The line up for this year’s RockNess festival has just been released and features three emerging electronic acts from the Highlands.

This year’s RockNess takes place from 8-10 June as ever in the village of Dores near Inverness on the stunning banks of Loch Ness.  The first line up announcement includes masters of the biggest club night in Inverness and winners of ‘Club Night of the Year’ at Scotland’s ICA Awards, FILTH aka Ross Lyall and Andrew McGibbon.  The duo are also planning an onslaught of new Filth nights for 2012 in new more intimate venues across the Highlands.

They are joined by POLYMATH aka Martin Gowans whose own tech house productions have featured on the playlists of Radio 1’s Kissy Sell Out, Tiga, Wolfgang Gartner and an early appearance on Netsounds Unsigned.  Completing this trio of talent is COUNT CLOCKWORK, Khalid Hussain & Louis Buick.  Netsounds Unsigned featured and spoke to the duo on our podcast last year following the release of their debut EP “Whorehouse.”  Alongside Polymath and up and coming DJ/Producers Them & Us they will also be supporting the “queen of electronica” Annie Mac at Ironworks in Inverness on 18th February.

Obviously our interest lies in the new and emerging acts so we will wait in anticipation to hear future line up news.  Last year we were very delighted with Story Books, Lucy Rose, Pete Roe, Capitals, Iain McLaughlin and The Outsiders, James Mackenzie and Kobi Onyame to name a few.

Further up the line up for 2012 RockNess have announced headliners the Brit Award winners and Grammy nominees Mumford & Sons, platinum selling Biffy Clyro and the critically acclaimed live sensation and Grammy nominee Deadmau5.  They will join the likes of Ed Sheeran, Justice, Noah and the Whale, Death In Vegas and Metronomy, whose album The English Riviera was one of my favourite albums of 2011.

This is the first line up announcement for RockNess 2012 and we fully expect further line up news and more Highland additions from all genres.  Keep an ear to our podcasts and an eye on our site for the first news on the new and emerging acts who will be appearing at RockNess 2012.

Official RockNess website: WWW.ROCKNESS.CO.UK

Our 5th MixCast and 9 bands make their netsounds debut. Artists from Scotland, England, America and France feature on this one.

All but one of the bands featured were found on Bandcamp and just about all these songs are free to download.

If you like anything you hear, please go and send the bands your love. And if there’s anything you don’t like, direct your complaints to me, we’ll discuss it, then ultimately decide I’m right.

Listen to it here on the website, or on Podomatic, or download/subscribe through itunes. All links on our front page.

Artists featured on this MixCast:

Thick Voltage - Pushed and Pulled

What a way to start the mixcast. Based in Brooklyn, electro/dance/punk Thick Voltage have a produced a superb 4 track EP that fans of Netsounds favourites Capitals and Homework will love. Keep a close eye on these guys.

The Hit Ups - You’re Dead, Lets Disco

The Hit-Ups have already built up a huge following and have been featured on Kerrang! Radio, but sod it, they’re still unsigned, so they’re getting a play on a netsounds and this song is bloody brilliant. Describing themselves as “Spooked out, electronic, party-core, rock ‘n’ roll”, the all too obvious comparison would be Rage Against The Machine, so I won’t do it. Turn it up loud.

Totem Terrors - 142083 (Trains)

Totem Terrors are a duo from Cardiff/Brighton. I have no idea what the song title relates to and I also have no idea “what’s in the bag Billy?” (you’ll have to listen to the song to understand what I mean by that). Simply a great 2 minute pop-rock song with a fantastic riff.

Sundayer - Metallic Cans

Everybody loves a bit of French pop don’t they? From Rouen/Rennes, band members Cécile Martin and Xavier Hemery’s aim was to sound like “une promenade dominicale” (a walk on a Sunday Afternoon). This is taken from their album “Might”, available from Bandcamp.

Cheerleader - Dreamer

Cheerleader are duo Donovan and Max from Hartford, Connecticut and produce dreamy indie electro pop. ‘Dreamer’ is an instantly catchy song with tones of MGMT running through it. Love it.

Dark Beach - Vamp

Dark Beach are female duo Faith Gardner and Melissa Dale from Oakland, California. Great high energy punk rock that reminds me of Sleater-Kinney and early Yeah Yeah Yeah’s. This song is taken from their 8 track EP with which can be downloaded for free from Bandcamp.

Dead Ends - Knock Back

Dead Ends are a 4 piece indie pop rock band from Norwich. ‘Knock Back’is taken from their excellent self titled 5 track EP which is available to download from Bandcamp.

The Mirror Trap - St Petersburg

Alternative rock band The Mirror Trap released their album The Last Great Melodrama in 2011 and have also supported The View at Glasgow’s Barrowlands and Dundee’s Caird Hall. The Dundee band play at King Tut’s on 7th March, supporting Sound of Guns.

The Minor Leagues - Ghost Maps

‘Ghost Maps’ is taken from Cincinnati’s The Minor League’s album North College Hill which is due for release this week. The band are often compared to Belle & Sebastian and The New Pornographers and are known for their lives shows which feature a fair amount of audience participation.

A great pop tune to end the MixCast.

And that’s yer lot for this week.

With the final chords of the the Ironworks Winter showcase still ringing in our ears, those ambitious chaps at the Ironworks in Inverness have announced that there will be another event in the Spring!

The Easter Showcase which will take place on Saturday 7th April follows in the footsteps of the ultra-successful Summer and Winters Showcases again supported by new media partnerships with popular local website Inverness GiGs and established our good selves.

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We have finally dragged our lazy carcasses back to the Netsounds bothy and thought it was about time we published our list of acts that we think will make a bigger sound in 2012.

You will get a chance to hear more from these acts and perhaps some exclusives on our podcasts over the coming weeks.   For now though turn your attention to these beauties below, check out the links to their tracks and make up your own mind about the acts we think you should watch closely in 2012.

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‘Twas the season of the great Winter Showcase!  TWO fantastic nights highlighting some of the best emerging talent from Inverness.  I have to say when we first talked about moving our end of year showcase to the Ironworks in Inverness I was a little unsure.  All of that was blown away on Wednesday and Thursday night with 16 great acts all in very fine form.

We gave you a sample of what to expect in the run up to the Showcase on our special preview podcasts but nothing quite prepared us for these epic nights.

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Our “11 for 11” podcast features our favourite new, emerging and under the radar acts of 2011 which has a total of 11 acts including 4 artists connected to the Highlands of Scotland and others from as far a field as Canada and America.

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Three years ago Lloyd from the Peenko Blog decided it would be be fun to run a poll amongst his fellow bloggers and folk who run music sites in Scotland, to try and find out what the definitive album of that year really was.

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