Luhrmann explains, “I heard the Jazz Age and said to Bryan “what about if you took our themes and record them with your band?” Then I said “what about if you do ‘Love Is The Drug’?…. and it just kept growing, and next he’s covering Jay Z, Amy Winehouse and Beyonce. And so he becomes the ‘Jazz Voice’ of the movie. We couldn’t have been luckier. Total serendipity.” [Source]
As founder and half of the songwriting engine that drove the mighty Hüsker Dü, to his maverick solo work, (has there ever been a portrait of a breakup as evocative yet anthemic as “2541″?) Grant Hart has cut a singular path across the last three decades of music. It is with great confidence that we say he has made an album to rival his greatest achievements. A double album based on John Milton’s epic “Paradise Lost”, Hart distills its essence into pop and rock concoctions that nimbly flit through the history of 20th century music from Irving Berlin and David Bowie to… Hüsker Dü, even. Ambition is the topic and Hell is the location for this project that is ambitious as Hell. Does he pull it off? We say yes!
While visiting James Grauerholz, former friend and secretary for William S. Burroughs, James showed Grant an unpublished manuscript for Lost Paradise, William’s science fiction story which portrays the fallen angels as men from distant planets and God as none other than fellow Missourian Harry S. Truman. James and Grant discussed adding music to William’s story much in the same way that Tom Waits and William conspired to turn the German folk tale Die Freischütz into The Black Rider as staged by Robert Wilson.
As a double album of two halves, we wanted to show both the light and the dark of the album in its initial introduction, so we are offering two tracks for preview. “Is The Sky the Limit?” is a melancholy song of the aftermath of rejection built upon the eerie and lonely sound of Sputnik 1. To counterbalance this somber paen, “Letting Me Out” follows in all its propulsive Buddy Holly glory as the Artist formerly known as Lucifer offers up his cunning business proposition to populate the netherworld.
There is something quite ultimate about Mayuko Hitotsuyanagi and the music she makes as Cuushe. Like Taffy, she’s come up with a honed, focused take on her specialist genre, as though she’s been studying it for years and has now perfected it. This is perhaps why the responses to it so far have been so over-the-top – ironic given the calm, still nature of the performances – from bloggers eager to conjure new ways to capture sepulchral rapture, blown away by the diaphanous dreaminess of it all. Dreaminess and dreams are key to Cuushe. Her new EP is entitled Girl You Know That I Am Here But the Dream and it is a virtual concept record about the dream state and what happens when we sleep. Titles include Do You Know the Way to Sleep, Summer Night Sketch, I Dreamt About Silence, 9125 Days of Sleep Waves and Dust of Dreams. The tracks have been produced and remixed by a variety of artists from the aforementioned Holter, who knows a thing or two about how to communicate the creepy tranquillity of silence, to other favourites of this column such as Teen Daze, whose work confirms the profound and far-reaching influence of the 4AD label in general and Cocteau Twins in particular, but also of the succinct snappiness of 80s synthpop. [Source]
This June, Black Sabbath will release their first album with Ozzy Osbourne since 1978′s Never Say Die!, and today they dropped the project’s first single, the nearly nine-minute new single “God is Dead?” Despite Ozzy’s current public persona as a bumbling zombie, he sounds absolutely fantastic on the track, wailing about God as if it’s still the mid-’70s. The song was produced by Rick Rubin — who is helming the new album — and features drumming from Rage Against the Machine’s Brad Wilk. The band will premiere the album’s next single — titled “The End is the Beginning” — on the May 15 season finale of CSI. Characters on the show will attend a Black Sabbath concert, where the band will then perform the song. Sounds bizarre, but then again, this is Black Sabbath. [Source]
The first taste of new album, ‘I Heard Them Say’, was released last week as a limited edition 12”, exclusive to Boomkat. The 12”, backed with remixes by Andy Stott and Maps, sold out in hours. The new Maps album, ‘Vicissitude’, is out on 8 July. http://www.thisismaps.com
After releasing an EP of dreamy and ethereal bedroom vibes last year, Berlin-by-way-of-Kyoto’s CuusHe is ready to spread her wings into more dynamic grooves. She does just that on her latest single titled “I Love You.” As it opens, the tune slowly simmers with bubbling disco synths and a tight, bouncing beat. CuusHe’s vocals are nearly effervescent as they flow in layer upon layer along the tune’s groove. Then, just over a minute into the tune, it breaks into a steady boil with an upbeat and blissful rhythm as she chants sweetly “I love you” over and over again. It’s hypnotic and irresistible. [Source]
From the album Trouble Will Find Me out May 20(UK)/21(US). Available for pre-order: http://bit.ly/10NQPA1
Illustration and video by Azar Kazimir / Michelberger Hotel
Pre-order Trouble Will Find Me from Amazon: http://bit.ly/16IRhoo
Pre-order Trouble Will Find Me from 4AD: http://bit.ly/1504PO1
Pre-order Trouble Will Find Me Deluxe Vinyl Box Set: http://bit.ly/10I7OoA
Troubles is the new album from Dirtmusic – Chris Eckman (The Walkabouts) and Hugo Race (Fatalists/True Spirit/Bad Seeds) – recorded in Bamako, Mali, in September 2012 during the high-tension and tragic recent crisis – hence the name, ‘Troubles’.
