After warming myself up by listing to the non-randomly purchased Time Is A Good Thing (Denzel and Huhn. Was a lovely way to chill out on this sunny morning), I've taken the first CD from the pile of lucky-dip albums.

Bring Back Tomorrow (Jynxt, 2006)

This is one of the few jewel-cased CDs in the pile. The cover art makes me think it's going to be some kind of Franz Ferdinand type affair. But it turns out to be some not-too-unpleasant mainstream rock.

Good production quality, the lead vocals (Tally Spencer) are clear and melodic; the guitars are driving and dramatic.

There is a certain film-soundtrack feel to the songs. The lead track, Perverted Mind, sounds like it belongs in the credits of the next James Bond film.

I haven't been able to distinguish between subsequent tracks much yet, and there are a couple of other failings - the fact that it is mainstream rock for a start, unintersting lyrics and the use of fade-outs. However, in its favour, I haven't skipped any tracks yet, Tally can certainly belt out the vocals, and some of the intro's are interesting.

While I wait for track 5, Electric Knives to finish, I'll read this photocopied pamplet that came folded up in the case (slightly incorrectly, so that the top edge was getting caught and is now all manky and torn.) Apparently Kerrang! magazine say "Singer Tally Spencer oozes passion over driving riffs and jittery beats. Edgy mainstream rock with great potential." Well, huh, that's basically what I've just said.

Ben Spencer says "We're uniting the ravers and the rockers, we want to redefine the mainstream." That would explain the acoustic-guitar-over-drum'n'bass feel of track 6, The Name. Hurrah for pretentiousness! Except, boo!, when it's not us being pretentious. There is some use of electronica (which is why I mentioned the intros), but in the end it just gets drowned out by guitars. I think the ravers and the rockers should be divided even further, not united, to the point that there is some kind of civil war in which they annihilate each other.

I'm still only on track 8 of 12, I'm getting bored as so far everything has sounded the same, and I've just noticed that the final track lasts 10 minutes. Must... listen... to... it all... Unless that last track turns out to be something special, I'll write my conclusion now: Mix of drum'n'bass & guitars fails to be exciting, but powerful vocals and should be shanghaid to perform the intro/outro to the next James Bond film.

On The Beat! (The KBC, 2006)

Promo CD in cardboard sleeve, stark artwork looks like it could be ska.

Track 1, Poisonous Emblem, promising start with a 1:1 bass drum intro, could be like White Strips... maybe.... nope. Drums. Guitars. For a moment, this track got really interesting in the middle, with disjointed drum beats and a chaotic feel, and I was about to give it a good rating. But then I realised it's because I had loaded up their website and two tracks were playing at once.

Track 2, Not Anymore, more drums and guitars, with electronic beeps in the background. It's a much earthier sound to Jynxt though, the ryhthm is more fun and energetic, I can imagine jumping up and down and dancing to this, were I at all interested in dancing. Nice outro.

Track 3, Trippin, reverby intro, another solid drum-machine style beat. Nice guitar interactions. Male vocals are gritty and shout-along-to-able. The 'quiet bit' bridge in the middle sounds like some ZX Spectrum game music. Quiet enjoying this, but I think it's just because these guys sound inventive when compared to the album I just listened to above.

Track 4, Test The water [their capitalization, not mine], a bit more conservative but otherwise more of the same. I have no idea what he is singing about. Something about my mother ripping me to pieces. A bit boring. Will go and make Janine a cup of tea, back in a bit.

Track 5, Day of Disillusion, A pop beat, cheerful but still earthy. Sheffield rock, I suppose. Derek would hate all this, it's like the Artic Monkeys. I'm getting bored now, this was fun for a few tracks. Track ends with an electronic attempt at sucking my brain out.

Track 6, Busy Hands, skipped it.

Track 7, I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor, this track is, wait, hang on, I'm getting confused.

