Ladies and gentlemen, 3mins30secs...

We weren't about to leave you with nothing. Musick is dead, but in its place is 3mins30secs, a brand new blog that picks up where Musick left off.

CLICK HERE PLEASE

The day the Musick (blog) died...

That's it. It's over. Musick is no more. Thanks to everyone who read it and commented, but it's time to move on...

See you soon maybe.

New Musick Monday

Right, is this some kind of pathological disorder we're dealing with here? Do you want to make us track down each and every one of you (yes, all twenty!) and talk sternly at you for ten minutes? For fucks sake, what's going on? How can a song as instantly catchy and indescribably amazing as 'Better Than Love' by Hurts enter the charts at number 50? How? It defies belief. Sure, Villagers missed out too and the chances of Sleigh Bells denting the charts was up there with Susan Boyle's next covers album featuring a cover of Aphex Twin's 'Windowlicker', but Hurts! Seriously, come on. We should put an end to all this, but we love you and we forgive you.

BUY THIS

Gemini by Wild Nothing

Chillwave or Dream Pop or Summer-sounding Songs With Fey Boys Singing Them is big business right now. Well, when we say 'big business' we mean it sells very little but it generates a lot of press. Wild Nothing, aka Jack Tatum, has been lumped in with the rest of them and for the most part it's a fair comparison, but there's something a bit more '80s indie about him then, say, Toro Y Moi. Gemini is his debut album and it features the stone-cold amazing, 'Summer Holiday', a cover of the Cliff Richard single...KIDDING. It's not as good as that. The rest of the album doesn't quite live up to it, but it's a slow week and we're running out of energy, so just buy it, yeah.

IT'S A REALLY QUIET WEEK, SO MAYBE JUST LISTEN TO AN OLD ALBUM

DOWNLOAD THIS

'Five Trees (The Horrors Remix)' by Chapel Club

The original version is fine too, but a bit too Editors-esque for our liking. The Horrors remix adds some nice keyboard effects, puts some distortion on the vocals and generally makes it all sound less Editors-esque. We're not sure if this version is available to buy but if not you could either listen here or buy the original and play it simultaneously with something off Primary Colours and you'd get the idea.

Truffles, anyone?

Who doesn't enjoy a good scrap? Well, there's a bit of a humdinger taking place at the moment between the never-knowingly subtle M.I.A and New York Times journalist Lynn Hirschberg. Basically, the New York Times magazine ran a fairly scathing 8,000 word piece on M.I.A in which Hirschberg repeatedly framed the Sri Lankan-born rapper as some massive hypocrite. This reached it's zenith with an extended paragraph in which M.I.A describes the injustice of the world whilst ordering some fancy Truffle-flavoured chips (Trufflegate as it has now become known online). M.I.A initially retaliated by posting the journalist's phone number on Twitter, which she wasn't too happy about, obviously.

Well, M.I.A has since posted recordings from the interview which show Hirschberg ordering the chips, not M.I.A (LIKE THAT'S THE MOST IMPORTANT THING HERE!). To be fair to the singer, she does acknowledge this fact and also posts other recordings and links to previous New York Times pieces. The best thing to come out of all this, however, is a brand new track that sees M.I.A spitting fire in Hirschberg's direction. 'I'm A Singer (Haters)' is a brilliant drip-feed electro monster that rides a massive sample of Various Productions' 'Hater'. In the song, M.I.A mentions how journalists shouldn't be thick as shit, goes on a bit about politics ("Lies equals power equals politics") and also seems to refer to Hirschberg as "racist". This could run and run.

Power play

Apparently this is the first single from Kanye West's fifth album, Good Ass Job. After all the hullabaloo about him 'violating' Taylor Swift's right to freedom of speech, it's nice to have him back doing what he does best.

This is 'Power' featuring Dwele:



This probably won't be online for long so get your ear holes around it NOW.

EDIT: It's gone...but you can hear it here

WARNING: This video features a lady playing guitar

This here is the video for Rihanna's new single (in the US), 'Rockstar 101'.



Rumour has it that her label have already got Rihanna working hard on a 'poppier' follow-up to last year's Rated R, a record that showcased her harder edge (i.e. she wore black a lot and talked a bit about shooting people). In all honesty, this campaign has at least given Rihanna a bit of an edge when a lot of other pop stars have faded into the background like some fairly pleasant wallpaper. Either way, Slash looks hot in this video, right?

Twisted Firestarters

We've always had a slight problem with Arcade Fire. Sure, Funeral had its moments and some of Neon Bible was OK, but the general fawning of critics mixed with THE VERY SERIOUS expressions the band seem to wear at all times made them slightly hard to love.

Regardless of our general sense of "meh", the band have somehow decided to carry on recording music and two brand new tracks have found their way into a shop in Glasgow. Let us explain; basically, a man called Chris Ward was in a record shop when he found a white label vinyl with two brand new Arcade Fire songs. Pretty amazing. These songs have now made their way onto the internet and you can download the songs for free from this here blog.

'Month of May' is an urgent, relatively heavy-sounding warning about winds that blow wives away, whilst 'The Suburbs' is a more obvious Arcade Fire track with bar-room piano and a typically lovely melody.

Expect some 5* reviews when the album emerges, probably in a Leeds branch of WH Smith.