Cleveland born, songwriter/performer Joshua Radin announces his upcoming SELF – RELEASED LP Wax Wings, coming May 7, 2013. The label favorite chose to independently release his fifth studio album. Radin has sold more than 1.5 million singles, half a million albums and has over 75 songs placements in film and TV.
The title Wax Wings comes from Greek Mythology and the story of Icarus and his attempt to escape from Crete(the largest of the Greek Islands) by means of wings that his craftsman father constructed from solely feathers and wax. Icarus ignored instructions not to fly too close to the sun, and in the process came too close, which melted the wax. The melting wax caused him to fall into the sea where he drowned which today bears his name, the Icarian Sea. Radin followed the same path of flight with this album… letting curiosity guide his path in order to conquer the sky.
“this album is the story of a romance; but there’s no beginning and no end. it’s more circular than linear. often, in my past songs, i’ve referred to my love as the sun. i flew too close to that sun on wings made of wax, and when they melted, i fell, over and over again.”
The Title Sequence are a North London based duo comprising of songwriter David Bailey and producer Nick Crofts. The duo fuse vocals, guitars, keyboards and vintage reel-to-reel tape decks to create their own unique lo-fi strand of indie electronica.
This spring, in the wake of the success of first single ‘Pay Day’, the talented duo release their eagerly anticipated debut album, ‘Stills’. Originally destined to be David Bailey’s second solo album for the alternative folk label Folkwit Records, Bailey turned to his lifelong friend and music producer Nick Crofts to record a small collection of songs. This early collaboration was to lead to the formation of The Title Sequence, with Croft mixing beats to Bailey’s keys and bass. Incorporated into this new collaboration was a strong design element which consistently plays into the band’s desire to create a distinct visual aesthetic alongside their music, setting them apart from the current indie scene.
The album opens with the track ‘Sound’, and the song explores that very concept, highlighting the equal importance of sound alongside lyrics and melodies. The unrestricted musical nature of this album further unravels itself in the song ‘Etienne’. featuring a baroque string quartet arrangement, it tells the story of a classical French composer who gave up music following criticism from classical institutions. Another highlight on the record is a lullaby style song -‘Evenings spent with you’ and stunning track ‘Dinosaurs’.
The album has received repeated airplay from the likes of Steve Lamacq, Tom Ravenscroft, Hew Stevens, Tom Robinson, John Kennedy, Chris Hawkins and Chris Coco and will be released via Bandcamp and iTunes on the 18th of March, with a view to do a limited vinyl release along with a brand new EP at the end of the year. The band also plan a one off show about 2 weeks after the release, where they will perform ‘Stills’ in its entirety before they start working on their follow up.
There’s a quality of nostalgia buried within The Title Sequence’s output, be it their music, films and artwork. Rather than using the latest technology to create music they make use of vintage technology, still using the synths and equipment they began collecting when they were 16 year old boys in their bedroom studios. Playing each of their tracks in the key of crayola, The Title Sequence are keeping their heads above the mainstream water. Both quirky and addictive, they are the ones to watch for 2013.
RELEASE DATE
25TH MARCH 2013
TRACKLIST
1. SOUND
2. ASHAMED
3. DINOSAURS
4. LOVERS
5. YOU BELONG TO ME
6. STILLS
7. JIGSAW DAYS
8. ETIENNE
9. EVENINGS SPENT WITH
YOU
10. PAYDAY
11. GHOST OF THE
RELATIONSHIP
12. SIDESHOW
13. DELETED SCENE
Heart Of Hearts is the solo work of Greg Hatem. The Baltimore-based project began recording in 2010 in a residential warehouse space onto a dusty old 8-track tape machine. Two years later, Hatem has traded in his worn tape heads for shiny new digits to produce his new album, My Society. The album focuses on Hatem’s experience as an aviculturist, breeding and caring for finches and doves.
Heart of Hearts My Society
Bleek Records BR010
Release date: OUT NOW
Available digitally via iTunes, Amazon and on 12″ vinyl via Bandcamp.
