1)stereo total we dont wanna dance Gli Stereo Total sono un duo franco-Tedesco di musica elettronica, attivi soprattutto nel Synthpop ma con sprazzi di ambient, dance e folklore. I membri sono la cantante francese Françoise Cactus (all'anagrafe Françoise Van Hove), in precedenza membro dei Les lolitas ed il musicista tedesco Brezel Göring (pseudonimo di Friedrich Ziegler). Fra le caratteristiche principali della loro musica vi è quella di utilizzare molti suoni campionati (come ad esempio il suono di un cellulare) come sfondo alla voce. Le loro canzoni sono scritte principalmente in francese, ma nei loro album sono presenti anche canzoni in tedesco, spagnolo, giapponese, turco e perfino italiano. The new 7? single, including this song and a new version of “Pixelize Me” has just been released on Staatsakt 2)julia losfelt/away moose records Be prepared to get taken far away into your own mind with this new one. Paris-based artist, Julia Losfelt can be most recognized for her collaboration with producer, Andrea and her outstanding cover of KiD CuDi's single, "Mojo So Dope" which still hasn't been forgotten till this day. Losfelt's newest track, "Away" not only is her first original to release, 3)jenny hval/i called "Something happens when you say 'I' in a song, that can't happen in a book," declares Jenny Hval, who's known in her native Norway both as a musician (both under her own name, the moniker Rockettothesky, and with the duo Nude on Sand) and as a published novelist and media commentator. Her songs -- featuring frequently explicit language -- explore subjectivity and sensuality and experiment with male perspectives and voices. But don't call her music "confessional," as that implies guilt and sinfulness, and Jenny makes no apology for who she is or what she's thinking. As she challenges: "How much subject can you take?" Jenny Hval's previous, acclaimed Rune Grammofon album Viscera (2011), recorded with her own free rock trio, overflowed with intimate detail and surrealistic bodily imagery. Innocence Is Kinky -- which also features a string section led by avant garde composer Ole-Henrik Moe -- was produced in Bristol, England by PJ Harvey collaborator John Parish, who helped bring out the intimate qualities of her lyrics and sharpened her improvisational tendencies. "It was a very easy collaboration..." Like contemporaries such as Julia Holter and Laurel Halo, she's weaving spellbinding new forms of intelligent, experimental pop with injections from mythology, theory, gender politics and improvisation. Innocence Is Kinky 2013 (Rune Grammofon) | experimental, prodotto da john parish e registrato a bristol. Dopo il folgorante “Viscera” e il duo “Nude On Sand” con Håvard Volden, la cantante, scrittrice e sound-artist norvegese esorcizza in autonomia i propri incubi sessuali, ispirata dalla sua stessa installazione sonora, uno studio sul volto femminile sullo schermo, dalla dreyeriana Giovanna d'Arco a Sasha Grey e Paris Hilton. 3)prince rama/ Those Who Live For Love Will Live Forever (channeling I.M.M.O.R.T.A.L.I.F.E.) per la paw trakcs, etichetta de animal collective There's a lot of make believe that can go into starting a band. If you've ever fantasized about starting your own, you probably spent some time dreaming up genre concepts and brainstorming cool names. A new wave band, a Hindi-pop act, a desert psych group, complete with own logos, all crudely scrawled across your high school assignment book. Sisters Taraka and Nimai Larson-- anchors of the new-age revival project Prince Rama-- are no strangers to mixing make believe and music. From their background as Hare Krishnas to far-out live shows that often verge on performance art to conducting "group exorcisms disguised as VHS workouts," the spectacle is just as important as what makes it onto Prince Rama's records. Their latest, Top 10 Hits of the End of the World, takes that principle to a new extreme: It's a concept album in which the Brooklyn group "invented 10 different pop bands that died during the apocalypse, channeling the ghosts of each one to perform the various songs." This premise includes a new wave band, a Hindi-pop act, and a desert psych group, all complete with fictional bios and names like the Metaphysixxx, Nu Fighters, and I.M.M.O.R.T.A.L.I.F.E. Prince Rama (previously Prince Rama of Ayodhya) is a two-piece now age psych-dance band based in Brooklyn, NY. Sisters Taraka and Nimai Larson have lived in ashrams, worked for utopian architects, written manifestos, delivered lectures from pools of fake blood, conducted group exorcisms disguised as VHS workouts and have recently finished inventing an apocalypse on which they based their most recent pseudo-compilation album, Top Ten Hits of the End of the World, composed of ten singles “channeled” from fictional deceased pop bands. Their often unpredictable live shows incorporate elements of psychedelic ceremony, performance art, and dancefloor initiation rite, and when Animal Collective’s Avey Tare discovered them in a Texas dive bar in 2010, they were equipping the audience with handmade shoes clad with broken chimes. They signed to Paw Tracks shortly thereafter, and have since released Shadow Temple and Trust Now, which peaked at #3 and #6 on the Billboard New Age Charts respectively.