dedicated to the wonderful danielle from Music is Art , go visit her awesome blog and you will love it for sure.
She shares her music , words , ideas , feelings and loads of positive and beautiful energy and has a large contribution to my happyness.
take this opportunity to invite Danielle to share her indie soul with this side of the planet.
would like to wish everybody a happy Christmas and a new year full of love and happy feellings.
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Tindersticks - She's Gone
Tindersticks are a rock band from Nottingham, England. Their sound is characterised by a synthesis of orchestral backing, lounge jazz, and soul; the lush orchestrations of multi-instrumentalist Dickon Hinchliffe and the smoky baritone of lead vocalist Stuart Staples are the band's hallmarks. Tindersticks have employed electric guitars, as most rock bands have done, but augment their instrumentation with a wide array of instruments: Rhodes piano, glockenspiel, vibraphone, violin, trumpet, trombone, clarinet, bassoon, Hammond organ, and many more are prominently utilised in the music of Tindersticks. The band has a cult following in the United Kingdom and continental Europe, although the eclectic and unique sound Tindersticks possesses never made significant inroads in the mainstream.
Pj Harvey - The Devil
Offstage, Harvey has cultivated a reputation for eccentricity to match her music; for example, Steve Albini claimed she ate nothing but potatoes while making Rid Of Me. Harvey describes herself as "an extremely quiet person, who doesn't go out much, doesn't talk to people", and rejects the notion that her songs are autobiographical. She told The Times in 1998, "The tortured artist myth is rampant. People paint me as some kind of black witchcraft-practising devil from hell, that I have to be twisted and dark to do what I am doing. It's a load of rubbish". She later told Spin, "Some critics have taken my writing so literally to the point that they'll listen to 'Down by the Water' and believe I have actually given birth to a child and drowned her." In 2006, Blender included her in their list of the hottest women of rock, calling her a "blues-rock sorceress trafficking in social politics and dark, tormented songwriting." In a recent interview, Harvey stated that she would like to reunite with fellow artists Tori Amos and Björk, as all three were featured on the cover of Q Magazine in 1994.
Clinic - Visitations
Clinic formed over easter in Liverpool '97. First single 'IPC subeditors dictate our youth' appeared that October, on their own Aladdin's Cave of Golf label. As an opener it set the stall out for how their unique sound would progress; pounding rhythms, heavily distorted organ and intense vocals, a cryptic mix of surf punk with a mutant house beat. The single was top ten in John Peel's festive fifty and ironically in both NME and Melody Maker. In an indie sense, the band had arrived (despite their ambitions lying elsewhere).
Beach House - Gila
Baltimore's Beach House are singer/organist Victoria Legrand and guitarist Alex Scally. Because they come from such a well-defined tradition-- the boy-girl duo making lovesick, narcotized rock with lots of depth and sweep-- it's pretty much impossible to listen to this, their debut, without making certain connections. Bands like Mazzy Star, Galaxie 500, Spiritualized, and Slowdive will come to mind, but this is neither pastiche nor homage. While a lot of their sounds and shapes are the same, Beach House's recipe of fairground waltzes, ghosted lullabies, and woodland hymnals feels more intimate than those of their forerunners. The Hope Sandovals and Jason Pierces of the world mostly wanted to make their songs bigger than their heartaches, to rub out messiness with beauty; Beach House play their songs for a much smaller room, and aren't afraid to stare down a mistake if it comes bounding back in echoes.
A weather - Spiders snakes
“Like Ida with a little more blood in its veins or Red House Painters cut with edgy bits of noise and smoky female vocals, A Weather achieves something unsettling yet warm, a richly textured sound that's as charming as it is totally depressing.” -Amy McCullough, Willamette Week
Yo La Tengo - Fourth Time Around
The band's name comes from a baseball anecdote. During the 1962 season, New York Mets center fielder Richie Ashburn and Venezuelan shortstop Elio Chacón found themselves colliding in the outfield. When Ashburn went for a catch, he would scream, "I got it! I got it!" only to run into the 160-pound Chacón, who spoke only Spanish. Ashburn learned to yell, "¡Yo la tengo! ¡Yo la tengo!" which is "I have it" in Spanish. In a later game, Ashburn happily saw Chacón backing off. He relaxed, positioned himself to catch the ball, and was instead run over by 200-pound left fielder Frank Thomas, who understood no Spanish. After getting up, Thomas asked Ashburn "What the heck is a Yellow Tango?".
The band wanted a name that sounded foreign in order to avoid any connotations in English and Kaplan is a devoted baseball fan. However, it still irks them when they are asked the origin of the name. The band once performed a cover of the Mets theme song "Meet the Mets" during a benefit appearance on radio station WFMU's pledge drive. A track on I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass is called "The Story of Yo La Tango" in apparent reference to an all-too-frequent misspelling of the band's name.
Kevin Drew - Cocaine Skin
Spirit If… is the first in a series of "Broken Social Scene Presents" albums. This solo effort from Kevin Drew unfolds like an emotional comic book. Drew's songwriting addresses all his favourite topics: fucking, fighting, fearing and hope. Both Drew and Brendan Canning, the two co-founders of Broken Social Scene, decided to approach making records as solo projects. In the process, the social scene community participated, playing key supporting roles, returning to the creative process that was the initial spark for BSS and giving birth to this new series.
