Blvck Ceiling - Wvfflife

The American electronic musician Blvck Ceiling is from Boston. His work combines several electronic music subgenres, such as industrial, witch house, and darkwave. Blvck Ceiling, who is well-known for his strong and atmospheric soundscapes, gives listeners an eerie and deep experience.
Blvck Ceiling is known for being an original and cutting-edge musician with a gift for fusing various electronic music elements. Visceral beats, distorted voices, and complex sound design are characteristics of his work. Each of his albums and EPs, which have been released, demonstrate his ability to fashion a unique musical environment.
The sound of Blvck Ceiling is not for the timid. It has a remarkable emotional depth in electronic music and is brooding, deep, and dark. He is one of the most intriguing and compelling electronic musicians currently active because of his unmatched ability to evoke a feeling or an environment through sound.  From: https://www.viberate.com/artist/blvck-ceiling/

Shocking Blue - Love Buzz

"Love Buzz" is a song by Dutch rock band Shocking Blue. It was written by Robbie van Leeuwen and first released on the group's 1969 album At Home. The original song is notable for its psychedelic rock style and its extensive use of the sitar, played by Leeuwen. The intro sample on the original single comes from the LP Monster Shindig featuring Snooper and Blabber (Hanna-Barbera productions 1965).
American rock band Nirvana recorded a cover version of the song for it's 1988 debut single, released on Sub Pop in the USA. It was described by Sub Pop as being "heavy pop sludge." The version recorded by Sub Pop was chosen for the feature soundtrack on 1990 skateboarding video Board Crazy.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Buzz  

Lovebyrd - Shot from the Sun

I don’t know where Lovebyrd has been hiding, but their debut album, the self-titled Lovebyrd, is being released by Hairy Records on my birthday and it already sounds like they’ve been around for years. They have a simplistic, mellow, laidback feeling to their music; shoegaze tripping through wave after wave of reverberation and jangling shimmering percussion on the entirety of their 10 track debut album.  “Spinning Around”, which was previously available on Lovebyrd’s EP cassette tape from the beginning of this year (2015), opens up Lovebyrd like the glistening psychedelic gates of some kind of paisley paradise.  There’s a melodic, warm, enveloping melody that oozes out of your speakers and gunks up the needle, dripping from your pores and beading up on your skin like sweat before long.  The angelic voice of Steffi Krauth is what really makes these tunes, minimalist sounds, and slowly shifting arrangements that comprise Lovebyrd standout.  The dream-pop label drifts slowly up like smoke rising from a crumpled joint pursed in your lips, smoke exhaling from the undulating guitars that clamor and rattle in the distance of “We’re Shining Through”.
Although it was available on the cassette EP, I don’t know if they’re the same recordings – and either way it sounds just as at home on this angelic slab of wax as it did on the tape that preceded it.  The abrupt end of ”We’re Shining Through” leads the listener directly into the echoing chambers of the third track, “Floating Up”.  “Floating Up” is the first song on the LP not to be featured on the original EP tape, and you can tell straight away.  The writing and composition are just a little less muddy, more concentrated, and absolutely gripping from the moment that it starts.  The hollow cavernous walls of sound instantly recall the guitar work of The Byrds and Jefferson Airplane while also showing off Lovebyrd’s unabashed Tame Impala influences. There’s a very almost, dare I say it, Oasis vibe to “Floating Up” as well. It has that hazy Beatles-esque swagger that so very few people are able to conjure up without becoming either completely consumed or losing their sound in.  Slithering through the finale of the song it’s hard to imagine why I haven’t heard anyone mention The Raveonettes in the same sentence as Lovebyrd before.  The thundering fuzzy tentacles of sound that erupt from “Shot From The Sun” only help to reinforce this idea, the simplistic repetitive guitar line crunching and popping above the dreamy vocals and vibrating drum track. It’s interesting how well the combination of material originally written for the cassette EP and the stuff done specifically for this 12” work together.  From: https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2015/11/lovebyrd-lovebyrd-2015-review.html 

The John Renbourn Group - Live Ohio University 1981

In 1967 the British guitarist and songwriter John Renbourn together with his friend Bert Jansch founded the British folk rock band Pentangle. Like Jansch, Renbourn was considered an outstanding representative of the British 'Folk Baroque' and fingerpicking playing technique. Since 1968 Renbourn successfully recorded several albums with Pentangle for the well-known UK folk/folk rock label Transatlantic. After the release of the album Solomon's Seal in 1973, the band members went separate ways. From then on Bert Jansch and John Renbourn realized solo plans. Albums like The Lady And The Unicorn and The Hermit by John Renbourn are still considered milestones today of British folk rock. In 1977 John founded the John Renbourn Group, recorded two studio albums and a live album with them and was busy touring again around the world. A 1978 live recording by Radio Bremen from the Roemer in Bremen, Germany also bears witness to these live activities. Again, with John on stage - the former Pentangle singer Jaqui McShee, multi-instrumentalist Tony Roberts, the well-known Indian tabla player Keshav Sathe (among others, John Mayer, Julie Felix) and the American cellist Sandy Spencer (member of the French based Prog Folk rock band Mormos, later also with the well-known Trevor Watts String Ensemble) completed the line-up of the John Renbourn Group in Bremen that night. Jacqui McShee, who also wrote the liner notes for the booklet to the album, still remembers the Bremen concert: 'To my knowledge this is the only recording of Sandy with the group, she left soon afterwards to return to America.' And goes on: 'I have been chatting to Tony recently (we laughed a lot) and of course we both miss John and Kesh, but we have these wonderful recordings and the albums that we made and we have a sense of pride in the music we played together.'  From: https://www.forcedexposure.com/Artists/RENBOURN.GROUP.JOHN.html

