The drummer-cum-solo artist will release ‘Horses’, which comes complete with sleigh bells, as a digital download on December 8th, then as a seven-inch vinyl single the following week on December 15th.

Catch Adam Ficek on the road at the below dates:

Monday 5th January 2009 - Leicester Charlotte
Tuesday 6th January 2009 - Cambridge Portland Arms
Wednesday 7th January 2009 - Nottingham Bodega
Thursday 8th January 2009 - Liverpool Academy2
Friday 9th January 2009 - Manchester Ruby Lounge
Saturday 10th January 2009 - Wakefield Escobar
Sunday 11th January 2009 - Birmingham Bar academy
Tuesday 13th January 2009 - Newcastle Academy2
Wednesday 14th January 2009 - Hull Adelphi
Thursday 15th January 2009 - Preston 53 Degrees
Friday 16th January 2009 - Derby Rockhouse
Sunday 18th January 2009 - Castleford The loft
Tuesday 20th January 2009 - Cardiff Barfly
Friday 23rd January 2009 - Sunderland Voodoo room
Monday 26th January 2009 - Glasgow Captain’s rest
Tuesday 27th January 2009 - York Fibbers
Wednesday 28th January 2009 - Wrexham Central

Top photo is taken from aurélien’s flickr stream under the creative commons license.

Unsure if you’ll like them live? They’ve just released a track of themselves doing a stripped back version of single “Don’t Stop” using iPhones and instruments… ingenious we think. Catch the video after the dates below.

Tickets are on sale now, priced between £8 and £9 each. Catch them at:

Monday 26th January 2009 - Cambridge Soul Tree
Tuesday 27th January 2009 - Brighton Audio
Wednesday 28th January 2009 - Cardiff Barfly
Friday 30th January 2009 - Exeter Cavern
Saturday 31st January 2009 - Birmingham Academy 2
Sunday 1st February 2009 - Glasgow King Tuts
Monday 2nd February 2009 - Leeds Cockpit
Tuesday 3rd February 2009 - Newcastle Academy 2
Wednesday 4th February 2009 - Manchester Academy 3
Thursday 5th February 2009 - London Underworld

• 8 names John Lennon used to check into a hotel:

1. Dr. Winston O’Boogie
2. Long John
3. Dwarf McDougall
4. Musketeer Gripweed
5. Rev Fred Ghurkin
6. Dr. Dream
7. Kaptain Kundalini
8. Johnny Rhythm Honorary John St John Johnson.

• The smallest guitar in the world is smaller than a red blood cell and has strings that can be strummed. It was made using nanotechnology.
• Termites eat wood twice as fast when listening to heavy metal music. Well any music with a big pounding beat and fast tempo.
• Elvis once said, I dont know anything about music. In my line you dont have to.
• A Mexican musician, Ramon Barrero, famous for playing the world’s smallest harmonica, inhaled the harmonica and choked to death.
• Beethoven dipped his head in cold water before he composed.
• Pop was once banned in India. The song “Tirchi Topiwale” became so popular that the police were instructed to fine 50 rupees to anyone caught singing it.
• The Greek national anthem has 158 verses.
• Monaco’s national orchestra is bigger than its army.
• Elvis Presley once entered an Elvis look-a-like contest in a US burger bar and only came 3rd!!
• The lead female singer in an opera is called the prima donna.

Well there you go, fascinating facts that will probably never actually come up in a conversation.

The band met through MySpace and alright, I have never really been an Escape the Fate “fan” but I’d heard a few songs I liked such as Dying is your latest fashion & Situations. I never really cared to listen to the rest of their music though. However, every song is pure genius on the album This War Is Ours (The Guillotine II) which sounds a lot more commercial than the first record.

I will say that I think the band still haven’t peaked and there should be a lot more to come from these guys but at the moment the songs don’t sound like big hits, they still sound like a support act and not the big thing yet. Having said this, there is a bit of me that believes the next album could be the big breakthrough.

See what you think on their MySpace and be sure to check out the track “We won’t back down”.

That’s what happened on Saturday evening - I got home to find La Roux‘ sampler CD on the doormat. I put it on, expecting the usual middle-of-the-road stuff that is alright but nothing to rave about, like most promo CDs. Then I had to lay down. Reminiscent of classic electro-pop pioneers like Eurythmics and Depeche Mode, it is still completely modern and is just perfect for a few remixes which would have the lips of the new school of club goers licking their lips. Really.

Synthy, poppy and catchy, 20 year old Brixtonite Elly Jackson just has a way of making her tunes sound so familiar yet completely original. Forthcoming “Quicksand” manages to combine Annie Lennox’ haunting (at times) vocals with a touch of Human League and Prince, yet manages to sound like it’s some throwback from 2010, rather than a dodgy 80’s revival.

Some tracks like “In for The Kill” have amazing choruses that just yell out for you to start dancing madly with mates… like Alphabeat’s guilty-pleasure quality, but not so guilty.

Thankfully, it’s not just me that’s been raving about La Roux - NME called her “the coolest voice to come out of UK club….’Let’s Dance’ era Bowie meets The Knife”… and bloggers have been having wet dreams over her.

MP3: La Roux - Fascination

The most sickening thing? Elly Jackson is younger than me. God only knows what she’s gonna have come out with by the time she’s 30 - it’s quite scary to think she’s nowhere near her creative best and can still pump out such amazing tunes. And only on a demo.

La Roux’ Quicksand is out on 1st December on uber-cool Kitsune records. Preorder from Rough Trade here.