Magnet - volatile
His debut album ‘On Your Side’ further confirmed what we has suspected all along about Johansen, that his songwriting was not only rich and unique, but that he had the ability to tap into the human vein; of life, love and loss...picking up rave reviews along the way, yet more appreciation in the world of dance, became a major star in his native Norway, soundtracking teen angst on the O.C, weird adult angst on Six Feet Under (and infact many other TV shows/films) and having one of the sleeper hits of the year with his cover of Dylan’s seminal ‘Lay Lady Lay’, a duet with Irish songstress Gemma Hayes (Itself currently soundtracking the Hollywood smash hit Mr & Mrs Smith). Not content to just invade your world gently, he decided to rock your world too, and spent much of the last three years on tour both on several European, UK and US headline tours, and as special guest support to bands and artists as broad as Doves, Phoenix, Ed Harcourt, Hayes herself, Zero 7, A-ha outdoors to 30,000 people in his hometown and countless others. These experiences have helped paint new Technicolor flow into the B&W and pastel shades of his songs.
Union of Knives - Opposite Direction
The music of Union of Knives is a meld of analogue riffs, beautiful voices and guitar abstractions over a dirty backbeat of programmed drums. It was designed to hypnotise and offer a true ode to life in all its dark beauty.
Cyann And Ben - Words
CYANN & BEN release their first album for Ever Records on September 11th. SWEET BELIEFS is an epic and yet intimate album that gives the space rock template a Gallic makeover by adding a much needed romantic grandeur. CYANN & BENs Paris is not the one you see in Amelie its dirty, dark and stressful as much as beautiful and SWEET BELIEFS, with its multi-layered and ambitious sweep, sounds as unsettling as it is irresistible. "a slow motion hurricane ripping apart your temporal lobe" Magnet
Film School - Plots And Plans
"Film School must have had a goth-shoegaze epiphany, because from beginning to end, Hideout is layered, dark pop bliss. It’s quite reassuring to know that a genre that’s been exploited to the bone can still come out this sick."-XLR8R magazine
iLIKETRAINS - Twenty Five Sins
iLiKETRAiNS released their first two singles at the end of 2005 to credible acclaim. However, it was their stunning mini-album ‘Progress Reform’ ( Fierce Panda) that truly captured the media’s attention and propelled them into cult status. They have been covered widely in publications ranging from the NME to the Financial Times, The Sun and Daily Mail to art magazine Aesthetica and the peculiar magazine that is Bizarre; and on radio, from Radio One to The BBC’s Politics Programme. An extensive network of RAiLCARD HOLDERS help spread these compelling history lessons across the UK, over seas into Europe and now America. They have performed at major European festivals and made personal appearances at regional railway events; they have been mentioned in the House of Commons and given talks at universities.
Autolux - Subzero Fun
In November 2002, Autolux entered the studio to record their first full-length album, Future Perfect, and finished primary recording in January 2003. In contrast with the 8-track recording method employed during the making of Demonstration, Burnett wished to capture the band's live sound on the album. Following the initial recording, the band continued recording and overdubbing additional music at their rehearsal space/studio (Space 23) to flesh out the songs. The song "Asleep at the Trigger" was completely recorded at Space 23 from the ground up. At the beginning of 2003, the album was mixed numerous times, with Dave Sardy, former front-man of Barkmarket, creating the final mix. The album was released September 21, 2004 and was generally met with critical praise.
Land Of Talk - Sea Foam
It’s late August, and on the porch of her home in Montreal, Elizabeth Powell is using one hand to swat away pestering bumblebees, and holding a telephone to her ear with the other, telling the story of her group, Land Of Talk. “We’ve been away for so long, on the road,” she laughs, a malevolent buzz audible in the background. “I come back, and there’s bees everywhere… Killer bees! It’s awful…”
‘The Road’ has latterly become Powell’s second home, or maybe her first, since Land Of Talk began to enjoy a nuzzling acclaim in Canada; she estimates they’ve played over 300 shows since they formed, criss-crossing the country and enjoying well-received sorties across the border in a rickety van. “I didn’t used to enjoy ‘The Road’, and now I do,” she offers. “You have to relinquish a certain amount of your expectations, about your privacy or your daily routine. It’s hard to feel grounded, when you’re always moving somewhere else. But then you let go of that need to feel grounded; you feel settled, once you forego that need for stability.”
The Little Ones - Lovers Who Uncover
In the land of White Noise, there lay a vast corporate landscape, which seasoned every major highway and small backcountry road for as far as the eye could see. The world itself tilted off its axis while all the powers that be played an eternal game of tug of war. The Little Ones felt so insignificant against the bigger picture. There were no new tales to tell and they felt stuck right where they started. Until one day there was a spark. They found it right outside their window. It was the branches that pointed them in the right direction. Although insignificant as it seemed, it reminded them what if felt to forget.
Electro Group - Panzer Treat
Beautifully melodic indie-dream-pop goes toe-to-toe with wall-of-noise sonic dissonance.
Ethereal vocals are woven into a tapestry of distortion and catchy pop wizardry. Reminiscent of "Loveless" and "You Made Me Realise" -era My Bloody Valentine, this trio takes the late 80's shoegazer sound a step into the future with driving, off-timed drumming (think more recent Unwound), and electronic loops, moog and surrealistic samples mixed into the layers. Falsetto vocals and intermittent guitar jangles tip a hat towards the solo albums of Syd Barrett. Seriously gorgeous music from Northern California's new noise pop kings.
