As ChinaShop’s assistant editor, 2010 has been quite an exciting year for me. I’ve had the privilege of seeing nearly every post that has come through our back end and onto your screen, each day discovering something new and exciting that I’d not known existed. The following are 5 post that blew me away and knocked my socks off in 2010.
Yo to the yo! The most wonderful day of the week is upon us once more and I’m here with some music updates and epic chat to make it that much more wonderful.
So. Wow. I’m completely loving Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros’ track “Fire & Water”. (I have an extreme weakness for folksy / country music, of which I place full blame upon my wonderful Papa Joe). The ludicrously large band (10 members – pow.) recently recorded an (awesome) iTunes session; stream the aforementioned track here and head on over here to pick up the rest of the session. Mandy totes digs.
Los Angeles based, indie/new wave band Ima Robot have been through their fair share of music industry travails – most of the drama stemming from their involvement with the questionable politics of being signed to a major label contract. What is it that Q-Tip said again so prophetically on the track “Check the Rhyme”? Oh yeah, “Industry rule #4080, record company people are shady.”
All the label issues culminated in the band taking a break from their situation and stealing some time away to refocus and try new things. Ima Robot founding member, Timmy Anderson states it this way.
“We were all a bit tweaked from our last year or so in the major label game – I’ll leave it at that! Some life happened, a lot of work and side projects went down (Guns n Bombs, Edward Sharpe, Werewolf Heart records) and we all just went off exploring other musical endeavors and interests.”