A band I’ve been meaning to feature on this blog for well over a year now, Hong Kong In The 60s finally released their debut album ‘My Fantoms’ digitally on the 2nd of May and will also release it physically on June 6th. Influenced by early electronic pop, 1960s Chinese music and European film soundtracks, the 12 tracks include bittersweet pop songs, dreamlike instrumentals and even excerpts from a mouse opera for children.

Hong Kong In The 60s have made a song from the album ‘You Can Take A Heart But You Can’t Make It Beat’ has been made available for free download from here.

First official music band from Mars Argo.

Mrs Stadler was first released on Technology is a Dead Bird as featured on this blog around a year ago. Read about it here.

Botany, in my opinion one of the most unique artists to be featured on this blog to date is to soon release his debut five track EP, Feeling Today. Referred to by Spencer Stephenson himself as hillwave, Botany produces his music from his house atop a hill surrounded by trees and the Texas horizon; it definitely comes through in the music.

With word already of a future full-length scheduled for Spring 2011, you can expect to hear more news of Botany on IMF.

Water Parker – Botany

Spencer’s first encounter with recording came from a Casio and a cassette at age 4. He’s into the idea of recycling sounds and his tracks are reminiscent of a lost age of antiquity buried by modern life. There’s a lucid, tribal quality and the fourth track of the EP and track four, Bennefactress really captures the sound of Four Tet, a sound which I had previously believed to be inimitable.

Released 15th November 2010.

Spring Offensive, a 5 piece university band with a difference, are definitely a band to look out for. They’ve just brought out their third release of the year, The First of Many Dreams About Monsters which despite technically being a single is over thirteen minutes long and composed of five seperate parts.

It’s been referred to as a ‘mega-single’ and is certainly just that. The First of Many Dreams About Monsters is somewhat of a concept record and Spring Offensive have made it known that it was inspired by On Death and Dying, the book by Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Küber-Ross that first documented the ‘grief cycle’. Each of the five parts to the song represents a different stage of the cycle; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance but that band have pointed out it isn’t about Küber-Ross or the loss of a loved one but about the potential insensitivity of writing about grief.

The First of Many Dreams About Monsters has been made available as a free download by the band and their earlier releases are available from the Spring Offensive myspace.

Released 20th August 2010.

Special Benny, an extraordinary British band I first featured on this blog almost a year ago are finally ready to release their debut ‘Toys’, a largely instrumental 9 track album. Toys has been a long time in the making and nearly didn’t happen at all. Special Benny first released the Rumblestrip EP back in 2006 but the band started to lose momentum as different members followed their seperate paths in life. A send off gig was played and then nothing more until late 2008 when Special Benny discovered a newfound enthusiasm for their music and went onto eventually complete Toys.

Toys opens with Air Filter, an absolutely blinding track released as a single last Autumn that sets the tone for the rest of the album perfectly. Special Benny themselves have said their musical tastes vary greatly and this really comes through in Toys. There’s a certain lucid quality to their sound and it’s hard not to get drawn in by it, particularly in a somewhat repetitive track like Sine and Step. Either way, you can tell right from the first listen how much studio time has gone in to this recording to make Toys exactly what Special Benny had envisaged down to the finest of details. I’m really glad that this band didn’t fall apart before they truly got started, there’s no stopping them now.

Released 6th September 2010.