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Showing posts from July 5, 2015

Two Very Different Tunes For Saturday

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Ember Isles - Background -  Brooklyn's finest trio of delicate harmonies, Ember Isles, released their newest 'Love Song' from their seven track, debut EP, Embers earlier this week.  'Love Song' was written during a muggy summer in a half furnished room at their first apartment in Brooklyn and speaks to a younger view of love and wanting. The kind of song you might need after a solid weekend of drinking and falling in and out of love with strangers and exes or after reading a Hemingway book, lying in your hammock in the heat of summer. Ember Isles is a trinity of modern folk writers, lyricists, and instrumentalists. Their yearning vocals and raw lullabies scratch at the ribs and burn the throat like scotch whisky. With personal origins stretching from Scotland to California, and back over the grey Atlantic waters to England, The Isles evoke the foggy dawn seashore and the warm cup of tea you would crave after a forlorn walk down the coast. Whether on a ukulel...

2015 - Out Of Our Inbox - July - Two

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Background - Teen Daze will release his first album for Paper Bag Records on August 7th 2015.  'Morning World' was recorded with John Vanderslice at Tiny Telephone, his all-analog studio in San Francisco with co-producer Simon Bridgefoot. Teen Daze has also announced a massive tour of North America. In 2010, Jamison, the person behind Teen Daze, had no idea what Four More Years would bring. That debut EP, a collection of blissful home recordings, was the work of a carefree 24 year-old. By 2012, things had changed, as they tend to do: relationships dissolved, illness affected his family, windows for outward communication were closing. The gravity of it all made for constant output; he reached for futuristic utopia with All Of Us, Together, found a devotional sanctuary inside The Inner Mansions, and embraced hibernation on Glacier. In hindsight, this was an artist coping through various forms of introverted escapism. While proud of the material, Jamison sought to break thi...

Genre Hopping Wednesday

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Steady Legend - Background -  Steady Legend is the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Michael Mancuso. Originally from North Carolina, Mancuso spent his high school years a trombone player touring around the Southeast with various acts. After high school, he attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, NC studying music, where he picked up bass, guitar, drums, and keys while attending frequent jam sessions in the musical hotbed tucked away in the Blue Ridge Mountains. After graduation, he moved to Austin to create a band that could handle a menagerie of different styles and blend it together into a fun, dance-friendly show. In Spring 2011, he met singer Debora Otero through a chance Craigslist ad and the band was formed. Releasing their heavy hitting self-titled debut album in March 2015, the record takes listeners on a journey though melodic horn features, chant choruses, epic guitar solos, catchy vocal riffs, and everything in between. From the upbeat soul sound ...

Quality Not Quantity - Tuesday Just Got Better

Dirty Hearts - Promo Says - Nothing gets a true-blue Aussie more ready for a cold beer on a hot day than a dose of instantly distinguishable, solid '90s pub rock. Inject a 70s Brit infusion, plus a trio of hard-working blokes and you can begin to imagine what a driving live force Dirty Hearts have become.  Favourites on the live scene for years now, Dirty Hearts have supported the likes of Violent Soho, DZ Deathrays, You Am I, Velociraptor, British India, Airbourne, Dallas Crane, Magic Dirt and Jebediah. Now, they officially release their debut single 'Louis XIV'. With a sound that demands to be listened to – loudly - 'Louis XIV' embraces distorted vocals, a decadent guitar solo and a driving belt-it-out chorus as singer Matt Doe and the rest of the band wail a catchy 'get high on my own' lyric.  With more shows to be announced later this year and an official release of Dirty Hearts' self-titled debut EP on the way, there's not stopping these lad...

Smashing Pumpkins - Columbiahalle, Berlin 2007 (Internet Archive).

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From the Internet Archive this is the Smashing Pumpkins live at Columbiahalle, Berlin, Germany back on the 6th June 2007. The Smashing Pumpkins are of course an American alternative rock band from Chicago, Illinois, formed in 1988. Formed by frontman Billy Corgan (lead vocals, rhythm guitar) and James Iha (lead guitar), the band included Jimmy Chamberlin (drums) and D'arcy Wretzky (bass guitar) in its original incarnation. It has undergone many line-up changes over the course of its existence, with the current line up including Corgan, rhythm guitarist Jeff Schroeder and Chamberlin. From Wikipedia we have the following details for the period prior to and around this concert tour - On June 21, 2005, the day of the release of his album TheFutureEmbrace, Corgan took out full-page advertisements in the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times to announce that he planned to reunite the band. "For a year now", Corgan wrote, "I have walked around with a secret, a secret...

Sundays Alternative Take - For Your Ears Only

Nightriders - Background - Boston-based house/nu-disco duo Nightriders kicks off the summer with five sizzling remixes of their track “Demand You,” taken from their February released EP ‘Until We Are Together.’ For the remix EP, the duo enlists heavyweights like Grammy-winning house music pioneer Ralphi Rosario, in-demand NYC producer/remixer, DJ, and Tiki Disco founder Eli Escobar, DJ/producer and Get Up! Recordings co-founder W. Jeremy, nu-disco maverick Alcala, and newcomer Jamie de Von to cleverly reinvent their slo-mo sleeper hit into a scorching summertime anthem covering the spectrum from deep tech house and nu-disco/indie dance and jackin’ Chicago house with hints of Detroit techno . It was a tough choice on what remix to feature, the 'Alcala Remix' wins by a whisker for my ears, the variety of interpretation across all five versions is impressive. On iTunes Here . ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------...