Happy New Year, Dischordians…

So, another year has flown by and all of a sudden we find ourselves getting comfy with 2011. Before the Daily Dischord machine marches on into the year ahead, we just want to take a small pause to reflect on the year gone past and tell you a bit about what to expect from us in the near future.

If you have been visiting us for quite a while now, you will no doubt know that Daily Dischord has never been this way. In fact, this is Daily Dischord in its third incarnation and we are absolutely delighted that the general feedback on the new website has been positive. From January until somewhere around September, my life had been pretty fucking turbulent to say the least and Daily Dischord really suffered because of this. I had no time to run the ship alone with university swallowing up my time, and the one person I look up to the most passed away just before Summer and without going into too much detail, the following months after she passed I lost faith in music. We were completely down and out in the first half of 2010, but as the year moved on and time freed up slightly I realised how much I missed stressing over this website. I got my shit in gear and as they say, the rest is history. What you are looking at now was made, I was joined by my brother in arms Mark and we went around assembling a new team to pump new blood into the dying beast.

From the day this website relaunched, the only way we have moved is forward. Traffic has been rising every month, we’re regaining the support we had many years ago and most importantly, we have our voice back. I have many people I’d like to thank for that but primarily I want to thank you, the reader, for listening to that voice. We adore each and every one of you who read, argue, agree and share our content. You are the beating heart of Daily Dischord and without you we are nothing. Before I go on to tell you what lies ahead I have more names to throw into the new year thank you list. Lets begin with the man who powers this website, the one and only Ralph Lawrence. If it wasn’t for Ralph we would probably have to have very annoying adverts which we generally oppose (because we are human too), so I would like to thank Ralph for being brilliant and continuously answering my many annoying emails with a smile. I want to thank Mitch Bain for joining the team and giving 110% in everything he does. You are a true gentleman, a great writer, and most importantly, a great friend. You’re hard work in helping us rise from the ashes has been out of this world and I can’t begin to thank you enough. Luke Halsall, I thank you along with the many readers you have brought in for your hard work in making our movie section the place to be. The movie section is a great addition to the site and if you haven’t checked it out then you don’t know what your missing. Thanks dude!  Mark Fraser, my cousin, friend, ally and brother from another mother, I can’t thank you enough for balancing admin duties so I have space to breath. I’m rambling here so I’m going to start throwing names out there (sorry if I miss someone out). I want to thank Ash Ward, Paul Williams, Dan Ward, Rhys Hounsell, Division, Devil PR, Hero PR, Visible Noise, Earache Records, Metal Blade, Ferret Music, Vagrant, Epitaph, Trail Of Press, Work It Out! Media, and the many, many bands who send us music. We appreciate all your support.

Now that I’ve finished rambling, lets talk briefly about what to expect with the new year. First of all you may have noticed the brilliant Festivals section we now have to the website. This is an addition we are proud to introduce to you and over the next few months we plan to be the place you visit to read about all the latest news, gossip and line up additions for your favourite festival, and we also want you to get involved in our opinion blogs for each gig. We’ll be covering T in the Park, Reading/Leeds, Download, Groezrock, Slam Dunk and Sonisphere in 2011 (more may be added) and we hope you join in with the fun! We have a new feature in the works at the moment called “Revisited”. It’s a monthly feature where we will revisit some of the most influential artists and talk about the impact they had on modern music. This is going to be a kick ass feature, with reviews of the artists groundbreaking records, interviews with bands they may have influenced and lots, lots more. We also have a new section we’ve used already called the “Live Feed” feature. It’s quite simple. Daily Dischord will be doing live reviews of some big gigs in the future and not only that, in the run up to the gig we will be holding live Twitter conversations so everyone can get involved in the excitement. We recently put this through a trial run when Pendulum hit Aberdeen and the results were awesome so get involved when we feature a gig you are attending! We started doing single reviews last month and expect that section to take off in the new year. That’s all the new features in the pipeline for the early stages of 2011 but we’re always thinking about what you guys want to see here so expect more new stuff in the next year.

Phew. This blog has been a lot bigger than I anticipated but I guess that’s a good thing. I’m excited to see what the year has in store for Daily Dischord and really hope you stick around and join in the fun. Once again, thank you for all your support, and we hope to keep you hanging around.

Holiday time is over. Normal service resumes as of now! Happy New Year everyone.