Kevinisabastard.com turns one this week/month/nowish so as a celebration and apology here is the run down of the musical year of the bastard.

Song of the Year: Panic! at the Disco, “Girls/Girls/Boys”

My song of the year comes from last year. Fight me. Spotify claimed that this was my song of the year and that’s as valid a reason as any to go with it. I talked about it way back in my first month of blogging and it’s stuck with me through the year. Yay.

Songs worth a damn: (in the order that I thought of them)

• “Weekend” – Vérité
• “Kisser” (Lazerdisk Remix) – Step Rockets
• “Uptown Funk”- Mark Ronson & Bruno Mars
• “Bugatti” – Tiga
• “Pony” – Zak Waters
• “Calling Out” – Penguin Prison
• “Lonely Souls” – Zoax
• “To the Top” – Twin Shadow

Album of the Year: Chromeo’s “White Women”

I have been a huge Chromeo fan for like 8 years at this point. I’m not gonna say I knew about them first or that they were better when nobody knew about them, but it was an amazing thing to find Chromeo and it’s been amazing to see the development. When “White Women” came out I was listening to it twice or three times a day. I bought the deluxe merch pack with my first pay check of the summer. It was a massive album for me this year.

Lovely albums:

• “Trouble in Paradise”- La Roux
• “Client Liaison” – Client Liaison
• “Down to Earth” – Flight Facilities

Hip happening EPs:

• “XIII” – Zoax
• “Four Guys Having Fun … Nothing Sexual” – Alabaster
• “The Element Yes”- Meanwhile OST

And as always, let’s see what I can give you for free based on these lists.

Straight off the bat, Colin from Alabaster is my brother so I’m not going to go mad pushing them because that just seems like poor form. I will say that I really liked that EP. If you click here you can download their debut album “Nobody Wants It” for “name your price” aka probably zero. The EP is a solid improvement but the album is a taster of things to come.

The Lazerdisk remix is free and that leads us on to something else. Some of these tracks were supposed to be on Free Free Free volume 4, which I started weeks ago, but since that’s taken so long I’ll throw that on here too. Tis the season and all. You’ve got a “Bugatti” Remix in there too.

So that’s it. It’s been a year of this so what have you thought. Everything is welcome in the comments, I’m always looking for feedback and recommendations for new, old or free music.

Peace

Gimme a shout if any of those downloads change. I had some free Penguin Prison remixes but they are now part of the single pack for “Calling Out” and Vérité’s remix pack for “Weekend” which ya can get on iTunes if you’re some sort of mad bastard.

I’m in my obnoxious pink jocks. I’m supposed to be studying and I’ve played old FIFA all day. So we all know that that means, it’s time for blogging. I said quick but that’s a lie. I have a ton of shit I want talk about and I really need to do it soon or nobody will care anymore. The struggles of attempting to be relevant. Okay so we’ve got three topics, two gig related and one new music.

First up is La Roux. Last Thursday, as anyone who saw my drunk tweets will know, me and Matty Moo went to see La Roux. I bought my tickets months ago and people might remember I wrote about “Trouble in Paradise” when it came out back in July. You can head back and read that post by clicking here. So I was really fucking stoked for La Roux. I’ve had a super busy couple of weeks and the gig put me under pressure with college but it was 100% worth it.

Support were a band called Meanwhile. And they were amazing. Amazing to the extent that we were worried that they might upstage La Roux. I don’t really like when that happens. It’s awesome to see a new band that you’ve never heard of but I feel like if I’ve paid to see someone and they’re not as good as the support then they’re doing something wrong. I really enjoyed Meanwhile because they’re a similar vibe to La Roux, kinda 80s throw back, maybe more so than La Roux. They were rocking the suit jackets with rolled up sleeves. I liked that they went all in. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the idea of “authenticity” when it comes to music, what that means and the stock that people put in that kind of shit. Meanwhile made me think about what I thought was authentic and I’ve kinda concluded that it’s just important to fully commit to doing what you wanna do. Then you’re being authentic in that you’re being yourself to max. That’s kind of a tangent but it’s been an idea I’ve really been mulling over for a few weeks and how 80s inspired band get a lot of shit for being 80s inspired.. Anyway, Meanwhile were fucking excellent and I’m super stoked for their new EP which comes out on Monday.

As excellent as Meanwhile were, La Roux was better. One of the best gigs I’ve ever been to. I’ve never seen a crowd as pumped for something. Everybody knew all the words and actually danced. I love gigs where people actually dance. Elly Jackson is so fucking cool. She has this immense swagger about her and she sounded perfect. Her band were super tight and really slick. The guitar player was my personal favourite. Seemed like a total odd bod. They played pretty much all her songs, new and old in pretty much equal parts. Of the first album the singles were the highlights, “Bulletproof” was immense and “I’m Not Your Toy” has always been one of my favourites and I wasn’t disappointed. Of the new stuff “Sexotheque” was the pinnacle. So good. I feel like I need to say more but that’s all I’ve got. It was just insanely good.

