The first Sigur Rós album I heard was Ágætis byrjun, which means ‘an all right start’ in Icelandic. Sigur Rós are an Icelandic band that plays a genre of music that is classified (by those who love to classify such things) as post-rock, minimalist, ethereal music. I found Sigur Rós’s music mainly downtempo and soothing but also sad at times. I heard several of their albums, including the curiously named () (released in 2002), Takk (in 2005) and Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (2008). That last title translates into ‘with a buzz in our ears we play endlessly’. Nice, isn’t it?  I don’t know why, but the band’s music sometimes reminded me of a huge, widescreen film where the camera is static and the visual is of a wide open landscape.
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It’s only a few days into 2010 but I can’t wait to hear some of the new music that’s going to come along pretty soon. On my playlist are tracks of bands that I know are all set to put out new albums this year and some of the tunes that are doing overtime on my burgeoning playlist I know are precursors of what we’ll get from them in the coming months.
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I don’t know how many people read this column regularly (four, perhaps?) but ever since Download Central began a little over a year back, I’ve heard one common response: “Why do you write about bands that we’ve never heard of?” This has become such a refrain that I’ve often felt a twinge of self-doubt. Am I really writing about completely obscure bands that no one knows or cares about? If that was indeed true, what was the point of writing the column?
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I hadn’t really heard the music of Delhi’s popular rock band, Them Clones, before getting a copy of their debut album, love. hate. heroes (EMI, Rs 195). One reason for not having heard them was, of course, the fact that although Them Clones have been a hot act on the gig circuit, I haven’t been to a rock concert in many years, preferring the infinitely more sedentary option of listening to music via downloads and most typically on my mp3 players with the phones stuck deep into my ear canals.
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For many recent weeks there was speculation that Radiohead would be putting up another album, an LP or perhaps at least an EP, online for free. Spoilt by 2007’s In Rainbows, which was put up for free downloads by the band for three months, fans expected another album that they could download without paying any money. Technically speaking, In Rainbows wasn’t really free. Read more

Going by what’s been happening thus far this year, 2009 could be a remarkable year. No, I’m not referring to the election results and the formation of the new government — about which, perhaps justifiably, everyone, including the inexplicable stock market, has been upbeat. No, I’m, as usual, talking about music. Going by the new music that’s been in heavy rotation on my playlist, this year’s looking good. Read more

Forty-one years ago, on this very day—April 26—Stephen Stills was at a recording session for his then girlfriend, singer Judy Collins. Stills and Collins, as is well known, had an on-and-off relationship during the 1960s, with Stills having played back-up guitar on at least one of Collins’ albums (1968’s Who Knows Where The Time Goes). Read more

I don’t remember when I last bought an album by a new band from a store. A few weeks back on a stroll through a Gurgaon mall, I browsed the CD shelves in a bookstore and picked up a copy of Radiohead’s In Rainbows. That doesn’t count because I’d already got the album, having downloaded it when the band put up all the tracks on the Internet in October 2007, letting down-loaders decide what they’d like to pay for it. Read more

This column has been getting some flak. Some friends as well as complete strangers have been telling me I write about obscure music and that I have no idea what young people are listening to these days. “Go to nightclubs and pubs,” advised someone, “and check out what they’re all grooving to instead of pulling out funny sounding bands and getting ecstatic about them.” Read more