dilluns, 27 d’abril del 2009

alela diane (the riffle) they're coming from the woods

julie doiron


Una canadenca que és una mescla de Joni Mitchell i PJ Harvey, potser el tò es un tant monocorde, però em posa una mica més que la Neko Case, per cert espero amb moltes ganes a la Alela Diane (comfirmada per el Primavera Sound)

dissabte, 25 d’abril del 2009

Byrne (sobre art i realitat, la sidra, el mal d'esquena, i Peret)


3.29.04

Last night's show in Gijon went perfectly — a beautiful slow beginning and a gradual ramping up to full speed. It was a semi-baroque old theater in the center of town, not far form the port.

In the morning I went for my second recent run since the lower back problems that plagued me the first few days of the tour have eased up. Yesterday in Pau and today in Gijon, I've been running down around the peninsula that juts out from the port and downtown beaches.

I head back there later for lunch in a little bar with sawdust, sea urchin shells, and cigarette butts littering the floor. I order sidra, the local dry cider, which is poured from a great height in small portions to aerate every few mouthfuls. I have it with chipirones, the little squids, and a chunk of deeply blue cheese, which I notice my bar neighbors eating.

The walls are decorated with pictures of football stars, the local craggy mountain range, a voluptuous lady in a blue dress holding a ball, a framed "biography of a sardine" and panoramic shots of the harbour. The clients smoke furiously and range from a family at one long table to an old geezer alone at another.

A young couple from Madrid enters and recognizes me, and asks for a photo. No one is watching the car racing on TV.

That night we add "Si Fulano" to the set, the song I did with Peret, the flamenco rock singer from Barcelona. He had hits in the 70s and was considered the Elvis of Spain, mainly due to the bad movies he did. The audience recognizes it as soon as the verse starts, and they cheer, so I guess it was a good decision to learn it.

I'm reading an advance copy of Lawrence Weschler's book of essays, Vermeer in Bosnia. The title essay is a meditation on Vermeer's beautiful pictures and the violent turbulent age they came out of. The museum is in the Hague, where the war crime tribunals are held, hence the connection. It is proposed that what his images were doing was "inventing peace." They proposed the possibility of a better, more beautiful world; by putting the visible possibility of such an alternative world right in front of us, we might imagine it, conceive it, and consider it a possibility.

I wonder if that's what we all do with music as well. Music, some of it, proposes a world that functions differently than the one we've been experiencing; it proposes possibilities, plants the seed of something that could exist but was not previously in the imagination's vocabulary.

29 March 2004 in Tour/Show Reports | Permalink

dijous, 23 d’abril del 2009

Calen pirates...




Study finds pirates 10 times more likely to buy music
According to research, those who download 'free' music are also the industry's largest audience for digital sales
Sean Michaels
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 21 April 2009 11.03 BST
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Are pirates really keeping the music business afloat? Photograph: Fredrik Persson/Scanpix/PA

Piracy may be the bane of the music industry but according to a new study, it may also be its engine. A report from the BI Norwegian School of Management has found that those who download music illegally are also 10 times more likely to pay for songs than those who don't.

Everybody knows that music sales have continued to fall in recent years, and that filesharing is usually blamed. We are made to imagine legions of internet criminals, their fingers on track-pads, downloading songs via BitTorrent and never paying for anything. One of the only bits of good news amid this doom and gloom is the steady rise in digital music sales. Millions of internet do-gooders, their fingers on track-pads, who pay for songs they like – purchasing them from Amazon or iTunes Music Store. And yet according to Professor Anne-Britt Gran's new research, these two groups may be the same.

The Norwegian study looked at almost 2,000 online music users, all over the age of 15. Researchers found that those who downloaded "free" music – whether from lawful or seedy sources – were also 10 times more likely to pay for music. This would make music pirates the industry's largest audience for digital sales.

Wisely, the study did not rely on music pirates' honesty. Researchers asked music buyers to prove that they had proof of purchase.