Speaking of insanely good, has everyone seen the new Zoax video for “Lonely Souls”? It’s been out for a few days so I’m not going into mega serious detail about the full video. I really want to mention one thing that I really liked. I love the appearance of the Irish flag. I like the video overall because I think it conveys a lot of the energy that Adam has always brought as a lead singer. I always felt that if I could bring people to see Time is a Thief that they would instantly join me in being their biggest fans and it seems like Adam has brought that with him to Zoax if Twitter reactions are anything to go by. Obviously, I’m an Adam fan boy but I think people who have seen either band will understand.

Anyway, back to the flag. There are probably only about 7 or 8 really cool Irish people (go on, count them) and I think Adam is one of them. Zoax are mostly sold as a London band, but I think it’s important for Ireland to claim at least a little bit of Zoax and support the boys. So I was really pleased to see the Ireland flag appear and get waved around. And there’s a fucking badass screenshot of it. Brightened up my day. It goes without saying, it’s a fucking banging track too but I expected no less.

Okay, finally, and this will be very brief because fuck me this is a long blog, Flight Facilities are coming to Dublin tomorrow night. Fucking buzzing so I am. My preorder pack of cool bits and bobs arrived the other day (click here and scroll down to “The First Class Experience”). One of my favourite things a band have done in a while. I’m really excited to wear the socks tomorrow night. The new album is super chill and has a short but sweet appearance from Kylie Minogue. I can’t think of a lot else that you could want. I thiiink tickets are still available if anybody wants to stalk me and/or see them.

So that’s it.That was a super wordy blog. I don’t have any free music this week but I am including a playlist of sweet tunes to get ya’ll through the daily struggles that are life. If it seems mismatched that’s probably because it is.

Peace.

Ok ok. I admit that I have a musical man crush on Penguin Prison. In my defense, the dude ticks a lot of boxes in terms of my musical values. That sounds a bit weird but bear with me here. So his music is fucking awesome. It’s fun and funky. He has an unreal voice. His output is immense. Crucially, in terms of why he’s such a big feature here in the kevinisabastard.com offices ( I write as I lie in bed) is because he puts out a shit tonne of free music. His first album will cost you but it’s excellent. So good that I bought it on vinyl. But he does a huge amount of remixing of other people’s songs, he shares remixes of his own stuff for free and he has a bunch of 40 minute plus mixes which are 100 percent on point.

I’m sharing his soundcloud with this entry and that initially seems like a cop out, but look at the amount of great music that you get there! There’s the Viceroy and Elephante remixes of his new single “Calling Out”. Super sweet long mixes of cracking disco bangers. There’s excellent remixes of artists like Kylie Minogue, Jamiriqoui and Lana del Rey. There’s a Penguin Prison cover of motherfucking Sade.

Follow this link. Download the truck load of free music. Enjoy. Then come see the dude with me if we’re ever lucky enough to have him come to Ireland or, for a strangely high percentage of you, go see him when he goes to Brazil.

Most importantly, show Penguin Prison love. He’s doing an awesome thing and he’s doing a lot of it for free.

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Two weeks of no tunes means a bumper playlist of free music for my Brazilian followers and everyone else I suppose. There’s a stream through this one, starts off electronic and moves towards rockier sounds . You’ve got the new Chance the Rapper in there, two Jhameel tracks and the usual mix of remixes and covers. Enjoy and download for the total cost of nothing. You’re welcome.

If you’ve got music that you want shared gimme a shout either in the comments or on twitter. I suppose you could shout at me on the street too if that floats your boat.

Also, if I’ve shared your music and it is not supposed to be floating around for free, get in touch and I’ll remove it.

Peace

It’s been a busy few weeks with college and I haven’t had the time to trawl through soundcloud for any real gems. I have been thinking about music though and listening to a lot. One of the trains of thought is part of a larger life issue of feeling older and whatever. Taylor Swift had written “22” by my age and what have I done? I try not to get into that one because it’s tragic but I have been thinking about my teenage years. It’s almost a decade since I turned thirteen which is a trippy idea. That got me thinking about what was popular then, what I liked and in retrospect, having access to a much larger bank of music, what I think that I might have liked if I’d heard it.

With this in mind, I’ve started a Spotify playlist. It’s called “It’s 2005 and I’m feeling fine”. If you can travel back in time and decide that you want to win the heart of a thirteen year old me, this is the playlist to arm yourself with. It’s all very skinny jeans and all comes from 2005 or earlier, in general trying to stay this side of 2000.

So I’m going to keep adding to it and just gather the tracks that would make a younger me happy. I’d love to hear what anyone thinks of it or what tracks would make it onto your own early teenage mixtape.

