R.E.M. Live at the Olympic

R.E.M. are one of my all-time favourite bands, and their concert in Seattle a few years ago was one of the best concerts I've ever seen.

So, I'm really happy to see they have a new live album coming out. You can read about it and listen to the whole 2-disc album on NPR's website here!

New "7 Worlds Collide" album from Neil Finn et al

Last night I saw that there is a new album by Neil Finn and friends (who call themselves "7 Worlds Collide'), called Sun Came Out. There's more info on the ReverbNation website here, and you can listen to the album here.

This new album seems to contain all new songs. From the album page:

7 years ago, Neil Finn & friends first got together to perform some live shows – and release a resulting live album. In December of 2008 and January 2009, Neil did it again, only this time bigger and better! He assembled a group of his friends and fellow artists in Auckland, New Zealand to record a brand new album of all new & original material.
The cast list this time includes Neil, Sharon & Liam Finn, Wilco, Johnny Marr, KT Tunstall, Ed O’Brien & Phil Selway of Radiohead, Lisa Germano, Bic Runga, and others – all contributing to the performances and songwriting.

The previous "7 Worlds Collide" album he did "with friends" was 7 Worlds Collide - Live At The St. James. "Down on the Corner" and "Edible Flowers" are really good, as is "There is a Light that Never Goes Out" - plus a few live versions of Crowded House and Finn songs.

Excellent news!

Ladysmith Black Mambazo in Seattle

A quick add-on to the previous post about summer concerts:
Ladysmith Black Mambazo (from South Africa) will be playing at the Woodland Park Zoo. More info here.

Music, comedy and other link clearances...

This will be a bit of a "grab bag" of links.

Some music news:

• A new album from Eels is coming out on June 2nd, called "Hombre Lobo". Check out the video for the first single here, and pre-order the CD here.
• Elvis Costello has a new album "Secret, Profane and Sugarcane", also coming out on June 2nd, and is on tour. He'll be at Ch. Ste Michelle this summer.
• Amadou & Mariam will be opening for Coldplay at Washington's Gorge amphitheater on July 11th. I guess they have arrived :)
• Marymoor have some fun concerts this summer, such as Duran Duran and The Decemberists.

Movie news:

• "A Matter of Loaf and Death", a new Wallace and Gromit short will be shown during SIFF.

Humour links:

One of the British folks in my team at work mentioned this comedian, whom I had not heard of before: Bill Bailey. Apparently his "Guide to the Orchestra" show is great, and is coming out on DVD in the UK, so I hope it ends up being released across the pond too.

Here are some Youtube links in the meantime:

• Foreign Ambulance Sirens: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRyvsRAo8T8
• Dr Who: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfMVFp-SAlQ
• Emo Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4oX2qK9yMg
• American Rock: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no7tyW31ekE
• German Love Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj6GX8gOwgc
• Kraftwerk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82HHglwXA24
• Belgium (and the oddest heckle ever): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7rCqFOENaI

David Byrne's new EP

I just heard that David Byrne is selling a special live EP recorded during his current tour, with proceeds to benefit Amnesty International. Definitely a worthy cause, and a nice addition to the studio album ("Everything That Happens Will Happen Today").

For more info and to listen to the EP, go to David Byrne's site here.

New Gito Baloi album!

"Death is not the end" :)

I got a message on Facebook today announcing a new Gito Baloi album, called Beyond, produced posthumously using recording made before he died in 2004. (See my previous post about Gito Baloi here).

Folks in the USA can buy the album from CDBaby here (you can also listen to the tracks online), or you can order from Kalahari in South Africa (see below).

Here's the full message*, from the album's producer Dave Reynolds:

There's a brand new Gito Baloi album out called Beyond.

Using bass and vocal recordings which Gito did before he died in 2004, the music was developed in studio by some of the musicians that had worked closely with him on various different projects in his life: Steve Newman, Paul Hanmer, Ian Herman, Dave Reynolds, McCoy Mrubata, Moses Khumalo, Pedro Pinto Da Silver (of 340ml), Tlale Makhene, Tony Cox, Frank Paco, Nibs Van Der Spuy, Deepak Ram, Rui Soeiro (of 340ml), Bernice Boikanyo, Paulo Chibanga (of 340ml), Thuli Mdlalose, Eliot Short, Vusi Maseko and Graeme Sacks.

Here is a write-up by Daniel Brown from Radio France International - there's also a 20 min audio interview which I did - also features some words by Gito.

The album is available from Kalahari . 100% of the proceeds of sales go to the Gito Baloi Memorial Trust (since all costs have been covered by donations).

