Anna Phoebe’s Embrace EP out today ahead of new album

11 November 2013

Anna Phoebe - Embrace

London based violinist and composer Anna Phoebe has announced the release of Between The Shadow & The Soul, her new full-length album slated for an April 2014 release.
Anna, who is know for her work with the likes of Jethro Tull, Oi Va Voi, Roxy Music, Jon Lord of Deep Purple, and Trans Siberian Orchestra, is teasing the forthcoming album with a four-track EP entitled Embrace. Limited to 250 copies, Embrace dropped today via Burning Shed. The effort is described as “an exotic collaboration of classical and Eastern influences with a unique rock edge”.
The stunning and fierce opening track ‘The Duel’ serves as the EP’s first single. Listen to it below.

Archival collection by The John Lurie National Orchestra due out in January

08 November 2013

12 Jacket (3mm Spine) [GDOB-30H3-007}

An archival collection of recordings by musician, painter, actor and director John Lurie and his 1990’s trio with percussionists Billy Martin and G. Calvin Weston has just been announced. Comprising seven previously unreleased live and out-of-print studio recordings. the upcoming compilation entitled The Invention of Animals will be released on January 21st via Billy Martin’s Amulet Records.

“The three of us got together to try and write stuff for my band The Lounge Lizards, but what happened between Billy, Calvin and I was magical. After about a year of playing live it really came together,” said John Lurie. “There is something so unique and beautiful about this music. I don’t think there is anything else like it.”

The spellbinding opening track ‘Flutter’ serves as The Invention of Animals‘s first enticing taste. Listen to it below.

Watch the short film for Kronos Quartet With Bryce Dessner’s ‘Tour Eiffel’

06 November 2013

Kronos Quartet With Bryce Dessner - 'Tour Eiffel

Kronos Quartet and The National’s guitarist Bryce Dessner released yesterday a collaborative album entitled Aheym, which means “homeward” in Yiddish. Aheym, before turning into an album, was the first piece they conceived together, after Kronos founder David Harrington invited Dressner to write a piece for their performance at the Celebrate Brooklyn! festival at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park in 2009. As the press release describes, Aheym “was informed by the stories of Dessner’s Jewish immigrant grandparents who settled near the park”.
Coinciding with the album release, the magnificent track ‘Tour Eiffel’ is being offered with a visual accompaniment in the shape of Passages, a short film by Alex Braverman and Poppy de Villeneuve directed by Dianne Berkun. Featuring the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, ‘Tour Eiffel’ is based on a poem by early 20th-century Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro, who wrote about the Eiffel Tower at the time it had just been built. Watch the short film beneath.


Aheym is out now via Anti-.

Alarm Will Sound bring us the Radiohead – Steve Reich musical cocktail

02 November 2013

alarm will sound ppl

There are good reasons to be jealous of those who will be in the Big Apple on November 16th! We know that Bang on a Can and Alarm Will Sound love their city very much and most of their new stuff is premiered there. This time Jonny Greenwood impressed Reich with his guitar skills when performing ‘Electric Counterpoint’ in the Sacrum Profanum Festival in Krakow in Autumn 2011. Reich, after much reflection and research, composed ‘Radio Rewrite’ – a piece inspired by Radiohead‘s ‘Everything in its right place’ and ‘Jigsaw Falling into Place’. The piece will be performed by Alarm Will Sound in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and it will also be streamed via Q2 Music at 7pm Eastern Time. Below is a taste of what’s coming.

Brad Laner releases third solo album Nearest Suns

31 October 2013

Brad Laner - Nearest Suns

Nearest Suns marks Brad Laner’s third solo album release and it has just seen the light of day earlier this week via Hometapes and Drawing Room.
The guitarist, songwriter, and producer composed, played, and recorded the album entirely in his Granada Hills, California home. The press release describes Nearest Suns as “an old new universe in twelve songs, shattering what it means to be called a singer-songwriter, messing around with the notion of getting older, and soundtracking the infinite distortion and infinite harmony of falling in and out of love”.
If you haven’t lent your ears to it yet, wrap them now around the warm, honey-soaked opening track ‘Be Gone’. It comes with a homemade video made by Laner and his brother illustrating the recording process. Here’s what he said about it:

“I filmed myself performing each instrumental and vocal part with my iPhone whilst recording the audio into Logic on my main computer. When finished I made a stereo mix to serve as the audio and sent all of the clips to my brother Josh who via his excellent taste and skill made it as entertaining to watch as is possible when viewing a scruffy 45 year old dude concentrating very hard on not fucking up”.

Here’s the live video for ‘Be Gone’ and the album version straight after.