Originally a trio with Chris Brokaw (Come/Codeine), Dirtmusic released their eponymous debut in 2007, a gritty collection of acoustic ballads drawn from their American and Australian frontier roots. The band’s explorations of raw, psych-folk-rock then took a radical detour out to the Saharan desert, to Timbuktu, performing at the legendary Festival-au-Desert.
Dirtmusic’s encounter at the Festival-au-Desert with the Tuareg band Tamikrest was the catalyst for the second album, BKO (2010), a classic, one-of-a-kind trip through the interzone between ‘western’ and Tamasheq desert rock. The two bands toured Europe extensively and the album received major shout outs from both the rock/pop and “world” music press:
“ BKO is a collection of dusty, yearning songs growled out over a nicely fused acoustic/electric mix… The atmosphere is infectious” – UNCUT
“A different take on African rock… it’s not Africa subsumed by the west but a genuine, equal meeting” – FROOTS
With the departure of Chris Brokaw, Race and Eckman decided to head further ‘upriver’, composing and recording an album from scratch in full collaboration with a select crew of Malian artists. Dirtmusic arrived in the Malian capital of Bamako with notebooks of lyrics, but without written songs or preconceived strategies.
Drawing on musicians from the Ben Zabo and Samba Toure bands as a core rhythm section, Race and Eckman produced the sessions on the dance floor of Salif Keita’s Moffou Club, inviting in guest vocalists including not only Ben Zabo and Samba Toure, but also Virginie Dembele (from the Rokia Traore ensemble), rising star Aminata Wassidje Traore and soku-master Zoumana Tereta.
There are many voices telling stories on Troubles, singing in Songhai, Bambara, Tamasheq and English, stories of war and peace and love and doubt in the shadow of an oncoming storm, and like a musical version of cinema verite, everything is real, in-the-moment and utterly direct.
Inspired by the collision between West African rhythms, digital sorcery and rock’n’roll, Troubles is a singular and border-slicing musical journey. And Troubles is only the first release from the sessions, with a second volume in the pipeline for a release on Glitterbeat in early 2014.
hanDover is the eleventh studio album by Canadian band Skinny Puppy. After 2007′s Mythmaker and its accompanying tour, the band returned to work on a new album in 2008. This new material was noise music, in the vein of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music and was initially intended to be handed over to their label in time for their 2009 international tour. Trouble arose, however, when their label, SPV GmbH, ran into insolvency problems and the album’s fate became uncertain. Rather than cancel all plans, the 2009 tour went on as planned and was named In Solvent See to reflect the events occurring at SPV. Nivek Ogre has suggested that this “handing over” of albums and assets inspired the album’s title. Still under contract and unable to release the album until SPV’s financial issues were sorted, Skinny Puppy continued work on the production of their album. While some material originally intended for the aborted noise album evolved into the songs “Brownstone” and “Noisex”, Mark Walk and Ogre took their noise ideas and further developed them for the ohGr album unDeveloped. In early 2011, Sasha Coon, Skinny Puppy’s former live crew member and friend died inspiring the song “Ashas” which is dedicated to Sasha’s memory. In May 2011, Skinny Puppy announced that they had finished recording their new album and that they were soliciting it to record labels in hopes of securing a September 2011 release date, though its release date would eventually be confirmed as October 25 in the United States and an October 28, 2011 release in Europe.
Like so many of his greatest achievements, the three-part, nearly 11-minute title track to Reed’s 1978 album seems like a bad idea on paper. In its execution it is one of those rare rock epics that doesn’t suffer from overblown pomposity, but rather lives up to its ambition through the strength of a remarkable set of multi-perspective lyrics and a recurring musical theme that begins and ends the piece, first on quietly bowed strings and later in a beautifully mutated guitar workout. Between these moments, too much happens to describe — practically a novel’s worth — but the essence is an arresting, unsentimental look at junkie culture and life on the streets, including a brilliant spoken-word cameo from Bruce Springsteen, who cheerfully deflates the romanticism of his own epigram: “Tramps like us/ we were born to pay.” “Street Hassle” captures and conjures just about every trick in Lou’s bag: It is harsh and humane, profane and dignified. There are not too many songs which could rightly both be described as beautiful and also contain the insight. [Source]