The paper's conclusions emerge just as Sweden's Pirate Bay trial comes to a close. Pirate Bay's four defendants, who helped operate the notorious BitTorrent tracker, were sentenced to a year in jail and fined 30m SEK (£2,500,000) in damages.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

dilluns, 20 d’abril del 2009

Byrne (a La Vanguardia via Linés)


ENTREVISTA
David Byrne: "He vuelto al pop, un género confortable"
David Byrne presenta su nuevo CD el viernes en el Palau de la Música | "El desarraigo nunca ha sido problema; yo me siento a gusto en cualquier sitio"
0 votos Añadir comentario
Esteban Linés | Barcelona | 20/04/2009 | Actualizada a las 03:31h | Cultura
David Byrne es de origen escocés, aunque habita en EE.UU. desde hace decenios. Hace 27 años grabó un disco con Brian Eno (My life in the bush of ghosts),otro británico inquieto y super cool,y ahora se ha descolgado con la grabación del disco Everything that happens will happen today (Emi), que este próximo viernes presenta en el Palau de la Música (21 h), en el Festival de Guitarra. Ofrecerá un espectáculo amplio en concepto y forma, con generosa escenografía.
Dos músicos británicos, pero el Atlántico les separa. ¿La geografía marca de alguna manera el ADN artístico?

Me siento estadounidense; es un proceso largo, imperceptible en lo cotidiano, pero llega un momento en que te dices: ´Ey, si pienso como un yanqui´. Y no piensas como un yanqui, eres un yanqui. Para mí, de todos modos, el desarraigo nunca ha sido mayor problema; yo me siento a gusto en cualquier sitio.

¿La nueva colaboración con Eno aporta luz, musicalmente, en momentos de oscuridad?

Como explico en las notas del disco, este es luminoso. Brian y yo coincidimos por casualidad y decidimos reiniciar una colaboración que formalmente no existía desde hace casi treinta años.

A mí el disco me entusiasma. Pero no es un disco que entusiasme necesariamente.

Es posible. Pero creo que he recobrado un entusiasmo necesario. Y, no se olvide, soy un músico pragmático. He vuelto al pop, un género confortable.

¿Cómo definiría este disco? Suena optimista, pero hay letras que rozan el apocalipsis.

No exagere. Es un disco que transpira sensaciones personales actuales. Mi visión del mundo, despersonalizado, engañosamente global, un mundo que yo conozco, que es el norteamericano, que asoma después de un periodo histórico nefasto.

La deshumanización parece el leitmotiv del álbum.

Efectivamente. Las ilustraciones del disco, por ejemplo, muestran la perfección de una casa, ¿un hogar? Limpia, aseada, pero sin personas. Es una metáfora ilustrada de lo que convendría evitar, pero que existe en cada rincón del planeta desarrollado.

¿Qué significa desarrollado?

Los conceptos van evolucionando, tiene razón. Hace años hablábamos del tercer mundo como algo con sustancia propia. Ahora estamos hablamos de sostenibilidad. Que tampoco sabemos muy bien qué significa, pero que como vocablo nos es más útil. El planeta se ahoga, es la prioridad, y convendría arrimar el hombro. Pero la raíz de fondo sigue siendo la misma, el reparto desigual de la riqueza.

Usted fue uno de los precursores de la world music. ¿Es un género hoy prostituido?

La etiqueta nunca la puse yo. Hablar de world music es, era, una redundancia, como usted puede comprender. No está prostituido sino que está asimilado. Era una marca de fábrica quizás necesaria. Pero esas consideraciones no conviene hacerlas porque acaban dando jaqueca. El mundo está evolucionando hacia derroteros que nos pueden alegrar la cara. Dese cuenta de que hemos estado al borde del precipicio, con un presidente realmente peligroso.

Pero ¿se siente orgulloso de haber apadrinado esa idea?

Somos neocolonialistas en el fondo. No sé, África contiene inmensas riquezas artísticas debido a su carestía real y cotidiana; América Latina es un continente ubérrimo: Brasil, Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina por supuesto. Yo no estoy orgulloso porque no he hecho nada. Grabé una canción con Celia Cruz [Loco de amor]que funcionó muy bien porque apareció en Something wild, y luego está mi carrera en solitario durante y al final de los Talking Heads, donde iba tocando esas teclas.

¿Cómo ha evolucionado la historia?

Creo que muy bien. No había nada, y ahora hay bastante. La música se abre, y la gente bebe.

