The Man with No Time

Last night I went to my first live gig of the year, at the Institute in Birmingham. I went to see Pentatonix , who are an a capella vocal group that I discovered on Youtube towards the end of last year. About a month ago I saw on Facebook that one of my friends from St Andrews was attending their gig in Glasgow, and wondered if they were playing near me. They were, and I was lucky enough to get a ticket (which wasn't too expensive either). I'm so glad I did, because it was amazing. Getting artsy with my camera. The stage was simple, and didn't detract from the music (Credit: David Brown)

It's been a busy weekend, so I'm breaking the posts up a bit to avoid a deluge all at once! Not only was it the final weekend of the 2014 6 Nations, but also the BULSCA Student Championships (more on that tomorrow). Except that I was only able to attend the Sunday of that event this year, because I had a concert on Saturday night! My orchestra, the Leamington Sinfonia, were performing at Kingsley School in Royal Leamington Spa. We had a great program of music, featuring one of my favourite symphonies, and gave what I think was a really good performance.

It's been a looooooooooong weekend of Christmas carols. At this point I'll be happy if I don't hear any more for at least a week, but I know that's probably a faint hope. I guess I'll just have to avoid shops for a while (which shouldn't be hard), and console myself with the fact that it was all for several good causes.

Today I want to talk a little bit about some new musical acts that I've recently found through YouTube. One I've known about for a while, but have sort of rediscovered in the last few weeks, whilst the other two I stumbled across via the magic of the 'associated videos' list that's on the right hand side of every page on YouTube. There are definitely some common aspects to the three groups, but also some big differences. I think all three have really developed their fame through YouTube though; it's great to see that that can actually work (although in at least one case there was another, pretty big factor involved in their success to date).

I'm spending this week in London for a conference, so my girlfriend and I thought that we'd take the chance to spend the weekend in the capital too. It was a good chance to catch up with some friends, and to do something that I've wanted to do for a few years - the BBC Proms in the Park. The Last Night of the Proms, Hyde Park style. (Credit: David Brown)

It's been a long time since I had the opportunity to go to a decent gig. Almost five years in fact; the last one was Feeder at the Warwick University Student's Union in 2008! St Andrews isn't exactly blessed with decent opportunities, and I never knew what was going on in Dundee. Edinburgh and Glasgow weren't even worth looking at until I had a car. But now I do, and several months ago my friend at work asked if I fancied going to see "We Are Scientists" in Glasgow. It seemed like ages away but gradually snuck up on us, and yesterday the two of us made the trip across Scotland to go see the band. We Are Scientists on stage at the Oran Mor, Glasgow. It was an awesome gig. (Credit: David Brown)

After last weekend's manic musical mayhem, last night was the culmination of all of that work. My last ever University of St Andrews Symphony Orchestra concert was a great success, and one of the best orchestra concerts that I've been part of whilst at this university.

After the Bassoon Quartet concert on Friday, this weekend has seen me massively overdose on music. Seriously, it's been crazy.

Today was a rather sad day. But also, in another way, a rather awesome one. At lunchtime today I took part in my last St Andrews Bassoon Quartet concert (or at least, what should be my last one if everything goes to plan). It's been three years since the quartet formed, initially just to do some Christmas busking, and it's been a blast. We've put on some great concerts in that time, and have repeatedly pulled them off with limited, or accelerated, rehearsals. What's more, most of the music has been arranged specially by our members.

Time for a 'music I'm listening to' update. Just like last time, it's prompted by the discovery that two of my favourite bands are releasing new albums. One of those releases is particularly surprising, given that I was under the impression that the band had broken up! I also want to give some more thoughts on a couple of the albums that I briefly reviewed last time around. (Credit: fanpop.com)

In recent weeks I’ve been gradually discovering some new music. A lot of it is new albums from some old favourites of mine. In most cases I wasn’t even aware that they’d released new singles, let alone new albums! I thought I’d share some initial thoughts after a couple of play throughs. Be warned though: I’m very much a person on whom music grows. Sometimes, and there are a couple of cases here, I love a particular song or album immediately. But most of the time it takes some time for me to appreciate new stuff. But in the end there’s a reason that some bands are my favourites. There are quite a few mini-reviews here, so I’ll put them in separate posts and link to them here. Linkin Park - Living Things Keane - Strangeland LostProphets - Weapons Paloma Faith - Fall to Grace The Subways - Money and Celebrity Muse - The 2nd Law

One of my favourite bands ever since I started to listen to music that wasn’t orchestral or on the radio, Muse have somewhat defied categorization and pigeonholing. Almost a spiritual successor to prog-rockers in my mind (which makes me wonder why my Dad doesn’t like them), they’ve never been short of ideas, inventiveness, or character. Nor have they been short on bombast and portentous lyrics, and their work has always been rather bleak and apocalyptic in tone. Listening to their previous 5 studio albums in order clearly shows the growth in both experience and confidence that the band has undergone. “Showbiz” was a favourite from the start, but has rather been superceded by their more recent work, “Origins of Symmetry” I disliked initially but has since grown on me immensely, whilst “Absolution” sees the band start to experiment with different instruments, styles and sounds, and has a couple of stand-out tracks. “Blackholes and Revelations” was, in my opinion, the heigh...