Minnesoda - Let's Get It On

Minnesoda did an obscure but fairly interesting self-titled jazz-rock album for Capitol in 1972, produced by Bob Johnston (famous for his work with Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, Simon & Garfunkel, and numerous others). The record was in limited respects like the first recordings of Chicago and, more distantly, Blood, Sweat & Tears in its jazz-rock-with-vocals format. Minnesoda, however, had a substantially greater funk flavor, and a speedier, more aggressive edge to their material, though they didn't have the pop-friendly melodies of the more renowned bands. Half of Minnesoda's eight members were on horns, with tenor saxophonist Dave Gustafson playing flute as well, adding to the rock band-as-big-band feel.
A couple of the musicians in Minnesoda had performed with name acts prior to the album. Trombonist Don Lehnhoff had played with Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. Much more unexpectedly, trumpeter Eddie Shaw had in the 1960s been the bassist for the Monks, the 1960s band of ex-GIs who recorded an album of ludicrously minimalist, furious pre-punk in Germany in the mid-1960s -- a record that was unknown by 1972, but which by the 1990s had an avid cult following.
Minnesoda were at first called Copperhead, but without the band's knowledge, they were renamed Minnesoda (in a nod to their Minnesota origins) for the Capitol album. (They were no relation to another band called Copperhead, including ex-Quicksilver Messenger Service guitarist John Cipollina, that also recorded in the early 1970s.)
Minnesoda's little-known self-titled LP is pretty hot white funk jazz-rock, sounding a little like Chicago or Blood, Sweat & Tears might have had those stars decided to go less commercial rather than more commercial after their first albums. Actually, Minnesoda are rawer and more frenetic than Chicago or BS&T were even at their earthiest, though their material lacks the pop hooks of even the boldest Chicago/BS&T outings. A quartet of brassmen on tenor sax, flute, trumpet, and trombone augment the usual rock lineup in this octet, fronted by John Elms' credibly high-octane, lusty upper-register blue-eyed soul vocals.
There's sometimes an almost big band-like dexterity to the horns, yet the more jagged, at times hyper, thrust of the guitars and drums give it a solid funk base. The melodies are often more ominous than they usually are in this kind of fare, frequently jetting off into unexpected, improvised-sounding horn interjections and key changes. Only the adventure film theme-like "Flexible Flyer," and the uncharacteristically reflective, jazzy ballad "Party" slow the tempo down much.
Johnston recorded a second album with the band that went a little further into jazz, and further away from any rough similarities with Chicago, although they were still present. But Johnston was unable to get the album released, and Minnesoda remained their only issued LP.  From: http://therockasteria.blogspot.com/2021/11/minnesoda-minnesoda-1972-us-stunning.html

Lucius - Wildewoman

What Haim is to early 90s pop/R&B nostalgia, Lucius is to mid-90s alternative pop and acoustic coffeehouse nostalgia. Don’t let the provocative cover fool you, because the two ladies who front this band (and the three men who back them up) don’t have to employ shock tactics to get your attention when they’ve got such irresistible rock grooves and delicious vocal melodies in their arsenal. This is an astounding debut from a band that sounds like they’ve got a long life ahead of them.
Just like a good title track should, Wildewoman sums up nearly everything that there is to love about the album named after it… and for that matter, the artist performing it. Its shimmying rhythm, bouncing bass line, steady acoustic strumming, and its little jolts of electric lightning would be entertaining enough if the track was purely instrumental, but throw in an incredibly well-written lyric brimming with details about how this unpredictable, untameable woman looks, thinks, and acts, and top it off with a triumphant chorus hook sung by both women in unison (one that’s bound to get crowds singing along in no time at their live shows), and this thing is just plain unstoppable.  It’s hard to resist quoting damn near every line from this one, but I think the second verse sums it up the best: “Her smile is sneaky like a fiery fox/It’s that look that tells you she’s up to no good at all/And she’ll say whatever’s on her mind/They’re unspeakable things, and she’ll speak them in vain/And you can’t help but wish you had bolder things to say.” Now that’s the kind of woman I’d like to sit down over a cup of coffee and have a long, perhaps sometimes awkward, but thoroughly insightful conversation with.  From: https://murlough23.wordpress.com/2014/11/13/lucius-wildewoman-we-all-scream-upon-realizing-thats-not-ice-cream/

Lovecraft - Brother I Wonder

Drummer Michael Tegza is the only original member from two years prior when the band was H.P. Lovecraft on Phillips Records. For this 1970 Reprise release, they are dubbed Lovecraft and have abandoned the psychedelic Jefferson Airplane sound for a progressive Crosby, Stills & Nash-meets-Uriah Heep flavor. In 1975, drummer Tegza re-formed the band again and separated the two words, their Love Craft album, We Love You Whoever You Are, took things into an almost Santana-goes-soul direction.
Valley Of The Moon is a surprisingly good album mixing leftover psychedelia with good harmonies. There are no throwaways here, just 11 fabulous songs, one better than the next. The arrangements are uniformly excellent, bolstered by superb playing from Tezga, guitarist Jim Donlinger, bassist Michael Been, and multi-instrumentalist Marty Grebb, formerly of the Buckinghams & Aorta, and soon after, the Fabulous Rhinestones. Every song was outstanding - tight musicianship, great vocals and just plain good songs.  From: http://therockasteria.blogspot.com/2020/10/lovecraft-valley-of-moon-1970-us.html

