Birmingham based label Zang Productions are well known for their giveaways, but this Christmas they have something very special to unleash to the waiting world. Its a collection of festive songs in a whole free album for you to download, some traditional, some original, and some contemporary. It features all the members of the Zang Collective, including The University of the King, Benjamin Blower, Barrowclough, Greybeard and more.

You can download the whole album by visiting www.zangproductions.co.uk and clicking on the free download section. On the site you will also find other information on their roster, and a link to the video for the song “Jumping Home for Christmas”, which is also available to download.

Uneasy listening. That would be the Itunes classification for Benjamin Blower’s debut album, ‘Its Raining Glass and Tears’. It’s an aggressive, hostile collection of songs consumed with the breakdown of society, bitterness, paedo’s, an album of sour tastes and animosity. It’s not for nothing that the majority of the percussion tracks were drawn together from the sound of smashing glass, the cacophony of skyscrapers imploding, plummeting to the dregs on the ground amid chaos and confusion. Few expected such an album from Blower, whose breezy lyrics and ponderings in the mighty rap outfit The University of the King added much to the general weirdness of their previous projects. Friends, I should imagine, worried about him. They probably wanted to give him a cuddle and check he was alright. Hide the sharps from his kitchen and check the cupboard for pills. To see whether he meant it, whether this truly was his view of the world he existed in. Continue Reading

1st September 2008 sees Benjamin Blower release his new album, ‘The Pillar of Smoke’, just a regular album of songs about running from a rhino and finding God in the wilderness. Benjamin sounded like an interesting sort of fellow, and so it would be rude not to pop round his house and fire 20 Questions at him until he shouted at us to leave. We are particularly frightened by the answer to Question 19. But any Sufjan Stevens fan will find a friend round here.

Enjoy his album, available from Zang Productions. Continue Reading

He claims to have been rapping before primary school, a hip-hop toddler presumably smothered with Fisher Price bling and the beginnings of the full and rather comprehensive beard he currently sports. Looking like a youthful hermit with full access to shower facilities, Barrowclough presents here his first solo album, after two critically acclaimed releases as part of the outfit Michaelis Constant. His ambition is to concoct an album that is both subtle and arresting, a musical collage as a canvass on which to paint his depiction of life. Continue Reading