9 posts tagged “jennifer”
Discography
Sounds Like
Sigur Ros, Matmus, Mogwai, Tricky, Mos Def, Common, Saul Williams, Dead Can Dance, Gorillaz, Kanye West, Portishead |
If you think about it, ambient navel-gazer music and incisive rap are probably the strangest musical bedfellows possible- but that's what Reality Serum is producing, under the new genre 'Trans-Urban', and it's pretty damn exciting, to say the least.
Camanche and Twizle- the former brings the hip-hop, the latter the ambient guitar- are two Long Island accidental bandmates. Twizle's cred as a Beatles Sgt-Pepper era guitarist is such that he actually appeared in the recent film Across the Universe, but that's beside the point. They're genuinely doing something so new and interesting that I'm stumbling over myself to share it.
Think Sigur Ros or the much-mourned Dead Can Dance (Eastern chords, adagio tempo, lush and complex sounds, barely any beat beyond sparse bass), overlaid seamlessly with spoken-word, rather like Saul Williams, and you're getting close. It's Tricky if he and Mos Def took a wrong turn into Mogwai territory at night- vaguely haunting, and can be slightly jarring if you've always taken your hip-hop plain with crunchy beats and little more.
Putting rap vocals in a very large and sprawling musical landscape, which is what ambient music is, is a risk, and it's tough to balance the hard with the soft. Sometimes I came away wishing that the vocals took more of a prominent role- they can get swallowed by all the washes of sound- or that there was more of a sense of urgency to match them.
It is important, though, to recognise good music when it comes your way, and trust me, this is very good music. It makes you listen, it intrigues you and pulls you in. One of the things which often isolates people from the mellow navel-gazing genre is that it doesn't grab listeners- it's background noise but doesn't engage- and sometimes hip-hop is criticised for sounding too harsh and simplistic. Maybe Trans-Urban is a way to fix both criticisms.
I know, I know, I'm making some grand claims here- but Reality Serum are making alchemy out of their crossover, and you should give them a listen. It's that simple.
They appear not to have any touring dates coming up because they're heading back into the studio, which is a shame. However, you can get their CD, 'Hop In', via iTunes, CDBaby or PayPlay.
12/13/2007 19:27:27
jennifer
my♥posts
myspace.com
supplerecords
Tour 12/12/07 ALL FM NightMoves Show - Live Set Manchester 12/21/07 Enchanted Brave, Britons Protection - Special Xmas Show Manchester
Sounds Like
Goldfrapp, Moby, David Bowie, A-ha, Boards of Canada, Doctor Who music, Matmos, Bjork, Blue Sky Research, The Whip, Snowfight in the City Centre, Moloko, Maximo Park, Minorplanet, Radiohead, Blue Cell, Aphex Twin, Strength of the Bear, Blur, Klaxons, Field Music, Olly Farshi, Sancho, Guillimots, Kylie Minogue, Posthuman, DJ Shadow, Idle Hands
Links
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I wasn't really going to follow up on Ryan's summation of This Morning Call, because it was pretty thorough, but I thought the world really needed to know how a friend of mine described 'Clockwork': 'Portishead on decent anti-depressants'.
(Yes, that is a positive endorsement.)
Since Ryan's gone into the wider contextual stuff, I'll stick mostly to the technical aspects. If you're a fan of sweeping electronic landscapes, ambient pop-edged melodies and the occasional dark crunchy beat, start paying attention. This Morning Call take the atmospheric aspects of Coldplay which stop them being purely guilty easy listening, channel them through the bleeps and angular squawks of the New Order/Daft Punk school, and produce an experimental, light, sweet electronica.
I'll admit that, as a devoted electronica fan of the VNV Nation kind, it was their subtle, layered use of distortion, metallic echoes and computer-generated loops which won me over, but it touches base with pop often enough that it doesn't alienate (which is a big risk in electronic music). Sometimes, actually, This Morning Call goes the other way entirely, and trades so much on classic pop structures that it seems almost unambitious. Delicate balance, but they're getting there.
Anyway. New word from the band is that they had a well-received, sold-out first gig run by Sony/BMG in London on December the 1 st- so hurry up and check them out before they explode onto the wider scene, because that's looking increasingly likely.
12/04/2007 17:51:31
jennifer
my♥posts
www.thismorningcall.co.uk
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Band Members
Influences
Talking Heads, the Kinks, the Dead Milkmen, They Might Be Giants, the Magnetic Fields, Andrew Bird, the Minutemen, the Fiery Furnaces, Terence McKenna, the Who, the Eurythmics, Michael Musika, Sean Hayes, T. Rex, Paul Simon, Weird Al Yancovic, Modest Mouse, [more details on myspace] |
If indie bands were rated on their names, San Francisco's three-piece Boneless Children Foundation would be an instantaneous hit. You know you thought the same thing. It's got the look-twice factor.