I went to see the Subways live during my undergraduate days at Warwick University. I was looking to see a gig at the Students’ union, and asked one of my school friends, whose taste seemed to match mine somewhat, whether he’d heard anything from any of the bands on the list. He recommended the Subways, and I’m eternally grateful that he did. Album cover for "Money and Celebrity" (Credit: fakeplastictunes.com) The Subways are one of my ‘hipster’ bands. Really good, but you’ve probably never heard of them. I loved them when I heard them live (it was a small gig, my first ever, and the atmosphere was brilliant), and their two albums to date, “Young for Eternity” and “All or Nothing” are full of catchy, almost punk-rock tracks, most of which are worthy of multiple listens. Their new album, like Keane’s, is more of the same. But whereas I found Keane’s new album “” to be boring and predictable, I find “Money and Celebrity” to be exciting. Perhaps that’s a co...

Paloma Faith is one of the acts that people see in music collection (at least the non-orchestral part) and are surprised by. She doesn’t seem to fit amongst the rock, indie, alternative and metal bands that I have tended to favour. However I’ve always had a bit of a soft-spot for people like the Rat Pack members and Michael Buble, and Paloma Faith, although a bit more of an oddity than those acts, fills a similar niche. Album cover for "Fall to Grace" (Credit: entertainmentempire.blogspot.com) I first heard her music performed live on Jools Holland’s Hogmany Show a few years ago. I liked the quirkiness in her performance, and the vocal style that she had. The full album, whilst not a favourite that I’d listen to constantly, was certainly one that I’d pull out fairly regularly when I wanted a change of pace. I, along with many others it seemed, liked what she brought to the industry. However Paloma Faith herself disagrees, and is on record as saying that...

On first play through my impression of “Weapons” is much the same as for the  Keane  albums  – more of the same. However on reflection I’m not sure that that’s true. Album cover for "Weapons" (Credit: idobi.com) LostProphets are another discovery from my school years, and I bought their first album on the strength of the title track, which I love. Unfortunately I didn’t get on with the rest of the album so well, and it’s my least favourite of theirs so far. Their follow-up albums were, in order, pretty good anthemic pop-rock (“Start Something”), very good slightly softer pop-rock with some edgier songs (“Liberation Transmission”), and excellent, mixing aggressive, repetitive hard-rock with more lyrical numbers (“The Betrayed”). “Weapons” seems to revert back towards “Start Something” in feel and tone, at least to me. That doesn’t make it bad, just not what I really enjoy from LostProphets. “The Betrayed” is, in my opinion, their best album, and aft...

Keane have actually released two albums without me noticing, and I only took notice when they appeared on the drive-time show on Radio 2. I loved their first album, was ambivalent towards their second, and didn’t really get on with their third, although a couple of the tracks from it have been real ‘growers’. Album cover for "Strangeland" (Credit: hangout.altsounds.com) Their most recent album, "Strangeland", is basically more of what you would expect from Keane. Soft melodic pop-rock, led by a piano with bass and drums as backing. Overall I’m underwhelmed by both of this album, as it's just a bit samey. Perhaps that’s symptomatic of me just listening through it though; the tracks from “Perfect Symmetry” that I like only really jumped out when I listened to them in isolation, and perhaps the same will happen here. I’ll give the album more time, but I’m not hopeful however. Highly successful as they are, it seems as though Keane have gone wit...

Linkin Park were a band I listened to a bit at school through my friends’ CDs, and through Kerrang TV which was my preferred choice of background music during study leave for my GCSEs and A-Levels. I always thought that their music was ok, but not amazing. A bit too angsty for me, and full of pseudo-rap that didn’t do much for what was then a mind focused on either orchestral music or proper guitar led bands. However after hearing the single “What I’ve done” on the Transformers soundtrack, I decided to check them out again. They’ve gone through a bit of a reinvention, becoming a bit more mellow in their sound but keeping the lyrical style, and also become a bit more political. Album cover for "Living Things" (Credit: culturetease.com) “Minutes to Midnight” (from which “What I’ve done” is drawn) was a decent album with a couple of stand-out tracks. “A Thousand Suns”, their next album, seemed to follow rapidly, and again had some excellent tracks. A bit of ...