A LoneLady among these dark Mancunian mills

LoneLady

Warp's wicked love affair with the guitar continued recently with LoneLady's debut album Nerve Up (LoneLady pictured above). I always wondered what happened in those smashed-window remnants of Manchester mills... well, here's the result.

Nerve Up is low-fi and immediate like the xx, and like that album it carries off the impossible task of sounding retro and fresh. Hear, if you will, the spirit of The Fall, Cabaret Voltaire, Joy Division and, to a larger extent I think, Gang Of Four, and yet it somehow explodes with potent energy.

Intuition is the immediate post-punk classic here, while If Not Now has the insistence of Tricky vocalist of Nicolette set to an unashamed '80s vibe. And she's not afraid to speed it up either, with the stomping disco of Army and the jangly, hand-clappy Early The Haste Comes.

Sharing a producer with My Bloody Valentine certainly helps LoneLady's album groove and ride and wiggle its way into your memory. Much of the record is reverbed to hell, I guess to reflect the huge mills in which it was created, and so adding a nicely apocalyptic touch.

My concern is if Warp can't convert this album into a sure-fire smash hit (the xx broke the top 40 last summer), what hope is there for any of their artists? I insist, dear reader, that this album is your guitar-rock purchase of the year.

Loscil

One for the guitar-phobic, now, and an album that is as equally atmospheric as LoneLady's long-player. Loscil's fifth album Endless Falls will envelope you, smother you and send your fuzzy mind spinning into that joyous place just before you drown with suffocated lungs.

Seven tracks of warm, glitchy looping ambience (nine tracks on the vinyl) make way for an epic closing piece of, um, spoken word poetry. Not a single string section, not the tiniest crackle, not a single moment of muffled melancholia is out of place on this beguiling ambient highlight of 2010 and a true successor to Global Communication's early work.

Do you pay for your record collection?

Do you pay for your record collection?

Following YouTube's decision to kick the pop stars off its screens (leaving the architect of Kylie Minogue's success in terrible poverty), you took one of two views. One: we internet-savvy media whores deserve all the free entertainment we can get, and we intend to stream our eyeballs out. Or two: "free" doesn't earn a living for struggling musicians; we should be paying for what we watch.

It has raised an interesting diversion in the battle between the internet autobots and the record industry decepticons. The debate is no longer about file sharing and illegal mp3s. In fact, Music Think Tank sounded the death knell for file sharing this week, arguing that illegal downloads are going the way of the mullet.

No. It's about streaming. Which bypasses the old debate about paying for transactions in which a piece of music comes into your ownership. It's a new debate about what you watch and what you hear through the power of Spotify or Last FM..

Independent writer Rhodri Marsden put up a staunch defence of the Performing Rights Society, insisting we should be forking out for our music consumption.  I agree with him, especially when you get the kind of impassioned plea from Grizzly Bear where hard-working artists have their new album leaked three months early.

So why, then, do I have a large stockpile of illegally obtained mp3s?

Well, almost all are single tracks swiped from blogs and file-sharing sites. I treat these downloads as tasters, and often do the old-fashioned thing of either buying the £6.99 download from Bleep or the £2.99 not-for-resale promo CD from Vinyl Exchange.

My streaming habits are different. Spotify spins me into a world of nostalgia; I listen to old albums I would never buy again. The past turns round and bites you on Spotify in the same way it does on Facebook (and noticeably doesn't on Twitter).

Last FM is another kettle of bunnies. It's the opposite of Spotify, in that it's totally about new music for me. It does, however, lead me into the cycle of sampling illegal mp3s, then eventually buying an album.

So maybe, my streaming habits feed my older-fashioned downloading habits. I don't think either habit costs the record industry a penny, though. I still pay for the bit of my record collection I really want to keep, and I would suggest this is true for a lot of music consumers.

Downloading can lead to disappointment.  The statistic that the dreary new U2 album was downloaded illegally over 400,000 times proves that, sometimes, you really can get nothing for nothing.  But overall, downloads serve as a valuable way of promoting promising musicians.

Get it wrong, and there's much to lose. Dave Allen, post-punk bassist and the proprieter of Pamplemoose sounded a warning that "what's at stake are the livelihoods of people who work at labels, big and small, and of artists who actually make a living recording and performing music."

No pressure, then. Do you pay for your record collection? Should you? Am I trying to justify behaviour which you think is harmful? Is streaming the new black? How will Pete Waterman get through the recession?

Post your thoughts (for free) below.