The Eels are making a live EP freely available for a limited period through their website  (http://www.eelstheband.com/), direct link here.  The EP is only available until 28th October 2008.  The EP with four tracks includes:

1. Fresh Feeling
2. Packng Blankets
3. Jeannie’s Diary
4. Climbing To The Moon

The site is also promoting special limited edition copies of the Eels’ last studio album Blinking Lights and Other Revelations.

 Sound Blog has got a great little blog entry which also links to an article on CNET here. Essentially it argues that being an Audiophile is not about having the biggest and best HiFi, but a state of mind.

According to the NME, the figures for last years sales experiment with In Rainbows.  Despite all the criticism from the likes of Paul McGuinness (U2’s manager) it turns out that the download approach generated more income than Radiohead’s previous album Hail To The Thief.  The report indicates that a large proportion of people didn’t pay anything for the album, but enough did to make a difference.  I’m sure that critics will attribute to issues such as the effort made to promote the album (Radiohead’s last for EMI), how good or bad the Hail to The Thief was and so forth.

It will be interesting to see if the model is picked up by more artists (other than Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails) given these new figures.

It would appear that 7Digital are launching a new site called Lost Tunes that appears to concentrate on old releases, covers of older songs, and radio sessions such as those recorded by John Peel. The site offers the recordings in high quality MP3s.

Lost Tunes came to my attention as a result of an email from The Delays who have produced a covers EP which is being made exclusively available through Lost Tunes.

Tom McRae the fine English singer songwriter is releasing his first proper live album from a number of dates on the 2007 tour to promoting King Of Cards.

Currently the album is only available through Tom’s website here.

The track details include:

1. Walking 2 Hawaii
2. For The Restless
3. A & B song
4. Ghost Of A Shark
5. End of the World News (Dose Me Up)
6. Got A Suitcase, Got Regrets
7. One Mississippi
8. On And On
9. Deliver Me
10. Only Thing I Know
11. Silent Boulevard
12. Boy With The Bubblegun

A download site for Classical music has just gone live called Passionato offering high quality MP3s (320kbps) and FLAC recordings at what appear to be very good prices. The Guardian has a full review of the site here.  It will be interesting to see how the site goes given that classical music fans tend to viewed as snobs when it comes to the source of their music.

Lost Highway Records have finally announced details of the next album to be called Cardinology.  Lost Highways have indicated a release date of October 28th.  A special website for the album has also been setup called http://www.cardinology.com/.

Being a bit behind in my blogging the sad death of Pink Floyd’s Rick Wright to cancer is common knowledge now.  If you’d like to read more about Rick then Uncut’s obituary is a good place to start.

Personally, I hope that the discussions and speculation about a possible Pink Floyd reunion are permanently ‘put to bed’ as a Floyd without Rick isn’t really Pink Floyd in my opinion, although the nit pickers will not point out that he wasn’t a proper member of the band, but a hire gun for a considerable period during the 90s.

The Gutter Twins (Mark Lanegan and Greg Dulli) are releasing a new EP to help raise funds for the Natasha Shneider Memorial Fund.  The EP comprises of covers ranging from Down The Line (Jose Gonzales) to Deep Hit Of Morning Sun," (Primal Scream). 

My only grievance with this is that the download is exclusive to iTunes!

For more information see the following sites:

• Gutter Twins MySpace blog
• Gutter Twins home site