The flicker of fairy lights. The taste of a forest on a wet day. The sound of a backroom deep in a David Lynch dream. Harbour boats bobbing on a slow tide. An empty armchair letting slip the secret of a past owner. Hope Sandoval lounging on a carousal, legs swinging over the side, watching the glitter blur of each slow revolution.
Skeletal love-torn hymns that waltz to their own heartbeat. This Mortal Coil. An ice-crisp voice that seems to live behind your eyelids; but only when you close them. The ritual of elegant decay that is only revealed through timelapse video – even that Nine Inch Nail one for Hurt showing a rotting fox carcass in reverse. Victoria Legrand purring “Your wish is my command” on Wedding Bell, pulling the melody down into an Abba daze before releasing it back into the air. Nico and Marianne Faithful and Francoise Hardy.
Felix are delicate like ribbons blowing in the afternoon breeze delicate. Vulnerable, pastel chamber pop swept with minimal piano and cello while Lucinda Chua’s verbose vocals undulate overhead. The sparse, distant piano stirs with the grace of Nyman and Satie, while echoing Rachel Grimes’ haunting arrangements in Rachel’s.
Seemingly effortless like a summer’s day – at times they evoke the feeling of walking through long grass, touching the tips with your fingers – there’s more than a trickle of melancholy; of reminiscence; of elegant but cutting honesty – Chua’s pining love on the Debussy-like ‘Death to Everyone but Us’ for instance. These are quiet melodies to silence a room. Tori Amos’ Little Earthquakes slowed down to a crawl; Cat Power stretching awake; Max Richter curling up with Antony and the Johnsons. As soft as your slow breath as you read this. Keep reading →
It’s 30 minutes to Christmas! Come and join in a mass Christmas singalong of The Magic of Christmas by HUNKS and Friends. Released through Self Raising Records, all proceeds go to the RSPCA and it features all these amazing people: Bright Light Bright Light, Jen Long, Los Campesinos!, Airborne Toxic Event, Dananananaykroyd, Sky Larkin, Slow Club, James Yuill, Copy Haho, Sound of Arrows, Sparky Deathcap, My First Tooth, The Venus Stare and Pulled Apart By Horses.
The Magic of Christmas is a delicious, sweet groovy singalong, an unapologetic ode to the wonder of Christmas. Buy it this year and stick it on all your future Crimbo compilations next to Sufjan Stevens and the Charlie Brown Christmas Special soundtrack.
“It’s Christmas / everything’s awesome of Christmas / everyone’s smiling at Christmas / That’s the magic of Christmas / woo-ah!”
Tomorrow, on Christmas Day right after Top of the Pops plays Rage Against the Machine I’m putting The Magic of Christmas straight on – it’s my Christmas No1.
Watch it below but then get it here at Itunes for 79p or at Amazon for only 69p!!
Find at more about the Magic of Christmas here and here
It was only a matter of time. Google has launched a real time search, integrated into it’s search results pages.
Google Real Times streams information as it is happening on the web – for instance live updates, news articles, and Twitter feeds – on the actual page displaying your search query. Public Facebook pages and Myspace public streams are due to be added soon. The feature is now live and will take a couple of days to roll out across the world. It will also work on iPhone and Android.
I’m not sure how many musicians you can fit inside a hat but Rock Lottery will attempt it on Saturday morning. Twenty five musicians from 14 different bands will be pulled out at random by their musical legs to form five brand new bands. Five bands that will exist for one day only – and they have only have that day to write 20 minutes of new material and debut it at Dempsey’s in the evening.
As soon as the new bands are drawn, each new set of musicians will be locked up in their own rehearsal room, under pressure to write four or five new songs that will be startling enough to win Rock Lottery 2009.
Rock Lottery’s organisers predict that “friendships will blossom, boundaries will be broken, whole new genres will be born, musical differences will explode, and there will undoubtedly be disagreements, probably even tears. But by the end of it we will have experienced something completely unlike what’s gone before, and along the way we’ll have raised some money for a very worthy cause – the Paul Ward Memorial Fund.” Keep reading →
This is about Christmas. This is about the songs that kiss you on the back of the neck and whisper “welcome home”. This is about sharing those songs and giving everyone those little kisses.
Snowflakes don’t have to fall. Bells don’t have to chime. Trees don’t have to glitter and portly bearded chaps definitely don’t have to don red and white suits. Christmas is a simple frame of mind: a wamth that can be felt all year round; a glow of hope and wonder; a stirring fireside glow of peace and tranquility. And a quality whiskey.
Come over to Yuleblogalog. There’s hot Glühwein, Sufjan Stevens on the stereo and a friendly portly chap – a bit worse the wear after a busy night, but with a sackful of crushing, gorgeous, genius Christmas MP3s for everyone. I’ll have a nice Grand Marnier thanks.
I heard my favourite album of the year in January, just thirteen days into the 365. Released as a digital download on 13 January, my only insight into Fever Ray, Karin Dreijer Anderson’s first solo record outside of the Knife, was its stark cover – Dreijer flanked against a paranormal lanscape of decrepit huts and overgrown wilderness.
By the end of the night I’d played Fever Ray four times, each time letting the ghostly, crow-black synths and temptuous beats scurry a bit more under my skin. Each time pushing sleep’s promise a little further away in favour of another exploration of that strange, addictive wilderness.
It wasn’t until its official release in March that I found out how fitting this first meeting was. Fever Ray was created in the months around the birth of Dreijer’s second child, a time when she found herself continually exhausted. Sleep and awake literally carved up into interrupted patterns with no control. The Knife’s chilling electronics have sometimes felt like the mystery between sleep and awake, but this time Dreijer fully entered the realm, choosing the actual exhausted moments of her new parent self to document when reality and imagination tease each other. Keep reading →
Tom McRae is to precede a full UK tour early next year with an intimate free show at Cardiff’s North Star this Friday, 11 December.
The singer-songwriter, whose eponymous debut in 2000 was nominated for the Mercury Prize, a Q Magazine Award and a Brit, will release his fifth album in February. The Alphabet of Hurricanes, an album in two parts, was recorded over three years in studios, hotel rooms and backstage in the US and UK.
McRae is a haunting and eclectic singer with an ability to make the most expansive halls feel intimate and warm. The North Star gig is a pretty unique opportunity to get even more up close and personal.
If there’s a nagging conviction behind Stay Positive, it’s a constant refusal to be pinned down on E Street, revealing a toxic indulgence to revel in the spit and swagger of the punk side of town.
And you thought the Hold Steady were just living on E Street? Littered with early Springsteen analogies ever since they broke through with the bar room tales of Boys and Girls in America, Craig Finn has constantly referred to the debt his band owes to the likes of the Ramones, Hüsker Dü and the Replacements, only for critics to remain defiant of their origins in favour of references to the New Jersey Godfather. If there’s a nagging conviction behind Stay Positive, the Hold Steady’s fourth album, it’s a constant refusal to be pinned down on E Street, revealing a toxic indulgence to revel in the spit and swagger of the punk side of town.
While Stay Positive proves that Finn and co. still love to get with the E Street shuffle, the first crashing notes of “Constructive Summer”, the record’s charged opener, are a “White Riot”-style riff that Mick Jones would be proud of. The tingling piano and made-for-arena drums that follows may be pure Springsteen, but only after he’s been dragged through a dozen chaotic bars by Finn, all the time regaling the Boss with the genius of Bob Mould. Seventeen seconds into “Constructive Summer” and Finn has already dropped an Iggy Pop reference:
Me and my friends are like the drums on Lust for Life
We pound it out on floor toms
Our psalms are sing-along songs Keep reading →
