Some child-like wonder

Folk

Natalie Merchant - Leave Your Sleep [2CD] (2010)

Disc 1
1. Nursery Rhyme Of Innocence And Experience 5:10
2. Equestrienne 4:39
3. Calico Pie 2:42
4. Bleezer's Ice-Cream 5:16
5. It Makes A Change 3:31
6. The King Of China's Daughter 2:39
7. The Dancing Bear 5:38
8. The Man In The Wilderness 3:45
9. Maggie And Milly And Molly And May 4:07
10. If No One Ever Marries Me 2:22
11. The Sleepy Giant 3:19
12. The Peppery Man 5:06
13. The Blind Men And The Elephant 5:31

Disc 2
1. Adventures Of Isabel 3:23
2. The Walloping Window Blind 4:16
3. Topsyturvey-World 5:09
4. The Janitor's Boy 3:52
5. Griselda 5:51
6. The Land Of Nod 4:04
7. Vain And Careless 4:43
8. Crying My Little One 2:26
9. Sweet And A Lullaby 3:04
10. I Saw A Ship A Sailing 2:12
11. Autumn Lullaby 3:22
12. Spring And Fall: To A Young Child 3:04
13. Indian Names 5:50


"'This album captures so many magical moments, the best times I've ever had as a musician,' declares singer-songwriter Natalie Merchant of 'Leave Your Sleep,' her ambitious, two-disc Nonesuch debut. Merchant, celebrated solo artist and one-time voice of 10,000 Maniacs, took on what could have been a daunting task: she's adapted 19th and 20th century British and American poetry - well-known and obscure works, anonymous rhymes, children's lullabies, all of it timeless material full of direct emotion - and fashioned new songs from these words. Among the poets she chose were Robert Graves, Charles Manley Hopkins, Edward Lear, Ogden Nash, and Robert Louis Stevenson. The project, five years in the making, has clearly had a liberating effect on Merchant. Never has she sounded so free-spirited, so full of musical adventure, whether backed by small jazzy combos or elegant chamber ensembles. The tracks she's created range from exotic ('The King of China's Daughter') to earthy ('Peppery Man'), soothing ('I Saw A Ship A-Sailing') to swinging ('The Janitor's Boy'), mischievous ('It Makes A Change') to moving ('Spring and Fall'). The string arrangements are particularly stirring, recalling Joshua Rifkin's now-classic work on Judy Collins' 'Wildflowers.' There's plenty of child-like wonder, counterbalanced with grown-up sophistication.

Says Merchant, 'It was an exciting, new approach for me to work with rhythm and rhyme schemes created by other writers. The poems inspired vastly different musical settings with their themes that ranged from humorous and absurd to tragic, romantic, and deeply spiritual. Over the course of three years I wrote 40 of these poem-songs and 30 were eventually recorded.' Merchant co-produced 'Leave Your Sleep' with Venezuelan musician-composer Andres Levin, a frequent collaborator of David Byrne and Arto Lindsay, and one of the creators of the eclectic Red Hot charity series. Over the course of a year's worth of exhilarating, musically shape-shifting sessions, they drew upon no less than 125 musicians from the varied worlds of, among other things, Cajun, country, jazz, chamber music, R&B, Celtic, and reggae. The revitalized Merchant explains, 'I called on old friends and approached many new musicians I only knew through admiring their work... The sessions were recorded in live ensemble workshop settings that captured pure and authentic sounds played with incredibly fresh and spontaneous energy.'"

(Similar artists -Sarah Mc Lachlan, Melissa Etheridge, Beth Orton)

Magnetic North (2010)

01. New Friend
02. Reel Me In
03. Sundowning
04. 36 Hours
05. Fingertip
06. Lost
07. Time Moves Slow
08. California
09. Remember Us
10. Hummingbird
11. Thin Air
12. Magnetic North






Matt Hales (born January 17, 1972), better known as Aqualung, is a British singer/songwriter best known in the United Kingdom for his song “Strange And Beautiful”, which was featured on a television advertisement for the new Volkswagen Beetle during the summer of 2002 and went on to become a Top 10 hit in the UK singles chart later that year.

"Magnetic North" is Aqualungs first album of all new material since relocating from England to sunny Los Angeles last Autumn. All 12 tracks were co-written and produced by Aqualung. Co-writers include: Ben Hales, his brother, his wife, and the legendary Paul Buchanan (of the Blue Nile). Guest vocal appearances include: Kelly Sweet, Alison Sudol (A Fine Frenzy), Sara Bareilles, and others.

Dave Grohl

One of the first times I heard of Dave Grohl I was in college, I'd entered a competition on Student Cents and I won a Dave Grohl t-shirt, later that year I would see them (Foo Fighters) live at Oxegen, squashed to death 3 rows from front, moshing my little heart out.

This post it thanks to Metal Bastard.

Grohl through the years, it's not everything, but it touches the surface of his ingenius talent!

