On his blog The Wireless new media bod Andrew Dubber is posting up an mp3 every day and writing a bit about it. Since he’s fairly in touch with the local music scene a number of the acts promise to be from the region. On Monday he posted a track by Friends of the Stars from their forthcoming album, which I duly downloaded and liked. So I started investigating.
Unlike many bands Friends of the Stars have a blog. Okay, a number of acts are starting to use the rather clunky blog that comes with their MySpace account but up until recently it was a rare thing to see. The FotS blog is ostensibly there to chronicle the story of making their album Lighting and Electrical but thanks to it, shall we say, being a bit delayed the blog veers off into other areas with YouTube videos and musings about all manner of stuff.
It might seem superficial and amateurish but I came away from it with a better idea about what the band were and where they were coming from than I would do from a pretty Flash-based site. There’s a personality and narrative here that I, as a prospective listener, can connect with. Next time I see their name on a gig listing I’ll make an effort to attend.
(The fact that their folk-esque music is really good doesn’t hurt though.)