Advent Calendar, Door Twenty Two - Verse Metrics

It's almost time to finish off all the treats and toss the cardboard and plastic packaging of the advent calendar into a landfill site for another year. Almost, but not quite.

Leading us into the last days are Verse Metrics, long terms favouties of the blog, and former gig guests at that. After a fairly lengthy quiet spell Verse Metrics popped up again recently with a new EP, Radians. It was, rather unsurprisingly, worth waiting for.

For Christmas, Verse Metrics have had a go at covering Mogwai. You can hear and download the results below.



This comes from a wee Christmas compilation put together by A Badge of Friendship. You can find the rest of the compilation here.

Readers' Poll 2012

While I try to find time to write up my best of lists for the year it's time again to have the traditional* Readers' Poll.
There's a couple of changes this year. The main one being that hardly anyone bothers to email in answers, so I've set up a wee survey page to fill in instead. Since I'm limited to 10 questions a few of the more redundant categories have been cut out this year. I could have kept them in, but after encouragement from people who probably just want to see me burn bridges and get a kicking, this year for the first time I've brought in "worst" categories. I'm well aware this is just asking for trouble, but I said I'd do it, and I'm a man of my word.

Quickie rules &regulations type things: 
Answer or skip whatever questions you want, but if a bunch of people answer one question with the same answer it'll be pretty obvious ballot stuffing.
No ballot stuffing! If it isn't obvious I probably won't notice it though.
You can vote for bands, albums etc from anywhere, they don't have to be Scottish.
Polls close on December 28th, after that I'll count up the results and post them around new year.
This is meant to be a wee bit of fun, so don't moan about the results when posted!

 Aye Tunes Readers' Poll 2012 Categories

Best Album - choose up to three, 1 being your favourite, etc. Same goes for all the "best" categories.
Best Single/EP Basically anything that isn't an album.
Worst Album/Single/EP - Pick one only, whatever you've liked the least from the last year. Same goes for all the "worst" categories but one.
Best Band
Best Solo Artist:
Worst Band/Solo Artist
Best New Band/Solo Artist -New is very subjective, if you first heard of them this year, that'll do.
Best Music Blog/Website
Best Music Radio Show/Podcast:
Worst Music Blog/Website/Radio Show/Podcast - big category, so you can pick up to three.

You can fill out the poll over here, or, if I haven't messed up the embedding, right down below.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

*I've ran it the last two years, that makes it a tradition.

Advent Calendar, Door Twenty One - Dinosaurs Are Shit Dragons

Here's the new Christmas song from Dinosaurs Are Shit Dragons. It's called Crying and Wanking (at Christmas) and is available to download here.

I don't think I really need to add any more.

Advent Calendar, Door Twenty - Eureka Machines

l loves me some Eureka Machines. Both their albums released to date have been on my year end best of lists - I still need to whip this year's one into shape - and their third album is currently in the works, you can find out more about that here.

Here's their take on an old festive favourite.

Eureka Machines - Silent Night

Advent Calendar, Door Nineteen - The Spook School

Today we've got one of my favourite Scottish bands in the advent calendar, The Spook School!

Considering that for a big chunk of the year half of the band have been off galavanting in foreign lands, they've been surprisingly busy. October saw the release of a 7" single, and they followed that up this month with a release on tape. Both are fab.

Now, here's their Christmas song, Bah Humbug! You can name your price for a download here.

Advent Calendar, Door Eighteen - mi mye

Repeating myself with a post from last year again today. Complaints to the usual address.

mi mye's Christmas album from last year was ace, so here it is again.

merry christmass and sorry for all the trubble i cosed is available to download for free on Bandcamp.

Advent Calendar, Door Seventeen - The Last Battle

I really shouldn't leave these till after I get home from work when I don't get home till eleven.
Anyway, squeezing in just before the midnight deadline - the deadline that I do occasionally gleefully ignore anyway - is the latest door on the advent calendar, with 3 (three!) songs behind it.

The Last Battle's Christmas offering is a three track single, The Last Xmas. You can download it here for free.

Advent Calendar, Day Sixteen - Colin's Godson

Another day, another pretend door to open.

Today we've got Colin's Godson. It's been a busy wee year for this band, they've gone to Space, through time, and, um, ahoy? They've also provided me with quite a lot of entertainment with their records, with a special mention going to the fab packaging the albums come in.

Now in what will surely be a career highlight for them, they get to be the illustrious 16th band this year to have a Christmas song on here.

The Colin's Godson Christmas single, Xmas 1993, is available to download here.