Thursday, June 29, 2006

Sleater-Kinney Good-bye


“After eleven years as a band, Sleater-Kinney have decided to go on indefinite hiatus. The upcoming summer shows will be our last. As of now, there are no plans for future tours or recordings.
We feel lucky to have had the support of many wonderful people over the years. We want to thank everyone who has worked with us, written kind words about us, performed with us, and inspired us.
But mostly we want to extend our gratitude to our amazing fans. You have been a part of our story from the beginning. We could not have made our music without your enthusiasm, passion, and loyalty. It is you who have made the entire journey worthwhile.
With love and thanks."
Sleater-Kinney

Thanks to you, I loved your music so much girls… saw you in Chicago in October 2002 and in Paris at La Guingette Pirate during a very warm rock evening in August 2003. Unfortunately, I missed your last show few weeks ago in Paris who now was the very last one ever here. Too bad for me. Good luck to you Corin, Carrie and Janet.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Neil Young found his Heart Of Gold


Sunday was a very grey day in Paris compare to Saturday (see Matmos post). I was supposed to spend the afternoon outside in the sun for the second day of Villette Sonique to see Faust, but it rained all day long and the show was postponed. I stayed home. Luckily, I bought a DVD a week ago so it was the perfect time to watch it between two football games.

Almost 10 years after Jim Jarmusch shot Year Of The Horse during the Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s 1996 concert tour, an other great movie director, Jonathan Demme, gave his talent to the music of Neil Young for a film shot during a two-night performance by the Canadian and his friends at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium in August 2005 called Heart Of Gold.

I am a long time Neil Young fan! So, it’s a movie for me. I really enjoyed watching my old friend and hearing those wonderful songs from Prairie Wind and, maybe more, the old ones in the second part of the set. But my feeling was a bit confused because Neil Young gave a show about the passage of time and mortality and it gave me the blues. The lost of his father, Scott Young (Prairie Wind), the memory of Hank Williams (This Old Guitar) and a tribute to Nicolette Larson (Comes A Time), all those wonderful peoples now dead shadowed his music and that movie. Of course, Neil Young is now 60 and he saw a lot of close friends living this world (Tonight’s The Night). I know that he is no more in the mood of writing songs about love and loneliness like he did in his early years when he was a young boy. So I must see him now as a watcher, a philosopher, a "keeper of the key to the locks" like he wrote in The Loner in 1969.

I wish you could see this movie/DVD who is not one of the best musical movies ever but who is pure as a crystal gem and very well directed. Also I hope you’ll wait for the last song that is for me one his best, The Old Laughing Lady, which he plays alone on the stage of that famous Auditorium, filled with ghosts.

And the sun came up in Paris at the end of the song when he sang “Everything is alright”.

Heart Of Gold (2006)
Directed by Jonathan Demme
Original music by Neil Young
With Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Pegi Young, Diana Dewitt, Ben Keith, Chad Cromwell, Rick Rosas
Cinematography by Ellen Kuras
Produced by Tom Hanks, Jonathan Demme, Neil Young

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Matmos @ Paris


During this weekend, Leaky Sparrow and some Sparrow friends were all together at the Villette Sonique in Paris. It’s the first edition of an outside/inside festival located in a big green park with a mixture of old and new artists (Mugiso, Afrirampo, Andrew Bird, Stuart A. Staples, Faust…). Here is the first review:

Saturday, June 24th. Matmos at Parc de la Villette.

An absolutely beautiful, sunny and warm summer afternoon in Paris. Kicking off the music festival of mostly experimental music at this large eastern Parisian park was the San Francisco based (I think- couldn't find any real bio info on their web site?) duo Matmos. Exactly what it was I heard I'm not really sure about though. Soak a cat with gasoline, light it on fire, throw it in a garbage can, put the lid on, stick a microphone on the outside and voila… this might begin to describe what these guys are doing with sound. Loop-driven bass and drum thumps coupled with blips and bloops of "found sounds" (I love this new terminology for music!), keyboards, various percussion instruments all blended up via self controlled, on stage mixing boards by M.C. Schmidt and partner Drew Daniel deliver us the songs. Added and abetted by an interesting guitarist/noisemaker (no name and not introduced!) Matmos impressed me. They also changed my perception of what music was all about. AND I am still not exactly sure what it was I heard. It was defiantly in 4/4 time signatures though. I think…:/? Perfect for a sunny, Saturday afternoon. (I'm quite interested to hear how their records sound and look forward to that!).