Her Majesty's Buzz - Wondering Why

The debut record from Her Majesty's Buzz, "One of Our Astronauts is Missing part one: the Cough Syrup Chronicles" is now available from the Label Music Group.
Recorded by Jake Robinson in Indianapolis and mixed by John Hampton in Memphis, the 10 song record showcases the songwriting of Greg Roberson and Don Main. The record was produced by Roberson and Main with Jake Robinson. Robinson said, "The collective insanity of each member makes this thing a whole. You get sucked into Greg and Don's energy, they are always on ready. I've never worked with guys with that kind of work ethic. They also hold the distinction of being the most insane people I've ever worked with. I saw things I will never share with anyone."  From: https://www.amazon.com/One-Our-Astronauts-Missing-Part-Cou/dp/B000CAGQYM

Shaun Davey & Rita Connolly - Granuaile - Ripples In The Rockpools

Granuaile is a song suite composed by Shaun Davey in 1985-87 for singer Rita Connolly and a frontline of uilleann pipes, harp, guitar, piano and percussion, with  single woodwind, horn, trumpet, timpani and strings. The songs portray episodes in the life of one of Ireland's most celebrated and courageous women, Grace O'Malley (Gráinne Ó Mháille), chieftain of a powerful, seafaring clan with extensive territories in Mayo and Galway. Her life is associated with resistance to Elizabethan invasion and plantation of Ireland in the 16th century. Towards the end of her life she famously sailed to meet, and confront, Queen Elizabeth the 1st at Greenwich Palace. 'Granuaile' made its public debut at the Lorient Interceltic Festival in 1986, it was performed and filmed at the Greenwich Festival, London, in 1987, and the next year toured with the RTECO to London's Albert Hall. A regular companion piece to The Brendan Voyage in Shaun Davey concerts, Granuaile continued Davey's unique collaborations between musicians of aural and classical traditions. The songs tell of Grace's loves and battles; it is intimate, expansive and sometimes explosive. A powerful historic event is explored in the song which describes the wrecking of the Spanish Armada along the west coast of Ireland in 1588, a desolation Grace O'Malley may herself have witnessed. It also includes what became possibly Davey's best-known song, with its distinctive shifting time signatures - 'Ripples in the Rockpools' and also one of his most beautiful - the heartrending 'The death of Richard-in Iron'.  From: https://shaundaveymusic.com/granuaile

Andy Pratt - Avenging Annie

There has to be a better category for the enigmatic Andy Pratt other than “one hit wonder.” The song he is best known for appeared like a comet on the pop music horizon in 1973, bristling with the buzz and excellence of a new discovery. “Avenging Annie” is a power ballad on the level of the kinds of things Elton John was producing at that time, alongside Yes and the Bob Welch era Fleetwood Mac. Annie’s time in the spotlight was brief if you only listen for chart positions splash. Yet there is something about this song that packs a wallop, not only of memory but of deliverance as we drop the needle a half century away from this magnificent obscurity.
The saga of Andy Pratt began with a self titled album in 1973, and progressed through one called Resolution in 1976 that Rolling Stone said “has forever changed the face of rock.” After that, he pretty much disappeared, but it wasn’t for lack of being unique.  He was educated at Harvard, attended Boston’s Life Institute, converted to Christianity, married a Dutch woman in 1988, and moved to Belgium in 1996, where he lives today. He says his best wish is for his music to offer inner healing. Just another famous Annie. American sharpshooter Annie Oakley (born Phoebe Ann Mosey; August 13, 1860 – November 3, 1926) had nothing to do with Avenging Annie. But her nickname was “Little Sureshot.”
“I wrote ‘Avenging Annie’ in the summer of 1972 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at my mother's 1926 Steinway B Baby Grand piano. I had broken up with my first wife... I was stoned on marijuana. On my turntable was the The Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo, in particular the Woody Guthrie song "Pretty Boy Floyd." You can clearly hear that the first part of "Avenging Annie" is an altered version of "Pretty Boy Floyd." I shut off the record and began playing "Pretty Boy Floyd." I was going into a creative trance, and I altered Woody's words, then out came a Bach-like piano riff which I liked, so I began singing to it in falsetto, taking the part of a woman I called Avenging Annie. A whole story came out, which was a fantasy version of my relationship with my ex-wife, combined with the outlaw theme of the American West. I worked on the song for a few weeks and played it for other people who liked it. I made a demo with Rick Shlosser and Bill Riseman, which became a hit at Brown University Radio WBRU. This new fame led to me being whisked away by John Nagy of Earth Opera, Clive Davis of Columbia Records, and Nat Weiss of The Beatles, being wined and dined in New York City and given star treatment at the famous Black Rock on 6th Avenue.
Once recorded and released on Columbia, ‘Avenging Annie’ took on a life of its own, which has never really stopped. My version was given extensive radio play, became a number one single in New Orleans and Providence, and reached about number eighty-five in the national charts. I did a successful tour of the East Coast, where Jimmy Buffet opened for me at Max's Kansas City, an Andy Pratt show was broadcast from Boston's Jazz Workshop over WBCN radio, and many other wonderful things happened. The Andy Pratt record, with ‘Avenging Annie’ is still available on various web sites, including www.amazon.com.
Roger Daltrey covered "Avenging Annie" in 1974, and his version appeared first on his One of the Boys album as well as other collections he released. My opinion of his version is that he was afraid to play the role of a woman in the song, and his band did not play the syncopations that we played in our version. I prefer my version. Still, I am grateful for his recognition of the song, and the added exposure that he helped me to gain.” —Andy Pratt, Sept 6, 2006.  From: https://professormikey.substack.com/p/old-school-single-avenging-annie

