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Five Day Forecast – w/c 10 Jan 2011
By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 10 January 2011
Hello there, it seems to be a new year. Happy New Year! I know we had a couple of Dailies last week, but let’s make this the official start of 2011. Last week was still 2010. Right now is twenty eleven. Or two thousand and eleven. I haven’t quite decided which I like best yet. Anyway, that’s not important, did you all have a nice break? Did you get nice presents? Was Santa good to you? I can’t believe he would have put you on the naughty list. Not you. Not after all you’ve done. No. Well, regardless of how a (close your ears, children) fictional character treated you over the festive period, I have some treats for you right now. Here they come…
01: New CMU website. Hey, look everyone, www.theCMUwebsite.com is all shiny and new. Like a virgin – UH! – touched for the very first time. Or something. Anyway, over Christmas we gave our website a good polish, moved bits around and fixed all the bits that were broken. Actually, it’s a totally new site altogether, but you get the idea. The important information you need to absorb here is that we’ve got a new website and you should go and look at it.
02: Eurosonic Noorderslag. It’s the first music industry conference of the year this week. Eurosonic Noorderslag gets in early, don’t you know. From 12 to 15 Jan, music industry folks from all over Europe will head to Groningen to debate and discuss what the future holds for the music industry, while the evenings on into the early hours will be filled with showcase gigs by a hefty number of Europe’s up-and-coming new bands. As well as all that, the trophies at this year’s European Festival Awards will be handed out. I’ll be there, swanning around, and possibly reporting on a thing or two. Feel free to walk up and tell me how much you like the new CMU website. I might even let you buy me a drink to celebrate.
03: BRITs nominations launch. On Wednesday, the BRITs will officially announce their nominations for 2011 at a party in the IndigO2 venue under the O2 Dome. Amongst the live performances from Tinie Tempah, Ellie Goulding and The Wanted at the show, which will be broadcast on ITV2 on Thursday evening, Jessie J will do some singing and then pick up her Critics Choice award, which will go nicely with her BBC Sound Of 2011 backlash.
04: New releases. It’s a fairly quiet week for new releases, though I notice that ‘Sinitta!’ by Sinitta is being reissued. Kanye West also claims that his collaborative album with Jay-Z, ‘Watch The Throne’, will be out this week, presumably only in downloadable form, but who knows. Definitely available physically is ‘Valhalla Dancehall’ by British Sea Power, which has had some very nice things said about it. In fact, our own Jane Wright called it a “triumphant return”, and she’s never wrong. Also out is the debut album from hotly tipped Montrealites Suuns, ‘Zeroes, QC’, while back on the reissues, Crass‘ very brilliant ‘Penis Envy’ album is available in spruced up form.
05: Gigs. It’s a bit quiet on the gig front this week, too. As I already noted, quite a lot of bands seem to be heading for The Netherlands. But there are still good times to be had. The marvellous James Blake will be headlining Plan B in Brixton this Friday, while on Thursday you can catch the wholeheartedly CMU approved Talons at Vibe Bar on Brick Lane.
Right, I’d best start thinking about what I need to take with me on my Dutch trip. I currently have toothpaste and shoes written down on my list of things I will ultimately forget to pack and have to attempt to buy in a foreign language.
Don’t forget, there’s no CMU Weekly this week, but it will be back in an all-new form next Friday, along with the first edition of the new CMU Podcast.
Andy Malt
Editor, CMU