[1] In four years, Prince Rama have released six albums and toured in four of the seven continents, recording with members of Animal Collective and Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti. Taraka recently published a manifesto on the “NOW AGE” that puts forth Prince Rama’s aesthetic and metaphysical philosophies, which has been met with both hatred and praise from art and music worlds alike. potete trovare il manifesto del loro lavoro e della loro filosofia esistenziale direi, su http://now-age.org/ MEDITATIONS ON SOUND AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF UTOPIA 4) julia kent/tourbillion dall'ambum character molte di voi conosceranno la sua musica, che è stata inserita nel film this must be the place, alcuni brani tratti dal suo album delay di qualche anno fa, oppure per la sua cllaborazione con antony. uscito il 4 marzo il suo nuovo album character, per la (Leaf) Julia Kent is a New York City-based,[1] Vancouver, British Columbia born cellist and composer. In 2007, she released her first solo album of looped cello music, Delay. An EP, Last Day in July, appeared in 2010, and a second full-length record, Green and Grey, in 2011. In 2011 her song "Gardermoen," included in Delay album, has been used in Paolo Sorrentino movie titled This Must Be the Place In March 2013, she will release a third full-length solo record on the Leaf Label. She was music composer for the Canadian documentary film The Boxing Girls of Kabul. and the short film Birthplace.Her song "Dorval" was used in the 2008 film Trinidad. 5)bona dish/8am / March 19th, 2013 realizzato da captured records Bona Dish were a scratchy pop punk group from Hertfordshire villages, brought together by their love of the Velvets, Supremes and each other. They were cool, handsome and gorgeous. The songs are simple but at the same time complex. The two girls, two boy’s line-up added a tension that was both sexual and musically fragile. You felt it might all fall apart any second but it rarely did. After their "cassette in a tube" ploy worked for John Peel play, the band released a cassette on InPhaze and disbanded not long after. Collected here is a rediscovered gem showcasing the zest and spontaneity that gripped the UK DiY scene of the time, standing up to their contemporaries like Television Personalities, The Homosexuals and Marine Girls. This release marks the first vinyl and cd release for BonaDish, their complete recorded output compiled and newly mastered. 6) Life Without Buildings/ (album Any Other City) Life Without Buildings were a Glasgow, Scotland based indie rock band. The band, mostly ex-students of the Glasgow School of Art, formed during the summer of 1999. The band initially consisted of Will Bradley (drums), Chris Evans (bass) and Robert Johnston (guitar). Painter Sue Tompkins (vocals) joined later that year. Sue's "talk-sung" vocals eventually became the band's most famous attribute. Impressed after their first London gig, the Rough Trade-affiliated Tugboat label asked the band to record a debut single on the label. Released in March 2000, "The Leanover" b/w "New Town" secured the band a full deal with the label. The band released two more singles on the label. The band's debut, Any Other City, recorded by Scottish producer Andy Miller, was released in 2001 in the UK; DCBaltimore 2012 issued it months later in the United States. In May 2007 a live album was released in Europe called Live at the Annandale Hotel on the Gargleblast Records label. The album has subsequently been released in North America on Absolutely Kosher Records in August 2007. The band broke up in 2002 for unknown reasons. Although existing for three years, Life Without Buildings has developed a strong underground following, with their only LP Any Other City widely admired in many critical circles 7)selofan/a whimper Analogue synths, minimal sound, experimental tunes by a newcomer from Greece using only analogue equipment (Moog Voyager, Roland SH101, Roland TR727). The duet produces music in their living room and regard it as ”retro-minimal. 