Doug's Indie Picks for May 2013

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - I'm sorry I took a couple of months off of the indie picks, I just felt that I needed to focus my writing elsewhere, but I'm back with a new batch of great albums by independent artists. I am starting to feel that this series needs a break though because I'm not feeling the creative excitement for it like I used to. I will probably revisit it when I feel inspired to do so, but for music articles, I have a couple of other exciting projects that I've been working on for some time. Next month will mark the anniversary and I will do a special one and leave it at that for a little while.

Click to read more ...

Rob Dougan – Furious Angels

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - I remember when I first heard Rob Dougan's music, it was a song in The Matrix where Morpheus takes Neo into the program to teach him about agents and there is a sexy woman in a red dress. I wanted to find out what the song was and at the time I wasn't nearly as web savvy as I am now so I wound up not figuring it out. I was clearly not very resourceful because it wasn't top secret information by any stretch of the imagination, I just didn't know how to research things. But that song reappeared a few times in my travels, at one point someone mislead me into thinking it was a song by Moby. It wasn't until 2003 when The Matrix: Reloaded came out and my younger brother picked up the soundtrack. There were two songs by Rob Dougan on there, one was “Furious Angels” and the other was a track called “Chateau” from the scene where Neo takes on a whole group of program minions with every medieval weapon imaginable. That inspired me to check out more of Rob Dougan's work and I found his website that was promoting his full album Furious Angels, which contained the title track, but sadly not “Chateau” as that one was made specifically for the film. But also, it had a song called “Clubbed to Death,” which was the song from the first Matrix film that I had been looking for years earlier. I listened to the album and instantly knew that I would love it so I picked up a copy and years later, it is still as beautiful, dark, and poignant as ever.

Click to read more ...

Doug's Indie Picks for February 2013

- Vancouver, British Columbia - This month I have an exciting and diverse collection of music for you. Admittedly, it's not a particularly romantic playlist if you're looking for something for the Valentine's season, but that's because I've never been one to care much about Valentine's Day. If your significant other really loved you, they would let you listen to awesome music, wouldn't they? And hey, if you're single, which is fine also, you can always snuggle up nice and close to your iPod by the fire place and listen to some of these tunes. They will always love you. Yes, I'm being odd. What of it?

Click to read more ...

Doug's Indie Picks for December 2012

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - December is a curious month in that Christmas just kind of takes it all over. There are 30 more days that month and all that is on everyone's mind is counting down the days until they eat a whole bunch of food and give presents to one another. Really, you could choose any day of the year to do that, but since everyone is doing it on December 25th, why not join in? Most holidays don't really get the wide assortment of music that Christmas does. I mean, Halloween has Thriller and... uhh... I don't think Easter really gets anything unless you're watching children's television. But almost every band or artist takes it upon themselves to contribute to the Christmas music tradition... except Radiohead, but maybe that's for the best. Sometimes they'll release a single, like The Killers made a habit of for quite a few years, or sometimes they'll make a whole album, like Cee-Lo Green did this year. I guess my main complaint is that so many people just copy the same standard songs time and time again... but sometimes that works. For my indie picks this month, I'm going to try and dig out some original music or find some of the standards that are performed in a way that's a little different this time, because hey, you might want some independent musicians on that holiday playlist next to U2, Mariah Carey, and George Michael... or was it WHAM? They can't have all the fun.

Click to read more ...

Doug's Indie Picks for November 2012

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - I think I'm running out of things to say in these introductions, but that's okay, I just like hearing myself talk... or seeing myself write. One of those. This month, my indie picks are quite diverse, both in musicality and in how much the music means to me. There are some I've had in my collection for a number of years and have come to cherish, a couple that I've had for a little while, and one that I literally just got a couple of weeks ago through chance. I want to take this opportunity to share these with you so you can find music that you'll love and be able to support some talented musicians while you're at it.

Click to read more ...