I was busy as a bee in Brussels over the weekend. It was basically my Belgian baptism: beer, bandes dessinées and bilingualism. It was, to be blunt, bloody brilliant.
Saturday morning sun among the guildhalls in the Grote Market
It must be time to check in with Stornoway again. At the end of May they released their first full-length album, Beachcomber’s Windowsill on 4AD. Which is nice.
For those who already own Stornoway’s independently released EPs, many of the songs will already be familiar, but new standout tracks like Fuel Up and I Saw You Blink make this album well worth picking up. Alexis Petridis at The Grauniadliked it, in any case.
Here’s the band playing “unplugged” in the fernery in Oxford’s Botanic Gardens. They may not be the most innovative group out there, but they’re still probably my favourite British band right now. And I think I want one of those squeezy portable harmoniums…
In May 2009, I remixed a track by O’Spada, and this Swedish band haven’t looked back since. They’ve now released their first album, Pay Off, a disc that is poised to furnish lounges and clubs around the world. It’s out now on Despotz.
O’Spada‘s debut album is chock-full of spiky, swaggering funk tunes, built around the in-your-face vocals of singer and principal songwriter Julia. Here’s a taste:
If I called their music “bulletproof prog-disco assembled by an unholy alliance of astromech droids and the Daleks “, then I would be guilty of using too many ridiculous metaphors, but I will have come close to describing the O’Spada sound.
The tone of the album tends towards darkness but there are bright moments. The shuffle-time Rainbow (with its ooo-wah vocals) edges towards Motown and provides a respite from the brain-freezing grooves that dominate the rest of the disc.
Most of all, O’Spada comes across as fresh, and rather unlike any other band I know. There’s a Swedish accent in the vocals, jangly rhythm guitar, irony-free slap bass, and ferocious sawtooth synthesizer licks that sound like they’re played by a dude with a Patrick Swayze haircut.
What more could you wish for?
Well, a tour maybe. O’Spada are in London in mid-June to promote the album. If you’re in town make sure you catch them before they’re Bigger than Bieber-Hur.
London city tour dates:
14 Jun Hoxton Bar And Kitchen
15 Jun Dublin Castle
17 Jun St. Pancras International
17 Jun YoYo @ Nottinghill Arts Club
18 Jun Last FM presents… @ Big Chill House
20 Jun The Luxe
Batucada Sound Machine is one of the many bands that grew out of Auckland’s funk/soul scene in the early years of the century. As far as I can recall, the scene congealed around a certain number of DJs and musicians. Club nights and the audience followed.
The scene was characterised by large-scale bands such as The Hot Grits, Tangent, Opensouls and one million dollars. If one were poetic and lazy one might say that the music reflected Auckland’s urban and cosmopolitan identity: jazz, soul, hip-hop, afrobeat, latin and funk congealing in one big sweaty mess.
Sound engineers either relished or dreaded the prospect of setting up a stage for a dozen musicians including horns, berimbau, harmonicas, surdos and multiple vocalists. A 24-channel desk was a minmum requirement. As were fun but low-budget music videos:
Of course, apart from a few forays to Australia, the sheer size of these bands has meant that they haven’t been heard often beyond New Zealand’s shores. BSM is an exception – a 2006 tour saw them play venues across Europe including WOMAD Reading.
This year they’re back in Europe for a month of gigs across the continent and the UK. They are definitely worth catching if they’re playing in a town near you. You will like them, and you will dance.
Here are the full tour dates:
June 11 2010 Blossom Festival, Alfândega da Fé, Portugal June 12 2010 Ollin Kan Festival, Vila Do Conde, Portugal June 15 2010 Music Box, Lisboa, Portugal June 18 2010 Sala Caracol, Madrid, Spain June 19 2010 Sala Joplin, Segovia, Spain June 25 2010 Bitterzoet, Amsterdam, The Netherlands June 26 2010 Afro Latino Festival, Bree, Belgium June 27 2010 Wereldfeest, Utrecht, The Netherlands June 28 2010 Colos-Saal, Aschaffenburg, Germany June 30 2010 Universum, Stuttgart, Germany July 1 2010 Café Hahn, Koblenz, Germany July 2 2010 Scala, Leverkusen, Germany July 3 2010 Bar Du Matin, Brussels, Belgium July 4 2010 Lustspielhaus, Munich, Germany July 5 2010 Spectrum Club, Augsburg, Germany July 7 2010 Guanabara, London, UK July 8 2010 The Stables, Milton Keynes, UK July 9 2010 Durham International Brass Festival, UK July 10 2010 Norwich, UK July 11 2010 Mouth of the Tyne Festival, Newcastle, UK
Every so often, it’s worth checking in with Alan Wilkis, an artist/producer who’s been featured several times on this blog . You can read a little more about his music in my previous posts here and here and here.
Beavering away in his Brooklyn laboratory, Alan seems particularly busy at the moment producing remixes for all sorts of people. I particularly liked his latest project, a remix of Phantogram‘s “Mouthful of Diamonds“:
Once again Alan takes some unlikely raw material (in this case, the trip-hoppy, slightly industrial-sounding Phantogram original) and given it the “Wilkis Polish”: he turns it into a little drop of Orangina-flavoured dance pop that says “There’s a party in my iPod and everyone’s invited!“
I get a lot of messages in my blog inbox from bands and promoters wanting me to review and post their new music. There’s simply too much to listen to, and since this is not just a “music” blog, I tend to only post stuff when I really like the music and if the artist’s message is nice, and particularly if it’s personalised.
