May 18, 2012 by Art J. Vandelay
The band’s three core members, Chris Keating, Ira Wolf Tuton and Anand Wilder, first came to attention after appearing at the SXSW festival in early 2007. Their first single consisted of a double A-side of the tracks “Sunrise” and “2080″. Following the release of debut album All Hour Cymbals in October 2007 by We Are Free, Yeasayer described their music as “Middle Eastern-psych-snap-gospel”. Live performances often include psychedelic visuals.
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May 17, 2012 by Art J. Vandelay
An incredibly prolific songwriter, Sam has built each album from a wealth of recorded material. Many of the songs not found on individual Iron and Wine releases later surfaced in live performance and in various limited-edition compilations. Up till now, any fan would find it difficult to track down these rarities.
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May 17, 2012 by Art J. Vandelay
“Most people were overjoyed; they took to their boats
I thought it less like a lake and more like a moat
The rhythm of my footsteps crossing floodlands to your door
Have been silenced forever more
The distance is quite simply much too far for me to row
It seems farther than ever before
Oh no”
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May 16, 2012 by Art J. Vandelay
Useless Information
“We usually travel with our destination in mind. We travel with hopes and expectations. We travel from one place to another. We travel with an end, and sometimes, without. But we always travel towards that final stop.
But have we ever wondered about the rest of the things that come and go during our transit? The objects, the places and the people that exist without being a part of our world and yet co-exist without our knowledge. Those that exist in time and space, by the law of nature or man, but remain mostly ignored by the traveller. They whiz into our worlds, play a momentary and insignificant part of the landscape they already belong to and once done are shelved into oblivion rendering it useless unless called upon by cognizance.
Useless Information is a tale of these very insignificant ‘actors’ taking centre stage. A result of a realization expressed through a form materialized out of inspiration.”
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May 16, 2012 by Art J. Vandelay
Bomba Estereo’s acoustic version of the song Pa’ Respirar atop Bogota’s most visited mountain, Monserrate.
You just wanna be there and listen to that live, not specifically with an audiance but just with a couple of friends…
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May 15, 2012 by Art J. Vandelay
More than a year ago, the Dutch big-room dance DJ Tiësto remixed Kanye West’s “Lost In The World,” the My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy closing track that prominently samples Bon Iver’s “Woods.” The song has apparently been sitting around Tiësto’s hard drive for the past year, and he just now got the all-clear to play it on his podcast. It’s seven minutes of ridiculously over-the-top thumpage, and it has the interesting consequence of transforming Justin Vernon’s solo Auto-Tune experiment into total Electric Zoo fare. Listen to a radio rip (or, I guess, podcast rip) of it below.
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May 14, 2012 by Art J. Vandelay
Santigold is Santi White: an artist whose perseverance relies on invention, a champion who survives off her own skill and faith. She is a major muse watched by the inspired world, an in categorical performer who collapses time and genre with one hand guided by tradition, while the other hand carves out a shining future. Santigold is neither calm nor mayhem, but from her lungs burst every color in …between.
After four years of hide and seek in which blogs blew up at the sudden release of any track with her name attached to it, Santigold returns in a moment of global aggression and vulnerability. Honing in on the hyper-media cult of personality, in her unmistakable voice she asks the listener: Into what fantasy do you hurl yourself as you gaze into the glow of your machine? The answer to this question is central to what drives Master of My Make-Believe, her latest work to be released this spring on Atlantic Records.
As an antidote against self-celebratory status updates in a climate where the focus on fame outweighs a day’s emotions, Master of My Make-Believe summons pop culture zombies back to life. This is sound proof of an artist on a diligent journey, measuring the power of individual mood against social clamor. Sifting through a wondrous wreckage of airplay, upload, and anguish, Santigold’s talent lies in filtering reality through freakdom, to find in desire a timeless spark of raw magic.
Anyone caught referring to Master of My Make-Believe as a sophomore effort is only half right. Though relatively fresh as Santigold, Santi White’s history of writing, production, and performance stretch beyond the century’s flip. Her collaboration with the industry’s most recognized and respected talent is something continuous and wide reaching, making her musical lineage all the much richer. Declared Best Breakthrough Artist by NME in 2008 and Pop Music Vanguard by ASCAP in 2009, the voice that defines Santigold is as complex as the faces that pack a subway car, as intimate and honest as conversation on a weathered stoop.
Through chopped pianos, the clink of glass bottles, and the peaking blast of motorcycle engines, Master of My Make-Believe accounts for 21st century details of life from the heart’s center to the mind’s periphery. In her pen and in her voice, the breadth of substance presented in Santigold’s newest songs is immediate and complex. There are valleys here wherein the drudge of daily living is met with caution and confronted by mortality, but underneath it all there is the celebration of each person’s power and vision to fight toward what they believe. Consider this your invitation.
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May 14, 2012 by Art J. Vandelay
In some ways, music doesn’t get much more modest or minimalist than it is in the hands of The Civil Wars, a duo comprised of California-to-Nashville transplant Joy Williams and her Alabaman partner, John Paul White. They travel without a backup band, and on their first full-length album, Barton Hollow, the bare-bones live arrangements that fans hear on the road are fleshed out with just the barest of acoustic accoutrements. Each song is an intimate conversation, and no third wheels or dinner-party chatter are going to interrupt that gorgeous, haunting hush.
The Civil Wars (John Paul White & Joy Williams) perform Leonard Cohen’s classic song, “Dance Me to the End of Love”.
Falling
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