Charting the career of Epic Soundtracks (bka Kevin Paul Godfrey) is to a certain extent to follow the trajectory of independent music in the UK from the seventies’ on forwards.

In 1972, Soundtracks along with his brother who would shortly take the name Nikki Sudden embarked on a project that would result in the Swell Maps. Prior it all coming down to that, though, the assembled players went and backed up a guy named Steve Treatment.

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Jaden Smith is the top attraction, tops Jackie Chan in a Kungfu movie? The flick is called 'Karate Kid,' but the martial arts is all kungfu and the location is China, and the star is eleven years old, ten years old when the film was shot, and the teen and pre-teens on the Internet are saying, 'he's cute." That translates into being box office hot.

Justin Bieber, the hot teen idol himself, who appears at the end of the flick singing his hit single, "Never Say Never," as the credits roll, was on Twitter on opening day, this past Friday, telling his zillion of girl fans -- "Everyone go check out my lil bro Jaden Smith's new movie KARATE KID. OPENS 2nite!! "  And did his fans respond! The flick grabbed the hog share of Friday box office and is expected to be this weekend's run away hit.

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There’s no way to classify a great deal of music. Some performaners so actively seek a broad swath of influence and practice that working towards a succinct description of its sound is ludicrous. And every act associated with the Los Angeles Free Music Association would agree. They’d each have to. However many groups found themselves under the aegis of this loose knit group, there can’t be said to be too many similarities. Noise and an adventurous nature might be just about the only things hemming it all up.

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Lady GagaThe new music video by the American pop music singer and dancer, Lady Gaga, performing 'Alejandro', the third single from her second studio album, "The Fame Monster," is on-line and is sizzling. The fan interest is, as expected, off the planet. See the video.

MTV says, "Lady Gaga's latest video opus, "Alejandro," is a dizzying array of provocative imagery." It is being called a "S&M Fetish Frenzy."

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At this point it feels more than a little patronizing to commend what is ostensibly not a hip hop album for using elements of hip hop properly. So, when I say that Treats, the debut album for Brooklyn-based noise pop outfit Sleigh Bells, is a pretty amazing and surprising fusion of hip hop and speaker-buzzing guitar I mean it as a comment with a caveat. Treats doesn't just use elements of hip hop, it uses some particularly egregious elements that have been woefully misused in some of the worst, or at least most artistically bankrupt, hip hop of the past ten years.

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In this digital age of whole music libraries made portable by MP3 players and the ever-changing electronic medium, the art of the mix tape has fallen by the wayside. That's why it's important every once in a while to promote the idea of putting certain songs back-to-back to establish a mood or convey a particular idea, even if they come from completely different genres or time periods. This is Mixed Tracks, where we put together a small set list of songs for just that purpose.

Today I'd like to delve into the lost art of the slow dance song. The style had its heyday in the 80's and 90's when it unfortunately got ruined by too many cheesy ballads and some of the worst music videos ever committed to film. That doesn't mean that there haven't been some really awesome intimate, down-tempo songs from the same era, just that none of the best from the period were ever considered proper slow dance songs. Maybe it's because they were more emotionally complicated than the saccharine fare of high school dances or simply because they catered to folks who never frequented traditional clubs. Whatever the reason, the following songs ought to be considered great slow dance songs for people who prefer, ya know, good music when they're swaying with their special someone.

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Shoegaze geeks rejoice, we have another great album in our favorite genre to celebrate. New York's own The Depreciation Guild just released their second studio album Spirit Youth and it's exactly what dream pop fans have been waiting for since My Bloody Valentine hung up their guitars. At once noisy and beautiful throughout, Spirit Youth is a textbook example of everything that makes shoegaze enjoyable. Together with The Daysleepers' 2008 album Drowned in a Sea of Sound, it seems that the scene that celebrates itself is making a long-overdue comeback.

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High Violet, the new album released by Cincinnati-by-way-of-Brooklyn band The National may not be the most uplifting record of 2010, but it is one of the most beautiful. It's the band's fifth studio release and it continues in the stunning tradition of Alligator and Boxer before it. That said, High Violet isn't as instantly exciting as Alligator or immediately compelling as Boxer. It's at once less urgent and considerably more fussed-over. Guitars don't feature very heavily on the album and there aren't any real rock songs to be found on the short but intense track list. Instead, much of the album consists of songs that clearly began as Matt Beringer sitting alone at his piano and spent 18 months blossoming into 11 miniature symphonies.

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David Bowie and Marc BolanThere are two sides to the art of pop music. One side is concerned with upholding the status quo while the other busies itself with all the ways to tear it down. Though not everyone is into chemically-aided expansion of the mind and a lot of pop fans don't cotton to violence and destruction, everyone is interested in sex (especially the people who say they aren't). That's why challenging sexual taboos has been a staple of pop ever since there was pop. Before visual art, stage and even the ever-edgy world of film were willing to tackle the topic of homosexuality, pop embraced the subject and has even managed to make a string of hits out of it. Some gay pop songs are sneaky, others are overt. Either way, the following four artists have paved the way to queer acceptance by putting gay-themed lyrics into songs too catchy to ignore.

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It's not always good to be the Next Big Thing, at least from an artistic standpoint. There are some pretty heavy expectations tied to being an up-and-coming act. Most NBT bands manage to get away with one great album before collapsing or at least disappointing everyone who proclaimed them the future of (insert style) music. For Radiohead, commercial and critical success opened up the possibility of artistic freedom, a privilege they would use to their full advantage as they approached the third decade of their careers.

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