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8 years of scrobbling, 55,000 tracks and 4 years with the incredible Last.fm team, it's been a blast, but it's time to move on and do something new.

It's been a really difficult decision to leave. Last.fm was quite literally a dream job for me and at times a family. I'm proud to have worked on a brilliant product with so many great people. I feel like i've grown up with Last.fm. It's been, and will always be, a big and very happy part of my life.

I really can't describe how much I've learnt and how much fun…

It's been far longer than it feels since I last wrote a post like this and it makes picking a small set of albums much more difficult. This ended up as a mix of what i've recently discovered and some of my favourites from the second half of last year.

Baths - Cerulean
Pretty much my favourite album of last year. Beautiful, lazy, summery, lo-fi, a little glitchy and all-over fuzzy. It's a warm blanket of a record that just makes me smile. It might even come under the heading of "chill wave" too.
♫ Lovely Bloodflow, ♥

Austra…

Wed, 24th Nov 2010

It is with sadness that we have to announce the closure of The Luminaire and The King's Head on 31st December. It's been a labour of love for a while now, and at this point it makes no sense for us to continue. We hope to be able to do some final farewell shows, probably in late March, and we'll let you know about those through the usual channels.

To all those who supported this independent venue, and the great artists who played here, since we opened back on 1st March 2005; you have our grateful…

Wed 24 Nov – Salem, Becoming Real

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While the venue was awesome (and half the reason I wanted to go in the first place) the gig was mostly rubbish. Not helped by it being a) freezing cold and b) on hard wooden pews.

First up was Becoming Real who's set improved significantly towards the end, becoming a bit more dubstep and reminding me of Hudson Mohawke. However it took a long time to get there, still it's on my list of stuff to listen to more.

After some time SALEM came on and played for a 20 minutes…

Johnny Foreigner guilted me in to a shirt, but it's OK because I still love them. A US tour shirt to support their upcoming US tour with Los Campesinos. All my existing white band shirts are closer to a sad shade of grey. How could I resist?

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New Johnny Foreigner shirt by David Singleton, on Flickr.

I have a couple of dozen old band t-shirts that I rarely wear anymore, but am loathe to part with, despite their tatty state.

I should post more about shirts, they always come with history, be it a show where you bought it…

Album Leaf - A Chorus of Storytellers
The latest album, as beautiful and chilled out electronic instrumental, with lush strings.

Do Make Say Think - The Other Truths
From the end of 2009, from the Constellation records school of canadian post rock. The catchy first track will get stuck in your brain.

Efterklang & The Danish National Chamber Orchestra - Performing Parades
A performance with The Danish National Chamber Orchestra, track for track, of their album “Parades”. Utterly amazing, one of my favourites out of the lot. Efterklangs usual dark, broody, glitchy electronica backed by a full orchestra.

Laura Marling…

I was recently in Boston for a Music Hackday, luckily I had the time to catch a few bands while I was there. It seems like a town with a pretty good music scene, lots of bands touring through it (a college town thing I guess?). It was also curious to see that a lot of bands were playing venues much smaller than i'd expect, I guess comparing to London isn't that fair.

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El-P @ The Echo Nestival.

The official gig of the Hack day, put on by the Echo Nest guys. With a surprisingly eclectic lineup, I…

60" of musical joy landed on my desk at work today. I really enjoy buying a big batch of records and the ritual of unpacking them when they arrive. Today I opened:

Two Los Campesinos! 7"s
One old and one new There Are Listed Buildings and My Year In Lists. Still my favourite band in the world and I'm excited about the forthcoming album. The new track is good, but not exciting as some of the others i've heard, also no B-side (boo!).

Johnny Foreigner - Eyes Wide Terrified 7"
Another favourite, and another single from an earlier album.…

After a wander up Oxford St. and a rummage through the HMV vinyl section i emerged with;

1/ Beat Happening - Jamboree (LP, 1988). A band i'm not overly familiar with, though i've listened to a bit of Calvin Johnson and like a bit of lo-fi indie.

2/ Los Campesinos! - We are beautiful, we are doomed (LP, 2008). One of my favourite bands ever, an amazing album not widely released on vinyl. In fact this was a US import (on Arts and Crafts), oddly.

3/ My Bloody Valentine - Loveless (LP, 1991). To be played loudly. Perfect noise.

4/…

I do <3 machine tags. If tag are web 2.0 glue (urghh), then they're most definitely super glue.

There are just under 100,000 photos on Flickr that are tagged with Last.fm event machine-tags. This is great because users can just tag their flickr photos rather than having to upload gig photos to us too. I'd rather we stuck to what we're good at, music.

As of today Flickr now link back to our event pages, hurrah!

http://flickr.com/photos/davidsingleton/2668371441/

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