Two magnificent gigs at the Liverpool Sound City festival played a part. Seeing Frank Turner at the Cathedral Crypt inspired my Folk Punk 2011 podcast, and thrashing along with Black Lips encouraged me to research my 66 greatest raw & raucous garage rock tunes of all time.

Folk punk and garage rock were to be represented in my end year list, alongside a wide range of folk, blues, bluegrass, country and world music – all stuff that I’d been researching intensively throughout the year for my Vintage Radio roots music programmes. If you’ve not yet seen my 100 songs of 2011 I hope you’ll check it out : there’s a lot of great music, a fair portion of which you’re unlikely to have seen anywhere else.

As 2011 came to a close I assembled a podcast of UK indie & punk from the 1980s. Again this was a real labour of love, revisiting so much of the music that I was into back then, and being reminded of just how good some of it was.

So what can you expect to see on here in 2012 ? I’ve got no route map : it depends on what inspires me. I’ll be looking to bring you some of the best new music as well as sharing with you my journeys into the past. On my 50th birthday in February I’ll be hosting a gig in Liverpool and I hope to find plenty more north west bands and artists that I can promote on this site. I shall be making plenty of use of spotify playlists as well as downloadable podcasts. And I’ll probably pack in the mp3 corner and instead make more frequent blog posts about new music (which may or may not include free mp3s).

Porcelain Raft are so good that it’s hard to compare them with any other band without doing them a disservice.

Labels like ‘dream pop’ and ‘shoegaze’ have been applied. But again, labels don’t tell half of the story. The songs all convey different moods and emotions. Some are haunting, some are evocative.They also apparently relate to different visual images. According to the record company Secretly Canadian, “the project’s genesis lies in this visual imagery. Over the past year, Remiddi has compiled a catalogue of images — gathered from the various nooks and crannies of the internet — that have served as notes, inspiration, context and a map for Porcelain Raft’s music.”

At this point it should be mentioned that although it has the sound of a band Porcelain Raft is in fact one man, Mauro Remiddi. Remiddi was born in Rome and now lives in London, and has worked on a variety of intriguing projects since the late 90s. As Porcelain Raft he’s released a series of EPs and singles over the past couple of years (all available on Bandcamp), and is now set to release his debut full length album Strange Weekend on January 23rd, with a UK tour starting from January 17th.

Here’s a mixture of older and newer songs. They’re so consistently good that I’ve tried to include as many as possible, though if I had to recommend one it would be Dragonfly.

Talk To Me (free download here)

Porcelain Raft – 04 – Talk To Me by Acéphale

Amateur’s feeling

Porcelain Raft – Amateur’s Feeling by stefanvice

Come Closer

Porcelain Raft – Come Closer by nofearofpop.net

Shapeless & Gone

Porcelain Raft – "Shapeless & Gone" by ccconr

Gone Blind

Porcelain Raft – 01 – Gone Blind by Acéphale

Come As You Are (free download from Bandcamp)

Porcelain Raft – Come As You Are by pmwtumblr

Dragonfly (free download here)

Summer Moon

And the new deeply unsettling video :
Put Me To Sleep (free download to facebook followers)

Here’s the latest batch of free and legal downloads that I’ve handpicked for your enjoyment ! Let’s begin as usual with a couple of exclusives :

DOWNLOAD : Lotzie Weaver – The Footie Song

The Footie Song by LotzieWeaver

DOWNLOAD : The Clever Little Tramps – I Was Sleeping

I Was Sleeping by clever little tramps

The footie song is from the Wirral songwriter’s recent album Caravan Dogs. He has an amusing bio on his website. He says “I’ll also be recording a new album as soon as I can get the spare cash to get into a studio” – so please buy the record and give him your money. The Clever Little Tramps (also from the Wirral) haven’t released any records yet and I can’t tell you much more about them except that they’re two brothers.