Check them out!
Bookfatz2

Here is an mp3 from Matmos' latest album The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast which is available since May 9, 2006. The song is the first track on the album and is called Roses and Teeth for Ludwig Wittgenstein; it’s also the first track they played… with roses, of course!

Photo : Katy

Saturday, June 24, 2006

The Maybe World of Lisa Germano



“A record about honoring death and seeing life. Seems like a last record… but feels like a new beginning. Out July 2006 on Young God Records made by me and Jamie Candiloro”, said Lisa Germano
Three years after the beautiful Lullabies For Liquid Pig, Lisa Germano will release her new album on Michael Gira’s label, Young God Records (Devendra Banhart, Swans, Akron/Family). Called In The Maybe World, it will be on your favourite store on July 18th.

More info on
Lisa Germano.com/

Lisa began releasing her music in the 90's, first on Capitol Records, and then several more albums through 4AD. Perhaps most notable among them were the fantastic Geek, The Girl, and Excerpts From A Love Circus. These records created a very special “antique” lost carnival atmosphere - extremely personal, simultaneously self-effacing and confrontational missives of emotional damage and impossible love. Her side projects/collaborations include the album OP8 (with Giant Sand and Calexico) in which she is the featured singer (beautiful cover of Neil Young’s Round And Roud), and diverse hired side-person stints with David Bowie, Neil Finn, John Mellencamp, Simple Minds, Iggy Pop, Sheryl Crow and others.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

New Yorke


Thom Yorke's upcoming first album, which is titled The Eraser, will be released the 11th of July on XL Recordings. “Be careful, this is not a solo album”, said Yorke! “It has been done with the blessing of the group. I don’t want to hear the word solo”. So, this is a record “written and played” by Tom Yorke.
Whatever, this album sounds like Amnesiac which is for me what Radiohead did the best. For that reason, The Eraser will be with no doubt first in my list of cd purchase next month. Oh, by the way, remind me not to wait too long before buying a ticket for the only French Radiohead performance in the
Rock en Seine Festival (Paris, August 26), it may be sold out long before.

Streaming of the nine songs from The Eraser are available
here.

1 THE ERASER
2 ANALYSE
3 THE CLOCK
4 BLACK SWAN
5 SKIP DIVIDED
6 ATOMS OF PEACE
7 AND IT RAINED ALL NIGHT
8 HARROWDOWN HILL
9 CYMBAL RUSH

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Single of the month: (Smog)


Chloe Sevigny plays a beautiful French maid, hiding her left eye behind a white dressing, Bill Callahan a very famous anchorman of let say, CBS Evening News. Both of then are very happy. They love what they are doing and what they see. Life is so wonderful…
But that’s not true, not with Bill Callahan, never with a (Smog) song. This is a strange and dark video. I guess it will never be showed on MTV.

Taken from the CD single Rock Bottom Riser (June 13) available on
dominorecordco.com/site/ or dragcity.com/catalog/records/

All You Need Is Beatles



This month, on his July 2006 issue, Mojo celebrate The Beatles 40 years after the release of Revolver. Together with a free CD, Revolver Reloaded featuring newly recorded covers of the 14 original tracks, including Ed Harcourt, The Handsome Family, Thea Gilmore, Chris Eckman and more, Mojo ask an all-star panel to vote for the Fab Four’s 101 best tracks. Here are the 10 first.

