Yesterday’s Advent Calendar window saw a double helping of free music from members of the Joyizne team courtesy of Paul F Cook and The West Midlands – you can still download them here. Today we have a pair of festive tracks, including the return of an old Advent Calendar favourite.
As always, the tracks are completely free to to download and there’s no need to sign up to any mailing lists to access the tracks (though if you’d like to you can join ours here), but with the UK’s independent music venues in peril following almost a year of covid restrictions, we’d love you to make a donation to the Music Venue Trust‘s #saveourvenues campaign if you enjoy these tracks. You can make a donation to the fund, or to a specific venue of your choice here.
The Long Blondes – Christmas Is Cancelled
2004 was a heady time to be a fledgling indie music zine in South London. An exciting group of bands were convening around New Cross’ Paradise Bar (thanks in no small part to the still excellent Rocklands promotions and the sadly missed Angular Records), trousers were tight, shoes were pointy and The Joyzine Advent Calendar was making its first appearance.
Amongst the tracks on our debut calendar was festive gem, ‘Christmas Is Cancelled’, from Sheffield art-pop quintet The Long Blondes, and with the chances of any sort of ‘normal’ Christmas looking pretty slim, a film, Giddy Stratospheres, named after another of their songs and set in that same early 2000s indie scene currently in production (find out more here), and his own book about the era due next year, guitarist Dorian Cox got in touch to see if we fancied giving it a second outing. We jumped at the chance.
Download ‘Christmas Is Cancelled’
If you enjoy this track please consider making a donation to the #saveourvenues campaign
Michael M – Baby, I Will Zoom You This Christmas
Bringing us bang up to date with Christmas 2020 is Michael M, also of Slime City (and formerly We Are The Physics), and a tale of separated lovers in the lockdown – it’s a full on Wall of Sound-style festive banger and comes from his Christmas EP A Digital Christmas Gift for You, along with other topical seasonal fare including ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus (Which Directly Contravenes All Social Distancing Guidelines)’. It’s available on Bandcamp now.
Speaking of the track, Michael said, “I wrote a quick song about why it’s fine if you decide not to go and visit your family and accidentally infect them with the virus this christmas. I felt like 2020 needed some old school style Spector-style Christmas songs that firmly placed in them in 2020 and, while it’s difficult to spend 4 hours on a snare sound when you’re recording between conference calls to make sure you have enough money to keep your heating on, I took a lot of inspiration from those 60s girl bands Spector loved working with and recorded a whole EP called A Digital Christmas Gift For You. I’m sorry.”
Download ‘Baby, I Will Zoom You This Christmas’
If you enjoy this track please consider making a donation to the #saveourvenues campaign
Keep up to date with Michael M on his Facebook / Twitter / Bandcamp
Come back tomorrow for more exclusive tracks + check out the tracks from previous windows, all of which are still available to download:
Day 1: Piney Gir ft. Roxys + MJ Hibbett
Day 2: Brixton Hill Studio Band + Friends
Day 3: Oh!Gunquit + The Kecks
Day 4: Salt The Snail + Dead Horse
Day 5: The Awkward Silences
Day 6: AKDK
Day 7: Lost Map Records – Friends of The Guinness
Day 8: Mister Solo + Fightmilk
Day 9: The Indelicates + Dexy
Day 10: The Burning Hell + Velvet Starlings
Day 11: Granfalloon + elkyn
Day 12: LOUD WOMEN FEST – I, Doris, Genn + Breakup Haircut
Day 13: PaulFCook + West Midlands
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