Being an instrumental band, the naming of songs can be a bit indirect and somewhat haphazard. ‘It’s Ryan Giggs’ is regarded by the band as their worst song title which despite being funny at the time has since been renamed as ‘Slow News Day’. The name of the band itself even has a somewhat unusual tale as it was randomly selected from a list of scientific journals.

Sad Xmas Present has been made available as a free download from today onwards from the Advances in Mathematics bandcamp where you can also get Sad Xmas Present as a limited edition CD for a mere £3.50 that comes hand wrapped and is one of just thirty copies.

Flux is a 7 track album and is instrumental in its entirety. I’d be lying if I said this album didn’t sound a little bit too much like the second half of Sigur Rós’ () but this doesn’t take away from the fact that this album is an outstanding achievement for an unsigned debut. Riddled with crescendos and whirring guitar riffs reminiscent of early Bloc Party, the dynamics in Flux show an unrivaled maturity in their music.

Broken Cities have already put together a music video for The Godfather, the 4th track on Flux.

We Are Transient isn’t officially released for another 2 months so only the first 57 seconds can be heard on bandcamp at the moment (pretty uncool). However, I’ve embedded an earlier single entitled ‘Big Love’ that was released in June 2010 which has been made available for free download (pretty cool).

It’d be fair to say We Are Transient has a much heavier feel to their earlier singles such as ‘Big Love’ and ‘Out Of The Rabbit Hole’ in which electro aspects featured more predominantly in the music and had a streak of Crystal Castles or even The xx about them.

Any Londoners reading this, Delooze will be playing at 93 Feet East on the 14th of July.

Released 11th July 2011.

Tre Burt and a Big Gust of Wind is to put it simply really quite amazing. It’s essentially a one man and a guitar act (bar a couple of tracks with banjo) as shown in the somewhat humourous artist name but this certainly doesn’t stop him from creating some of the most engaging music I’ve heard in quite a while now.

There’s a soothing quality to Little Mornings, something to listen to forget about the rain outside. This 13 track masterpiece certainly has a lot of potential for mainstream success but this is someone I can’t see selling out for a mobile phone company advert and even better, Little Mornings is currently available for free download from his bandcamp.

Towards the end of 2009, Tre Burt and a Big Gust of Wind also released the ‘Paraplui’ EP. I wish I’d discovered this gem earlier now because it also definitely deserved an IMF feature. Listen to and download Paraplui for free now on bandcamp.

Bon Iver, Bon Iver’s progress has been tied into the construction of a new recording studio created in his hometown of Wisconsin and this album features some unusual track names corresponding to cities such as Lisbon OH, Perth and Hinnom, TX from previous tours. At the forefront, as always, are Justin Vernon’s archetypal harmonized vocals underpinned by his sublime acoustic chord patterns but with the mandatory occasional synth pad/electronic beat in the background we’ve come to expect.

Bon Iver is also set to tour again this year: a North American tour in late July/early August alongside The Rosebuds and a European tour in October/November with Kathleen Edwards. Tickets are already on sale and can be found through these links.

The album was recorded in a cabin in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York and then finally put together back in the Netherlands in Zwolle. Reverence for Fallen Trees feels like autumn music, stripped back and almost entirely acoustic this album is capable of transporting you to your very own woodland glade. The album heavily features the ukulele and multi-layered vocal harmonies reminiscent of bon iver as well as the use of the voice as an instrument in itself as is so often heard in Sigur Rós.

Reverence for Fallen Trees is still available as a ‘pay what you like’ download on their bandcamp. There’s also a beautiful looking vinyl/CD pack for sale there for €18.

The follow up album is still in progress but The Black Atlantic are much keener on the live front and have toured the U.S seven times. They also maintain a steady flow of gigs in Europe and are currently on a tour around the Baltic Sea through Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.

The reason I think this EP is worthy of a feature is because these artists have done what any good remixers should, they’ve made the song their own. You can really hear their own unique musical stylings in each of these tracks from Hong Kong In The 60′s stripped out (almost MIDIish), yet detailed, wistful sound emanating through in ‘Air Filter’ to ‘Shooting Horses’ big beat, somewhat tropical feel being applied to ‘Croydon’, a song with an entirely different time signature to the original. It’s easy to see that a lot more work has gone into these remixes than someone sampling away with their computer in a bedroom one evening as we’re so often seeing at the moment.

It’s taken me a while to get around to this one (released 22nd November 2010) but it’s still an awesome remix EP and it’s still free to download at 320kbps from bandcamp.

Throughout the next seven days the special release, which demonstrates a rare acoustic side to this often diverse indie quintet, is being offered for free (no email required) and on a pay-what-you-like basis before it will be removed from their website – so if you don’t want to miss out on this limited-time opportunity be sure to go and download your copy now!

Known and critically acclaimed for their extraordinary creativity and attention to detail after showcasing their 14-minute “mega-single” which is currently still available for free download, Spring Offensive have not only created another brilliant piece of art for their loyal fanbase, but have also taken the pay-what-you-like model one step further. Their proposal states that listeners who contribute an amount above just £4.00 will, in return, see their full names credited on all physical copies of their upcoming full band single ‘A Stutter & A Start’. That single is due out for release in April- of which each and every contribution for ‘Between Me & You’ will help record, release and promote.

Between Me & You’ showcases five tracks in all: stories of companionship, guilt, confrontation and decisions. A record that deals with the realisation of two people growing slowly apart and the increasingly emptier void between them.

Whether you choose to pay-what-you-like and have your name included on their upcoming single or even if you just download it for free, make your decision quick because it’ll only be available for this one week!

They’ve got a beautifully well balanced live set up; a male and a female singer/guitarist, an incredible bassist and one of the tightest drummers I’ve seen in a long time. The result is a tight-knit entity producing some outlandish tracks with clear musical influenced from Sigur Rós and Radiohead being held together with some really quite intricate bass lines.

Milk have recently released their second EP Oubliette and have made it available for free download on their bandcamp along with the first self-titled EP. They’ve also been giving out free copies of the Oubliette EP at gigs.

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.