Opinion: Independent’s Day

The music industry is in tatters. Every week there are ever more depressing reasons to give up hope on the music world altogether. CD sales are falling faster than Icelandic bank stocks, big wigs with stupid names are sitting at the boardrooms of the most powerful labels in the world, and Saturday night talent contests exploit the young and the beautiful, only to leave them on the side of the road with nothing after a year. That’s before we even consider the knock on effect of that ghastly label ‘the credit crunch’, causing music labels to fold and young artists to disappear in a sea of debt. Is it any surprise that Slipknot, those purveyors of doom and gloom for unloved teenagers across the globe, named their last album ‘All Hope Is Gone‘?

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Interview: Bossk

I know, I know – I’ve been going on about Bossk incessantly recently but as of now all that is pretty much going to end. I promise. If you haven’t checked them out already then I don’t think there’s anything else I can say that can tempt you, but just before they took to the stage one last time at Camden’s Underworld, I sat down in the murky Underworld office to have a brief chat with Tom Begley, bassist and all-round wonderful bloke. Some people might have been concerned about how England were going to fare against the Kazakhs…the only thing on my mind was why this was the end. Read on to find out.

Heard It Yet?: Bossk – 1 and 2

Artist: Bossk
Album: 1/2
Label: Qnotq/Eyesofsound
Released: 2006/2007

This is a rather delayed entry to the Heard It Yet catalogue, considering that it was only recently that I was fully introduced to Kent based post rockers Bossk. But now, after becoming so thoroughly enamoured with their two brief releases, I’ve been shocked and devastated at the news that they have decided to call it a day with irreparable member disputes to blame. Whatever the issues surrounding the band, there is no doubt that in their brief tenure they put out two brilliant EP’s which I’m going to shortly cover here, just to give you the opportunity to hear what was one of the UK’s most promising bands, easily rivalling the likes of Russian Circles and Pelican when it came to writing heavy, primarily instrumental rock. Think of it as a sort of tribute to what could have been.