You know how artists quite often say "this is the best work we've ever done" or "we've really upped our game" or "you won't believe this new record"? Well, over the last two months a succession of records has come across the Outstanding desk which actually live up to those boasts for a change....

2010 looks like being a great year for anybody with ears. February is already a busy month with 22 February set aside for a national celebration in Spain for the release of the self titled Maika Makovski album. Produced by John Parish, it's 11 tracks of really quite amazingly swooping vocals, swampy guitars, rocking bass and drums. Live they are a treat. On record.... well, it's just a great record.

23 February - the very next day! - sees the release of Les Paraules Justes by La Brigada. Their last album received accolades left right and centre and was chosen by Mondo Sonoro as the best Catalan language album of 2009. It's always interesting to examine albums as "Catalan" or "Spanish", but here at Outstanding we tend to think of albums as "is the music any good?". Their first album was a bit of a triumph, this new one is much much better than that.

Over the next few weeks we're going to be updating the blog much more regularly so you can see what we're up to. I've been trying to think of a theme for this year (as The Pinker Tones are also in the studio and Ovni are currently mixing the final tracks for their album). I think it might be "Outstanding - we have no idea what the music industry is doing, but here's some good music".