Stream the entire album at bandcamp here.
8/07: Los Angeles, CA @ Largo
08/08: San Diego, CA @ Anthology
08/09: Costa Mesa, CA @ Detroit Bar
08/10: Long Beach, CA @ Fingerprints (Record Store Performance)
08/11: Ventura, CA @ Zoey’s
08/12: Santa Cruz, CA @ Crepe Place
08/13: Oakland, CA @ Yoshi’s
08/14: Nevada City, CA @ Haven Underground
08/16: Portland, OR @ Alberta Rose Theatre
08/17: Seattle, WA @ Empty Sea Studios
08/18: Eugene, OR @ Sam Bounds Garage
Erika Spring (Au Revoir Simone) Signs to Cascine for Release of self-titled Debut EP, out July 10
Singer/keyboardist Erika Forster (Au Revoir Simone) has teamed up with Cascine to release her debut
self-titled EP on July 10th. Erika Spring Tracklisting
1. Happy At Your Gate
2. Hidden
3. Like A Fire
4. When Tomorrow Comes
5. 6 More Weeks http://cascine.us/
The House That Jack Built on June 26th on Bella Union
and Upcoming Tour in Support of The Punch Brothers
Having just this week embarked on her tour in support of The Punch Brothers, Jesca Hoop announces her forthcoming album The House That Jack Built out on Bella Union on June 26th 2012.
The House That Jack Built deftly showcases Jesca Hoop’s unflinching tendency to pull focus from widescreen to close-up. Part siren song, part grim warning, it achieves a perspective-warping balance between the haunting intimacy of Hoop’s delivery and an unconfined air of horizon-scanning grandeur from the outset – tempestuous, moodily melodic opener ‘Born To’ shares this striking duality with later highlights ‘When I’m Asleep’, ‘Peacemaker’ and ‘Deeper Devastation’.
It arrives with more than a few splashes on its hands. Life and death; light and dark; sex and war; head and heart: The House That Jack Built offers up as much in celebration of the macabre as it does in mistrust of the familiar, with a twist of humor. It’s steeped in an allusion to biology, nature and humanity, but drops precious few clues as to whether its next rush of imagery is set to beguile or repel.
The follow up to 2010’s universally critically acclaimed Hunting My Dress, the new recording is a co-production between Hoop and three producers – “ a drop of blood in the can from each of us rendered a more radical sound” says Hoop – and this visceral album will open a whole new world of listeners to Jesca’s music.
Returning to Tony Berg’s Zeitgeist Studio in Los Angeles, where she recorded Hunting My Dress, Jesca enlisted old friends Shawn Everett, Blake Mills and Tony Berg himself as her co-producers. Says Hoop, “What a combination of minds, these three men & me. It was a real balancing act with tensions pulling toward one or the other. Striking that balance was the ticket to some of the most elevated moments in my musical collaborations to date.”
Admitting that writing the record was an often an insular, isolating experience – “I spent days and days without leaving the house and having zero contact with others” Hoop found herself exploring topics as diverse as Greek tragedies (Peacemaker), street artist Banksy (Ode To Banksy) and her often turbulent relationship with her father (DNR and the album’s title track).
Born To – the first single from the album – asks a question we’ve all asked ourselves “how is it that I was born into the circumstances I was born into. How is it some of us are born into famine and others into unimaginable wealth”. In Hospital (Win Your Love) she tackles “a human quality that causes us to crave injury” recalling childhood memories and on Deeper Devastation – her favorite song on the record – a fear of infidelity, this song Hoop says “is about accepting nature and learning to trust”.
Elsewhere, Pack Animal and Dig This Record find Hoop spinning very different threads to equally hypnotic effect. Throughout Hoop’s stone-turning observations remain mired in the equal beauty and violence of nature, hers is a nature red in tooth and claw.
