Magical Music Roundabout, vol. I

Hundreds of thousands of bands must clump together every week like grotesquely hopeful agar in putrid petri dishes. Then the likes of Polar Bear and Gorillaz come out of hibernation every once in a while. With blog inboxes inundated day after day by fresh-faced Interpol impersonators and dubious ska mixes, the internet's forever more becoming a stagnant mire of musical mishaps. Proactivity permitting and provided laziness can be kept at arm's length, Dots & Dashes' Musical Music Roundabout looks to spin through the caberet and carousels of the unheard, the underground, the unsigned and the unlistenable. Hopefully not too much of the latter...


Polar BearEclectic, eccentric and caricatured, Seb Rochford is one of few jazz-pop pioneers. Famed for the demented disco and saxophonic rumbles of Acoustic Ladyland as well as personal opus, 2005's Mercury-nominated Polar Bear outing Held On The Tips Of Fingers, Rochford returns in March with Jeepers, an equal-parts barmy and brilliant return to polishing the filthy, mucky stereotypes that surround the words jazz, fusion and tenor come March.

Polar Bear - Peepers by theleaflabel

Polar Bear's Myspace


Withnail
Withnail is the visceral by-product of Manics obsessive "Richy Withnail". Waterfall, 27% is a sneering Horrors-meets-QOTSA romp, seething with enough dripping aggression to reduce the pages of The Holy Bible to sodden masses of opaque stodge.

The Waterfall, 27% by Withnail-

Withnail's Myspace


RabbitMount Dora, Florida's Rabbit reek of twee saccharine sheens only seen encasing Juno soundtracks and Hello Goodbye conventions. Aesthetically, they fit in with both predetermined stereotypes whilst sonically, they're so high school it hurts like drawing pins face-up on classroom chairs. Ground-breaking, perhaps not. Aurally intoxicating? quite. Debut LP Connect The Dots is available from this very second. Fall Into Love's their most terrific track.



Rabbit's Myspace


Alan WilkisAlan Wilkis, self-professed "general musical mover-and-shaker" deals in Broklyn's most bloody barking rehashes of the likes of tribal experimentalists Yeasayer, Diplo's African extravaganza The Very Best and New York goth-lite poppers Murder Mystery. Meticulously regurgitated, forget the addition of a few superfluous bleeps and blips tacked onto a radio edit; Wilkis is the one-stop shop for respectable retellings of groundbreakers and genre benders.

"Ambling Alp (Alan Wilkis Remix)" - Yeasayer by Alan Wilkis

Alan Wilkis' Cassette Hub