Track Of The Week: Kwes. - Bashful

Hello, it's the fourth day of the week, so you all know what day it is. Track of the week day. Oh and Thursday.

This week's effort is not only a great song, it has a brilliant music video to accompany it. 'Kwes.', a British record producer released this way back in April this year and as far as we know, the track has received very little attention. We're here to change that, Kwes. is an artist that deserves more attention not only for this great track, but as we said for the great music video that compliments the track. We may have unearthed a fantastic lesser known artist to impress your friends with, or just a very good new artist to listen to, hopefully the latter because you're not a wannabe hipster.

Taken from his latest EP 'Meantime' is FA Cup Vinyl's track of the week, Bashful.

Click on the link below and let us know what you think.

Kwes. - Bashful

Frank Ocean: Channel Orange

Stop what you're doing, Frank Ocean released Channel Orange today!

A week before the original release date on 17th July, Frank has decided to release it after his appearance on American talk show 'Late Night With Jimmy Fallon' last night. FA Cup Vinyl may have listened to it a few times already on repeat, we're not fan girls honestly. Anyway go listen to it now on the link below to his tumblr. Are we a bit excited? Maybe.

Channel Orange

What's To Come: FA Cup Vinyl's New Features

A Formal Hello

Hello, you may have seen our new banner containing some of our favourite albums and regardless of whether you like it or not that's one of the many features FA Cup Vinyl is undergoing at the moment, we're working hard to improve the blog for you! Aren't we nice? New features include:


Classic Album Review
Gig Review (bear in mind, this is dependant on when we have money)
More Football Roundup
Banner Albums (We tell why they're our favourite and re-listen and review)
More 'Track Of The Week' section
FA Cup Vinyl's Premier League Team Of The Week (when the season starts of course)
FA Cup Vinyl's 'Players To Watch' (same as the other bracket)

And occasionally, more 'What FA Cup Vinyl did today...' You know because it's such a success...

Anyway you'll hopefully get to see these features more and more over the next few weeks and hopefully better material in our writing itself, no pressure.

Thanks, 

The FA Cup Vinyl Team

(Un) Reliant Robin: Van Persie Announces No Contract Extension

Yes, it's the news that every Arsenal fan has been dreading, their talisman Robin Van Persie wants to leave Arsenal. As a member of FA Cup Vinyl being an Arsenal fan themselves, they're not far from distraught. But let's take a look at why he wants to leave.

In a release on his own personal website Robin stated "Unfortunately in this meeting it has again become clear to me that we in many aspects disagree on the way Arsenal FC should move forward. I’ve thought long and hard about it, but I have decided not to extend my contract. You guys, the fans, have of course the right to disagree with my view and decision and I will always respect your opinions."

So that's Robin's take on the situation, but what about ours? Well Robin has been at Arsenal for 8 years now, that's a long time especially in today's modern football society and there's no doubt he is going to be hot property after his sensational goal scoring record last season, 30 goals in 38 Premier League games is nothing short of spectacular. Arguably as well at the age of 29, it is his big last contract in football, so if he were to move it would be now. With Arsene Wenger acquiring two new strikers in Lukas Podolski and Olivier Giroud, Arsenal fans will have to hope they can replicate the same kind of form shown by 'Van The Man', yes that's an actual name used by fans. Let's also remember from an Arsenal fan's viewpoint that he has been injury plagued as a striker in past seasons.

So who's interested in him? The question is really who isn't? Well surprisingly Manchester City are, as they are with every decent player in the world, but can Arsenal fans handle another player leaving to money bags Manchester City? Having seen the likes of Kolo Toure, Emmanuel Adebayor, Gael Clichy and Samir Nasri leave the red of North London to go to the blue of Manchester, every Arsenal fan must be sick to the teeth of seeing this sight. Plus we get the sneaking suspicion that Man City are buying every good player so no other club can have them? Do City need him really, with them currently boasting a striker collection of Sergio Aguero, Carlos Tevez, Edin Dzeko and every knobhead teenage boy's favourite Mario Balotelli or as they've cleverly nicknamed 'LADotelli' *sigh*.  With Manchester United and Italian champions Juventus also interested as the 'Old Lady' have reportedly had an £8million fee rejected, it seems that Robin is not short of suitors.

The question is for Arsenal do they cash in on their captain, the PFA's Player of the Year and the Premier League's golden boot winner? Or do they keep him until next season, take a gamble by trying to sign him throughout the season, and then take the risk of losing him when his contract expires and he can leave on a free? It's an interesting decision and one that is down to the chief executive Ivan Gazidis and Arsene Wenger to decide, we guess Arsene must be annoyed having seen similar ongoings with Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri last year and having being forced to sell them. Are we about to see the same for RVP? It seems to us, like it could be another ongoing saga at the Emirates Stadium this summer.

But what do you think let us know by commenting on the post below.

Track Of The Week: SBTRKT - Hold On

Track of the week time once again, and unsurprisingly we've picked another brilliant choice from the realms of our music collection in one of our favourite 'new' artists SBTRKT. For those of you who are unaware of SBTRKT (pronounced Subtract) is considered to be one of the next big things in the post dubstep genre, and we can see why. (It's not 'dubstep' like the crap you hear sampled on one of those dubstep anthems albums they advertise on tv, if we ever do post that, that's when you know we gone clinically insane.)