To celebrate the amazing year, M83 are releasing new single “We Own The Sky” on Monday 1st December, along with Maps’ remix of the title track, previously available on a swap-mix 7” on Sonic Cathedral and described by the NME as “a space-disco rager” plus brand new song Je Vous Hais Petites Filles and ParkerLab’s Dusted remix of Graveyard Girl. Whilst Je Vous Hais Petites Filles is distinctly B-side material, Maps’ remix is worth the single alone - amaaaaaazing to say the least.

There isn’t an official video to go with the release, however there is a competition on youtube for people to enter videos - full details are here.

Anthony and his band of merry-makers are off on tour in December supporting the amazing Kings of Leon on their UK jaunt - Jared Followill recently said of M83, “You have to dive into “Saturdays = Youth”… They switch off between a guy and a girl on vocals, and they have such amazing sounds. They’re very experimental. This band sounds like they invented the sounds… When I first heard some of their lyrics, I got chill bumps.” (New York Times)

M83’s We Own The Sky is out on Monday 1st December on Mute records.

The first band I would like to write about are an old favourite of mine, Sweep The Leg Johnny. I first became aware of them when I was working in a record shop in Portsmouth and they released a split live ep with a band called Hella, another potential ‘band you should know’, I was intrigued by their name, a reference to the end of the movie The Karate Kid, and seeing as I had carte blanche to listen to whatever I wanted it soon found its way onto the stores stereo.

I was treated to intense, interwoven guitar play, what some people would refer to as ‘mathey’, and an almost free form style of drumming that filled in the spaces of silence left by the stop start nature of the songs. The thing that most caught my attention though was the use of the saxophone. Until this point the sax was an instrument that I associated with two types of music, Jazz, and Ska, neither of which I was particularly enamored with. However in the hands of Steve Sostak, who also sings, it was an instrument that seemed capable of so much. Haunting build ups, violent breakdowns and able to punctuate the breathtaking moments in the songs like nothing I’d ever heard before. Nowhere is this more evident than the, amusingly titled, song ‘Sometimes My Balls Feel Like Tits’ from their final album, I’m saddened to say that Sweep have split up, Going Down Swinging.

Opening with the mournful sound of the Sax the song quickly breaks down into a jagged beast, being powered forward by a galloping bass line that the razorwire riffs wrap themselves around. The Saxaphone acts as an anchoring point for the song to build around. It is a 14 minute epic which contains one of my favourite ’stop-start’ moments within any song of this ilk which happens at around the 10 minute mark, every instrument slamming in and out of the song with such ferocity that it will always send a shiver up my spine when I hear it.

Anyone who is a fan of ‘post-hardcore’ or modern ‘math-roc’k bands like Foals who have taken the math rock template and adapted it, but who have cited Sweep The Leg Johnny as one of their influences, would do well to check them out as they are a force to be reckoned with.

Between 1997 and and 2002 Sweep The Leg Johnny released four albums and one live EP as well as a few split 7″. All of them are a testament to the originality and inventiveness of this band. They hail from Chicago. The broke up in 2002 and members have since gone onto perform in bands such as ZZZZ, Hoover, and June of 44.

The US star (who’s co-headlined tours with the likes of Ben Folds, Conor Oberst, Death Cab For Cutie and other US indie luminaries) is doing a short European jaunt before Christmas to promote his intriguingly named new EP “How Ya Lookin’ Southbound? Comein…”.

Tickets are on sale now (and look like they have been for a while), and are around the £10 mark.

Catch him at:

Thursday 4th December 2008 - Mancheser Ruby Lounge
Friday 5th December 2008 - Glasgow King Tuts
Saturday 6th December 2008 - Dublin Wheelan’s
Monday 8th December 2008 - Birmingham Glee Club
Tuesday 9th December 2008 - London Union Chapel

This coming Monday sees uber-hip Esser back with yet another super-catchy single release following debut track, ‘Headlock’. It’s a shame about the weather, as ‘Satisfied’ is a track fit for a bright, summers day. I can’t help but imagine myself lying on a warm beach with a Solero while listening to this sunny tune. The tinkling repetitiveness of the charlston-like piano is truely addictive, while the steel drums bring out the tune’s groovy reggae undertones. A warning - the chorus is lethal - one listen and it’s stuck in your mind for days. “You know a man can never win, even if you buy her all the shoes”. Ok, the lyrics aren’t exactly Shakespeare, but does it really matter? This quirky little track will still be taking over the airwaves, so watch out.

“She’s never satisfied, no matter how hard I try”, Esser complains. Terribly predictable pun, I know, but Esser - I certainly am.

‘Satisfied’ is released on Monday via digital download, 7″ vinyl or CD, which you can pre-order here.

Tickets are £9 for most dates except London which is £12.50 a ticket.

Catch the lads at:

Tuesday 3rd February 2009 - Bath Burdalls Yard
Wednesday 4th February 2009 - Exeter Phoenix
Thursday 5th February 2009 - Wolverhampton Civic Hall
Saturday 7th February 2009 - Sheffield Leadmill
Sunday 8th February 2009 - Glasgow Oran Mor
Monday 9th February 2009 - Aberdeen Moshulu
Wednesday 11th February 2009 - Middlesbrough Empire
Thursday 12th February 2009 - Leeds Metro
Friday 13th February 2009 - Derby The Royal
Saturday 14th February 2009 - Manchester Academy 2
Monday 16th February 2009 - Oxford Zodiac
Tuesday 17th February 2009 - London Forum
Wednesday 18th February 2009 - Brighton C2
Friday 20th February 2009 - Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms
Saturday 21st February 2009 - Hitchin Remix
Sunday 22nd February 2009 - Cambridge Junction