Coming Soon?

According to her MySpace blog, Lily Allen says her next album will be called "Three Singles and Other Songs, Plus iTunes Exclusive"!

The Wolfmen – Cecilie (indiestore.com)

This is the latest from Marco Pirroni and Chris Constantinou – both of which took our iPod Challenge on these pages last year. This is their third single and is a low-down and dirty Velvet Underground-style chunk of confusion and flutes. Available on all platforms, but best downloaded from 7 Digital’s IndieStore which has two exclusive remixes.

Manic Street Preachers – Autumnsong (tunetribe.com)

It comes as somewhat of a relief to see the Manic Street Preachers back on form, and enjoying commercial and critical success. I’ve never really heard their sound waver, but seeing them fizzle, when they’d been so massive, would have been like watching some giant dinosaur collapse and die right in front of you. Their July single, Autumnsong, has a B-side only available from TuneTribe. From Despair To Where was recorded live at The Point in Cardiff in June. 95p well spent.

Dr Calculus MDMA – Designer Beatnik (Virgin)

With five rare bonus tracks and an album that was never released on CD, it’s bizarre that Virgin didn’t make any fanfare around the digital re-release of this lost classic. Not long after Kiss Me went global, Stephen Duffy got off his face on ecstasy and studio gimmickry and came up with the appropriate moniker of Dr Calculus MDMA to record this psychedelic early blast of trip-hop. It sank without trace, of course, and became the stuff of legend. Across the next twenty years you could pay a high price for it on the collectors market, or just as easily find it in a bargain bin in the High Street. But Virgin has reassembled the album along with all of the 7” and 12” remixes and B-sides, to make a great 16-track set, the only omission remaining the brilliant artwork that was as much a part of the original prank as the music. Annoyingly, Straight To Stereo (12” Mix) is the only piece of the set not available as a single-track download on iTunes, so your best buy is from TuneTribe. But at £7.99 for the full thing from all online platforms, it’s a bargain.

Natasha Bedingfield – Live from London (itunes.com)

The latest in iTunes’ exclusive monthly sessions, recorded live at the Apple store in Regent Street comes from Natasha Bedingfield. At eight tracks, it’s longer than other releases in the series, which this summer have also included Kate Walsh and Lemar. The highlights are the singles of course, like Unwriten and the two closing songs from the session: These Words and Single. Natasha’s gushing, gusty vocal style and lyrics are like Marmite and this set screams For Fans Only. But the fans certainly seem happy – according to Blue-Rose, an iTunes user who was in the audience for this very session, “the crowd and the atmosphere was electric.”