Fused magazine, as part of Eyecandy Festival, are helping out the Oxjam charity this year by calling for submissions for a 12×12 visual interpretation of your favourite record sleeve.

OxjamBrum operates with zero budget; and so we ask that all artists involved kindly donate their services for free, enabling us to make sure every single penny raised goes to Oxfam. This year’s Takeover Festival is raising funds for, and awareness of Oxfam’s GROW campaign. The OxjamBrum Takeover Festival is a major one-day multi-venue celebration of the best of Birmingham’s independent music scene, curated and delivered by a team of dedicated volunteers who know and love the city.

It’s actually a little tricky to find out about local music around the city, I find. This is the stuff I know about, feel free to add other stuff in the comments.

News

Brum Notes is the website for the free, monthly music and lifestyle magazine (Nov issue out now, Oct one online here).

The Birmingham Post have news and reviews here and the Birmingham Mail do rock/pop news.

Fused Magazine‘s site does the odd bit of music news, as does the website for sister magazine Area.

Surge Music takes a wider, Midlands-wide view of things, with articles and lists of gigs, bands and venues.

Cul-de-Sac turned out to be a false dawn for this sort of thing, but may come back one day.

@birminghamlive and @brumpunks are good sources for concert info too.

Reviews

Birmingham Live is the obvious choice here – someone from their ranks of volunteer reviewers and photographers will be at a gig in Birmingham pretty much every evening. Steve Gerrard organises this one (Lee Allen and I have also chipped in occasionally).

The Hearing Aid is a blog by someone called The Baron who goes to an impressive number of local gigs.

The Birmingham Mail do gig reviews too.

Get-togethers

The Birmingham Music Network meets monthly at the Department of Technology, Engineering and the Environment (T.E.E.) at Millennium Point. Their website has a good range of resources too.

Audio

I’m on shakier ground here – which radio shows promote local talent There’s Brumcast on Rhubarb Radio and Introducing on BBC WM. I don’t know enough about the shows on New Style Radio, Aston FM or any others.

Are there any Birmingham-based mp3 blogs worth talking about?

Anything else?

Let me know in the comments. Just to be clear, we’re not looking for bands/venues/promoters to plug themselves but if that’s you, where do you look to get featured?

Oh, and see also Birmingham listings.

(pic – The Editors by Steve Gerrard from the opening night of the new Academy)

Why apply?
The SXSW MUSIC AND MEDIA CONFERENCE showcases hundreds of musical acts from around the globe on over eighty stages in downtown Austin. By day, conference registrants do business in the SXSW Trade Show in the Austin Convention Center and partake of a full agenda of informative, provocative panel discussions featuring hundreds of speakers of international stature.

The fund covers up to 50% of your costs. These costs can include: your event pass or ticket, travel expenses and accommodation costs. Costs will be reimbursed upon production of receipts up to a maximum of: £500.

Applications close on 20th January, to apply fill out the short application.

For those that don’t know Fused, they produce a quarterly publication that covers fashion, music, arts, etc and so on.  They also produced a rather good students’ guide to Birmingham, a responsible for the Ltd Edition affordable art market and promote local bands overseas at showcases like SXSW.

The magazine’s distributed internationally but their blog tends to throw in lots of local mentions with posts about Plus+ and Eastside Projects recently.

Here’s what the site looks like:

Made Media made it.

Last year at LTD Edition, an affordable art market organised by Fused Magazine, 30 artists sold their work to over 100 visitors in one weekend. Kerry from Fused has written to say that this year:

We are bringing a touch of culture (not that it doesn’t have bundles already) to the Custard Factory with 4 art markets planned from July onwards, all happening as an addition to the Sunday Flea

If you’re an artist and want to take part then see the site for the contact information. The blog will carry updates on the artists involved and pictures of their work/what’s going on generally.