Beyond the name, though, they're purveyors of that thoroughly upbeat, happily sarcastic punk-pop noise defined as a genre by They Might Be Giants; think the soundtrack of a higher-caliber teen movie produced in the 90's and you might be getting close. Their press sheet compares them to The Talking Heads, The Who and The Unicorns, which is right in a roundabout sort of way- it's distinctly punk drumming, some enjoyable straight-out rock guitar riffs and witty/ironic lyrics thrown on top (one of their songs is called Carl Sagan, make of that what you will). David Sophia Siegel, the frontman, has a very east-coast whine, all languid and sneering, which really defines their sound.
Admission: when I come across new bands I tend to categorise their sound not as 'who they sound like' but as 'the exact scenario in which one would listen to them'. You'd listen to Boneless Children Foundation on big old headphones at an American laundromat in a cool inner-city neighbourhood, while wearing sneakers and op-shop clothes, dancing stupidly around the driers. It's that sort of ironic indie post-punk extravaganza, so it's fitting that they've been garnering buzz via college radio stations.
Whether this makes sense to anybody beside myself is, of course, another question. If you want a more specific pinpoint, think the Dead Milkmen with a bit of glam rock thrown in to make things interesting.
Boneless Children Foundation have no shows planned at the moment, but head over to their Myspace for their album, and check out the very silly webcomic on their official website if you're into that.
12/03/2007 08:51:15
jennifer
my♥posts
bonelesschildren
myspace
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Tour
11/25/07 Queenscliff Music Fest - Queenscliff 11/27/07 Live At The Chapel Prahran, Victoria 12/03/07 Knitting Factory - Hollywood, CA 12/14/07 Fest of The Sun - Port Macquarie 12/18/07 Corner Hotel - Richmond, Victoria 12/30/07 Falls Fest - Lorne, Victoria 12/31/07 Falls Fest - Marion Bay, Tasmania
Album Discography
Band Members
Sounds Like
Cat Power, Beth Orton, Feist, Antony & The Johnsons, Bat For Lashes, Joanna Newsom, Mirah |
Patriotism isn't supposed to cloud your musical judgement, so I promise I'd love Clare Bowditch and her band The Feeding Set just as much if they were Scandinavian rather than Australian. No, really.
Clare won the ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Award) for Best Female Artist 2006, and most people went 'who?' A Melburnian, she produces sweet, vaguely punky folk-rock with elements of indie and country, and has just released her third album, The Moon Looked On. She's been the supporting act for Cat Power and Elvis Costello, but her sound is pretty diverse- sweet vocals on a lush soundscape, like a quieter and less outrageous Feist. Australia has a crop of this sort of artist at the moment- Jen Cloher and Holly Throsby are others- but Clare is becoming the most popularly known.
Alongside guitar and piano, The Moon Looked On incorporates a few Indian and Thai elements into the mix, along with the entire Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, a French horn, a male choir, 17 gongs and god knows what else. It stays clear of self-indulgence through the mercy of clear, distinct song-writing. The first single, 'When the Lights Went Down' (you can hear it on Myspace), shows off her sound- rollicking, rich folk-indie. 'Monday Comes', from her 2005 EP Autumn Bone, is slower and sweeter. I'd highly recommend The Moon Looked On if you can get your hands on it. Interestingly, it comes with a second CD called 'Campfire', which is Clare solo with a guitar, stripped of all the French horns and audio layering.
11/26/2007 22:42:05
jennifer
my♥posts
myspace.com
clarebowditch
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Tour
11/17/07 Cambridge Newcastle, NS Wales[1] 11/18/07 Brass Monkey Cronulla, NS Wales[1] 12/11/07 The Zoo Brisbane 12/12/08 Spectrum Sydney 12/18/08 The Corner Hotel Melbourne[2] 12/29/08 FEELGOOD FESTIVAL Sydney 12/30/08 FALLS FEST Marion Bay, Tasmania 12/31/08 FALLS FESTIVAL Lorne, Victoria
Discography
Band Members
Influence/Sounds Like Ben Kwellers, Elliott Smith, Sufjan Stevens, Bjork, The Grates, Zach Braff Footnotes [1] with The Panics [2] With Clare Bowditch |
Whitley is an emerging Australian independent artist on the same label (Dew Process) as hyperpop darlings The Grates. He released his debut album, 'The Submarine', earlier this year, and is playing in many of the folkier festivals of the upcoming Australian summer.
