2024 was a great year. Real Gone celebrated its fifteenth anniversary. It was the website’s most successful year to date. We picked up a lot of new supporters and covered a wealth of new music. Our detailed reviews continued to be popular with the readers, and our Singles Bar really caught the attention of those looking for a quicker fix of new music.
It’s been another great year at Real Gone. We’ve reviewed countless albums and EPs. We’ve covered a record number of gigs (with Simple Minds and Deacon Blue being particular standouts), and gained support from a wealth of new labels and PR teams. It’s also been the first full year online for our popular Singles Bar – allowing us to take a look at various individual tracks and submissions – which has provided a massive extra stream of traffic.
It’s been a superb twelve months for music, and it’s time to shine a light on the many talents we feel have helped to make our site interesting. We’ve featured a wealth of new stuff. As usual, rock has provided the backbone of Real Gone’s musical interests, but we’ve really gone all out to try and promote some of the most interesting things from other genres, which has made picking favourites a little harder this year.
Bringing together members of Fuzz Orchestra, Zeus, Lento and Zu, German band Traum aren’t light on musical talents. On their debut album, the collective explore a broad soundscape of space rock, desert rock and stoner to create a heavily atmospheric work. Perhaps most impressively, unlike some of their peers, they don’t feel it is always necessary for their musical explorations to stretch out into hugely lengthy jams. There are longer works shared, but the bulk of ‘Traum’ shares shorter, accessible pieces, and in doing so, really helps to create a user friendly record from a sometimes less than user friendly style.
Welcome back to the Real Gone Singles Bar, the place where we explore the various individual mp3s that have landed in our inbox over the previous few weeks. With January at an end and with 2024 having now gained momentum, the submissions are rolling in very fast. This week, picking favourites was almost a thankless task. People have sent so much good stuff our way after returning to work following the Xmas break! This time out, we bring you a couple of singer songwriters, some brilliant light sounding and alternative pop, a strong guitar instrumental, a slab of retro space rock and more besides! We hope you find something to enjoy…
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