UPDATE: That spotify list shooooooooooould load up. It just takes a few seconds coz Spotify is too busy sucking it’s own motherfucking dick. I hate Spotify right now

Key to getting free stuff is the email address that you never use. You have to sign up for news letters and shit but it still costs you nothing. There’s one track in this batch that needs an email address but I’ve done the hard bit and found the tracks. All that you have to do is download and enjoy.

 

Obviously stealing music isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it’s not very nice. So here is a playlist of free tunes so nobody has to be a criminal. I tried to cover a variety of genres so there’s something for most people. The tracks include remixes, covers and originals from artists and groups of varying degrees of fame. It’s all about the ethical cheap vibes.

1. Bud Light – William Bolton
2. Blue Jeans – Lana Del Rey (Penguin Prison Remix)
3. Faded – ZHU Ft. Sean Dee
4. PYT – Michael Jackson (Bixel Boys VIP Edit)
5. John – Bowens and the Wood
6. Douchebag – Skizzy Mars
7. the new karate workout – wait what
8. My Lovin’  (you’re never gonna get it) GoPro Live – This Club
9. Radio – The Royal Concept
10. Erdbeer Mund – Franz Ferdinand

You can click on any of the tracks to go straight to it on Soundcloud where you can find the download or you can click here to listen to the full playlist

I’m not even going to apologize. Poor form on the blog writing yet again. I have the final installment of “Dirty Danish Delights” in the works as well as a post about an old album from an artist who I think should be bigger than bleedin’ Abba. Is it Abba or ABBA? Fuckit.

I wanted to post something short and sweet, just to touch base with you guys, make sure you’re doing ok and so you can see that I’m alive after an intense few weeks of Electic Picnic and graduation. Woop Woop. So here is what I’ve been listening to:

“Penguin Prison” by Penguin Prison.

Penguin Prison just one dude kicking ass and making music. Fucking love the whole album. I bought it on vinyl because I thought that would make me cool.

“The Walkyr” by Cult Called Man.

Sweet single by a cool band. They played two gigs at EP and I didn’t manage to see either of them. My life is filled with shame. This track is really impressive because of it’s completeness. That sounds like a super douchebag of a sentence but give it a listen and you’ll understand. Lots of nice little details and quirky sounds.

“Five Seconds” and “To the Top” by Twin Shadow.

One of my EP highlights. I like to think that Twin Shadow is what Bruce Springsteen would sound like if he lived in a future ruled by Prince.

“Girl” by Beck

One of my favourite tracks from one of my favourite albums by one of my favourite humans. Beck was fab at EP and this was the pinnacle.

So that’s it. What is the rest of the world listening to? Gimme some suggestions and i’ll start a positive rumour about you

xo

So my second album was honestly the one I was looking forward to the most, “Lukas Graham” by Lukas Graham. And it was pretty disappointing. I heard Lukas Graham like two years ago with a cool kinda live version of “Drunk in the Morning”. It was just a video of the dude himself and the band just playing the song in his gaff. They looked like scaldy piss heads and he just had the most amazing voice. I was so excited about it. I checked out some other tracks and wasn’t that sold on them. Decent, but underwhelming.

I bought the album off the back of “Drunk in the Morning”. The thinking was that nobody could have written such a good song and not be able to write anything half as good. Lies. There’s a kinda weird faux gansta thing going on and it’s just a bit tragic. I like to pretend to be the pimp mac daddy as much as the next white college educated man but this is upsetting. The album has interludes. I got one listen though and I can’t say I see myself returning to it for a while. Even the album version of “Drunk in the Morning” is disappointing.

So, while I’m not sharing a great album, I am sharing the original video which is worth the heart break. Actually, I’m not even sharing the album at all. Fuck it.

So much for up before the weekend I suppose.

So for the last couple of years I’ve kinda had a hard on for Scandinavia. Music, TV, women, everything important. So when I went to Denmark last week I had the plan to buy some albums and come back and share them here with all the Brazilians who have been reading my blog this month. I had a short list of artists that I knew pretty well and I picked four albums that I thought seemed worthwhile. One was Alphabeat so we’ll ignore that. That leaves three albums for me to share with yissers.

So for Part One of Dirty Danish Delights I’m gonna go with The Blue Van’s “Man Up”. Wikipedia reliably informs me that The Blue Van are a Danish “blues-rock band”. The album’s from 2008. It’s not ground breaking or avant garde or anything like that but it’s a solid album of pretty solid songs. A bunch of the tracks have been used in ads for shit over the years and that’ll give you the idea. If I was to compare it to another album I think I’d go with Orson’s first one. Kick ass singles and then the rest of the album maintains the vibe without straying from what is probably a “dad rock” sound. I like it though and I’m fairly certain I’m not a dad so don’t worry.

Give the album an auld listen and  I’ll love ya forever xoxox at least listen to the opening four. Well worth it.

The Blue Van – Man Up