Finally some news from our dear singer-songwriter Thomas Mery, as he played his first gig in a long time, last week in Lille, and has 2 more in Paris this month.
Catch him this Sunday for a short set among many acoustic performances at Boutiques Sonores and Monster K7’s party, or on Wednesday, September 30 with Blackthread and Thos Henley at la Cantine de Belleville. A nice opportunity to hear some of Thomas’ new songs, as a foretaste of his upcoming album, expected for -hopefully- 2010.
Snaking away from the indie pop accents of her debut Hands Across the Void, Jesy Fortino aka Tiny Vipers releases her second full-length album on SubPop and risks her folk inheritance to higher spheres: an immense step up.
The first play of this sixty-four minutes record will most certainly leave the hearer at a loss to tell one song apart from another, or to even discern any sort of conventional pattern in the composition of the eleven tracks. But if you think this sounds boring, the young viperidae from Seattle may prove you wrong.
Her influences include Townes Van Zandt, Neil Young, Nico, and Micheal Cashmore, and yes, from its mere primitive shape to more experimental ventures, the folk spirit quietly walks through the full length of the record. It is nevertheless difficult to label Life On Earth as a folk album, unless you think of it as a distorted and elongated entanglement of Joni Mitchell’s “Tin Angel” and Melanie Safka’s “Pebbles In The Sand“, remixed by Aidan Baker in a “Green and Cold” fashion. She inherited the almost medieval austerity of the first’s earliest works, the proto-Joanna Newsom-esque vocal figures and untechnical spontaneity of the second, and the surprising neo-classical approach to grimy contemporary pop of the last.
Yet, few comparisons will let you grasp the full horizons of Fortino’s Earth.
Only a long and worthy intimacy with her voice and minimalist guitar will help unravel its uncatchable personae and ever-changing sceneries. From the disarming introduction lyrics, “Do you remember when the world was still young…” in “Eyes Like Ours”, and the airy timelessness of “Dreamer”, to the nihilist sense of emergency and confusion of “Outside”, she ushers you through an imaginary mythology for an imaginary people, a lost volume in-between the Bible and the Verda; she tells you about death and ghosts, about the origins and future of the world, and of otherness, but, at the same time, through some fascinating and unaffected trick, leaves you the serene and immobile witness to the nearly organic attachment to memory, to the doubts and fears, and fascination for the beyond, to the unbearable self-consciousness and isolation of a thousand individuals, whose faces become blurred as centuries are swept by around you. If “Cm” sounds like a recess and is more in the traditional style of her early songs, the darkness and deconstructed frame of the following tracks, and especially the sinuous sine waves of “Twilight Property” will only hit you as a more fatal blow. There is no poison distilled in this nest of vipers though, only a miracle recipe of how to turn casual yet mysterious singing and songwriting into a mesmerising and modern ambient work.
Undoubtedly, Life On Earth is not an easy-to-share experience, but if it has not played a special part in your Summer already, it is high time you gave it a special place in your life, for it is a true and very secret gem.
Listen to “Dreamer” (MP3) on Sub Pop.
Buy Tiny Vipers “Life On Earth” on CD or digital release from Sub Pop Records.
Visit Tiny Vipers’ MySpace.
Best known for sitting behind the piano of Louisville’s cult band Rachel’s in the 90’s and early 00’s, Rachel Grimes has recorded a whole new album on her own, Book Of Leaves, set to be released on September 22 in the US by Karate Body and October 12 in Europe and Japan by RuminanCe. 100 copies of a special edition vinyl will include the original score sheets; only 25 copies were still available for pre-order at Karate Body earlier this week.
Listen to 2 songs from the album on Rachel Grimes’ website: Long Before Us and Every Morning.
Following the release of Book of Leaves, Rachel will bring her intimate songs on a Fall tour in the US, and is expected to fly to Europe in April 2010.