Far From Alaska - Deadmen

Far From Alaska formed in Natal (a city in the Brazilian Nordeste region) in 2012. Currently based in São Paulo, the band played at major festivals such as Planeta Terra and Lollapalooza in Brazil, SXSW in the United States and the French version of Download Festival. They recorded an EP (Stereochrome) and an album (ModeHuman, which has a great cover). Their upcoming second album (Unlikely, whose songs will feature titles with animal names), is due out in 2017, backed by a crowdfunding campaign.
Far From Alaska is: singer Emmily Barreto, guitar player Rafael Brasil, bass player Eduardo Filgueira, drummer Lauro Kirsch and keyboardist Cris Botarelli, who also sings and plays slide guitar. The band’s sound can be defined as stoner rock and their heavy, atmospheric and riff-based songs are sung in English.
I’d gotten a good seat in the theater, right in front of the stage, a great place to enjoy the show and take good pictures. My good fortune, however, was short-lived. Before starting to sing, Emmily Barreto called the audience to the front of the stage — if I wanted to shoot, I‘d must be in the middle of the crowd. That was ok because I was able to walk free throughout the theater and shoot the band from various angles. Their sound doesn’t call for a sitting audience, by the way.
Far From Alaska is a very tight band. The heavier parts are felt like a wall of sound by the audience thanks to the precision with which each member plays their parts. Rafael and Eduardo put good use to a lot of effects on guitar and bass. The interaction between them and Lauro Kirsch is great, which ensures that the dynamics variations have the intended impact.
They opened with “Thievery”, which was followed by more songs from ModeHuman, plus two songs from the upcoming second album. Emmily’s voice was what caught my attention when I first heard the band live, a few months ago. She travels easily between the melodious and soft singing and the aggressive moments in which the song demands more vocal power.
This concert showed me how keyboardist Cris Botarelli is also a good guitarist. Playing a lap steel next to his little synth, Cris showed good technique and a great taste for melodies on this instrument that isn’t commonly heard in heavy bands. “Politiks” is a good example of this cool mix.
I sometimes face with a certain distrust Brazilian bands that sing in English, especially if their members are very young - the risk of finding only half-baked cliches is always a possibility. Far From Alaska isn’t one of those cases, though. The quality of the compositions and arrangements shows that they still have a lot to offer.  From: https://medium.com/brazilian-stages/far-from-alaska-17b0ea93e36a

The Vespers - Live at The Station Inn

 The Vespers - Live at The Station Inn - Part 1

 The Vespers - Live at The Station Inn - Part 2

 

Join the fun December 12th at 1PM CDT when Nashville’s The Vespers visit the DittyTV Studios to perform. A band comprised of two pairs of siblings [the Cryar sisters and Jones brothers], The Vespers combine Americana roots with pop melody and rock & roll muscle that’ll have you humming in your favorite key right on in to 2015. Check out their single ‘Sisters and Brothers’ (via Paste Magazine).
Natives of Nashville, Tennessee, the Vespers began making their own kind of rootsy, southern stomp in 2009, throwing themselves into a music scene that was rich in history and high in competition. Playing as many as 115 shows a year and selling more than 10,000 copies of their second album, The Fourth Wall (2012), The Vespers found themselves at a crossroads. They could make another album of bluegrass-influenced folk music — a genre that had grown quite popular since the group’s early days — or they could throw some newer influences into the mix.
“We wanted to make a new sound, something people hadn’t heard from us before, and Sisters and Brothers came out of that desire,” says Phoebe Cryar. Over five years, the Cryars’ and Jones’ had laughed, fought, cried, smiled, learned about life and played their hearts out. Without the influence of a label or an A&R team, they’d learned to rely on each other, trusting few outside influences apart from the support of their own fans. Those fans had helped The Vespers through the hardest of times, becoming not only the band’s supporters, but their family, as well. The time had come for the Vespers to make an album birthed from the ups and downs of traveling in a band, an album that focused on the great things that can happen with the support of your literal and figurative sisters and brothers. The Vespers didn’t abandon their old sound for Sisters and Brothers; they just expanded it.
“Phoebe and I were fresh out of high school when we started the band,” Callie Cryar adds, thinking back to the days when they were teenagers working the 5 a.m. shift at a Nashville donut shop. “You’re never more vulnerable or unconfident than you are at that time. But in the years leading up this album, we all became more comfortable with each other, with our emotions, with ourselves. We became adults, and we started delving into some of the emotions that we wanted to make people feel. People want to feel when they listen. They want to feel something intense, and that’s the kind of album we hoped to record.”
Looking for the right collaborator to help them evolve, The Vespers turned to Paul Moak, a Grammy-nominated producer and accomplished songwriter who operates his own recording studio, Smoakstack, in south Nashville. Moak pushed the musicians to create music that was raw and real instead of polished and perfect. The goal wasn’t to sound flawless. It was to find imperfect performances that captured a genuine moment, performances that raised the hair on everybody’s arms. If a take didn’t evoke that sort of response, it was scrapped.
“We used to record our vocals over and over, separately, until every single note was perfectly correct,” Callie remembers. “But Sisters and Brothers was completely different. We wanted it to be raw. We realized there was more attitude and more emotion whenever Phoebe and I sang together, even with that slight element of imperfection.”
“Every time you make a record, you’re summing up where you’ve been for the last few years,” says Bruno Jones. “Our band went through some challenges in those years, but we also went through a lot of growth, both onstage and off. We came out of it and realized we still cared about each other.” Bruno adds, “Sisters and Brothers is a rallying cry for the band.” Indeed, Sisters and Brothers does feel like a battle cry. It’s an album about beating the system, banding together, taking care of those around you and focusing on what really counts.  From: https://dittytv.com/vespers-dittytv/

