For a few weeks now and until April 10th, bands from 40 European countries can share their music to a wide audience of music lovers through The Euromusic Contest. Adapted to the new technologies and the digital music industry, and described as “Eurovision 2.0”, the Euromusic Contest aims at promoting new and emerging bands from the independent European music scene.
The event, which was first held in 2011 and received submissions from over 28 different countries, will see that number swell to 40 in its 2014 edition. Bands can still register until April 10th. Online voting will be open until the end of April to elect 40 pre-finalists, one from each country. In May, a jury made up of all kind of people passionate about music, from TV presenters to bedroom bloggers and everything in between, will pick 10 finalists. We’re pretty chuffed to be part of the jury and can’t wait to listen to the 40 tracks that make it to the top. The following month, the lucky 10 will get to perform at the contest’s final, a concert streamed live from Paris.
Head over to euromusiccontest.com for more info and to vote or even enter your band in the competition!
Hoping to hear you soon,
CTD
‘Infinite London’ was the first infectious single to emerge from Michael Forrest‘s recently released debut album Infinite Music Machine, back in January. The single has been given the remix treatment by longtime favourite outfit Chik Budo, who masterfully took it apart and reworked it into a twisted behemoth of a track. Play it loud.
Here’s the video that accompanies ‘Strange Colores’, a new track lifted from Avey Tare’s Slasher Flicks‘ upcoming debut album Enter the Slasher House. Olivia Wyatt directs.
Enter the Slasher House is out on April 7th in the UK/Europe and April 8th in North America via Domino Records.
We’ve been eagerly waiting to hear a full taste of Yann Tiersen‘s upcoming new album, ∞ (Infinity), even more so as the French composer had teased the effort last month with a stunning album trailer. Conceived and recorded between Paris, Brittany and Iceland, ∞ (Infinity) features guest collaborations from Aidan Moffat and Amiina amongst others who contributed in their native language to some of the album tracks sung and spoken in Breton, Faroese and Icelandic.
‘A Midsummer Evening’ is the first wonderful single from the album to emerge. Tiersen explained how the track came about:
“The idea was to start with toy instruments as a reference to my early works, then manipulate the sounds electronically. Then I added a new layer of acoustic instrumentation, and repeated the same process. Finally I repeated the process once more with strings, so the whole album was a constant back and forth from acoustic to electronic to digital, and then back to analogue.”
∞ (Infinity) drops on May 19th in the UK/Europe and May 20th in North America via Mute. Now listen to ‘A Midsummer Evening’.
Over the years, drummer/percussionist Sam Ospovat has lent his talents to numerous projects, including Beep, Naytronix, tUnE-yArDs, Anteater and Kapowski, to name but a few. With PIKI, his solo project, Ospovat released a tremendous self-titled debut album in 2012, which remains a favourite of ours. So we were ecstatic to learn about ROOM, his most recent collaborative project with French guitarist and electronic musician Serge Rogalski. The pair have recently released a full-length album, La Malédiction du M, via their bandcamp. An album of absorbingly weird, rich and mostly improvised sounds, La Malédiction du M is an exceptional and powerful release that clearly showcases the duo’s talent.
To whet your appetite, listen to ‘Où les zèbres dorment’ and ‘Flashing candies under my tongue’ below. The first comes with an accompanying video. Enjoy.