1 A Day In The Life
2 Strawberry Fields Forever
3 Yesterday
4 Tomorrow Never Knows
5 She Loves You
6 In My Life
7 Something
8 Happiness Is A Warm Gun
9 Penny Lane
10 A Hard Day’s Night

No surprise, you may say. Let see what was Uncut choice in July 2001 who also asked artists to decide who are the Beatles’ 50 most popular songs. The first 10:

1 A Day In The Life
2 Strawberry Fields Forever
3 I Am The Walrus
4 Tomorrow Never Knows
5 In My Life
6 Across The Universe
7 Something
8 Rain
9 Helter Skelter
10 Happiness Is A Warm Gun

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Cat Power on the Tube


A little bit of footage on YouTube for a change if don’t mind. The egroups Cat Power mailing-list mentioned not later than yesterday two nice TV performances from our dear Chan.

The first one, you’ll find a young Cat Power for her first live performance in France. Chan Marshall with Steve Shelley and Tim Foljham performs Nude as the News, live in Nulle Part Ailleurs (Canal +), December 12, 1996. I missed that tour, but not the next one in May, 1997.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HawbtsYP_2o

In the second one, you’ll find a smiling and dancing Ms. Marshall 10 years later, which means today. Cat Power performs Living Proof with Paul Shaffer and the CBS Orchestra on the Late Show with David Letterman, June 13, 2006

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iNOpxFeYio&search=Cat%20Power%20Letterman

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Cibelle the Beautiful


Is it because it’s summer now in Europe or because Brazil will start to play tonight in Germany, but the laid-back voice and the inventive music of Cibelle look perfect to me.
Born in Brazil, Cibelle first started to be a model then actress for TV commercials and movies. But the music was what she was looking for. In 2004, she released her first cd simply called Cibelle.
The Shine of Dried Electric Leaves (May, 2006), Cibelle's second full-length recording effort, further defines her as one of the most inventive and distinctive musicians to emerge in recent years. The record is a clever combination of acoustic instrumentation and electronic processing build around her moving voice.
The record features collaborations with Seu Jorge, Devendra Banhart and Spleen. Artist cover songs include Tom Waits' Green Grass, Caetano Veloso's London London and Antonio Carlos Jobim's Por Toda a Minha Vida. Mike Lindsay of the English folktronica band Tunng and Apollo Nove co-produce the album along with Cibelle.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Hayward Williams @ Paris


On his way to Gelsenkirchen, Germany, to encourage the U.S. soccer team who will play against Czech Republic, Hayward Williams stopped by Paris for a short but promising performance.

Williams is a young singer-songwriter from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who hides behind glasses and long hair singing quiet and introspective stories. He is young but he is comfortable on stage like if he had experienced years of travelling in little clubs and smoky bars all around the Midwest. His debut record Uphill/Downhill can be found
here on cdbaby.

Hayward Williams was the support guest of Vince Bell, Texas, in La Pomme d’Eve during the most awaited monthly Acoustic in Paris evening. Vince Bell did a no surprise show, beginning with songs that make him famous after been covered by others like Lyle Lovett (I've Had Enough) or Nanci Griffith (Woman of the Phoenix).

Next Acoustic In Paris "rendez-vous" will be with Eric Andersen from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Wednesday July 12th. More information here:
http://www.acousticinparis.com/

Photo : Hervé Oudet

Friday, June 09, 2006

Vito in Radio Session and new CD

Before Vito left Cardiff to go on tour (read leakysparrow/about-vito), they recorded a session for a radio show called The Evening Session with Bethan and Huw, on Radio 1 in the UK. The session was broadcast yesterday on FM or via the internet.

For the session, 3 songs were recorded live in the studio with Charlie Francis, the album producer and long time collaborator www.charlie-francis.co.uk/. Two of the tracks are from the album and the other one was the B-side from the first 7" single.

The new Vito’s album Make Good Areas Disturbed now has official release dates and will be available in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Holland and Switzerland on June 30th. The UK and Ireland release will follow on the following Monday, July 3rd.

To listen to The Evening Session, go to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/bethanandhuw/index.shtml and click on the Listen link or go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/listen/

The show will also be available for a week after the broadcast to Listen Again at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio1_aod.shtml?radio1/wales.