If Zach Braff ever comes across his music, he'll be on the soundtrack of a Gen-Y film about disconnection, off-beat humour and whimsical loneliness before you can say 'indie folk'. He has the slow hushed melodies and the acoustic sadness of the Ben Kwellers and Elliott Smiths of the music world. The buzz around him has been building slowly (he turned up, slightly inexplicably, in Australian Vogue, looking brooding with an owl on his shoulder), and 2008 may be his hallmark year, so discover him quickly so you can claim you were onto a big thing before everybody else.
His confidence is exemplified by his steady, sweetly muted remake of Bjork's intensely complex 'Hyperballad' for a compilation called 'No Man's Woman', which involved Australian male singers and bands covering songs which originally had female vocalists (Powderfinger, for instance, did Portishead's 'Glory Box'). You can find it on his Myspace page.
'I Remember' is my favourite track of his- like a pared-down Sufjan Stevens song, to be played when driving alone at night, or while staring pensively out the window at age twenty-five, wondering about the vagaries of life.
11/16/2007 23:45:19
jennifer
my♥posts
myspace.com
whitleymusic.com
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Tour
11/16/07 Silver Rocket @ The Buffalo Bar - London 11/24/07 Chelmsford, The Fleece Chelmsford, East 11/25/07 Brighton, South 01/22/08 Brighton Prince Albert Brighton, South Band Members
Influences
Pavement / Guided By Voices / The Flaming Lips / Beck / The Pixies / Sonic Youth / Nirvana / REM / Sebadoh / Dinosaur Jr. / Built To Spill / Rites Of Spring / Fugazi / Television / Terrorvision / Slint / Mogwai / ... [More on myspace] |
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4 or 5 Magicians are an unsigned alt-rock group from Brighton, England who make life very easy for impressed journalists, who can just call them 'magic' and move on. Said impressed journalists are becoming a bit easier to find lately, as the group gathers momentum. They formed almost by accident two years ago, when the frontman, Dan Ormsby, realised he needed a group for a performance at very short notice and assembled the band's lineup.
Their sound is probably best described as 'Pavement had a baby with The Pixies, and it has the accent of the Arctic Monkeys and the twee-free snark of Blur'. It takes you right back to the early 90's, which was the halcyon time for blunt riffs and witty slacker disillusionment with the mainstream. Case in point- one of their songs, 'Forever On The Edge', goes on about not being signed- 'I'm wasting my time in this band / Pinning all my hopes on getting signed / Well it could happen / Some idiot might sign us…. Forever on the edge/Sainsbury's Basics till I'm dead'. If the London music scene knows what it's doing, they won't be waiting long. Don't be deceived by the sparseness of the accompanying track, which is a reworking of their upcoming album's title song; the original's guitar sound is closer to Gang Of Four.
Pavement is the most obvious parent, with Ormsby identifying Stephen Malkmus as a core influence, but it's not a case of shameless emulation. I was trying to figure out why I liked them so immediately, and I think it's because they really know what they want to sound like, and have moved past love letters to Malkmus and into their own unique space. While the sound quality on their Myspace-streamed tracks is a bit wavering (Ormsby's half-spoken deadpan lyrics sometimes get drowned out a bit, which is a pity, because they're biting without being pretentious), it's music with a hell of a kick in it.
Myspace: www.myspace.com/4or5magicians
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Tour
11/10/07 Theater de Uitstek Zwijndrecht 11/11/07 Thalia Theater Ijmuiden 11/12/07 Dekleine Comedy Amsterdam 11/13/07 De Oosterpoort Groningen 11/15/07 Zaantheater Zaandam 11/16/07 Stadsschouiwburg Leeuwarden 11/17/07 Theater de Tamboer Hoogeveen 11/22/07 Visy Theatre, Powerhouse Brisbane 11/23/07 Visy Theatre, Powerhouse Brisbane 11/24/07 Wah-Bar Adelaide 11/25/07 Wah-Bar Adelaide 11/28/07Clarendon Katoomba,New South Wales 11/29/07 Heritage Hotel Bulli, New South Wales 11/30/07 Studio, Sydney Opera House Sydney 12/01/07 Spiegeltent Melbourne 12/02/07 Elder Park, AIGF Adelaide Discography
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Kaki King is a five-foot guitar virtuoso from Georgia, and she has absolutely electric fingers. If you've listened to Tegan & Sara's 'The Con' or Foo Fighter's 'Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners' (which, as a side note, has a pretty awesome story behind it- wonder whether We♥Music might do a section on Disaster Songs soon?), that's her guitar work, but she has three albums of her own material out too.
She got her start busking in New York with an acoustic guitar after years of playing the drums, and built up a career as an instrumentalist; she only started using actual lyrics widely in her songs as of her last album, …Until We Felt Red, most notably on the song Yellowcake. …Until We Felt Red is a departure from her earlier purely guitar-based stuff, going for a more rounded sound with a backing band, electric guitars and vocals. It's more accessible, but you can still appreciate her skill.
