The Monitors music blog Relaunches!

The Monitors music blog Relaunches!

Our very own new music blog, The-Monitors, has re-launched with a flashy design and loads of amazing content.

Edited by Record-Play consultant Kier Wiater Carnihan, The-Monitors has been our way of informing our clients on a weekly basis of rising stars, bands and artists they should be keeping an eye on.

The new layout is designed to make the site much more user friendly, and with new features with the likes of Karl Bartos (Kraftwerk) and Liars already up, we expect the blog to gain a much wider audience too. This follows our ambitions into the world of content creation, which includes weekly new band posts for Brazil’s Revista Trip website under the ‘Music Forward’ tagline.

You should also definitely check out the current re-launch competition too, which is giving people the chance to win Ableton Live 8 suite along with a load of other goodies.

Here’s what Kier has to say about the site and future plans…

TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOURSELF

I’ve been writing about music for about ten years, starting off at university putting together zines when I should’ve been studying. Professionally I’ve written for Playground (sort of like the Spanish version of Pitchfork), Management Today and The Stool Pigeon, the latter being a particular source of inspiration before its untimely death earlier this year. The fact I rarely had the time, money or inclination to write for other people for free has meant I’ve had to turn down a fair few opportunities, but I’m happiest running my own ship so it’s all turned out for the best. Although possibly not for the other people in the ship.

WHAT HAVE YOU ALREADY POSTED AND WHAT HAVE YOU GOT COMING UP?

For our launch week we published interview with Liars, Karl Bartos and Scout Niblett, which was amazing. We have interviews coming up with Mount Kimbie, Childhood and a host of new artists, a South African travelogue from Nick Luscombe in podcast form, a vinyl decorating session with the artist Craig Dermody of Scott & Charlene’s Wedding, reviews of festivals like Tramlines, Visons and Poland’s OFF, and bits and pieces like a Residents retrospective and ‘The Memoirs of a Discogs Addict’. Alongside this will be our normal band, album and video picks of the week, plus globbets of news, opinion and live reviews spattered all over the site.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE POST UP THERE AT THE MOMENT?

I really liked the Scout Niblett interview. Less for the interview itself and more for the writer’s honesty and insight into the interviewing process: the awkwardness, the frustration and the occasional unexpected connections. A lot of interviewees find the process quite unpleasant and interview situations are often quite contrived, but writers tend to try and gloss over any uncomfortable feelings. Instead the writer here, Jenny Smale, used it as a springboard to talk about Niblett and her music in more depth. I found that much more interesting.

YOU’VE BROUGHT A HOST OF NEW CONTRIBUTORS ON BOARD, WHO ARE THEY?

We’ve got a real mixture: experienced music writers from places like The Quietus, The Line of Best Fit and Artrocker alongside people who’ve never written about music before. Getting the latter on board is quite exciting as they haven’t had the opportunity to fall into lazy formulas and conventions, which hopefully adds some freshness and character. We’ll also be getting experts in other fields such as politics, science and film to explore the places where these disciplines intersect with music.

Head over to www.the-monitors.com today!