(zip) The Evolution of Dave Grohl (85 mb)
1. Dain Bramage - The log (1986)
2. Scream - Gods look down (1989)
3. Late! - Throwing needles (1992)
4. Nirvana - Scentless apprentice (1993)
5. Dave Grohl & Louise Post - Touch (1997)
6. Foo Fighters - Enough space (1997)
7. Iommi - Goodbye lament (2000)
8. Queens of the Stone Age - The sky is fallin' (2002)
9. Killing Joke - Asteroid (2003)
10. Probot - Shake your blood (2004)
11. Nine Inch Nails - Getting smaller (2005)
12. Tenacious D - Beelzeboss (The final showdown) (2006)
13. The Prodigy - Run with the wolves (2009)
14. Them Crooked Vultures - No one loves me & neither do I (2009)
15. Slash - Watch this (2010)

F**K the ash cloud!

Eyjafjallajokull

Photo take by Skarpi

I'm writing this post in honour of my cancelled flight to the Angus and Julia Stone gig in the UK :(

It's all volcano related, be it bands from Iceland, songs re: ash, or something to console being stranded...you get the picture!

Bjork - So Quiet3

Sigur Rós - Hoppipolla

Cornershop - Brimful of Asha

Benedict Moleta - Ash And Delay

Ash - Burn Baby Burn.

Jónsi - Time To Pretend (MGMT Cover)

Blondie - No Exit

REM - End Of The World

Howie Day - Brace Yourself

Eels - Last Stop, This Town

Damien Rice - Volcano

Slow Club - Sorry About The Doom

Emiliana Torrini - Jungle Drum


There's also a band called "Volcano Insurance", just do you know....

A Little Gem

Pop/Alternative

Introducing 27 year old, British V V Brown singer, songwriter, and producer!Mixing soul vocals, with indie  pop beats, she was tipped to make waves on the scene in 2009, and is set for even dizzier heights for 2010! She has a habit of writing songs on her one string guitar, Crying Blood (below) was one such tune. This is music which sounds like performance: dramatic, charismatic and, frequently, as mad as a box of frogs. This is high definition, high concept pop with scuffed edges and laddered tights. “It’s about letting out all these ideas I’ve had locked up in my mind,” Brown states. “It’s honest - it’s not about being festooned with £10m diamonds or having perfect hair.”

VV Brown - Crying Blood

VV Brown - This Charming Man (The Smiths Cover)

Buy it on iTunes

Indie/Electro

Merriweather Post Pavillion (2009)
Tracklist
1."In the Flowers"
2."My Girls"
3."Also Frightened"
4."Summertime Clothes"
5."Daily Routine"
6."Bluish"
7."Guys Eyes"
8."Taste"
9."Lion In a Coma" (Animal Collective, Lathozi Mpahleni Manquin Madosini)
10."No More Runnin"
11."Brother Sport"






Merriweather Post Pavilion is the eighth studio album by Animal Collective.
With their constantly evolving sonic identity, in-your-face vocal mannerisms, and open-ended ideas about what their music might "mean," Animal Collective seem designed to inspire obsessive fans and vociferous detractors in equal measure. Merriweather Post Pavilion, their latest full-length, was anticipated to an almost ridiculous degree and soon became one of the best albums of 2009.

Animal Collective's two vocalists, Dave Portner (aka Avey Tare) and Noah Lennox (aka Panda Bear), have never sounded better together, and the way their styles complement each other is the story of the album. On the one hand you have Panda's straightforward melodies, his fuzzy, head-in-the-clouds dreaminess, and his instinctual trawl through pop music history. The tracks that favor his songwriting typically have an underlying sense of drone, with everything moving forward along a line in relation to some subliminal center: They begin, then build, expand, and contract. Tare, meanwhile, tends to work within a more classic pop structure, with clear bridges and snappy choruses, greater harmonic development, and a sharper lyrical focus.

This album, which finds Animal Collective completely owning their unique sound, feels like the crucial next step in that conversation. What they've constructed here is a new kind of electronic pop-- one which is machine-generated and revels in technology but is also deeply human, never drawing too much attention to its digital nature. It's of the moment and feels new, but it's also striking in its immediacy and comes across as friendly and welcoming.(Pitchfork)

Soundtrack Sunday

1. A Kaleidoscope Of Mathematics
2. Playing A Game Of 'Go!'
3. Looking For The Next Great Idea
4. Creating 'Governing Dynamics'
5. Cracking The Russian Codes
6. Nash Descends Into Parcher's World
7. First Drop Off. First Kiss
8. The Car Chase
9. Alicia Discovers Nash's Dark World
10. Real Or Imagined?
11. Of One Heart, Of One Mind
12. Saying Goodbye To Those You So Love
13. Teaching Mathematics Again
14. Prize of One's Life... The Prize of One's Mind
15. All Love Can Be - Charlotte Church
16. Closing Credits


Minute Film Review
The mind is indeed a beautiful thing. It is the reason for our ingenuity, artistic originality and maybe even our humanity. What happens however when the mind works against us? When it tricks us into believing that what is not real to be the actual, destroying our sense of being? This is what “A Beautiful Mind” tackles, a thought-provoking film based on a true story with lots of brain behind it, but more importantly, lots of heart within it.