24 Sep 2009 – PianoForte Chicago, IL
25 Sep 2009 – PianoForte Chicago, IL
8 Oct 2009 – 21C Museum, Louisville, KY
9 Oct 2009 – WRFL Boomslang Festival, Lexington, KY
12 Oct 2009 – Le Poisson Rouge, New York, N
13 Oct 2009 – The Ethical Society, Philadelphia, PA
22 Oct 2009 – Good Shepherd Chapel, Seattle, WA
24 Oct 2009 – Swedish American Hall, San Francisco, CA
6 months ago, Balmorhea released their 3rd album, a praised effort that explored the raw landscapes of 19th-century America, in a way that furthered the path of Rachel’s. From the 9 epic songs that owe as much to post-rock and folk as they do to chamber music, 8 have now gone through the hands and ears of 11 of today’s finest sound artists, resulting in a surprising new re-interpretation of the album, now released on double-LP vinyl and digital download by Western Vinyl.
With a 17+minute opening, Eluvium sets the tone, muffling the original melody of “Settler” as an underlying guiding thread for layers of choirs and strings with looped acoustic guitars. As many of the artists here, he has chosen to strip down Balmorhea’s song, and shape their raw sound material into a much more ambient direction. Rafael Anton Irisarri and Tiny Vipers keep on with this introspective approach, both calming down the vigor of “Harm & Boon”, while Bexar Bexar’s guitar samples open up to a slightly brighter sound on his short “Elegy”. After a couple minutes of organ and creaks, Machinefabriek playfully introduces a deep, vibrating double-bass halfway through his vision of “Remembrance”. The Fun Years are the first to use a more straight-forward drum rhythm on “Coahuila”. Library Tapes has also kept the drums for that same track, but the beat gets more hesitant, as it supports an acoustic instrumentation, remaining closer to Balmorhea’s sound than any other remixer on the record. Jacaszek adds a peculiar DIY touch, with cheap percussions, and interweaving waves of organs and guitars. Helios comes next and drags “Truth” into indietronica spheres (Get the MP3 here). Quite unexpectedly, Peter Broderick litteraly addresses a letter to his dear friends from Texas as he builds on a motif of piano and choirs to which he adds his own voice and violin. On the other side of the sound spectrum, Xela eventually slowly lets “November 1, 1832″ drown into a growingly overwhelming feedback.
Compared to the Austin band’s original album, this one may sound drier. It is indeed much more abstract and experimental, the lyricism and complex song structures being left aside to the benefit of feelings and ambiences. Tearing apart and stretching out tiny bits of melodies, resonating strings and sound accidents, those 11 remixes, though illustrated with a black-and-white cover, really reveal myriads of shades through the headphones, and bring the attentive listener into a worthy contemplation of a rich and wild inner nature.
READ MORE ON BALMORHEA AND THEIR REMIXERS ON GOODMORNINCAPTN.COM:
IN THE MIDST OF A VERY BUSY YEAR, MULTI-INSTRUMENTALIST AND COMPOSER PETER BRODERICK PUTS HIS LUGGAGE DOWN FOR A QUICK LOOK BACK ON HIS PROMISING DEBUT AND WALKS US THROUGH A DAZZLING GALLERY OF PROJECTS.
Captn: “4-Track Songs” is being released on Type. You recorded this song collection back in 2006. Do you feel like a lot has changed for you since then, or does it seem like only yesterday?
Peter: It’s funny, because I only made this music three years ago, but it feels like much longer. So many things have happened in my life since I made that music, and at that time, my own music was only something I did for fun on the side. I never thought I might be able to release records on my own and make a career out of it… When I hear that music now, it’s hard for me to believe that I made it. It’s almost a bit embarrassing actually, but I also like how raw the music is, and I’m happy that Type has reissued it.
Captn: Your roll-out of releases for 2009 is quite impressive. How do you manage so many projects? Do you write and record songs 24/7? How many ghostwriters do you have, and/or do you ever sleep?