Since self-releasing Hunting My Dress, Jesca Hoop has continued her knack for collecting fans in high places. Having been endorsed by Elbow’s Guy Garvey – she presented his BBC Radio’s 6 music show on March 25th – she’s joined Eels on their US and European tour in 2011 and was invited by Peter Gabriel to sing backing vocals for his David Letterman and Jools Holland TV performances, and support and duet with him on his South American tour last year. With the release of The House That Jack Built, Jesca is set to pick up a host of new fans, high profile or not.
Asinger, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist, Monica Lionheart is known for creating unique, atmospheric songs with a global twist. In Indian Summer, her first album since Zigmat’s critically acclaimed Sounds of Machine, the chanteuse channels Norah Jones’s soothing vocals, deconstructs personal relationships with the lyrical honesty reminiscent of Julieta Venegas and brings it all together with the kind of eclectic beats that defined Beth Orton.
From the calmness of “Air and Sea” to the complexity of “Circles,” which features world-renowned cellist, Yoed Nir (Regina Spektor, Rufus Wainwright) Indian Summer is an exotic, aural experience. Lionheart’s music is often described as both mystifying and haunting andIndian Summer is no exception. Filled with lush arrangements, mesmerizing vocals and vivid imagery, the album is a chronicle of love and heartbreak.
Liz Green Announces O, Devotion!
Out February 7th via [PIAS] America
The U.K. singer has a welcome sound with inflections that are seductive and expressive and a delivery that makes every word count. – Bob Boilen, NPR Music
“Part Joanna Newsom, part thirties-starlet” –Esquire
“Astonishing raw blues” –Time Out
After years of anticipation, Liz Green is finally releasing her debut album in the U.S. The UK songstress will release O, Devotion! on [PIAS] America on February 7th. And to celebrate the release of this album, Liz has made her song “Hey Joe” available for download, premiering the track with NPR Music. Writing on the All Songs Considered Blog, critic Bob Boilen called the album, “a bit of Tom Waits, a bit of Kurt Weill and certainly an original.”
For the 29-year-old Liz Green, O. Devotion! is a labor of love, crafted with time and care over the last four years. First rising to prominence in 2007 after winning the Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition, Liz started turning heads with her first single “Bad Medicine” back in 2008. In the four years since the single’s release, Liz retreated into the studio with Liam Watson (White Stripes, everyone else). Recording with Liam, Liz found the pieces that were needed to fill out her sound, incorporating new and unique arrangements. “I thought, “Fuck it. I’m gonna get me that brass band I always wanted,” Liz says, looking back on her decision to enlist Watson and saxophonist Gus Fairbairn to help create the woozy, brassy arrangements that appear on the album.
The end results are pretty impressive. Over the album’s 41 minutes, O. Devotion! vacillates between Weimar cabaret, Bugsy Malone dancehall hops, and a version of down-and-out folk that would make Johnny Cash smile. The album includes a single inspired by Holocaust chronicler Primo Levi and sung from the part of a self-reliant refugee (“Displacement Song”), a tale of an inveterate funeral-goer a la “Harold and Maude” (“Luis”), and an astonishingly visceral album highlight titled “Gallows,” which explores the inevitability of a bad end. It’s a multifaceted record that explores the high and lows of love, loss, and all the bad things in between. Watch Liz Green’s Video for
“The Displacement Song”
Giraffage is the creation of 21-year old multi-instrumentalist/producer Charlie Yin of San Francisco, California. The general sound of Giraffage has been described as crisp schizophrenic dream pop tunes that thread their way through loose-knit grooves and tightly-toothed rhythms. Gaining inspiration from things as diverse as dreams or the weather, Giraffage evokes a woozy yet familiar mood that leaves you feeling a sense of nostalgia and melancholy.
His debut EP Pretty Things, released May 2011, is described as having lush dreamscapes committed to hip hop beats and physical sound. Seamlessly blending looped guitars, pop cans, and 808 machinery into a cohesive summer vibe, Pretty Things has caught the ears of the blogosphere.
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