. These lists have EVERYTHING on them. Things like ‘organise a gig on an hot air balloon’ and ‘pick up 4 AA batteries’ and even ‘this man gave you a business card last night, find out who he is’. And the satisfaction I get from scribbling one of those entries out? It’s an indescribable amount more than ticking the checkbox by something digital. It’s the peak of GTD bliss. I can hear the sound the pencil makes as it effaces the offending and completed task. (Yes, that’s right, I use a pencil. HB.).

(4) ITERATION – this is possibly the most GTD thing I do (GTD as a concept being credited to David Allen, and this kind of constant re-evaluation being key to what he talks about). Every day, every single day, I rewrite my paper list, from start to bottom. It means that anything that’s been on their too long becomes a guilty rewrite – I either have to get it done, decide that it’s no longer worth my time, or actually DO it. It also helps me figure out what it is I’m going to do that day. It’s probably the most important thing I do every day. It is, however, utterly boring – so it’s definitely number 4 on this list.

(5) NOT DOING THINGS – this was the best idea I ever had. I think that all GTD is aimed, at the outset, at giving you free time to do the other things that you love. But the end result is always a draconian system from which you can never retire, and which will leave you always with a task to complete. So at any point I so desire, I completely ignore every system I’ve ever built up, and do exactly what I want to do. That’s often catching up on my google reader account (that way I feel marginally productive – it’s relevant news! – it’s culture!). Or buying a can of coke. Or spending 30 minutes getting as far as I can on Desktop Tower Defence. My innate sense of guilt and productivity always leads me back to what I have to get done, and normally I’m a much happier, more productive person for it. Obviously sometimes I spend a day reading blogs and beating the 154th wave of oncoming enemy troops with a newly upgraded squirt cannon – but I kind of treasure those days. Like the days you watch half a season of Friends with nothing but a ting of pringles and some Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream. Those days are probably more important that all of the 50 combined ‘productive’ days that came before.

Yeah, so, um – I might go do some washing up. I’ve been putting it off this whole time. Feeling guilty about that now.

Then, over the same weekend in September 2008, we ran the festival again, this time with the noticeably strong hand of a good team of people behind it. It was ambitious – two floors again – but this time across TWO DAYS. Both days were great, but we felt the pressure of it all, and ended up making a bit of a loss. That year we put on over 100 acts.

All of which brings us to this year, on Sunday 27th September: the latest iteration of the festival. I couldn’t be more excited. We’re sticking with the age old mantra “if it works, definitely change it round, utterly and completely”. We’ve got quite a few changes in store, and two in particular that change the way the whole festival will work. I thought it might be interesting to talk about them – quite a few people have asked me about the festival and how it all works, and I think it demonstrates what made (and makes) IKTOMS so different to everything else that went (and goes) on in the London acoustic scene…

(1) FREE ENTRY – this year we’ve opted for free entry. In honesty, the only reason we ever charged money was (a) so that we could pay the bands, and (b) so that we could do cool things like make t-shirts and CDs, if we made a profit. We’ll miss the IKTOMS CDs and t-shirts, but I think it’s misleading to always charge money. Let’s say we charge 100 people £10 each for the day. Even if we have no costs at all, that means there’s £1000 to split between 50 bands. That’s £20 per band. That’s about £5 per person. And that depends on making 100 people think it’s a good idea to part with £10 for a load of bands they’ve never even probably heard of.

Compare this with a free entry festival. Everybody that shows up is, in a sense, £10 better off than they would have been if we’d charged. We don’t have to pay a door person for the day. And rather than playing to 100 people, the acts could well be playing to 200 music loving members of the audience. Not only are the band playing to a packed out audience, but their chances of selling a CD are doubled, and the atmosphere of the whole event becomes more carnival, more celebratory.

(2) VENUE AND LENGTH – The Cross Kings served us well for two years, but this year we’ve opted for a change in the venue, to the Vortex Jazz Club. It’s for a few reasons, but the main amongst them is that we wanted a venue with a touch of prestige, that idea of getting the great acts we know and love from our little scene into a wider limelight, simply by moving up the venue tree. Also the Vortex has a jazz piano – I can’t wait to see some of the bands playing on that! We’re also sticking to a day this time, to keep the crowd more concentrated, and keep our energies up. It’s hard to get people in London out to a venue twice in two days.

This isn’t to say I’m a staunch advocate of the model in any and all situations. I ran UNPLUGGED as a pay-for-entry night once a week, every week for 2 years, and it was a better event for it: the acts got paid, and the door fee gave a kind of exclusivity to the nights. They were gigs with *quality* acts, it seemed to say.

This time round, though, what we really wanted was a celebration, a coming-together, a creative free-for-all (puns intended). The feedback we’ve had from all our ventures (UNPLUGGED, Wired, the IKTOMS Tour of 2008, the IKTOMS CD and the festivals) has been that it’s great to have a confluence of a good number of the many talented acts that make up our ’scene’, somewhere both curated and yet ‘open’, that felt as if it had some significance and an actual relationship to the peopl involved.

Some of this is also a backlash to the nights that have sullied the reputations of honest ‘door tax’ nights. Every upstart London musician has played the night where they’re told to bring 20 people all paying £5, and receive 50p per person if they bring more than 25. It’s good to show what you can do for free. If musicians make the choice and can control the ‘free’ ways in which fans can interact with them, then they’re ten steps closer to profiting from rather than being exploited by things like online music piracy. Perhaps we need a musician- or fan- approved status for nights, granting them a ‘fair-trade’ seal of approval (this is something I’ve discussed doing with Siobhan from the Green Note Open Mic a few times – please make a go of it if you can think of a good way to make it happen!).

So it’s a festival with a few weighty decisions at its core. But they all belie one simple thing: we want this festival to be amazing, great fun, and free. Click on through to check out the lineup and location and suchlike, and come and support some great music. You can use the imaginary £10 you save to buy a couple of CDs that might just make you a convert to the next big thing, or a fan of a deserving and talented unknown musician in our midst.