Peter: Sleep is something I could probably use a lot more of. These last couple years have been incredibly busy, and in general I’m pretty exhausted sometimes. But I make music whenever I can! I think it’s what keeps me going. And I often work very quickly. I like to work in many different ways. Sometimes spending a lot of time on something in a studio, and sometimes making things really quickly on my computer with the minimal equipment I have. For instance, the music on Five Film Score outtakes was recorded really quickly before I left for an extended North American tour. I set up one microphone on the piano and recorded some improvisations, and then quickly recorded some improvisations on a few other instruments, and then I brought all the files with me on the road, and did all the mixing and assembling in the tour van, with my laptop and noise-canceling headphones. So I’m always working on things!
Captn: “Blank Grey Canvas Sky” is coming out in October on Fang Bomb. What can you tell us from your collaboration with Machinefabriek?
Peter: I am really happy about this one. Over the last couple years, Machinefabriek has become one of my favorite artists, period. Everything he does, from the music, to the design, to the amount of things he releases, his website, etc. In my eyes he is a completely unique artist, and I have so much respect for what he does. In addition to that, he’s one of the most amazing, positive, and energetic people I’ve ever met. A short email from Rutger (Machinefabriek) always puts a smile on my face and makes my day brighter. That said, making an album with him was an amazing experience for me. I would record different things and send them over to him (by email), and he would work on it and send it back. Every time he sent something back to me I was blown away. It felt like he took my music and turned it into something much more interesting, in a way that I could have never imagined in my musical brain. I think we have very different approaches to music, and when you combine them, for me it turns into something very special. So I’m really happy about this album. Sadly we’ve had some problems with the master, so it might be delayed a few weeks now, but I look forward for it to be released!
Captn: What about your remix/letter to Balmorhea, which is just out?
Peter: Haha, I don’t think there’s too much to say about that one. Michael and Rob from Balmorhea are two of my favorite people in the world, and great friends. I think the concept of “remixing” music is quite strange, especially when I think the music is already perfect (and I think this about theirs). So when they asked me to contribute to this remix project, rather than sit there spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to approach their remix, I just started recording, and this is what came out…
Captn: You’ve been travelling/touring a lot for the last 2 years. Where do you consider “Home” now?
Peter: Well, at the moment I’m between Copenhagen, Berlin, and Portland, Oregon. My things are scattered all over the place, and I’m really working hard to try and find a place where I can settle for a while. I think the most honest answer to where my home is, is probably in my suitcase at the moment. Sad but true. But someday I’ll have a home!
Captn: You wrote soundtracks to a short film and a dance creation already. Would you be interested in composing a feature film score? If yes, which director would you work with in your wildest dreams?
Peter: I love to work with filmmakers and different kinds of artists to make music. It always encourages me to try something new, and that’s very valuable to me. If I could choose one artist to work with, it would probably be Miranda July. If she made another film and I got to make the music for it, this would be my dream collaboration. She is an incredible artist, and so inspiring. Actually once I sent her a fan letter (a real letter, not an email). I spent a lot of time putting it together, and mailed it off feeling really embarrased about it. I never heard anything back. So I don’t think we’ll be collaborating any time soon ;-)
Captn: Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy tweeted you “World’s best looper”. What do you think? And who would you pick for world’s best looper?
Peter: This is crazy. One of my friends forwarded that Tweet to me. I’m stunned by that. Owen Pallett is amazing, and I was really nervous about playing that night with him, because he is who I would consider to be the best looper! So to hear this from him is a real honor.
Captn: Can you tell us a few words on your current recording sessions with Efterklang? What should we expect from “Parades“‘ successor? Will you keep touring with them despite of your numerous projects?
Peter: I am -really- excited about the new Efterklang album. Those guys are my heroes, and they always will be. There is still a lot of work to be done on the album, so I don’t think I should say too much yet. I will say that I think it’s very different for them. But in the best way possible. I will continue to play with them as long as I can! At this point I’m not ready to say goodbye to them and focus only on my solo music. I love having both. So at this point I do everything I can to keep Efterklang a top priority in my schedule.