 

 

Uni and The Urchins - Clean

The course of history often seems wayward and chaotic. It’s the gum on the heel of your shoe that a homeless saint picks off and plops in his mouth to chew again. Uni and The Urchins grow underneath your fingernails when you sit next to your parents in Church, digging them into the soft flesh above your knee.
Uni and The Urchins dribble from the mouths of sidewalk sleeping drunks and slither into the throat of a politician to make him cough and loosen his tie. Uni and The Urchins were there during your first masturbation and first confession. Uni and The Urchins wake you up in the middle of the night. Parents of America, a new phenomenon has taken over our youth. Uni and The Urchins wage war on the apathy and digital narcissism of 1st world ignorance.  
It is a cult of one, a cult of infinity. Jack James is the voice, a slender boy from Texas with a penchant for glitter and Oscar Wilde, who came down from another planet to be the rock star of the future. David Strange is the sword, a grisled poet and carpenter who can build anything, writing sonnets and summoning demons on his guitar. Kemp is the brain, a crazed scientist who composes prog riffs and surrealist visuals, leading the three into the great abyss. But you are the hands. Go spread the message.  From: https://www.chimeramusic.com/artists/uni

Orchestra Of Spheres - 2,000,000 Years

Orchestra of Spheres is a wide-ranging collective from Wellington, New Zealand whose distinctive music crosses from disco and electro to kuduro and mbalax, from neo-psych to no wave, from kosmiche to prog, on instruments both formal and homemade.
The group’s members adopt outlandish pseudonyms and don equally far-out costumes, and their performances and recordings consist of ecstatic sonic rituals and peaceful, playful dance mantras. Making their full-length debut with ‘Nonagonic Now’ in 2010, the Orchestra continued to shift styles and group members on subsequent releases, including 2016’s ‘Brothers and Sisters of the Black Lagoon’ and 2018’s ‘Mirror’.
The group formed in the early, heady days of Wellington’s artist collective, the Frederick Street Sound and Light Exploration Society, in 2009. Early members included Baba Rossa (biscuit-tin guitar and sexomouse marimba), Zye Sosceles (electric carillon), Jemi Hemi Mandala (drums), and Mos Iocoss (keyboards and gamelan).
Their self-released debut EP, ‘Space Art Music’, appeared that same year, followed by the full-length ‘Nonagonic Now’ in 2010. ‘The Bad Spheres’ single appeared in March of 2011, and the‘Numbers‘ EP in June. Meanwhile, the U.K.’s Fire Records signed the group and re-released ‘Nonagonic Now’ later in the year. An intense and prolonged period of touring and recording ensued, during which time EtonalE joined on bass carillon and percussion. Fire released ‘Vibration Animal Sex Brain Music’ in December of 2013.
The group returned with its third album, ‘Brothers and Sisters of the Black Lagoon’, in 2016. The album featured drumming by Tooth, and Woild Boin also mixed and contributed to the recording. Along with percussionist Farmerboy and several guest musicians, Orchestra of Spheres recorded their fourth full-length, ‘Mirror’, and Fire released it in 2018.  From: https://www.firerecords.com/artists/orchestra-of-spheres/

Sundowners - Hummingbird

How do you all know each other, and when did you get started as a band?

Me and Niamh [Rowe, also vocals and rhythm guitar] have been mates for years – she showed me how to play guitar and I encouraged her to sing, so we started playing together doing covers at small gigs and that’s mostly where we found our style and learnt hamonies. Alfie [Skelly, lead guitar] saw us playing and he wanted a singer for his band at the time, so we went into practice and jammed “Run Away” by Del Shannon for about an hour. He never officially asked us to join but we just kept showing up. For a while we had another drummer and bass player who went on to play in other bands, and that’s when Tim an Jim joined. We’ve all been playing together now for just over a year.

How would you describe your music, if pushed?

Well i’d say there’s a definite influence of ’60s/’70s rock and roll but individually we’re all into lots of other eras and genres that come through. I mean we get the obvious ones like The Byrds but have also had a lot of people say some of the songs are like Blondie.

Who or what are your primary inspirations for music-making?

The Beatles as a band and solo artists, Tom Petty, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Fleetwood Mac, Bruce Springsteen and Oasis.

Where can we hear your music?

On our Facebook page, our SoundCloud and our MySpace. We also have some videos on YouTube. We’ve just recorded in Parr Street (Liverpool) our new single “Humming Bird”, to be released with a B-side, so listen out for that!

Which have been your most exciting gigs so far?

We played a great gig supporting Cat’s Eyes in the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London but a close second has to be York – we played some dive and went down a storm with a load of students. We always enjoy supporting The Moons.

Got any more big gigs or festival dates coming up?

There’s no festivals planned this year but there’s plenty of gigs always popping up, mostly in Liverpool, Manchester and London. You can find out dates on the events page on our Facebook.

Are there any other up-and-coming acts that you’d like to recommend or give a shout-out to?