Track 8, 9, 10, 11 etc, skipped through them Solid beats, some inventive sound combinations (excepting those I accidently made myself), would not object to listening to one or two tracks again (Trippin, for example), but in the end... blaaaahhh!

black daniel

since the sleeve doesn't use capital letters, i'm not going to either. unillustrated white-on-black cardboard sleeve doesn't give anything away about the genre (although i'm pretty confident it isn't going to be pop.) fortunately only 5 tracks, so hopefully I won't fall into short-attention-span-itus like I did do with the two previous albums.

track 1, chelsea's teardrops - bouncy rubbery beat and guitars. vocals and chorus have a rubbery bass. not too unpleasant rock-pop; one might say brit-pop, it's sort of oasis-y but not as miserable. final chorus has multiple layers of electronic noises.

track 2, children caned unable - again, a grungy, electronic bass guitar sounds and synth sounds. is this title some kind of pun? so far the vocalist is doing our trick of putting on lots of filters do disguise lack of singing talent, which works but in an annoying way.

track 3, say hello - a lighter track, verses are talky-to-the-beat rather than singing, like me for the most part on the welcome to jhenge album. i'm not really interested in what he is talking about. possibly upset about something, except the music is upbeat. and repetitive. his voice is annoying me a bit now.

track 4, go on get it - more rubbery synth sounds, more grungy filtered vocals, chorus goes 'la la la la la la', so i'm going to skip this one.

track 5, tears to sip on - light acoustic guitar over a gentle drum-machine beat, some beeps. sounds like a lazy steam-powered guitar string factory. this track would be pretty good if it had polly harvey on vocals. but it doesn't, so it ends now.

conclusion: i wouldn't punch someone for putting this album in the cd player, and would possibly allow them to listen to it. some kind of comment about the pacing that i can't quite formulate, vocalist should be replaced with, just, like, more rubbery synths or something.

edit: hmm, i was mostly positive in my comments. let me make it clear that i'm not going to listen to this album again, hopefully.

Dragonette

Promo cardboard CD sleeve, with the four band-members mugshots in grainy b&w; could be folk music or anything really.

Track 1, I Get Around - TB-303 stylee rubbery bass intro sounds nice, female vocals are sweet and slightly cheeky, like an elf. Rest of the song kicks in and fills with sound, quite enjoyable.

Track 2, Competition - Punctual electronic intro becomes homely pop, like a cross between Moloko, Gwen Stefani and Freezepop. So, again, quite enjoyable.

I just typed 'Dragonette' into Wikipedia, expecting it to come up with an article on the mythological / Dungeons & Dragons monster, but it actually took me straight to this band. They are described as part-Canadian, part-British electropop.

Further tracks continue in similar style, perhaps less memorable but this album may end up in my library. Will inform you if another track is of particular note.

Getting a bit bored by Jesus Doesn't Love Me, started skipping tracks :/ Black Limousine has a nice mix of sounds, but a little disorganized structurally. Just noticed that the album art thumbnail in media player shows the promo CD, but with 'Artwork TBC' printed across it. Gold Rush - skipped. You Please Me - slower paced, sounds okay, will skip for now.

Last track, Marvellous, are we going to end on a high? Bangra samples, fakey R&B talky-singing, like the worst of Stefani, horrible, am going to stop it now. Shame, I might have considered putting this in my library to play when I need something unassuming in the background to drown out the neighbours. I did like the first two tracks though.

Construction Time Again? - something in construction

This looks like some kind of compilation.

