Music from the Hearts of 'Space

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[HTRK photo by Emma Pop]

Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Gareth Branwyn writes on technology, pop and fringe culture. He is currently a Contributing Editor at Maker Media. Recent projects have included co-creating The Maker's Notebook and editing The Best of MAKE and The Best of Instructables collections.


I love making serendipitous musical discoveries via MySpace. It's amazing how many unique, talented, unsigned bands there are on the site. Okay, they are somewhat overwhelmed by the Tbits of less-than-unique-and-talented bands, but that makes the accidental discoveries all the happier. Musical taste is clearly and utterly subjective, so YMMV, but here are a few of my recent MySpace finds.

 

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Lunabee & Swan I love how bands categorize themselves on MySpace. Belgium/UK duo Lunabee and Joanna Swan describes their music as "Melodramatic Popular Song/Trip Hop/Electronica" and that's pretty accurate. The two artists, Lunabee the musician, Swan the singer, actually met on MySpace. Swan bumped into Lunabee's page (again with the serendipity) and sent her a message saying she wanted to collaborate. A week later, an album's worth of music showed up in Swan's inbox and Lunabee & Swan were born. Their song "Smoke Rings" blew my wig off the first time I heard it… and the 20th time (I gotta get stronger toupee tape!). It's like Annie Lennox on the lower register, Shirley Bassey in the middle, and Prince wailing away up on top. I have to sit up and listen to any band that lists Poulenc, Ella Fitzgerald, and Tod Browning's Freaks as influences!

 

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ZAZA My pal, Pete Kennedy, of the most-excellent psychedelic folk duo The Kennedys, turned me on to these 21st century shoegazers, another duo, this one from Brooklyn. Pete says they've only done a handful of gigs, but they're already generating a buzz, on both coasts. Echoey, ethereal singing over smeared-out gothy soundscapes. The male singer sounds a little like Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips (never a bad thing in my book). One reviewer described their sound as "like drowning with a smile on your face." Yeah. It's like that.

 

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HTRK My favorite "MySpace band" of the moment is HTRK, pronounced "Hate Rock." This trio of young ones from Melbourne, Australia makes a primitive, minimalist form of noise rock (vocalist Jonnine Standish's percussion instrument is a single maraca and a floor tom). They also do some poppier fare, like "Fascinator," the first song to prick my ear. When I started listening to their MySpace jukebox a few weeks ago, Fascinator had 80,000 listens. It's now shot up to over a quarter million. At least some of those are not me. HTRK just released a three-song MP3 bundle "Ha-Panties," which includes the tracks "Ha," "Panties," and "Fascinator." It's tasty, GBP2.97, and deliciously DRM-free.