Independents’ Week is the perfect time to pay tribute to all of the places that we take inspiration from; all of the places we scour for new music. We get hundreds of tracks uploaded to amazingtunes.com every day (and we listen to them all) but we regularly go looking for new music too. We thought it only fair to highlight those places where we consistently find mind-blowingly great stuff.

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Disco Naivete

You might have noticed that we’re a sucker for good looking blog. And Disco Naivete has been batting its eyelashes at us for a while. Updated regularly, it spans a number of genres and is always uber cool.

This is founder, Jarri’s inspiration behind the blog.

I listen to new music every day and felt like I had to share some of these tunes – I couldn’t spam my friends with these recommendations all the time, so I started my blog Disco Naïveté. There wasn’t a specific song nor band that inspired me to found the blog, it was just my passion for music in general. There are some really talented musicians out there and I want to put them in the spotlight on the blog because they deserve to be heard.

I’ve liked music ever since I was a child – it’s something beautiful that can do all these things to you: not just emotionally, but also physically. One of the world’s finest “inventions”.

Website: Disco Naivete

Twitter: @Disco_Naivete

The Blue Walrus

There’s a reason why 6 Music, The Guardian, Drowned in Sound and XFM have spoken highly of The Blue Walrus. And it is founder, Tim’s impassioned writing that has us hooked. Sometimes it’s incredibly difficult to portray exactly how much you love a track or an artist in writing yet his eloquence lets us know exactly why we should be listening to the artists he’s shouting about.

Tim shared his inspiration behind the blog with us:

“Both playing and listening to new music has always been a big part of my life, but what made me decide I wanted to get involved and write about it was hearing the Transgressive founders talking about some of their latest favourites – The Noisettes and GoodBooks if I remember rightly-  back in late 2006/7 on an iCast podcast. It was the first time it dawned on me that I was spending so much of my time finding out about new music from every source possible – and it was about time I got onto sharing that passion. The Blue Walrus was born.”

(Hear the founders of Transgressive speaking about that very podcast in the last of our Independents’ Week documentaries here)

Website: The Blue Walrus

Twitter: @thebluewalrus

Basement Fever

Jake of Basement Fever has a brilliant musical mind and we were thrilled to have him curate a day of blog content for us not so long ago. He has also been shouting about Amazing Radio for a while and persuaded a good number of artists to upload their tracks to us. (We should probably start paying him…) Each of the artists he has introduced us to have been mind-blowingly great. He’s one of those great bloggers that champions a small number of artists to the core. It’s amazing to see such passion for artists.

The blog itself is littered with seriously under the radar artists that Jake stumbles across wayyy before we can get our hands on them. For that reason we read Basement Fever religiously.

Jake shared where his passion for music stemmed from:
“I’m not really sure if there was one thing that really got me into music though. I guess it was a gradual progression from listening to my Dad’s punk records when I was young to discovering new (although retrospectively rubbish) bands independently in my teens and it just snowballed. Quite a natural thing I guess. I think Animal Collective, typically, are the one band to have really propelled my tastes into the less ‘usual’ though. I remember listening to 3 of their albums one-after-the-other, on repeat, about 3 times over on one night a few years back. That was pretty inspiring.”
Website: Basement Fever

Twitter: basementfever

Independents’ Week is the perfect time to pay tribute to all of the places that we take inspiration from; all of the places we scour for new music. We get hundreds of tracks uploaded to amazingtunes.com every day (and we listen to them all) but we regularly go looking for new music too. We thought it only fair to highlight those places where we consistently find mind-blowingly great stuff.

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Breaking More Waves is, and will remain, one of the most important sources of new and independent music. Its roots are back in the days of the fanzine, before moving online as the internet took over the world. The blog has since become an authoritative and respected voice on new music.

Founder, Robin champions the best new artists without a hint of PR favours, without a desire to get the first Hype Machine post or in a desperate attempts to bump hits. He is also honest and forthcoming with his views. Un-moving from the ethos that spawned the first humble fanzine, Breaking More Waves still comes across as a blog that simply can’t wait to tell you about the new stuff they’ve heard. And we’re always listening!

Founder Robin Seamer tells us his inspiration behind the site:

“Independent fanzines back in the 90′s. These lovingly produced, attitude laden, DIY, photocopied and roughly stapled works of wonder were mailed out for 50p or a pound plus postage and were impossibly exciting to read. They made me love the underground music that their writers were writing about even before I’d heard the bands themselves. Some of them were a day-go riot of glitter and teenage excess, others were more studied and worthy but they all had a huge sense of enthusiasm for the music they wrote about.