8)butterclock/milky words un po cocorosie, un po emily wells the name Butterclock is just weird. The word itself summons images of Dalí-lite kitchen tables covered in timepieces that would make Paula Deen’s mouth water. In actuality though, it’s the moniker for an electro-poppy music maker named Laura Clock, who has been active with bands like oOoOO for a bit now. This, oddly, makes more sense, but the lack of food-lubricant or minute-hand-relevant imagery in her music is a bit disappointing. What is not disappointing, however, are her beats. She has beats in spades. Another thing she has is an EP coming out on April 15 called First Prom. Apparently, Fantasy Music have already released it as a very limited CD but are releasing it again come April 15. It’s all very confusing. Check out “Holograms” from this already present but also impending EP below. 9)gianna lauren/anchor down Gianna Lauren is a performer of the graceful kind. Her onstage aura and the charisma behind her recordings are impossible to overlook. With the release of her sophomore album, Some Move Closer, Some Move On (October 2010), she becomes Forward Music Group is first female artist and first singer-songwriter to join the label. Having shared the stage with Julie Doiron, Snailhouse, Flotilla, Share, and Two-Minute Miracles; having sung with Hi-Lo Trons, The Prospectors Union, and Paper Beat Scissors, Gianna Lauren is breaking ground all her own. Following 2010's Some Move Closer, Some Move On, Halifax-based songwriter Gianna Lauren is back with another collection for Forward Music Group. Her six-song EP On Personhood is out on April 2. The songs were captured live off the floor at a 19th century horse stable-turned-studio in Ontario called House of Miracles. It was engineered by Andy Magoffin (Constantines, Shad, the Hidden Cameras, Great Lake Swimmers) with sessions taking place over five days in June 2012. For the recording process, Lauren formed a band featuring J.J. Ipsen (J.J. Ipsen and the Paper Crown), Marshall Bureau (Octoberman, the Pinecones), and Justin Nace. 10)rokia traoré/beautiful africa The first thing you hear on Rokia Traoré's Beautiful Africa is a drum beat, unadorned. It only lasts a few seconds before the guitars wrap around it like a veil, but it still feels revealing, as though we opened the door on the music just a few seconds before it was ready for us. That thump and tap, in a rhythm a bit like Radiohead’s “Idioteque,” tells us a lot about the album that follows: This is a record that grooves but also invites the listener to come closer, to step into its space, be still and listen. Traoré and producer John Parish have captured this music in all its rhythmic grace with great intimacy, capturing each slide up the bass or thrum of the n’goni with direct clarity. For music with such rhythmic body, precision in capturing the singular character of each sound is often beside the point. But Traoré’s music benefits immensely from it-- you can hear the way the her guitar twists around the other guitars and Mamah Diabaté’s dusty n’goni, and the sound sets this thicket of repeated, interlocking phrases inside the full-bodied rhythm section. The effect is of music that lives two rhythmic lives in tandem, and each one pushes the other, leaving her voice free to glide loosely over the top. Traoré’s past albums established her as a fine singer, but here, she feels more accomplished than ever, her voice bending around her words (sung mostly in Bamana) with flourishes of subtle vibrato. Moreover, she’s developed the dynamic range of her singing and writing. “Sikey” and “Lalla” both offer slippery funk, but with two completely different feels, while “N’Téri” travels in time over its nine and a half minutes, from hushed and skeletal n’goni topped by some of Traoré’s most incredible, full-throated singing to a whirling, driving electric song. The final couple of minutes surge on a bed of beatboxing and roiling guitar. It’s an amazing performance, and a good contrast to the more concise and straightforwardly funky songs. Traoré is from Mali, and her music carries many signatures of her homeland, from the n’goni to the language to the circular guitar figures, but her sound is fundamentally international, swallowing tradition and modernity whole to create a pop sound she can quite easily call her own. Being from her country means contending with the legacies of some of West Africa’s most internationally successful artists; at this point, I’d say Traoré fits comfortably alongside her forbears. Rokia Traoré – Beautiful Africa (releasedate: D/A: April 9th) “I really like rock,” says Rokia Traoré about her new album Beautiful Africa, “and