The Radio France International interview also touches on a collaboration project called Grassroots which features Gito as well as Louis Mhlanga, Concord Nkabinde, Jeff Maluleke, Chris Tokalon, Siya Makuzeni and others. It was nominated for three South African Music Awards and had hit songs on Kaya FM and Munghana Lonene FM [South African radio stations].

The Grassroots album African Moods is also available from Kalahari, and check out the Facebook group called "friends of gito baloi" which will also be the name of the collective of musicians who will be performing tracks from Beyond.

Look out for this - Oppikoppi etc.and funky video coming soon on YouTube too. So get down and pass this on (for Gito and his family, and because it's a great album to have in your collection) ....

* With some slight tweaks and added links by me.

Popcorn Superhet Receiver

Ever since seeing There Will Be Blood and loving the soundtrack, I've been looking around for more music by Johnny Greenwood (guitar player for Radiohead).

In 2004 he was hired by the BBC as their composer-in-residence, and wrote a piece called Popcorn Superhet Receiver, which won the Radio3 Listeners' Award at the 2006 BBC British Composer Awards. I tried to find a version online that I could listen to, without much luck until today I found this page from WNYC , part of the Wordless Music series. You can listen to any of the three pieces on their own, and I've also embedded the code for Popcorn Superhet Receiver below.

Feel-good music from Africa

I've been having a bit of an African-themed few weeks, musically speaking. {A} and I received two CDs as a wedding gift from our friends Patrick and Tracy in Cape Town: Putumayo's Mali and African Odyssey CDs.




Both are great, but the Mali CD reminded me how much I like Malian music. Perfect up-beat stuff that leaves you feeling energized and cheerful. The songs by Habib Koite & Bamada are my favourites, so I looked him up on Napster and downloaded his most recent album, Afriki.



That led me to related artists on Napster, and I discovered more good stuff - most notably, Dimanche a Bamako by Amadou & Mariam. (This was released back in 2005, but I've never heard of them before.) This has an interesting, more modern pop edge (not surprising since it is produced by Manu Chao).




Finally, I've been enjoying the recent album by South African guitar legend Tony Cox, called Blue Anthem. This is a collaboration with the guys from the SA band Benguela, and it's quite different to Tony's usual fingerstyle guitar CDs. (He won a 2008 SAMA award for this album - congratulations!)

Morcheeba videos by Joel Trussel

Joel Trussel is the animator behind the War Photographer video I've mentioned a few times - his work is amazing. It looks like I just missed a recent animation show on June 20th in Seattle that he attended. Anyway for the latest info/news check out his blog.

Here is a recent (Jan 2008) video he directed for Morcheeba's song Enjoy The Ride. You can also check out an interview with him about this video here on Youtube. "I get questions about the pears..." :-)



From his blog, I see he was asked back to direct the video for the 2nd single too, Gained the World:

A shiny, sharp Quicktime version is here.

Madonna and the Viking Marching Band

Madonna's new album Hard Candy is pretty lame, but it does have a madly catchy hit single, 4 minutes. Rolling Stone describes it as having a "marching band aesthetic as blasting brass play a scale-like riff".

That must be why it reminds me so much of the Viking Marching Band* music every time I hear it. (Remember this cocktail based on the Viking Marching Band video?)

* Actually, it's called War Photographer.

So, for good measure, I give you the videos. Decide for yourself.

Updates: Better version of the War Photographer video.

New Coldplay album, and more new Brit music

I've been listening to the new Coldplay album for a few days now. It was a bit underwhelming at first, but it's growing on me more and more. The single hyped by Apple and used to promote iTunes, Viva La Vida, sounds a bit washed out on the album - I wonder if Apple did some funky remixing to make it bassier? Some of the production reminds me of William Orbit's ambient style - no surprise since Brian Eno did the bulk of the production...

One thing that has been driving me nuts is the opening track, Life in Technicolour. The repeating tune (on sitar, I think) that starts around 00:41 sounded very familiar, but I couldn't place it.

I think I finally have it! Nirvana's All Apologies. I wonder if they credit this "borrowing" anywhere?

In other "new British music" news, I downloaded the debut album by Adele, 19. What a fresh, interesting voice! (A bit like Macy Gray) Nice lyrics too... (Listen to the track Tired to see what I mean) I see what the UK critics have been raving about.

Hugh Masekela coming to Seattle in August

I just noticed that Hugh Masekela is playing at Dimitiou's Jazz Alley on August 4th.
Sadly, {A} and I will be out of town - on our honeymoon! - so we'll have to miss this show. Needless to say, if you like jazz, I highly recommend seeing this show.

If you'd like a sampler of his music, check out this recording from the 2007 Tanglewood Jazz Festival, provided by NPR.

I was also really pleased to see that Ian Herman (ex-Tananas) is on percussion during this tour. I've been a huge fan of his since discovering Tananas back in the 90's in SA, and having the pleasure of seeing them live a few times. (Including once at the WOMAD Festival in Marymoor Park!)

