Stupido Shop is, to my mind, the best record shop in Helsinki. I visited Finland the week before last and walking into Stupido was like seeing eMusic made physical – all of our favourites were there: Glass Candy on the counter; a vinyl copy of Boxer pinned to the wall and “Paper Planes” coming over [...]

Hearing “What You Won’t Do For Love” on the overhead speakers in the deli across the street today absolutely made my morning. Then finding out that we have a significant chunk, if not all, of Bobby Caldwell’s entire discography made my week. And THEN finding these youtube clips pretty much made my whole [...]

photo via Jason Bergman’s Flickr
Terminal 5, Bowery Presents’ new factory-like behemoth in Hell’s Kitchen, ended up being an oddly perfect venue for a Sunday night noise freakout.

So the Plug Awards show is over, the winners have been announced. Here’s my wrap up of the proceedings with pictures as clear as I could muster with my tiny digital camera from my spot 20 feet back from the stage.

I first attended the Plug Independent Music Awards in 2005, shortly after I had moved to New York and joined the ranks at eMusic. I couldn’t think of a better event to mark the beginning of my employment at a company that is so focused on the passionate spirit of music.

I love Kelley Polar and I want you to do so as well. He’s a tough sell, I know. “Classically trained viola player that makes over-orchestrated electronic pop music punctuated by his own untrained voice.” Sounds like a recipe for disaster, right? Not at all. What resulted when Polar stepped behind the boards for his [...]

The music policy in the eMusic Europe office is usually dictated by whoever gets to the stereo first (and it’s right by my chair, so I have a natural advantage here) but when we can’t agree on anything we listen to FIP.
FIP is a French radio station, based in Paris (the initials stand for [...]

Over the course of the last six months or so, I’ve fallen back in love with going to see bands live. I think it started in Iceland, where I was hearing new (and often unusual) bands every night, and it’s continued unabated since then. These days, I try to primarily check out bands whose albums [...]

In today’s additions, do not overlook Coptic Light, whose 2005 self-titled record is a modern math-rock classic, and at a bargain price of three tracks (in 45 minutes) to boot. Coptic Light were — they are no more — members of Storm & Stress (a Don Cab offshoot), Antioch Arrow (such a great goddamn band) [...]

Constellation, one of Canada’s most respected independent labels hit the site today, and per usual I’m hugely excited. A sampling of the highlights below…

It took me awhile to get into The Eyes of Stanley Pain (which we added today, along with two additional subsequent Download releases). At that time in my life I was listening to a lot of metal and industrial and had little interest in other types of electronic music. This album was one [...]

I’m a music person because of my father, a musician, and I’m an indie-minded guy because of a dude named Butch Lazorchak. I grew up outside of Blacksburg, Virginia (home to Virginia Tech), which had an amazing — and now out-of-business — indie record store called the Record Exchange. It was there that I bought [...]

Just before Christmas I came across a news story that made me laugh, so forgive me for a brief foray into British politics. Nick Clegg, the new-ish leader of the Liberal Democrat party* appointed an advisor to help him connect with the needs of everyday people. And who did he choose as his commonplace person, [...]

While eMusic has some good material made by Ekkehard Ehlers already on the site (namely März’s Wir Sind Hier), we just recently received his solo releases on Staubgold.
They’re better.

We received a number of Loren Connors discs on the site in the past few days. Normally, I would’ve just written it off as avant-guitar sketches that I’m not that interested in. But after reading Marc Masters’ feature on him in The Wire this month, I decided to take a listen to some of these [...]

When you live with a person, you also live with their music. My life has wound from my mother doing the ironing to the Beach Boys to my boyfriend’s obsessions with noise and psychedelia, via several other people’s sounds; Scottish Kate who cared about her huge collection of vinyl the way ants care about their [...]

So much to talk about. Let’s do this:

In five years, the Octopus Project have gone from an Austin oddball instrumental trio to A Band With Buzz. The buzz was built on the back of their live show — which, damnit, I still have yet to see — and they’ve regularly become That Opening Band people end up liking more than the headliner, [...]

In all the hubbub of yesterday’s new arrivals (Picastro, mostly), I missed out on seeing (and talking about) yet another notable Scandinavian label that has appeared on the site. Everybody, give a warm welcome to Häpna.

A great day for new releases, with fantastic new material from Akron/Family, Shout Out Louds, Besnard Lakes, Dirty Projectors and a host of others.