This week I got one such nice message from Paper Swords, an folk-rock quintet from Southern California, which has been quick off the mark into the studio – according to their biography they only formed this year! Here’s a little taste…
The band consists of Ryan Myers (vocals, guitar, banjo, harmonium, piano), his brother TJ Myers (drums), Patrick Grant (bass), Russell Fletcher (trumpet, banjo, guitar, harmonium, vocals), and Teresa Ramallo (vocals, piano/keys, guitar).
If you like rich orchestrations and interesting songs, they’re worth checking out. They do a particularly nice job of meshing TJ’s angular drumming with more traditional “folk” instrumentation – in this way they remind me a little of Laura Veir‘s erstwhile backing band Saltbreakers.
Regular readers of this blog will know I’m a sucker for time signatures, so I have to recommend their song Bethseda, which is written in 21/8: but you’ll have to buy their EP “Wax Moon, Wane” to hear it! As a statement of intent, the EP is very impressive – hopefully there’ll be more music forthcoming soon!
It’s safe to say I’ve finally leapt on board the Esperanza Spalding bandwagon. I got her album Esperanza a few weeks ago, and it’s pretty darn good.
For a still-young musician (25 years old) Esperanza shows remarkable maturity in performance and composition. She reminds me a lot of a young Tania Maria, both in the fact she is a vocalist/composer/instrumentalist and because of her taste for rapid-flight scat melodies spread over latin grooves:
But Esperanza is also all about subtle and complex songwriting, both in terms of the lyrics and their harmonic structure. I wish Betty Carter were still alive, because she would understand exactly where Esperanza is going with songs like She Got To You. Esperanza is the real deal:
Now I’ve got nothing against Justin Bieber in particular or teenage pop sensations in general. As music critic Graham Reid expressed on his blog today, the kids are going to scream at whatever they want to scream at. too. (Although this footage reaffirms why 13 year-old girls are still the scariest thing on the planet).
No, my point is about Auto-Tune. It’s clear that Mr Bieber can actually sing quite nicely in a radio-friendly monochrome fashion, and even plays the guitar – you can check out all the original YouTube videos if you want, but here’s JB on ITV in the UK back in January:
So why-oh-why do they channel his voice (and all of his right-on offsiders like Ludacris and Usher) through a freaking Auto-Tune on allhissongs?
Auto-Tune’s been around for a while now. I wonder if in ten years’ time we’ll regard it as a hopelessly outmoded sonic token of the current decade. Just like all song titles at the moment must include the letters “ft.”, (as if artists are afraid to be heard performing without at least one celebrity friend), singers must warble through Auto-Tune’s digital downpipe in order to satisfy 2010′s well-tempered-robot aesthetic.
“Auto-Tune”, with its Bryl-Creem hyphen and teen-snaring smoothness, is like fins on a Studebaker: the fins serves no practical purpose, but made the car look cooler. Similarly Auto-Tune has become the indispensable appendage to modern pop.
In many ways, not a lot has changed since that shiny atomic age when asbestos was futuristic. In the first 8 bars of Baby compulsorily ft. Ludacris, Justin’s Ooooh-Aaaah resembles the same shoo-wop-doo-widdy nonsense as Da Doo Ron Ron in 1963.
And the rest of the song is based around the same I-VI-IV-V progression that has served so many chart-toppers well – 1964′s Leader of the Pack by the Shangri-Las, and 1961′s Stand By Me by Ben E. King…
I hope Justin Bieber survives the screaming hordes and that he grows up to be happy and fulfilled in whatever he does. Time will tell if his musical career will be durable and interesting.
Maybe one day Justin’ll make an album without Auto-Tune.
And maybe one day I’ll write that follow-up post about Joseph Stiglitz.
If I ever think that music has lost its power to move and excite me, I find some Frank Zappa. Here he is in concert in Barcelona in 1988, playing one of my favourite Zappa instrumentals, Watermelon in Easter Hay. Music like this proves Zappa wasn’t just a Stravinsky fan – he could write with glistening simplicity too.
Orchestre des Concerts Gais, direction Marc Korovitch
Concerto pour violon, Beethoven, Pierre Hamel
Symphonie #4, Schubert
17 et 18 avril 2010 – Temple des Batignolles, Paris 17e
It’s now Wednesday and I haven’t yet written about the weekend of concerts that marked the first “outing” (hoho) of Les Concerts Gais (et Beaux). If you can read French, I highly recommend diverting your attention towards the accounts of klari and zvezdo, which are far more detailed and wonderfully written than I could manage.
In the meantime, here’s a taste of what we played – although this version is performed by some random fiddler called Itzhak Perlman and an obscure German string-band conducted by Mister du Pré, (who is himself a part-time Argentinian pianist).
From my perspective, it’s been a most interesting and exciting few months being back in a classical orchestra – I’m of the firm opinion that your relationship to a piece of music changes utterly when you are allowed “inside” it.
Winter and spring in Paris for me has been punctuated by Saturdays crawling around within the frameworks nailed together by Schubert and Beethoven. It’s been fascinating work, and we’ve eaten some good lunches too.
Playing in an orchestra in Paris is also very good for my French. I’m learning all sorts of great new words.
From a trumpet player’s standpoint, the music is not necessarily challenging – essentially we double with the tympani for most of the time, and because the parts were written for valveless natural trumpets, we play no melody at all – just declarative rythmic statements. In theory this gives you time and space to work on your dynamics (although as everyone knows, trumpet players only have two dynamics – LOUD and NOT PLAYING).
The trumpets’ three most important roles in the orchestra involve, counting bars rest; tweeting during the Larghetto ; and helping the timpanist not to get lost. Great pleasure can be derived from doing such simple jobs well.
However, it was always a beautiful moment when, in the dying moments of the concert, Marc finally smiles at us in the 4th movement of the Schubert, and points his baton at us with a gesture that says ALLEZ LES TROMPETTES!