The Moons, Neville Skelly, By The Sea, Ren Harvieu, Cold Shoulder and The Sand Band. Also love Paul Weller’s new record!

From: https://rocksucker.co.uk/2012/05/interview-sundowners.html

The Verve - Bitter Sweet Symphony

"Bitter Sweet Symphony" is a song by the English rock band the Verve, released on 16 June 1997 by Hut Recordings and Virgin Records as the lead single from their third album, Urban Hymns. It was produced by Youth at Olympic Studios, London.
The Verve developed "Bitter Sweet Symphony" from a sample from a 1965 version of the Rolling Stones song "The Last Time" by the Andrew Oldham Orchestra, adding vocals, strings, guitar and percussion. After a lawsuit by the Rolling Stones' former manager, Allen Klein, the Verve relinquished all royalties and the Rolling Stones members Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were added to the songwriting credits. In 2019, ten years after Klein's death, Jagger, Richards, and Klein's son ceded the rights to the Verve songwriter, Richard Ashcroft.
The music video features Ashcroft walking down a busy pavement in Hoxton, London, bumping into passersby. It was played frequently on music channels and was nominated for Video of the Year, Best Group Video and Best Alternative Video at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards. It has been parodied in television advertisements and other music videos.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Sweet_Symphony  

Rapunzel & Sedayne - The Railroad Boy (Died For Love)

Fleetwood, Lancashire-based Rachel McCarron and Sean Breadin are better known as Rapunzel and Sedayne. Following from their recent involvement in the well-regarded Oak, Ash and Thorn project, Songs from the Barley Temple is a new album mainly comprising traditional material with several new tracks from the duo. There is certainly plenty of material here with a total of 14 tracks featured.
Songs from the Barley Temple has an ethereal and haunting tone, medieval in spirit, yet sounding curiously contemporary at the same time. The songs feature skillful and powerful vocal harmonies with sparse instrumental accompaniments that create an occasionally disconcerting yet compelling landscape. Banjo, fiddle and cwrth (a medieval lyre) mesh well with the innovative use of a Korg Kaossilator synthesiser to provide interesting and distinctive drone effects.
Housecarpenter/ I Curse the Day showcases Rapunzel’s emotive vocals with background drones and instrumentals to create a truly eerie atmosphere. Riverdance weaves together strings and drones with harmonium to lend a timeless feel to a gloriously sung lament. In contrast, Outlaws is a far more modern piece, setting to music a 1930s poem by Bonnie Parker, of Bonnie and Clyde fame, whilst in Diver Boy Sedayne’s powerful vocals are given the opportunity to shine through. Never less than fully engaging, Songs from the Barley Temple is an album of rare quality.  From: https://brightyoungfolk.com/records/songs-from-the-barley-temple-rapunzel-and-sed

Pretenders - The Wait - Live 1980

After the complicated stomp of “Tattooed Love Boys,” side one of Pretenders went in a different direction, a slow instrumental with double entendre title of “Space Invader,” ostensibly named after a very popular arcade game of the time, highlighted by a big, rumbly Pete Farndon bass and out-of-nowhere guitar outbursts from James Honeyman-Scott that I absolutely loved. At the fade, they brought in some of the actual noises from the Space Invaders arcade game, which segued instantly to what might be my favorite song on Pretenders, the utterly incandescent “The Wait,” one of most exciting rock ‘n’ roll songs that anybody has ever performed.
I’ve often joked that Pretenders turned me from a boy into a man, and the moment Chrissie Hynde exclaimed “huuuuuuuhhhhh!” and the chittering, stuttering riff that dominates “The Wait” explodes out of the speakers is when I pretty sure it happened. (If it indeed, ever happened. Jury’s still out.) Coming after an initial outburst of guitars and drums that still hadn’t quite found a direction, it’s like Hynde is telling the song “follow me.” And boy does it ever. Weirdly enough, unlike most of the other songs on Pretenders (“The Phone Call” excepted, of course), the lyrics and singing on “The Wait” are more impressionistic and mixed lower, Hynde’s vocals becoming part of the song instead of dominating, everything being subsumed to the amazing riff (heretofore referred to as THE RIFF because I’ve been air-guitaring to it for nearly 40 years) at the heart of the song, spitting out the words to map the build up to THE RIFF’s explosion.

Said the wait child magic child work it on out now work it
The wait child pinball child pool hall child hurts
The wait child pacing child forth back now hurts
The wait child neon light late night lights hurt

And then, with Farndon picking up his bass and running away from the rest of the band as fast has he can, there’s a quick chorus while they all catch up to him and drag him back to THE RIFF.

Oh gonna hurt some child child
Gonna hurt some whoa my baby

After the second chorus, the guitars drop out and over a still on-fire Farndon and ever-sturdy Martin Chambers, Hynde sings actual words on the bridge.