¿Qué relación tiene con sus ex compañeros?

Otra pregunta.

Hábleme de su ansiedad. Han pasado los años, pero su manera de cantar remite a sus mejores días de Talking Heads.

¿Usted cree? Era un grupo único, y vivíamos una circunstancia especial. Nos excedíamos, lo pasamos bien, acabamos fatal. Mi manera de cantar es nerviosa, espasmódica, es urgente incluso, pero eso se debe únicamente a una impostura artística. Hay que épater,como dicen en Francia.

¿Le gusta Morrisey?

¿Quién?

¿Por qué decide reencontrarse con Brian Eno?

Fue una simple casualidad; vino ami casa de Nueva York por otro asunto, y comenzamos a hablar de lo que teníamos entre manos. A mí la música me interesa cada vez menos. Me gusta tangencialmente, pero me contó que tenía centenares de composiciones en su ordenador y que no sabía qué hacer con ellas. Le propuse entonces que yo escribiría las letras de las melodías que me enviase. Me envió muchas. Antiguas, divertidas, inocentes. Es muy buen compositor, no es muy detallista, pero le da caña al tema.

¿No le da corte volver a trabajar con él después de casi treinta años?

Eso lo dicen ustedes, los medios. Siempre hemos tenido una relación fluida, cordial y muy amistosa. Y compartimos gustos.

¿Como cuáles?

Ambos somos muy elementales. El rock, la ópera, los compositores impresionistas, Satie...

¿Lo indie, la americana,el post brit pop? ¿Son motivos de atención?

No tengo tiempo, y es una lástima. Me he volcado bastante más hacia lo clásico.

Vuelvo a su disco. Se ha elaborado de una manera estrictamente virtual. Eso destroza la esencia de una obra artística.

Ese era el riesgo, es cierto. Brian me enviaba las composiciones desde Londres, y yo me ponía a escribir. Apenas hablábamos. Confiábamos en nosotros.

¿Y si no le hubiese gustado la música a usted?

No fue el caso. Para mí, Brian es impecable. Son canciones bonitas, alegres. Me gusta el pop; es más, he vuelto con este disco al pop… No deja de ser un género confortable.

dimarts, 14 d’abril del 2009

(The Smoking Gun) la pitjor expressió per suggeir innocència. Aquí li ha fallat el Wall of Sound.


Phil Spector: He's A Jailbird

L.A. jury convicts music producer of murdering actress Lana Clarkson

APRIL 13--Phil Spector, the fright-haired music producer, was convicted today of second-degree murder in the February 2003 death of Lana Clarkson, a struggling actress who died of a gunshot wound in Spector's Los Angeles home. The 69-year-old Spector, who faces 15 years in prison, was immediately taken into custody after a Los Angeles Superior Court jury returned its guilty verdict. Spector is pictured below in a Los Angeles Sheriff's Department mug shot taken today. CLICK HERE for hundreds of other celebrity mug shots, though few are as scary as Spector's. (1 page)

dissabte, 11 d’abril del 2009

Casiotone for the painfully alone (nom impressionant)

(Not) Breaking News: Vanderslice Signs with Dead Oceans »
News
Casiotone For The Painfully Alone releases Vs. Children, Tours US
By Shawn M. Smith ⋅ April 8, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment | Email the author

teamclermontpublicity_cftpahannahpersson04b_1

Casiotone For The Painfully Alone [MySpace] will be hitting the road in the US this Summer, touring Europe throughout April and May. These tours come after a very active Spring: CFTPA released Advance Base Battery Life, a collection of 7-inch split-singles and compilation tracks he released from 2004-7 early in the season, and just yesterday CTFTPA released Vs. Children, the fifth full-length album from CTFPA since 2006’s Etiquette.

(Not) Breaking News: Vanderslice Signs with Dead Oceans »
News
Casiotone For The Painfully Alone releases Vs. Children, Tours US
By Shawn M. Smith ⋅ April 8, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment | Email the author

teamclermontpublicity_cftpahannahpersson04b_1

Casiotone For The Painfully Alone [MySpace] will be hitting the road in the US this Summer, touring Europe throughout April and May. These tours come after a very active Spring: CFTPA released Advance Base Battery Life, a collection of 7-inch split-singles and compilation tracks he released from 2004-7 early in the season, and just yesterday CTFTPA released Vs. Children, the fifth full-length album from CTFPA since 2006’s Etiquette.