Captn: Any details about what will be your next full length album? When should it come out? On which label? Will it be song-oriented or rather instrumental?
Peter: I am working on my next album for Bella Union right now. It’s quite far from being finished, but I think it will most likely be out next Spring. The main difference this time around is that I’m actually spending a lot of time on it. All my other albums have been made really quickly, in focused, condensed periods of time. For once I’m taking some time to really work on something, and I think that’s good. It’s more challenging in a way, because as time goes by, I start to doubt my own ideas, and I try to rework them. There are already three songs on the new album which I’ve recorded two times. After a while the first version wasn’t working to me any more, so I started over with a different approach. And it’s also the first album where I’m not placing any limits on myself. It is mostly song oriented, but there are a lot of strings and piano, etc., and a lot of extended instrumental passages. I think that’s about all I can say now, because I’m still not sure where it’s going! My friend Nils Frahm is producing the album. I’ve been getting to know him really well in the last six months, and I trust his ears so much. He has a great impact on this album, because he has been there almost the whole time, contributing ideas and playing piano, etc.
Captn: Any other projects you are working on or are looking forward to and which you would like to mention?
Peter: There is one thing. There’s a lovely record label from Belgium called Slaapwel, which only releases music to sleep to. They asked me to make a contribution sometime last year, and I immediately said I’d love to. For many years I have often fallen asleep to my favorite music. Not so much these days because I’m always traveling and sleeping in hotels, etc., but when I had my own home I always listened to music to fade away in the night. At the same time, there was a girl in Holland (but actually she’s from Greece…) who made a sleeping sculpture of me. A gigantic sculpture of me, laying in a bed sleeping, with a little motor in the chest so you can hear it breath. When she first proposed the idea to me, I thought it was crazy (a sculpture of ME?), but also beautiful in some way. So I told her I’d love to make a piece of music to acompany the sculpture. I made a long piece of music for this strange version of myself to sleep to. It’s about 30 minutes long, and comprised entirely of my voice and little piano (with a lot of processing and effects). When I made the music, I was maybe the most exhausted I’ve ever been, after my longest tour ever around Europe this Spring. I was nearly falling asleep while I made the music. And when I finished, I sent it to Chrysa (who made the sculpture), and then I took a trip to Amsterdam to see the opening exhibition of the sculpture, with my music playing in the background, on repeat. It was….terrifying. I sat there in this cold, grey room, staring at myself sleeping on this bed, and it felt as if I was watching myself die. And all of a sudden this music I made became very, very sad to me. But at the same time, it became peaceful, like it was ok that I was dying. …This all probably sounds very strange right now, but this music is really important to me. If I were to die tomorrow, and if there was any kind of funeral held for me, I would like this piece of music to be played there. That image makes me feel very calm. Anyhow, this one will be released at the end of the year. My last release for a very busy year.
Captn: Thanks a lot for your time (and for your music)!
Peter: Thank YOU!
DISCOGRAPHY
READ MORE ON PETER BRODERICK ON GOODMORNINCAPTN.COM:
A collection of home-recorded drafts and improvisations may sound like a puzzling follow-up to the polished folk of Home and the vibrant modern classic Music For Falling From Trees. At least not one to render his ever-growing rollout of projects more intelligible to a wider audience. Yet, more than any of his previous works, this 25 short tracks give a vivid overview of Peter Broderick’s sound palette… and maybe more.
The opening “Untitled” and its fingerpicked austere bass versus chanting trebles accompanying Broderick’s voice immediately evokes his Bella Union release, while the following “Piano and Rain” is a fit illustration of his gift for unpretentious new classic experiments. Other pieces come as a surprise, like the down-tempo trip-hopish “Walking/Thinking” and the drony electro melancholy of “A Low End Rumble”. “For Pop”’s banjo shows an unprecedented country-music inversion.