• Blacktrap - Winning Speech. It's rock. Might listen to it if I was driving through the Nevada desert as it's quite a, well, driving track. Situation unlikely to happen.
• The Silent Legaue - Aeroplanes. Intro is some lazy brass instruments over strumming guitars and generic drums. It's just, sort of, gentle pop. She's a victim of aeroplanes, apparently. Not objectionable.
• Loney Dear [is that a typo?] - The City The Airport It's a song. Great review, eh? Some bloke singing with some emotion about, well, the city and the airport, nice melody. This is a remix; whoever C.S.S. is has added a trancy boops and wheeps over it (trancy in a nice way, not in a club way.) [What?] (Shut up.) [It's not unpleasant to listen to, though.]
• Damn Arms - Homewrecker. Earwrecker more like. Punk rock. Since that all sounds the same I'm sure you can perfectly imagine this song in your mind.
• Other Passengers - Sick Sick (You, Me & Everyone Else) Dark, slow drums and bass with wierd audio-vocal squiggles in the background, with a feint, seething subvocal. Main guitars kick in, reminds me a bit of Rosetta Stone The Tyranny of Inaction, possibly playing in the Bang Bang Bar from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Evolves into a more conventional misery-guts slow goth-rock. There's a tension between the plodding bass and the fluid vocals and guitars which keeps it moving. Keeps going for 7 minutes. Yes, I liked that.
• The Jealous Girlfriends - Hieroglypjic Another slow track, this one is dream-like indie pop-rock (I suppose this could be the 'space rock' mentioned on the back of the sleeve, but I associate that term with eX-Girl, which this is nothing like.) The CD sleeve, by the way, shows the houses of parliment blowing up, at night time. I can imagine this track playing whilst it does so in slow motion. Perhaps that image and this track reminds me of The Pixies playing at the end of Fight Club. Track ends with just raw vocals and piano. Another track I liked, hurrah!
• Christiansilva - The Chopping Board At first I thought Christian Rock, then I thought QOTSA's Mosquito Song, then I thought 70s glam rock, then I thought fuck you if you don't know what you want to be, I'm bored of your fucking chopping fucking board.

Will review the rest later, ears getting tired.

Relistened to Christiansilva. It's could possibly be some kind of The Darkness type parody.

• Susu - Steal My Air is just sort of a splungy mess of guitars, drums and vocals, like a rock sponge. I would listen to them if they were playing live in a shady pub conducting a nefarious deal.
• Akira the Don - Hypocrite. One of those "can't sing, so I'll sort of speak rhythmically at you in a not-quite-rap way." I can't think of any context in which this would be listen-to-able. Some attempts at vocal virtuosity. Twat. (It's easy to mock.)
• Kid Casanova - Tearing You Apart. Perhaps I should be using quotes around song titles, instead of italics. There's some kind of dull music playing here. Bland-pop-rock. In the aforementioned pub, this music would be played live whilst the mescaline kicks in and I wobble into the street.
• The Leisure Society - "A Richer Dust". Peripheral percussion instruments (like shakers and those wibbly wooden things) plonk away like clockwork, gentle guitars, singing in harmony, everyone sway your heads from side to side! I wonder what their other stuff is like. No, actually, I don't.

Moving this one to my library for the sake of the handful of songs I do like, and even the naff ones can be listened to without much pain.
Advantage of the compliation format is the variety, which the lack of was the main problem with the above albums.

Edit: I've rather warmed to this compilation, to the extent that I'll happily listen to all of the songs on it. "The City The Airport" in particular is a track that has stuck in my mind (two days after I had dismissed this album, I woke up in the middle of the night with that melody playing in my head.)

Die! Die! Die!

The JDB track "You", but over and over and over again.

• Shouting: Check.
• Feedback: Check.

Had to stop. Will try again later.

Enter (DJ Kentaro)

...much later as it turns out. Went for something else.

Always a bit weary of music by these DJ chappies. So far it's some rather chaotic drum'n'bass. I'll let it play in the background and give you my thoughts when all 16 tracks have finished.

Had to stop. Will try again later.

-Black Cab-Jesus East-

At last, something a bit more relaxing. Hippy rock-pop that plays fairly unobtrusively in the background. The current track is "Another Sun" which is summer-of-love psychedelics meets ambient electronic repetiveness; alright I suppose; vocals are always subdued and filtered which adds to the hippyness.

Decided to copy this one into my library. On the whole, quite creative.

Ghosts===

This is a 5 track promo. "Stay the Night" and "The World is Outside" are strange in that they have strong, familiar sounding vocal melodies, like forgotten pop songs from the 80s. They are at once nostalgic and contemporary. The remainding tracks are okay, on the whole solid, friendly songs but nothing particularly memorable. A nice sound overall, and being copied to my library.