If you're new to her, here's what you need to know: she's an explorer, investigating the guitar's full potential as an instrument, so be prepared for songs which, while they're smooth and calming due to their tendency to revolve around experimentations on a small handful of riffs, aren't no ways predictable.
Her music is navel-gazing and languid- think Sufjan Stevens, with a sharper, wittier and more concise sound- but I suspect a lot of her appeal as an artist is as a performer, watching how she works with the guitar.
She's Rolling Stone's first female 'Guitar God', if you put stock in that sort of thing, but her most distinctive quality is her complete utilisation of her instrument- plucking, thwacking, scratching, jamming on chords, fret-tapping and bass-slapping, a bit like Preston Reed. That, and apparently she never writes music; she just makes it up as she goes along, and if she likes what she hears she remembers it for next time. Perhaps that's an urban myth, but it's a pretty damn good one.
Apparently she's finished her new album, though it won't be released till next year. She's touring northern Europe at the moment, and will be in Australia in late November (though I couldn't get tickets, bah humbug, and think most of the shows may be sold out).
Website: www.kakiking.com
Myspace: www.myspace.com/kakiking
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Tour
11/15/07 Body - Santa Fe, NM Discography
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Kito Peters belongs in a time when Hunter S. Thompson was still jumping around the Nevada desert on amphetamines; he produces friendly-on-the-ear folk/pop/jazz which draws heavily on the sounds of the sixties. Kito himself is an ex-New Yorker, lapsed psychologist and self-described 'boomer' now living in New Mexico who has released six CDs and won some acclaim at the New Mexico Music Awards; I think there's a few other members circling him, but they don't feature much on biographies. You can sense in Kito's drawly, poetry-heavy lyrics and the spectrum of his sound, which ranges from Joni-Mitchell melodic strumming to chords reminiscent of the Doors, that he has a real nostalgia for the flower-power decade.
This isn't a bad thing. Frankly, if you want Bob Dylan you're better off going for the real deal, but Kito Peters' music does creep into your head, particularly the slower, more classically pop songs, like 'Empty'. It's charming enough that even though your parents would probably like it, you can too; it's pretty quintessentially American songwriting about driving into sunsets, hold-ups at truckstops and desert loneliness.
His next and only listed gig is at 'Body' in Santa Fe on the 15th of November.
Official site: www.kitopeters.com
Myspace: myspace.com/kitopeters
First of all, hi, this is Vu. I just wanted to welcome Jennifer aboard W♥M! She's doing a great job. Due to a misunderstanding, she ended up reviewing Kito Peters. But I can't complain because I don't think I can add much to the writeup.
I will mention that he's been producing a lot of music (check the discography) since 2003 and in 2007 alone have released two albums. His latest is Stories, released last August. As the title suggest, all the songs are mini little stories: "CEO" tells about the Alpha-Dog who's in charge (but doesn't quite know what he's doing), "Take a Stand" is about two people who doesn't get along, but somehow have to manage to make it work, and "Four Way Stop" is about a meeting. The four way stop really is a metaphor for decisions and this song in particular really reminds me of "Stuck in the Middle".
Here's the chorus of "Four Way Stop":
Devil on my left
Danger on my right
Mystery straight ahead
in the pale moon light
Waiting at the four way stop
If you're planning on seeing him live this Thursday, he's joined on stage by Steve Hill (lead guitars) and Michael Grimes (bass).
11/10/2007 06:25:43
jennifer
&
vu
my♥posts
www.kitopeters.com
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Discography
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LittleHorse bill themselves as 'America's only double-piano rock band', but I like Boston Globe's assessment better: 'Manhattan Transfer duelling with Queen in the Latin Quarter'. Comprised of two New York brothers, E and Jo 'Yo' Horsley, LittleHorse combines truly impressive piano playing (their duelling version of Flight Of The Bumblebees, deserves your time, if for the passive-aggressive janitor alone) with a really eclectic, boogie-woogie sensibility. And yes, there is a lot of piano involved. Think something you'd find in a cool honky-tonky dive bar- the occasional trumpets, a Latin/cabaret flavour and shades of Ben Folds or Billy Joel on the ivories, with elements of Yes and Jellyfish to taste. Plus they take song inspiration from places like Sherlock Holmes, Bonnie & Clyde and Star Wars- 'I Want Your Love' is based loosely on the Odyssey. It's bouncy melodic rock which doesn't take itself seriously.
They've just released a new album, Strangers In The Valley, available through iTunes and CDBaby, but beyond the release concert for that in October, concert dates appear to be thin on the ground, which is a pity. Sometimes you just get the feeling that a band would be good live, and this is one of those times- despite the problems that would probably come from touring with two pianos.
Official site: www.LittleHorse.net
Myspace: myspace.com/littlehorseband
Buy their album on iTunes
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