I often found myself in Manchester in a previous life as a music journalist. These days I often find myself listening to bands from Manchester. There’s lots of them. I took onboard the landfill indie (note new favourite expression) of The Courteeners early doors and decided nah, not for me, or words to that effect. How they got an NME cover is beyond me, says more about the sorry demise of NME than anything I guess. But what do I know? Ears of cloth, me.

Anyway… Quite how I’ve missed Aidan Smith is beyond me to be frank. Just look at his CV will you? Supported Badly Drawn Boy, warmed up for Turin Brakes, opened for the almighty I Am Kloot and wonderful Calexico. Impeccable.

In short, I hold my head in shame. The man is genius. His nimble tunemongery and little piano-playing fingers probably make him a sort of UK Ben Folds. There’s a delicious hint of Andy Partridge in his voice, and very much an XTC sensibility about his music, which is slightly, delightfully off-kilter. And as regular readers will know (seriously doubt there are any regulars, but still), we do like a bit of off-kilter here.

Best of all, the fact he’s in a jazz trio, Luke and the Dukes, who you can hire for weddings and stuff makes me honk like a goose. Like I said, genius. Why on earth don’t other bands do that? Record labels take note – stop moaning about downloading and start hawking your bands out for weddings for all our sakes.

More hear…
- myspace blah blah
- Old version of his proper website and so on and so forth
- BUY BUY BUY HIS MUSIC HERE
- Oh, the can you dig it in the headline? New album called ‘Allotments’. Do you see? Do you?

There are many things that I like about writing about music when I feel like it. One of them is the peculiar thrill I get from seeing our posts on a site called Hype Machine.

Hype Machine is just about the most brilliant music site in the world, ever. What it does is present a snapshot of the music being posted right now to the many thousands of MP3 blogs around the world.

Aside from it being a great place for discovering some fine new music, seeing what everyone else is listening to, and reading what everyone else is writing about (it is NME for the 21st century, really it is), Hype Machine lists all the blogs it features in a handy A-Z format. Handy for bands looking for coverage.

We get quite a few mails this way. Most, you can tell, have just been knocked out to everyone, literally thousands of blogs. And to be frank, the music is crap.

Some mails, even if they have gone to everyone, make you feel special. And everyone likes to feel special now and again, right? Thanks then to Rebecca Mosley off of the wonderful Cogwheel Dogs for making us feel special this week. Nice email.

Cogwheel Dogs are Oxford duo, Rebecca on guitars and singing and cellist Tom Parnell. They make music that tip toes through the daisies one minute (see ‘Breathe’), and is slashing at the pretty little flowers with a big spade the next (see ‘Anticoagulant’). It’s all everso slightly left of centre. And we do like ever so slightly left of centre.

Cogwheel Dogs have a faint shimmer of Dry period PJ Harvey about them, never a bad thing, and there’s a very similar, very strong songwriting sensibility at work here. If we were betting folk (what? Oh), we’d say these two are going places. Ask Alan Mcgee who’s booked them to for his Death Disco night at Notting Hill Arts Club on July 16. If you live in London, check them out for us will you and report back? Thanks.

And doesn’t a cello make a quite gorgeous sound? It does.

More hear…
- A very nice site that actually isn’t MySpace, from which you can download single ‘Cress’ for free.
- Oh, and a MySpace