I said child, child staring into the streetlight
Messed up child lonely boy tonight
Kick the wall turn the street and back again
Oh boy you’ve been forgotten

And with that, James Honeyman-Scott just totally and completely takes off: cramming about 5000 guitar solos into one, all skyrockets and pinwheels and air raid sirens and the end of the fucking world rolled into several bars of glorious noisy chaos that seems like it would be impossible to stop until it smashes headlong into THE RIFF and dissipates like a massive wave into a giant wall as Chrissie Hynde exclaims yet another dick-hardening “huuuuuuuuuhhhh!” before one last verse and chorus.
All in all, “The Wait” is an utterly tremendous and incredibly exciting piece of music, and the fact that it came after five other stunners, each one completely different from the others and yet all infused with everything I loved about rock and roll back then — and everything I still love about it — meant that it didn’t even matter that the rest of the album wasn’t quite as ovaries-to-the-wall powerful for it to totally and completely wipe me out.  From: https://medialoper.com/certain-songs-1630-pretenders-the-wait/

Talking Heads - Crosseyed And Painless

I was surprised to learn that Talking Heads made a video for “Crosseyed and Painless”. It was directed by Toni Basil, who also directed the “Once in a Lifetime” video, and briefly dated David Byrne. The band does not appear in the video; instead, it features an excellent breakdance crew, the Electric Boogaloos. (They are unrelated to the movie or the fascist movement.) It’s interesting that the video edit of the song doubles the length of the rap verse. It’s also interesting that at 3:33, Skeeter Rabbit does the moonwalk, two years before Michael Jackson did it at the Motown 25th anniversary show. The philosopher Timothy Morton, who coined the term “hyperobject,” wrote an entire book chapter about the song and its video. As you might expect from cultural criticism by a philosopher, it is very heavy and full of esoteric language, but I will do my best.

    The video stages the proximity of poor African Americans to the broken tools of modernity, far from valorizing their immiseration, offers a way to think black environmental consciousness as symptomatic of and central to the emerging ecological age, the age of global warming (p. 167).

As the William Gibson quote goes, “The future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed.”

    This video and the song are part of the anthem of global anxiety, the overwhelming sensation that underlies ecological thinking like a note that no one wants to hear, a certain high-frequency hum like the sound of a malfunctioning electric pylon (p. 168).

This is definitely how I experience climate anxiety.

    “Crosseyed and Painless” is a superb example of funk, a broken blues without a story, without that four-chord trick, that twelve-bar narrative, just popping in and out, locking into that first section, like a needle stuck in the groove of a broken record. Funk evokes the repetition compulsion, returning again and again to the same part of the city, like Freud in his essay on the uncanny, over and over again to the same strange part of town, the part that is your home, made stranger by the constant popping dislocation of the groove. Funk burrows into that initial moment, the beginning of the blues sequence—the basic unhappiness that spawns the ironic enjoyment, the blue note. That chorus-like section that tries to fly from the sickening lurch of the verse, and seems for a few seconds to float above it, before descending back to uncanny home base, like a bird with a broken wing. No escape velocity can be achieved from the horrible gravity of the song, the centripetal torque emitted by the sharpened, shortened blues on heavy rotation (p. 170).

It’s not a musicologically well-supported idea that funk comes from the first four bars of the twelve-bar blues; it’s probably the other way around. However, what I think Morton is saying is that for Talking Heads in 1980, twelve-bar blues would have been the familiar template, and funk would have felt like looping the first four bars.

    Haunted by illusion, lies, anxiety, the black working class knows the secret life of things, the way they are in excess of their social role. Yet inner space does not provide a refuge from the outer world. There is no escape from this implicitly racist environmentality: The feeling returns / Whenever we close our eyes. Race, environment, nonhuman things are intertwined (p. 175).

Environmental racism is real. David Byrne gets into that with his bicycle activism, and in his book about biking around different world cities.

    Between the flattened seventh and the tonic note of the funk sequence, there is nothing, not even nothing—an oukontic nothing, like the forbidden gap between electron levels, which an electron jumps across when excited by a photon in the crystal lattice on a phosphor screen (p. 181).

“Oukontic” means absolute, as opposed to relative. Thinking of scale degrees as quantum modes of vibration is a rich and generative analogy. The flat seventh in blues probably arose from the seventh harmonic in the natural overtone series.

    The horrible familiarity and strangeness of anxiety, its uncanny creepiness that seems to lurk just off of the edge of our perception like a car in a driveway beside the street we’re walking on, or a car approaching in your wing mirror. U.S. car wing mirrors are object-oriented ontologists: they say, “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.” The trouble with ecology is that it brings everything too close. Things become vivid, yet unreal, at the very same time and for the very same reasons (p. 185).

How much of any of this might have been in David Byrne’s mind, or any of the other Talking Heads, or Brian Eno or Toni Basil or the Electric Boogaloos? Maybe not consciously, for any of them, but unconsciously, it would make sense. The whole point of the Talking Heads aesthetic is to sneak intuition around the barrier of the conscious intentional mind.  

From: https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2022/crosseyed-and-painless/

Cellar Darling - Dance

To get the obvious out of the way immediately, how are you all feeling as the release date of your debut is coming up?

Anna: Great! I’m exhausted, but in a positive way. We gave it our all, we poured a lot of energy and creativity into this album.

Merlin: We’ve worked on this album non-stop since the day we started the band, pretty much exactly one year ago. I would say it’s probably the most important release of our lives; at least it is for me. So there is certainly much anticipation!

How did you form your partnership with Nuclear Blast, and how is it going so far?

Merlin: As you might know, we’ve worked with Nuclear Blast with our previous band for nearly a decade already – we knew they have an outstanding team, and we knew they’d be among the first we would reach out to.

Anna: We sent them the two tracks we released last year (“Challenge” and “Fire, Wind & Earth”) and they immediately wanted to sign us. It’s going great, we’re very happy to work with them again.

Have you, at any point, considered adding more members to your band, or why have you decided to keep it as just the three of you? The obvious “missing link,” so to speak, would be a bassist.

Anna: No, Cellar Darling is the three of us and it works perfectly this way. Ivo is an amazing bassist, plays bass on the album and we’ll work with session musicians for live shows.

