I know I have a few followers of this blog who stay up on their underground hip-hop, so I’ll start to share a few names. It’s quite difficult to find a bunch of artists within this scene as they get little to no attention from mainstream media because their songs aren’t about bitches, guns, bling and the rest of what is commercial rap.

Anyway, rant over. This weeks – I’m probably not going to do this weekly by the way – recommendation is Iller Than Theirs. You should check out the song above and their self-title album, the latter of which starts incredibly well.

I know I shouldn’t do this but it’s late and I still haven’t posted anything for today.

Today, or more like last week but it went live today so I won’t spoil the illusion, I wrote my 10 random iPod tracks for Electro-Candy. I know I should be posting something original here but I rarely write for other sites and have a lot of work on.

Work that includes writing about the excellent, Heavy Rain. In the meantime though you should all check it that out. The article not Heavy Rain, although you can do that as well… yeah, do both.

I’ve spent most of today listening to The Alan Price Set, specifically Simon Smith and his Amazing Dancing Bear. If you haven’t heard of this song click the video above. Actually go do it now before reading the rest of this post.

Good right? Granted, it isn’t a song about how in-love someone is or how upset someone is, it’s about some bloke and his dancing bear – real life stuff. I wish I could find some more music like this, any recommendations? In return, I had a quick listen to some of the other Alan Price Set and compiled a compilation. See if you can get your hands on the following…

1. Simon Smith and The Amazing Dancing Bear
2. Take Me Home
3. Critic’s Choice
4. Tickle Me
5. Don’t Stop The Carnivale
6. Don’t Do That Again
7. My Old Kentucky Home
8. Shame
9. The Time Has Come
10. The House That Jack Built

Search for them, listen to them, hopefully enjoy them.

I used to think that, and this was my way of justifying the fact that I never bought music, I’ll support bands and music through ticket sales. In theory that makes sense and cleared my guilty conscience of any wrongdoing but in practise, it didn’t. Despite enjoying music nearly everyday, I’ve only been to a handful of gigs.

A Red Hot Chilli Peppers gig that seemingly everyone went to, two Maximo Park gigs with Art Brut and Good Shoes as excellent support acts and one Futureheads gig with Field Music providing more than worthy support. Unless there is one I’m missing or forgetting about, that’s the lot. See, I have only been to a handful of gigs, you can literally count them on one hand.

I don’t know why I don’t like gigs, but it’s probably something to do with the fact that they are the worst places to listen to music. Everyone is just drunk and is trying to push you over and you can never really hear anything right. Maybe, I do know why I don’t like gigs. I can kind of see the appeal but I’d rather listen to something on my turntable and drink tea or something…

I’m starting to sound like an old man here, so I’ll stop.

It’s been a while since I’ve listened to real commercial music – well that’s a lie, I listened to The Blueprint 3 – and since have been listening to the weirdest underground hip hop.

Not that I’m trying to encourage music piracy here but I’m always on the look out for new music through blogs specifically Musical Schizophrenia. I’ve already discovered a few artists from it, some that I still haven’t made my mind up on but I’m enjoying the whole trying out new music thing anyway especially when a new album or two are delivered to my inbox every morning. If it’s good, I’ll buy it – if it’s bad then to trash it goes.

I’m starting to wonder how I used to discover bands before the internet. Now I use the similar artists function on Spotify or click obligatory YouTube link alongside a blog post. But I must have done something before; I guess I just listened to whatever was presented to me on the radio or TV.

Maybe a post about discovering bands or artists is in order.

Not in this post though… this isn’t a concise one.