Music for nations

Somehow, we've been added to the Hype Machine. Everybody get well.

Let's start what we think might be our last roundup of mp3s passed on to us in good faith of 2008 with what we think may be an exclusive, in that it's not due to go online officially until this weekend but the band's management have said they don't mind us blogging it. Said band are SixNationState, a favourite of ours for a couple of years now on the back of their full throttle exuberant live show and their infectiously ragged indie-punk/ska/dub/transplanted Merseybeat carnival records. This summer they've done the festival circuit, headlined a touring show based on a barge up the Thames and supported the Maccabees, The Wombats, Pete & The Pirates, Laura Marling and Mumford & Sons. Can't help wondering how they came across to a Marling/Mumford audience, but we must press on. Having cleared 500 shows in two years, they've been writing their second album for spring release and ahead of White Denim support dates starting on Sunday are releasing a twangy demo apparently inspired by that whole McCartney/Mills business.

SixNationState - Your Money Or Your Life

Another band we've consistently supported (and another band whose frontman has told us they're a reader - see, well known record label intern who mailed us last week asking about our rate card, some things are more prestigious to us than sidebar adverts) are the grandiose Bologna collective A Classic Education. We're still waiting on the fruits of their Jeremy Warmsley production sessions, and indeed anything else to come out when someone sees sense and gives them a label deal, but in the meantime they've issued a new song about, it says here, "the banal misunderstandings that come between two lovers and the usual notion that escapism can be a solution".

A Classic Education - We Can Always Run To Hawaii

What news from the shires? Leicestershire, to be exact, where paupers feel like princes, the streets are lined with rosy cheeked youngsters proffering gifts and this blog calls home. What that means is we know all about both Minnaars, electronically charged post-dance-punks taking Q And Not U and Minus The Bear as starting points (oh alright, and Foals) and Love Ends Disaster!, wiry post-post-punk Nottingham emigres. One has now remixed the other ahead of the former's November 24th debut EP.

Minnaars - Essay Essay Essay (Love Ends Disaster! remix)

And a band completely new to STN! Ace Bushy Striptease (they have a proper site too, with more free mp3s) are a slippery, slithery female fronted Birmingham unit who specialise in rusty, ramshackle indie-pop songs, diverting from glorious pop melodies to complete splashdown at the drop of a hat. The recently shuttered - lightweight - Death To Music put us onto them, as did a showing on Brainlove's Two Thousand And Ace compilation. A year and fourteen gigs old at time of writing they've already gone through three permanent singers and six guests. This, one of the few current songs they have of an appreciable length, have a song named after Alexei JoFo's previous band. Result.

Ace Bushy Striptease - Panda Love Unit