it was because of rock that I wanted to play music, but I didn’t want to make rock and roll in the Western tradition … I wanted something that’s rock and roll but still Malian and still me.” When she was growing up, an older brother used to play her Dire Straits and Pink Floyd. “It wasn’t all I listened to—I discovered jazz and blues with my dad, and Malian and other African music, and French chanson, but it was rock music that made me want to learn guitar.” There are three guitarists on the album, John Parish, Stefano Pilia and Traoré herself, but though the record is constructed around rock riffs and sturdy bass work, it still has a distinctively West African feel, thanks to the genius of Mamah Diabaté on the n’goni, the ancient, harsh-edged African lute. It’s an instrument that Traoré has used in compositions throughout her career, and she argues, “I’ve used n’goni in classical music projects, and it goes with blues, or jazz, or rock and roll. It’s a great instrument!” Traoré’s changes of musical direction usually start with “a sound that I imagine…a sound inside my head.” She didn’t want to imitate what other people had done “because I need to do what I imagine—that’s the reason I’m making music.” But she needed someone to help her create the sound that she imagined, and eventually decided on John Parish, the writer, guitarist, and producer who has worked with Tracy Chapman, Eels, and PJ Harvey. During the recordings “he just asked me to listen to things and make my choice.” The collaboration worked. “This is what I wanted to make. it’s even more than I imagined." The past year has been a quite extraordinarily productive period for Traoré. The Barbican invited her to wirte three wildly different new sets of music: the acoustic Damou (Dream), the often bluesy Donguili (Sing), and the rock- influenced Donke (Dance), in which she set out to show “three different aspects of Malian culture and my own personality.” She has toured Britain lately on the Africa Express train, collaborating with Damon Albarn as well as Paul McCartney and John Paul Jones, who joined her backing band for the London finale. And she has continued acting as well, with British and European performances in Toni Morrison and Peter Sellars’ much-praised theatrical/musical re-working of the Shakespearian story of Desdemona, for which she wrote the music. The songs on Beautiful Africa are in the West African language of Bambara, as well as French and occasional bursts of English, and the often personal lyrics are concerned with Traoré’s thoughts on her own life, and on her tragically battered homeland. The album’s title track, built around the sturdiest rock riff on the album, is very much a love song to “battered, wounded Africa,” and reflects Traoré’s despair and fury at what has happened to her country. “The flood of my tears is in full spate, ardent is my pain,” she sings, while arguing that, “Conflict is no solution…Lord, give us wisdom, give us foresight.” Other songs on the album include the thoughtful ballad “Sarama,” a praise song to Malian women, partly sung in English, and the personal “Mélancolie,” a surprisingly upbeat song about loneliness and sadness that has already become a radio hit in France. Traoré says that she was lonely as a child, partly because her father was a diplomat and constantly on the move. Another, more upbeat song, “Sikey,” is also autobiographical, looking back at the criticism she received when she first set out to become a professional musician, after all, she was not a griot, from a family of traditional musicians, but the daughter of a diplomat. And although she had no musical training, she gave up her studies in Brussels to return to Mali to create a new form of music, in which her songs would be backed by her acoustic guitar, along with n’goni and the xylophone-like balaba balafon, two instruments not normally played together in Africa. Traoré, Parish and Stefano Pilia play guitars on the album, with Nicolai Munch- Hansen on bass, percussion from Sebastian Rochford (Polar Bear), ‘human beatbox’ effects from Jason Singh, and n’goni playing and backing vocals by fellow Malian musicians Fatim Kouyaté and Bintou Soumounou, both members of the Foundation Passerelle that Traoré established in Bamako, the Malian capital, to help her fellow Malians prepare for careers in music and sustain the growth of Mali’s rich musical culture. It is difficult to think of anyone else who can switch from ancient Malian culture to acting and then to African rock and roll. She will be touring Europe in May and June presenting her album Beautiful Africa during a run of summer festivals, including Glastonbury and Roskilde.