I’ve written before about the need for filtering in the online music world – there’s just too much music and not enough time to leave it all to chance. As Jeff Schmidt just expressed it on twitter – “curation is vital”.
Which is why I’ve just started To The Left Of The Mainstream – a twitter-based music recommendation feed. I’ll post at least once a day, sometimes more, with links to great artists, with the proviso that all the sites will provide full track on demand streaming tracks or downloads. They’ll mainly be from Myspace, last.fm and Reverb Nation…
So if you’re on twitter (you should be), you can ‘follow’ TTLOTM on there, or just click the link and then grab the RSS feed to follow it in google reader or safari or wherever. I’m sure you’ll find loads of great new music through it.
Stylistically, it’ll run the gamut from singer/songwriters to ambient music, rock bands to chamber works, electronica to nu-jazz. All the kinds of things I love. There’ll be no ‘buy-ons’, as it’s only going to be of any value at all if the sole criteria is quality…
That doesn’t mean I’m not taking recommendations – make those in the comments below please (rule #325, you can’t recommend yourself! ;o)
Recommendation: Tom Middleton (aka Global Communications). CD “Lifetracks” is highly recommended. Ambient electronica. http://www.myspace.com/tommiddleton
Thanks Mike, just listening now – cool stuff! There’s a bit in the first tune on his myspace page where the melody is SOOO like ‘Shout To the Top’ by Style Council… which is no bad thing…
This solo stuff is rather different from the Global Communications stuff, no?
Some of the stuff on his Myspace is actually quite different to Lifetracks. Shinkansen and Optimystic are on there though. Yeah Global Communications is much more ambient. 76.14 is a great album. “The Groove” has an immense bass part. Very funky.
Joel Ackerson! Great singer/songwriter, the lyrics really put you in places. I highly recommend his new album http://www.myspace.com/joelackerson