Portishead guest DJ

Portishead are the guest DJs on this week's All Songs Considered. Check out the podcast here.
I've just started listening to their new album, Third, and so far I like it.

The Beeb have a review here which you can peruse...

Ahoy, me hearties!

I just saw that NPR's "All Songs Considered" has a new podcast with Colin Meloy of The Decemberists acting as guest DJ. He also has a new solo album out - a few songs are included in the podcast.

And what's this I see about a new Portishead album? Wow, that's a blast from the past...

Bumbershoot 2008

The sneak-peek lineup was posted this week, and it looks good!
Some that got me excited:

• Beck (new album due out this year, produced by Danger Mouse of Gnarls Barkley fame)
• Stone Temple Pilots
• Neko Case (just recently "discovered" her...)
• Del Tha Funky Homosapien (Gorillaz, Deltron 3030, ...)
• Jakob Dylan (with the Wallflowers? I can only dream ;-) )
• Tim Finn (Split Enz, Crowded House, Finn Brothers, and a great solo artist)

In other music news, I am stoked to be seeing Eels this Friday!

Sir Michael's chill-out album

This is one the weirder bits of news I've stumbled on for a while. While checking out the news on the William Orbit website, I saw William interviewed Sir Michael Caine about his recent entry into the music buisiness.

Yes, you read that right... I must admit to not having heard of Sir Michael's album, Cained, until now. It's a collection of "chill-out" tracks from various artists. I might have to give it a listen, assuming Napster has it...

It's a small world (sort of)

When I was a kid, my first PC was a pretty crummy 4.77 MHz XT. Some of my friends were very cool and had fast AT machines with sound cards (mostly Sound Blasters), and I was very envious, especially when my friends and I discovered MOD files (tracked music).

MOD files originated on the Amiga computer, I believe, and allowed you to play complicated multi-track music on low-end PCs by mixing different samples of instruments, voice, etc. and doing clever things like changing the pitch. Some of the MOD files were very impressive, especially those by a tracker call U4ia. A blog post I stumbled on has some basic info about him, and reminded me about the first MOD-playing program I used - ModPlay.

By then I had upgraded to an AT machine (one with a Turbo switch - "Who would want to ever turn that off", I wondered?) ModPlay could play music through the PC speaker, but the quality was not very good, and at the time I couldn't afford to buy a Sound Blaster card. Luckily for me, ModPlay came with instructions on how to build your own simple D/A converter, which connected to the parallel (printer) port. For the cost of a few IC's, resistors, and capacitors I was able to build a pretty decent 8-bit "sound card", which I hooked up to the cheap "all-in-one" stereo we had at home. The sound was incredible - better than most of my friend's sound cards! :)

I was interested to see that the author of ModPlay (also named Mark) now works as a Security Response Lead at RedHat. That's pretty similar to what I do now, so once again the Web leads around in strange circles...

Rodrigo y Gabriella

Yum Lass and I saw Rodrigo y Gabriella live last night at the Paramount. A truly incredible show! I'd seen them earlier this year at Bumbershoot, but last night left their earlier show behind in the dust.

If you like guitar music and haven't heard of them, check them out - They play what you might call acoustic heavy-metal flamenco music.

My only criticism is that some of their songs sound too much alike, are a bit rambling and "bitty", and basically just vehicles to show off their amazing technical skills. (I was spoilt growing up listening to Tananas and Tony Cox in South Africa).

The flamenco guitarwork and driving rhythms are very catchy though, and the sheer energy they put into their performances is breathtaking. They are also capable of playing with a lot of sensitivity, and I found myself liking their slower songs best (like their take on Take Five, and Floyd's Wish you were here). The solo stints they did as the other took a well-deserved break were incedible (especially Gabriella's solo).

Speaking of Tony Cox, I just noticed he has a new album out (with Benguela), so I'll ask South African Santa to send me a copy...

Flight of the Conchords on All Songs Considered

I just saw that today's edition of NPR's All Songs Considered podcast features Flight of the Conchords. Take a listen here.

New Crowded House album

As a quick follow-up to this post, I received the new Crowded House album a while back, and have finally gotten to listen to it this week. So far, I can say that I definitely like it, but it is one of those albums that doesn't blow you away on the first listen. It's will be a bit too restrained and introverted for some CH fans: It's mostly full of quiet ballads and fairly low-tempo songs, and feels like a Neil Finn solo album more than an old Crowded House one.

So far my favourite track is Silent House, but others will no doubt grow on me :)

For a more in-depth look at the album, see this review which gives the history of the album, and hits the nail on the head in describing how this album relates to the previous solo work by Neil.