Check out a new track “after the jump”

[mp3] [listen] Casiotone for the Painfully Alone- “Optimist vs. The Silent Alarm (When The Saints Go Marching In)”

dilluns, 6 d’abril del 2009

Els 100 millors discs "indie" segons Amazon

AMAZON'S 100 GREATEST INDIE ROCK ALBUMS OF ALL TIME

thubmnail icon: Amazon's 100 Greatest Indie Rock Albums Of All Time

Every now and then some magazine or other sort of publication decides to trot out their "100 Greatest Indie Rock Albums Of All Time." The last of note we wrote about was Blender (RIP, dudes) in 2007, so it's ostensibly time for the folks at Amazon to show their own. Before you guffaw, the list has strengths. Like someone finally remembered Jawbreaker and Unrest'sImperial f.f.r.r. ... albeit the "Deluxe Edition." (It's clearly a site designed to sell you these very records, so grains of salt, please.) As with all lists, there are head scratchers, i.e. the Postal Service beating Hüsker Dü's Zen Arcade, the Replacement's Let It Be, and the Fall, etc., by a landslide. The criteria:

The term "Indie Rock" is undeniably tricky. We challenge anyone to definitively define what is and what is not indie rock--you will fail. For the purposes of compiling this list we've decided to use a combination of hard and fast rules and gut instinct. Our hard and fast rules are listed below, but as for gut instinct--you just kind of have to know. For example: John Oates put out a rock record called Phunk Shui on an indie label, however, in no way should Phunk Shui be mistaken for indie rock. Likewise, Black Flag put out many seminal punk albums on SST, but we're not talking about punk or grunge or classic post-kraut-rock, we're talking about indie rock. Are Black Flag really indie rock? Not to our ears.

Important to note that there was only one album per artist, Guided By Voices, Sonic Youth, and Sebadoh (Liz Phair is cool with this rule), plus no singles or EPs or comps or greatest hits. Dig in:

100 Dangerous Magical Noise - The Dirtbombs
99 Passover - The Black Angels
98 To Survive - Joan As Police Woman
97 Ultimate Alternative Wavers - Built To Spill
96 Trans Am - Trans Am
95 The Discovery Of A World Inside... - The Apples In Stereo
94 Waiter: 'You Vultures!' - Portugal The Man
93 Alligator - The National
92 Horses In The Sky - Silver Mt. Zion
91 Gallowsbird's Bark - The Fiery Furnaces
90 Louden Up Now - (!!! Chk Chik Chick)
89 The Milk-Eyed Mender - Joanna Newsom
88 The Power Out - Electrelane
87 Cure For Pain - Morphine
86 Worn Copy - Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
85 Vivian Girls - Vivian Girls
84 Hearts Of Oak - Ted Leo/Pharmacists
83 Save Yourself - Make Up
82 The Last Match - The Aislers Set
81 The Sea and the Bells - Rachel's
80 The Ugly Organ - Cursive
79 De Stijl - The White Stripes
78 Nothing Feels Good - The Promise Ring
77 The Smell Of Our Own - The Hidden Cameras
76 Jane From Occupied Europe - Swell Maps
75 Furnace Room Lullaby - Neko Case
74 The Curtain Hits The Cast - Low
73 The R&B Of Membership - The Delta 72
72 II & III - Camper Van Beethoven
71 Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating... - Spiritualized
70 The Fawn - The Sea And Cake
69 Feast of Wire - Calexico
68 Oh, Inverted World - The Shins
67 Will You Find Me - Ida
66 Milk Man - Deerhoof
65 Coquelicot Asleep In The Poppies... - Of Montreal
64 Rejoicing in The Hands - Devendra Banhart
63 Destroyer's Rubies - Destroyer
62 TNT - Tortoise
61 Neon Golden - The Notwist
60 Daddy's Highway - The Bats
59 Set Yourself On Fire - Stars
58 Fabulous Muscles - Xiu Xiu
57 Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes - TV On The Radio
56 The Decline And Fall Of Heavenly - Heavenly
55 The Mysterious Production of Eggs - Andrew Bird
54 Pussy-Whipped - Bikini Kill
53 Sing No Evil - Half Japanese
52 Liberty Belle And The Black Diamond Express - The Go Betweens
51 Emperor Tomato Ketchup - Stereolab
50 And Don't The Kids Just Love It - Television Personalities
49 Wild Love - Smog
48 Agaetis Byrjun - Sigur Ros
47 Red House Painters I - Red House Painters
46 Advisory Committee - Mirah
45 How Memory Works - Joan Of Arc
44 On Fire - Galaxie 500
43 On - Imperial Teen
42 Mass Romantic [Remastered] - The New Pornographers
41 Gulag Orkestar - Beirut
40 This Nation's Saving Grace - The Fall
39 You Forgot It In People - Broken Social Scene
38 I Am A Bird Now - Antony & The Johnsons
37 When Your Heartstrings Break - Beulah
36 Our Endless Numbered Days - Iron & Wine
35 Person Pitch - Panda Bear
34 Let's Get Out of This Country - Camera Obscura
33 Merriweather Post Pavilion - Animal Collective
32 Let It Be [Expanded Edition] - The Replacements
31 Repeater + 3 Songs - Fugazi
30 Zen Arcade - Hüsker Dü
29 24 Hour Revenge Therapy - Jawbreaker
28 Lift Your Skinny Fists... - godspeed you black emperor!
27 Yellow House - Grizzly Bear
26 The Glow Pt. 2 - The Microphones
25 Black Candy - Beat Happening
24 Funeral - Arcade Fire
23 Moon Pix - Cat Power
22 Diary - Sunny Day Real Estate
21 Lifted Or The Story Is In The Soil... - Bright Eyes
20 I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One - Yo La Tengo
19 Kill the Moonlight - Spoon
18 Give Up - The Postal Service
17 Dig Me Out - Sleater-Kinney
16 No Pocky for Kitty - Superchunk
15 I See A Darkness - Bonnie "Prince" Billy
14 We Have The Facts and We're Voting Yes - Death Cab For Cutie
13 Michigan - Sufjan Stevens
12 Daydream Nation - Sonic Youth
11 69 Love Songs Volume 1 - The Magnetic Fields
10 Bakesale - Sebadoh
09 Either/Or - Elliott Smith
08 Surfer Rosa - Pixies
07 If You're Feeling Sinister - Belle & Sebastian
06 Slanted & Enchanted - Pavement
05 Imperial f.f.r.r. (Deluxe Edition) - Unrest
04 Exile In Guyville - Liz Phair
03 Spiderland - Slint
02 In the Aeroplane Over the Sea - Neutral Milk Hotel
01 Bee Thousand - Guided by Voices

Yellow House > MPP, for those keeping track. You can see it all in context at Amazon.com. (True, some of the records we chose for our Friendly Deals are on this puppy, too. Including #1. What good taste we have.)

Posted at 10:27 AM by brandon 
Tags:  

Akron (al final hi hauré d'anar)


I tornem-hi, ara descobreixo una banda, sembla que no gens desconeguda (almenys han aterrat per Barcelona un parell de vegades), que tot i ser de Brooklyn s'han batejat amb el "beneït" topònim...
Son força interessants, diría que mes "friendly listening" que els pirats d'Animal Collective, però en la mateixa "vena". S'espera nou disc (crec que el cinquè) per el mes que vé.

dissabte, 4 d’abril del 2009

Live in London (el Leonard Cohen de sempre, i com sempre, i per sempre...)

Album: Leonard Cohen, Live in London (Columbia)

(Rated 5/ 5 )

Reviewed by Andy Gill

Friday, 27 March 2009

dijous, 2 d’abril del 2009

St. Vincent


Sembla una descoberta, però jà fà temps que aquesta noia s'ha posat en bona posició (ha fet d'instrumentista del Sufjan Stevens, de telonera de The National, de Dead Cab for Cutie), i el primer disc de fà dos anys està força pero força bé (Marry me), pels mitjans d maig apareix el segon "Actor out of work", que promet...