Merlin: I think a big part of the strength of this band is that we’ve been recording and touring together for years – we know what works, we know we work, and this established and proven symbiosis lies very much at the core of “This is the Sound,” too.

You played with Amorphis and Anneke van Giersbergen at the end of last year – what were some of the highlights? Were there any Spinal Tap moments worth sharing?

Anna: The first show with Amorphis was a bit shaky because of technical problems we had, but we still enjoyed the show and received positive feedback. The show supporting Anneke was much better and the entire trip was basically just one huge party. We traveled with a tour bus and brought all my friends along. Why? Because Amsterdam!

How does it feel to have so few people on stage, as compared to before?

Anna: Definitely very different, I think every person feels like they’re more “on display” than before. But that can also be a good thing, a lot of focus comes with it.

Ivo: It’s challenging too, but in a good way. Besides having more space on stage, it also opens up new possibilities for the live show.

Merlin: For me, there is more room for musicality; I can focus fully on what everyone else on stage is doing, and vice versa.

I’m not sure how the song-writing process went with Eluveitie, but I suppose it’s safe to assume that Chrigel was largely in charge? What differences, both positive and negative, did you notice now, working as a smaller collective?

Anna: Yes, Chrigel was the main songwriter in Eluveitie, with Ivo contributing a lot of riffs and songs and myself also being involved here and there. Cellar Darling songs are written collaboratively, based on ideas from Ivo or myself. It’s a group effort and you can hear that our songs are a symbiosis of us three and not one mastermind with a backing band. We experiment a lot in the rehearsal room and often also arrange whole songs together.

Merlin: From the very first Cellar Darling rehearsal, we played and explored ideas together in the same room—something which was entirely new for all of us, and something which I’ve enjoyed tremendously. We had been wanting to explore this way of working for some time, and it was quite surprising just how naturally it worked for us. The song we worked on during that first rehearsal actually made it on the album, albeit after many iterations!

How did it feel to work with so many fewer instruments now?

Anna: I don’t really perceive it as so much less to be honest. Besides the normal band line-up there’s the hurdy-gurdy, flute, strings, piano & even an Uilleann pipe on the album. But of course, our music focuses on what three people play and that is less, but I think it’s great.

Does your current music feel simplistic in any way to you by comparison? And if so, is that a nice change, or is it a bit strange?

Anna: Not at all actually, I think there’s much more variety in our arrangements. Fewer instruments does not equal simple.

Ivo: It’s not strange at all. Having fewer instruments also means that each instrument has more focus, which doesn’t make the songwriting process any easier or more simplistic. In fact, this approach feels more natural to me instead of having a checklist of instruments which have to be on every song.

Do you feel as though the lyrics carry more power with fewer instruments backing them?

Anna: That’s not really something I’ve thought about… we just write music, impulsively, and that results in something. Too much thinking would ruin that magical process.

I’ve noticed that your music is extremely catchy; for example, “Challenge” gets stuck in my head every time I think about it, let alone listen to it. Do you write that intent in mind, or is it just a pleasant side effect of the process?

Anna: That’s nice to hear! I never write music with any intent, it just happens naturally.

Ivo: The music I write mostly starts with a certain mood I am currently in; it’s not something I can control on my own. We don’t sit down and “plan” to make catchy melodies, they just evolve during the writing process.

Many bands travel the self-titled road for their debut – how did you come up with “This is the Sound” for the album title (which I assume is taken from the line in “Challenge”)?

Anna: We had a long list of album title candidates and like with most things, we went with the option that just felt right. “This is the Sound” is a statement to ourselves – we found our sound with this album and we’re thrilled about that.

Anna has said in other interviews that she never directly addresses things in her lyrics (like the story of eating too much ice cream)—are there any stories behind songs on the album that are similarly metaphorical? And what might the original stories/inspirations be, if you don’t mind sharing?

Anna: I think pretty much all songs on this album are metaphorical. I noticed at the end of our songwriting sessions that a lot of songs deal with “the end” in some way or another, whether that is in the form of death or the apocalypse… I guess I wrote about those topics because I was still processing the Eluveitie split without fully realizing it. It’s so interesting how our mind can tell us things and give creative hints like that. Another track that is very personal is “Redemption.” It’s about the people we love, yet manage to hurt, and the regret that comes with it. I turned it into a story about a magical moor that can take you in and give birth to you again as a new person. But with a price.

Are there any overarching themes or concepts on the album, or is each song an individual element? Is there any message you were trying to get across with the music or lyrics? What is the album “about,” if anything?

Anna: There is no lyrical concept; each song tells it’s own story. The only concept being the way the lyrics are written, as stories. I want the listener to drift off into another world, see pictures and colors. Like I do when I’m composing them, or when I’m listening to music that I like. My message is to use your imagination; it’s the most valuable and powerful thing you have.

The length of your songs is surprisingly varied—“Water” is a mere 1:54 minutes, while “Hedonia” is 7:29—how did some songs end up so short, while others were so long?

Anna: Song lengths are never intentional, they just happen naturally. Here once again we just do what feels right to us.

Finally, the phrase “cellar door” has, for many, many years (a century even), been considered to be one of the most beautiful phrases in the English language. Do you agree, and do you think that “Cellar Darling” has a similar beauty, as it is phonetically similar?

Anna: I do actually! I’ve always loved the combination of words, there’s something about them. Cellar is dark and Darling is light, like our music.

From: https://www.bearwiseman.com/off-the-record-interviews/off-the-record-with-cellar-darling