Staying in Merseyside, The Flamin’ Mamies are five girls who could’ve stepped straight outuva swinging jazz joint in the 1930s or a Texan dance hall in the 1940s. While Joe Rhead recorded his debut 5 track EP Growing Signs “in my Dad’s basement with nothing more than sheer love, heartache and a lack of natural light”.

Latest tracks by The Flamin’ Mamies

Latest tracks by joerhead

Wooden Shjips and Howler are both from the US. But I saw Wooden Shjips in Liverpool last month, and Howler are touring the UK in November and December.

Wooden Shjips – Lazy Bones

Wooden Shjips – Lazy Bones by The 405

Howler – I told you once (free download from their website if you give them your email)

Daughter is Elena Tonra from London. This is the lead track from her Wild Youth EP due for release on Communion Records on 21 November – and it’s a grower !

Daughter – Love

Daughter – Love (taken from ‘The Wild Youth EP’) by ohDaughter

The next two bands are also from down south, but are both on the bill for the closing party for Liverpool Music Week at the CUC on 11 November.

Fear of Men – Phantom Limb (from Hanna Schygulla Demos)

Phantom Limb DEMO by FEAROFMEN

Bos Angeles – Beach Slalom (from Demo EP)

Bos Angeles – Beach Slalom by 322 on The Pigeon Post

Last week Scotland’s Frightened Rabbit released their new EP as a free download to subscribers to the band’s newsletter, with the announcement of the vinyl being available for pre-order.

A Frightened Rabbit EP by Frightened Rabbit

Finally for a rather lovely mellow sound, check out and download if you want these tracks from Ajimal, otherwise known as Fran O’Hanlon, who’s based in Newcastle / Edinburgh and is yet to release anything for you to buy.

Latest tracks by Ajimal

Older posts – with more mp3s – are now on the mp3 corner page.

You’re invited to join me in exploring different kinds of music from across the globe : explosive rock alongside Celtic folk; hip hop and African rhythms; reggae and drum n bass.

All the lists here are my personal selections (though I’d be quite happy to host your own lists, following the same general format – contact me if you’d be interested in this). Obviously the lists aren’t reflective of popular opinion. They’re more respectful of critical opinion, without being a slave to this. Unless a song really blows me away, it’s unlikely to get included; though I’ve seen to it that each list is properly researched and genuinely representative of the subject genre. Each time that I research a list, I discover a whole host of great songs that I’d never heard before, so that I’m constantly expanding my musical knowledge !

Site guide

The core of the site is the lists, which you can see listed on the right hand side. The latest major list is my 66 greatest raw & raucous garage rock tunes of all time. In a few weeks time though I’ll be publishing my top 100 songs of 2011, which will be an amazing collection of music from around the world. This time for the first time I’m sharing with you before making my final list the songs which are vying for inclusion (artists A-K and L-Z). So you’ll get more time to listen to the songs, plus a chance to help me decide what should be in and what should be out of the final published list.

Lists from 2010 include my ’100 greatest songs and ballads of the last 100 years’, an exciting and ambitious list featuring some outstanding songwriting; 40 heavy duty funk classics; and my selections of top tracks from 2010. The most popular page though remains by some distance my 50 greatest traditional blues songs.

Just as lovingly compiled, if less authoritative, are my playlists, which cover new African music and the golden age of jazz.

The podcasts page contains downloadable podcasts of recent music from Merseyside; protest music from recent years; bass heavy club music; Latin American music; and traditional blues music. The latest addition here is a podcast of rowdy folk punk music released in 2011.

For the very latest music, check out the posts on the home page. Slightly older posts are archived in the mp3 corner and Band of the month archive pages.

To keep the site reasonably uncluttered, some lists have now been moved to a separate site – just click on music to die for archive to find them.

Finally, it’s great to get reactions : please leave a comment at the bottom of the page when you’ve had a good look at one of the lists (and let me know of any links that no longer work).

Nick