Here is a sample from the new album:

Photo Robert Gil

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Low Solo


Good news for those of you, like me, who are long-time fans of Low or saw him played guitar live, Alan Sparhawk the frontman of Low has released a solo project simply called Solo Guitar. The record will be available in August but you can already buy it here. This is what the press releases say:

Solo Guitar is the album length debut from Alan Sparhawk of the minimalist-indie-pop band Low. Listeners expecting the rock & roll element Sparhawk’s recently become known for with the Black-Eyed Snakes will be surprise to hear guitar exploration in the vein of “Do You Know How to Waltz?” or “Will the Night.” Guitar sounds influenced by underground stars like Aarktica & Reynols as well as guitar heroes like Eddie Van Halen.

The entire album was recorded live using guitar loops & reverb allowing a greater immediacy & improvisation to the guitar work than a more orchestrated approach would allow. Without the constraints of working with any sounds not at the control of his hands or feet, Sparhawk is able to push his guitar to fill the entire audio spectrum. The songs begin with single notes that often build up to be larger than an orchestra playing Ligeti. The disc shows both sides of guitar drone, the aggression of playing a guitar by beating it with a fist & the inherit peacefulness in a heavily reverbed slow crescendo.”

Monday, June 05, 2006

Jullian Angel


There’s a very cool break-down toward the end of Checking Your Soul, track ten on Jullian Angel’s second and latest album for Another Record Life Was an Answer, which epitomises “his sound”. The sound of Jullian Angel is very cool because he is a very cool guy. Believe me, I met him. Sure, you may feel the Nick Drake minimalism on Born on the Seventh Day, no mistake. You may also imagine Fairport Convention influences here and there. Myself, I particularly think about Ian Anderson’s voice (Jethro Tull) on Mystic Friend. Am I wrong? Anyway, the strength of Angel’s compositions may have many roots in the traditions of American and Anglo Gaelic folk styles, stripped back post-medieval, but Jullian Angel makes these disparate styles his own.
This second record (released last week) is full of quiet charm and iridescently beautiful songs, and is just too good to miss. Take a moment to listen to it. It’s easy, some of the songs are free to be downloaded on
another-record-jullian and the full cd can be purchase for a minimal price of 10 euros here: another-record-shop.

But, what is Another Record? Another Record is an independent micro label that specializes in offering a wide variety of indie musical styles (songwriting, post-rock, electro-pop…) on a download basis. All music on the website is legally downloadable, and most of the tracks are under a free license. There is a wide range of excellent and talented musicians to discover on Another Record website. Give them a visit, it’s free!

Friday, June 02, 2006

When Mogwai played with Zidane


The movie Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (directed by Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon) has been showcased as an out-of-competition "Official Selection" at Cannes Film Festival. It can be seen now in France since May 24th, just prior to the beginning of the World Cup in Germany.

I didn’t saw the movie yet, maybe I won’t ever – or, who knows, probably after Zidane will retire, that means in few weeks – but, yesterday, I just watch on French TV the Making Of. Behind the beautiful pictures what attracted me was the sound. Good surprise, this is Mogwai who are providing the soundtrack.

Here is what the directors said on the film's sound work during the Cannes press conference:
Philippe Parreno: "We had no preconceived ideas, but we did know that we wanted to do very important work on the sound. We contacted a large number of sound engineers and chose in the end Tom Johnson, who is an extraordinary mixer. As for the music, we asked quite a lot of questions... We wanted to work with the group Mogwai, whom Douglas knew. We asked them for music which was able to show at what point Zidane is concentrated. They constructed rich, complex music, which met all our needs."
Douglas Gordon: "It was a long journey to arrive at the final sound as Philippe wanted something highly sonorised, while I fought to make rather a silent film. But as you've seen, the film is full of sound... But to be frank, there are things about which Mogwai spoke that we didn't really understand. They spoke of "sampling" audience attendance. We decided to trust them entirely."

Before the original score of Zidane will be available, no official date for the moment, a trailer from the film can be seen here:
Zidane/ba.html
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