Archive for November, 2008|Monthly archive page
The Cranberries – Greatest Hits
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Here’s a band I never owned any album of, yet I’ve heard most of these songs on the radio and wherever in the 90s. Now I just wanted to have it sort of in the archive.
Marvin Gaye – Anthology
I once saw a movie where the main character was planning all the time how he’s gonna take a girl home, put on some Marvin Gaye and then they’ll undoubtly get laid. Well I think he’s onto something.
The Music – Strength In Numbers
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Something I missed when it appeared earlier this year. I used to listen to The Music a lot when at the time of their first album; their reverbed-dance enhanced space blues was something truly refreshing. That style is still present fortunately, and although I wish that maybe there were fewer songs here and the remaining were extended into jams which they’re pretty good at doing (they do me this favour in the hidden No Danger), it’s an awesome album and I urge you to check it out.
This release is a Japanese double CD edition with 7 bonus tracks!
Belle and Sebastian – The BBC Sessions
Of all Belle and Sebastian, I only listened to If You’re Feeling Sinister a few times before, but now I think I properly get their music. A nice companion to feeling … quietly awesome in a november fog.
Habib Koité & Bamada – Afriki
Acoustics, open strings, balafon, brilliant musicians, African melodies that make you dream of landscapes you’ve never seen, and some simpler world, closer to the what we really are and need. You’ve got to hear this.
Hauschka – Ferndorf
Volker Bertelmann aka Hauschka is a pianist and composer from Germany exploring the possibilities of prepared piano – where one plays a piano that had its sound altered by placing objects between or on the strings or on the hammers or dampers. So what he’s doing is:
Clamping wedges of leather, felt or rubber between the strings; preparing the hammers with aluminium paper or rough films; placing crown corks on the strings, weaving guitar strings around the piano’s guts, or pasting them down with gaffa tape – his resulting tracks are composed both originally and charmingly. The results are vivid, unconventional pieces made in a spirit of playful research-enthusiasm.
And the last sentence there holds true – often together with a string duo, the compositions on this album actually grow into each other as an orchestrated daydream – on a distant village (Ferndorf) indeed.
Love Is All – A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night
Filed under: music | Tags: disco, indie, pop, post-punk, rock
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Love Is All are a Swedish indie-garage-disco-punk band led by Josephine Olausson. They come with eleven songs on their second album that will most probably make you stand up, move and remember them. Meanwhile it’s actually a soundtrack to the young modern folk’s solitude despite a hundred things. Olausson’s tiny voice yells about how shitty movie romance portraits are, walking home with the last guy at the bar, being inside 19 walls and all in between.
Little Joy – s/t
Little Joy are a candid, a bit upbeat and late night experience at the same time. I’ll be lazy and throw a bunch of quotes if you wanna know more:
Little Joy is Rodrigo Amarante (Los Hermanos), Fabrizio Moretti (The Strokes), and Binki Shapiro – three friends who got together to demo songs and produce this self-titled debut, named after their corner bar. Produced by Noah Georgeson.
Through a chance encounter at a Portuguese festival in Lisbon, where both Amarante (Singer/Guitarist of Los Hermanos) and Moretti (drummer of The Strokes) had performed, the two chatted well through the night and into the morning by the side of the river, humoring the idea of working together on music that had no affiliation to their particular bands.
A year later, Amarante traveled to the United States to record with Devendra Banhart on his Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon album. On the off hours of an arduous recording process, Amarante would meet with Moretti to discuss anything but music.
Binki Shapiro, musician and native of Los Angeles, was introduced to the pair through mutual acquaintances and became a fast friend, encouraging the two to focus on the music they had spoken of long before. Through the process of late night “show-and-tell” the three developed and arranged songs Moretti had begun and soon after started writing original music for the group as a band.
A couple of months later they all moved into a house in Echo Park to demo songs and soon after, with the help of producer Noah Georgeson, who had recorded Banhart’s album, they finished their self-titled debut, Little Joy, named after the cocktail lounge just down the street from their home.
Loose Fur – s/t
Loose Fur is like more experimental Wilco hanging out with aa Sonic Youth member… oh wait, Jim O’Rourke really was in SY. Then it’s all clear. Liking both is a prerequisite I guess.