“They inspired me to write my own fanzine – Breaking Waves. Years later the internet changed everything and Breaking More Waves became an online blog -its much easier and faster to produce and is read by 1000′s of people a month rather than a few 100 that the fanzine was. But if it hadn’t been for the sizzle and spunk of fanzines such as Cha Cha Cha, All About D And Friends, Cult of the Bus Stop I probably would have never started.”

Website: Breaking More Waves

Twitter: @BMWavesBlog

Independents’ Week is the perfect time to pay tribute to all of the places that we take inspiration from; all of the places we scour for new music. We get hundreds of tracks uploaded to amazingtunes.com every day (and we listen to them all) but we regularly go looking for new music too. We thought it only fair to highlight those places where we consistently find mind-blowingly great stuff.

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Another blog turned full-on website, The 405 is an online culture magazine, and perhaps one of the most hard working out there. Most days we find ourselves getting lost in the sheer volume of quality daily updates. They hook you in with an interesting feature and half an hour later, you’re still there discovering something completely new.

The 405 New Music team recently hijacked our blog with three of their most exciting new acts and it was through this that we discovered the incredible Saskatchewan and so, almost for this alone, our list wouldn’t be complete without them.

Founder Oliver Primus shared his inspiration with us:

“The first thing that pops up into my mind is the fine city of Norwich. I grew up there, saw my first gig there, had my first kiss there, bought a million CDs there and one place in particular that will always have a special place in my heart is the Norwich Arts Centre. It’s a beautiful place, run by wonderful people, and they always put on great gigs when I was a teenager (and I’m sure they still do now). The venue also housed a lot of shows by Wombat Wombat, who are complete legends in Norwich, so the place was pretty much my second home for many years.

“My fondest memory of the venue was seeing Jetplane Landing there for the first time; they played an amazing set, and afterwards headed straight to the merch area to talk to their fans. The main man, Andrew Ferris, epitomises the DIY work ethic that will always be at the center of what I do. From his work in the band, all the way through to setting up Smalltown America, the man always does it with a smile on his face. So in celebration of independent music I salute the Norwich Art Centre, Wombat Wombat and Andrew Ferris.”

Website: The 405

Twitter: @the405

Independents’ Week is the perfect time to pay tribute to all of the places that we take inspiration from; all of the places we scour for new music. We get hundreds of tracks uploaded to amazingtunes.com every day (and we listen to them all) but we regularly go looking for new music too. We thought it only fair to highlight those places where we consistently find mind-blowingly great stuff.

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This Music Wins steals our attention for being a little bit more left-field with the music selections. And because we always find lazy down-tempo electronica there. It’s not necessarily music you’ll hear on the Amazing Radio daytime playlist but if you’re tuning in during the evenings or one of the specialist shows you may just hear some stuff discovered on This Music Wins. They also have a penchant for beautiful artwork which makes it even more pleasing to browse the site.

Founder Peter Lanceley tells us why he began the blog and his favourite artists at the time:

I started in 2008, aged 16 when I realised naively there was a music scene other than what was in the mainstream media! Some of my favourite albums from around the time I started were M83, Frightened Rabbit, The National, Meursault, Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Wolf Parade, Yeasayer.

Website: This Music Wins
Twitter: @thismusicwins

Independents’ Week is the perfect time to pay tribute to all of the places that we take inspiration from; all of the places we scour for new music. We get hundreds of tracks uploaded to amazingtunes.com every day (and we listen to them all) but we regularly go looking for new music too. We thought it only fair to highlight those places where we consistently find mind-blowingly great stuff.

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So often on music sites, we see the same artists and tracks posted at the same time in some sort of daft race to post it first… We got the same press release. But then we go to Jon Hillcock’s New Noise Podcast every Thursday and we genuinely find something new and exciting outside of the hype-race.

And that’s when a music source becomes special… When it isn’t just posting the newest Lana Del Rey remix, it’s featuring artists they’ve discovered and become impassioned with. That’s why we still listen to New Noise. Every week.

Jon Hillcock has taken his renowned show across XFM, NME Radio and is now a downloadable Soundcloud podcast produced every Thursday.

Jon shared where his obsession with music came from:

I’d always bought lots of music, but I didn’t really start collecting things in an obsessive way until I got a job working in a record shop. Only it wasn’t the chain-store in which I was working that got me hooked. My new place of worship was a much smaller independent place, best described as an underground cupboard, tucked away around the corner in the basement of a skate shop.