Nevertheless, this few departing notes do not seem to weaken the ensemble, quite on the contrary. Bearing in mind that this is not just a demo to any of Peter’s latest releases but the 2006 random recordings, audio post-its, and research of a 19-year-old Oregon-based session musician, such heterogeneity is symptomatic of two of Peter Broderick’s greatest strengths: the open-mindedness and spontaneity of a young hard-to-categorize multi-instrumentalist.
If several folk songs in the collection fail to stand up to his 2008 album, more instrumental tracks simply bloom in the stark arrangements allowed by the 4-track recorder. The theme of Float in “More of a Composition”, a mind-blowingly fully-grown newborn, is simply transfigured. From creaking stools to swelling strings, with a pinch of throat-rattling, and a fine sprinkling of field recording, 4-Track Songs is not only a nice insight into Broderick’s workflow, it is a wonderful and moving immersion into his creative process, an unsettling journey among the intimate clutter of music instruments and sonic tropisms. In the semi-darkness of lo-fi recording, his usual blend of tense melancholy and almost naive serenity takes on a tangibly human glimmer.
Initially collected as a teaser for Type records, these 25 4-Track Songs may well set an inspiring foretaste of what Peter Broderick could achieve if he were to grow out of frames and musical genres. And for all the joy his music has brought us so far, let’s pray he eventually does!
Read Peter Broderick’s interview by our Captn.
Buy Peter Broderick “4-Track Songs” on CD, 2LP, or digital from Boomkat.com.
Last April, 22-year old Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds created one song a day for one week, and made each one of them freely available on the same day on foundsongs.erasedtapes.com. The 7 nice songs that resulted from the exciting project have been drawing more and more listeners, among whom many contributed their own artwork via Flickr. Erased Tapes eventually decided to physically release “Found Songs“, and the remastered record is coming out on August 31 as a limited-edition CD, 10″ Vinyl incl. digital download code, or high-quality download. Here is a dreamy video of the 7th-day track, “Ljósið“.
Buy Ólafur Arnalds’s Found Tapes on Erased Tapes online store.
Music Go Music - Expressions
Halfway between their label mates Bodies of Water and 70’s disco icon ABBA, Music Go Music is starting to gain more and more attention, as they have announced their debut full-length release on Secretely Canadian, “Expressions“, due October 6. Don’t get too excited if you’re an early fan though, as it will merely be a collection of their 3 previous EPs, “Light of Love“, “Reach Out“, and “Warm In The Shadows“. If you’re not yet a fan of the promising L.A. band, here’s your opportunity to enjoy their psyched disco-pop, with the time-traveling video of Warm In The Shadows. You can also catch the catchy song for free from Secretely Canadian’s site.
We all love cute furry animals, from sweet lambs to grizzly or panda bears. Today for a change, we are inviting Le Loup into the sheep fold.
Let’s take advantage of their lovely pastoral debut video “Planes Like Vultures” to introduce you to this collective of 8 musicians. Since 2006 when they formed in Washington, DC, Le Loup quickly proved to be a master at weavering a delicate and enthralling folk, nurrished with slightly psychedelic, repetitive rythms, aerial voices, keyboards and banjo, not to omit a few guitar surges.
Make sure not to miss their debut LP, “The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly“, out on Sub Pop subsidiary Hardly Art, and on the worth-following Bordeaux-based label Talitres for France.
As a tasty starter to convince you, please download “We Are Gods! We Are Wolves!” from Hardly Art!
We’ve been used to rabbits riding bikes by night in the forest. Now, they also ride scooters in quiet American suburbs. Today’s leporids invite does, owls and racoons to an explosive house party, full of Oreo cookies, partycrashers, and choreographies, in Mates of State’s new music video.
Jason the porcupine and Kori the wolf are a husband-and-wife duo from Kansas, and their 5th album comes out May 20 on Barsuk Records, also home of Nada Surf, Death Cab For Cutie and Menomena. Let’s bet “Re-arrange Us” will hold more catchy and luminous indie pop jewels.
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