Starting from right now, we’ll be posting a regular round-up of the best new music we’ve found hanging around in the internet ether and putting it here for you to steal/share/download (depending on how you see these things). And we’re calling it Jookbox.
Illustration by Holly Dinsdale
We’ve not relied solely on our own instincts either, receiving recommendations and contributions from a number of our favourite blogs, each credited below the chosen song. I don’t know why I’m spelling this out for you, you’re not babies.
You can stream the songs individually or download the lot as a zip by right-clicking the link directly below. Enjoy.
DOWNLOAD ZIP FILE HERE – JOOKBOX #1.
Cold Pumas - “Tropical Guilt”
Of Mark E. Smith’s evil school of language, Cold Pumas know the importance of the three R’s – repetition, repetition, repetition. Stuck in a never-ending cycle running laps around Saturn’s rings, they’re in an eternal cosmic race to nowhere, no-waving at the stars each time they pass by. “Tropical Guilt” could loop forever. Somewhere, I suspect, it probably is.
(chosen by Platform)
Happy Birthday – “Girls FM”
Happy Birthday wrote the theme tune to me. For any of you boys who have ever got the tube, been on a night out in Liverpool or studied in the British Library, Happy Birthday wrote the theme tune to you, too. Girls, you’re right, we do have one track minds. And guess what? You’re on it all the time.
(Chosen by Transparent)
Yuck – “Georgia”
Another day, another band from London with buzzing guitars and dreams of summer sun. Just where these chipper kids get their enthusiasm I do not know, because it’s taking every bit of me to even raise a sullen smile in the capital’s winter gloom, let alone come rushing out of the blocks like all of life itself. Soon this kind of thing is going to collapse under the weight of its own orthodoxy, but while bands keep writing indie-pop as effortlessly blissed-out as “Georgia”, I don’t think anyone is going to start pissing on their party just yet.
(Chosen by Transparent)
Grave Babies - “Gouge Your Eyes Out”
They may be called Grave Babies, but the ghosts that haunt “Gouge Your Eyes Out” are monsters; prehistoric beasts coated in deathly black sludge, slowly rising from the West Coast tar pits, charged on fear, loathing and Suicide, headed straight for your sanity.
Grave Babies – “Gouge Your Eyes Out”
(chosen by No Pain In Pop)
Balam Acab - “See Birds”
Could this be underwater love?
(chosen by Don’t Die Wondering)
Protect-U - “Double Rainbow”
With London trapped within a perpetual snow globe, the thought of summer is both a distant memory and an impossible dream, a better past and future equally far away. But soon, through the clouds that rainbow is gonna appear, slowly at first, but then luminescent and fucking ecstatic. I know ‘cos Protect-U already wrote a song about it.
(chosen by No Pain In Pop)
Raw Moans – “Rose Bath”
Don’t Die Wondering recommended “Rose Bath” and for ages I was thinking “how the fuck am I going to write about this?”, because Raw Moans are kinda hard to pin down and make sense of. So I thought I’d check what they had to say about the song on their blog, y’know, get some inspiration, plagiarise a bit. And it turns out they were equally perplexed too, admitting “if all this going-on hasn’t made it clear, I like things which I don’t completely understand”. Saying anything more about “Rose Bath” now seems like a waste of words, so I won’t waste anymore.
(chosen by Don’t Die Wondering)
Trash Kit - “Fame”
It’s uncanny that Trash Kit should sing about Megabuses and being famous, because it’s precisely that combination of things that brought me to London – travelling south by budget transport surrounded by fat people and tramps like Dick Whittington expecting fame and fortune to greet me as if an old friend. As it turns out, the streets aren’t paved with gold and I didn’t get my face in the papers, but I did stumble across the reincarnation of The Raincoats (even though they aren’t dead), which is a victory of sorts.
(chosen by Platform)
Lonely Galaxy – “Have A Heart”
Lonely Galaxy may have a heart, but it don’t half weigh a tonne. There’s a crushing weight of heartbreak coursing through these seven long languorous minutes that’s heavier than a Cormac McCarthy film adaptation. Then again, when you’re alone floating in space, you’re weightless anyway. But what good’s a heart if you’re not going to use it? I guess that’s what a lonely galaxy really is.
Lonely Galaxy – “Have A Heart”
(chosen by Platform)
d’Eon – “Prochaine Station”
Named after a Montreal train station, there’s a neat literalism to d’Eon’s “Prochaine Station”, because, y’know, it sounds a lot like a train and has a slight French (house) bent. And this is that same train that Michel Gondry had sailing into Paris in “Star Guitar”, except this one isn’t heading for the suburbs. d’Eon has his controls set firmly for the heart of the sun.
(chosen by No Pain In Pop)
This list was compiled with love and guidance from Don’t Die Wondering, No Pain In Pop and Transparent.