SBTRKT or Aaron Jerome (and sometimes Sampha) are a prime example to us that there are still good current new musicians knocking around in the barren wasteland that is the current British music scene. That's enough bickering for one day, taken from their self-titled album is this brilliant track, enjoy. Even  if you don't like it at least appreciate the cool African tribe masks he uses when live, we haven't liked masks so much since MF DOOM.

SBTRKT - Hold On

Track Of The Week: Bombay Bicycle Club - Sixteen

It's Thursday, it's FA Cup Vinyl, it's track of the week.

Ok FA Cup Vinyl has another cracking track for you this week and we're jazzing it up a bit and going for something a bit more modern in comparison to our recent classic tracks of Oasis and Blur and are going for a Bombay Bicycle Club B-Side, too much aliteration there.

From their self-released EP 'The Boy I Used To Be', to us this is Bombay Bicycle Club when they were at their peak, that's not to say they're not still good, but they were playing and creating good indie music and their first album 'I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose' still remains one of our favourite albums of the noughties? Ergh noughties doesn't sound right. But yeah it's one of the best albums we heard around 2009 in a long time, but we're rambling as usual, we'll just let the music do the talking.

Bombay Bicycle Club - Sixteen

FA Cup Vinyl Reviews... England's Euro 2012 Performance

The picture sums it up really, dismay, dejection, disillusioned. What's that, Wimbledon's on?

Yes England fans, it's deja vu for the umpteenth time, England go out on penalties, again.

Just when you thought it was going to turn around and we were going to win Euro 2012 because of that team spirit they had, they go and make a complete h-ASH of it. (Get it? Because ASH-ley Young and ASH-ley Cole missed their penalties? Oh god we're surprised that isn't a headline from 'The Sun'.) (P.S. We also hope that no-one genuinely thought England were going to win purely because of team spirit).

Anyway in all seriousness, England probably deserved to lose against the Italians, we say probably, they did deserve to lose because they were simply the worst team, and because no-one closed down Pirlo! We were shouting it at our T.V screen every time he had space, but obviously they can't hear us in Ukraine from our living room. While it may be heartache for some, but to others like us who have grown up watching England lose to so and so on penalties, it's become an all too familiar. But let's focus on the positives.

6 weeks before the tournament had started, a certain Roy Hodgson was appointed not Harry Redknapp, who was the firm favourite by fans, journalists and even players. Many doubted the FA about the decision to appoint the former West Brom boss as the manager of the 'Three Lions' but even the sceptics out there (those miserable Roy Keane types) can't deny that England exceeded your expectations.

We started very well against a France side that were unbeaten before going into the tournament on a stupidly good run of games, we took the lead with Joleon Lescott before Samir Nasri equalised by in his words, 'deceiving' Joe Hart with a low aimed strike. Alright Samir you had a good shot it's not Die Hard. Yes we did just relate that to Die Hard.

Followed by a rather impressive showing by England against Sweden where we managed to go in front with a great set up by Gerrard followed by an even better header by Andy Carroll. oh and when we say impressive we mean we took the lead, conceded two soft goals by Mellberg, yes the dodgy former Aston Villa defender before actually managing to win inspired by a bizarre brilliant performance by Theo Walcott who scored a fantastic if not lucky goal and also assisted to a marvellous back heel by Danny Welbeck. 

I know we were shocked too. It gave us hope that every England fan has when we do alright, 'This isn't atrocious, oh we might do well!' then we'll lose to a team who have far less better players than us and then it's 'oh it happens every time, I told you we weren't going to do well.' C'mon you know you've said that at some point if you are England fan, FA Cup Vinyl even may have ushered those words themselves. May have.

But Ukraine was our final game, the co-hosts, we only needed to avoid defeat and we were through, so being typical England what happens when it comes down to the crunch... We win. Unexpected right? We delivered, didn't play well, but we got the result and that's what matters. Yes how intense. Plus the match marked a return for Wayne Rooney, who also bagged the winner, albiet one of the most easy tap in headers we've ever seen. Oh and this happened.

 See didn't cross the line... No England were lucky not to concede this as the match official who is stood on the end of the pitch to see if the ball crosses the line, didn't see it. WHAT IS THE POINT OF HIM BEING THERE THEN? *cough* Goal-line technology *cough*

Then we played the Italians in the quarter finals, well you know what happened. Surprisingly it managed to stay 0-0 for England over 120 minutes in a game of which they were dominated by Italy who had a number of chances to win the match but somehow failed to grasp any of them. Despite having a disallowed goal in the second half of extra time it was clear the Italians should have won the game, plus we would have never beaten Germany. Good luck Italy.

So overall FA Cup Vinyl think that it was a good performance from Roy's Boys and who knows with a bit of improvement and a bit more attacking mentality we might be able to beat a Germany or Spain one day. But until then, we'll have to celebrate defeating minnows like Andorra.

Let's hope the next major tournament we fare a bit better, that's of course if we qualify.