The first six months of the year went by with a flash of Bowie, the whoosh of Daft Punk, Boards of Canada, My Bloody Valentine, and the crash of Nine Inch Nails returning... we thought we better take stock of the year so far, and give you lot (hello!) a digest of what people were reading (or at least what they were clicking on). Hopefully this will help catch some of you up with anything (and everything) you might have missed.

Features

10 Most Read

1) Interview: "We channelled Prince's energy!" - Paramore discuss their 4th album
2) First listen: Daft Punk's Random Access Memories
3) Modem Life Is Rubbish: Unplug To Save Your Love Of Music
4) "I wish there was a different story to tell" - Josh Homme talks to DiS
5) Where Was He Then? David Bowie's Not-So 'Lost' Decade
6) DiS Does Singles 6.05.13: Vampire Weekend - Ya Hey (XL)
7) Live report The Stone Roses - Finsbury Park, London: 8th June 2013
8) First listen: 24 hours with mbv
9) All Hail the Culturati... Fighting Over Radiohead's Hail to the Thief
10) Canon in the 1990s: From Spiritualized to Coolio, Regurgitating Pachelbel's Canon

5 Must Reads

1) Jason Molina: Farewell Transmission - a heart-felt tribute to a genius who passed away earlier this year.
2) (This Is) The Dream Of Jimmy and Ben: 10 years of The Postal Service - features interviews with almost everyone involved in the record.
3) What's the point of the Brit Awards? - a really in-depth look at why it exists, including a revealing interview the chairman of the BPI.
4) Emo? Twee? In unnecessary defence of Neutral Milk Hotel… - a guest post from Stevie Chick, reminiscing on what it was really like seeing NMH first time around.
5) Push Every Other Band Away: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Live Report - one of the greatest gigs I've seen in a long-long time.

You'll find plenty more features as well as genre specialist and local columns to read in our Recommended Reading section.

Album Reviews

20 Most Read Album Reviews

1) Beady Eye - BE
2) Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest
3) Hookworms - Pearl Mystic
4) Foals - Holy Fire
5) My Bloody Valentine - m b v
6) Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City
7) The National - Trouble Will Find Me
8) The Strokes - Comedown Machine
9) Daft Punk - Random Access Memories
10) Sigur Rós - Kveikur
11) The Flaming Lips - The Terror
12) Phoenix - Bankrupt!
13) The Knife - Shaking the Habitual
14) James Blake - Overgrown
15) Mogwai - Les Revenants
16) Deerhunter - Monomania
17) Gold Panda - Trust
18) Kanye West - Yeezus
19) Stereophonics - Graffiti on the Train
20) Paramore - Paramore

Browse our Recommended Records for a selection of releases our editor has compiled that have really stood out so far this year.

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