Ok, so I still made the most of my staff discount in the giant flagship Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street, (in which I worked as an instore radio DJ) – I was the equivalent of the barman whose pay-packet turned to liquid after each and every shift – but most lunch breaks were spent perusing the racks, counter and new release wall of Rough Trade Records in Neil’s Yard, Covent Garden, looking for the things I’d heard John Kennedy playing late at night on Xfm.

It was there where would finally be able to lay my hands on LCD Soundsystem‘s Losing My Edge. Sufjan Stevens‘ ‘Seven Swans‘. TV on the Radio‘s ‘Desperate Youth Bloodthirsty Babes’. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy‘s ‘Master & Everyone’, Colder‘s ‘Crazy Love’, Desaparecidos‘ ‘Read Music/Speak Spanish’. Subtle‘s ‘A New White’. The Trencher/Cutting Pink With Knives 5″ vinyl. The first Skull Disco 12′s. The Shins‘ ‘Chutes Too Narrow’. Liars‘ ‘They Threw Us All In A Trench’…, The Knife‘s ‘Deep Cuts’, !!!‘s ‘Me & Guiliani EP’, even the grey plastic/white label 10″ of Gnarls Barkley‘s ‘Crazy’. It’s the start of a long list that contains so many of my favourite records of that time.

The shop also recommended obscure classics, books, periodicals, magazines, compilations, t-shirts, badges, stickers, demos.  Unbelievably the place even found space for in store performances.  I was in there so much that once, and this is the God’s honest truth, a member of staff offered what can only be be described as ‘a friendly smile’.  A rarity in meccas such as this.

The Covent Garden Rough Trade closed in 2007, making way for the brilliant independent Rough Trade behemoth that now stands in East London, apparently thriving while major high street music retailers seem to be reducing in number by the month. While shopping at Rough Trade East is always a thrill, I’ll never forget the grin and glow of anticipation I used to get as I descended the spiral staircase of Neil’s Yard, absorbing whatever underground sounds happened to be growing louder at the time.

Independents’ Week is the perfect time to pay tribute to all of the places that we take inspiration from; all of the places we scour for new music. We get hundreds of tracks uploaded to amazingtunes.com every day (and we listen to them all) but we regularly go looking for new music too. We thought it only fair to highlight those places where we consistently find mind-blowingly great stuff.

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The music site equivalent of this song (Friends – I’m His Girl). Effortlessly cool, and a little bit sexy. With its ice-crisp site design, intelligent editorial and as curators of some of the best London club nights, The Line of Best Fit commands a considerable respect. Of all ‘blogs-turned-websites’, it’s our most visited.

And if you’re after a truly beautiful live session or two, you could do worse than getting lost in their sessions archive.

Editor and founder Rich Thane shared his independent inspiration behind the site:

“Anyone that knows me will know of my utter obsession with Scandinavian music – typically artists hailing from the glorious land of Sweden. Though, what is it about the country that originally sparked the interest? Like most things in life, it comes down to a single fleeting moment that – like the ‘butterfly effect’ theory – has an unprecedented effect on your life. Kind of like the first time I ever heard Bob Dylan. But that’s another story…

“It was Autumn 2006. The Line Of Best Fit had just started and was still in ‘blog’ mode. In fact, it didn’t even have its own independent URL. Sat at my desk, day job looming over me like a black cloud of doom, I tuned into the Gideon Coe show on BBC 6Music. Literally, as soon as I flicked on to the station, a joyous noise was bounding into my ears – euphoria, innocence, joy, sweetness…. Some would call it an epiphany. The band in question was Loney Dear who were in the studio performing a live take of their single ‘The City, The Airport’. I recall being completely stunned and – pretty much immediately – devoured the complete discography which, at the time, consisted of two albums available only through the band direct (‘Citadel Band’ and ‘River Fontana’) plus ‘Sologne’ which had just been released by UK label Something In Construction.

“As is my nature, I couldn’t stop there. Reasoning suggested that, if something as good as this was coming out of Sweden, then there must be similar artists I could get equally obsessed over. Of course, it didn’t take me long to discover the delights of Jens Lekman, The Honeydrips, The Embassy, The Tough Alliance… the list goes on. As The Line Of Best Fit grew in stature, so did my involvement with the Swedish music industry. Over the years I’ve been involved on a consultancy based level to some incredible artists, not to mention had the pleasure of product managing releases for Service label (home to Jens and ex-home to Tough Alliance and Studio) and Force Majeure (responsible for Museum Of Bellas Artes and Bandjo).

“I still get the same kick from discovering new Swedish artists on a daily basis… The country is so rich and diverse – honest and open. The whole experience has been – and continues to be – hugely rewarding on so many levels. I owe a lot to Loney Dear, it would seem.”