Seeing as I’m living in the Netherlands at the moment, why not feature a Dutch band? The Black Atlantic are a four piece band originally from Groningen fronted by Geert van der Velde. Reverence For Fallen Trees was their debut album released as a free download back in the late summer of 2009.

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.

‘Other People’s Toys’ is a 5 track EP released two months after Special Benny’s debut album Toys. It features some unique remixes of tracks taken from this album by the likes of ‘Specialist’ and Johnny Beverton.

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.

In recognition of this loathed/loved occasion, Oxford’s unique and eclectic Spring Offensive have released an intimate EP entitled ‘Between Me & You’, which will be extremely limited in its length of availability – for a period of just one week starting from today!

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!

I was lucky enough to chance on Milk two Mondays ago at The Water Rats and was seriously impressed and slightly shocked that they were only on second on a bill of four. Luckily they’ve been rebooked for the 28th and seem to be a bit of a regular occurrence at this venue so I’d thoroughly recommend going along.

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.