UNMAP - New Album "Pressures" out now

When Marichen Danz first began to make music with Alex Stolze, it was a project intended to soundtrack her art performances. But the soulful, crystalline melodies the two had begun to weave could not be contained within that context; instead they took on a life of their own, expanding into territories the two hadn't planned on charting - into the world of UNMAP.

Using the framework of these ideas, the two began isolating these ideas into beautifully ferocious pop melodies. They came armed with the tools of familiarity, knowledge and passion, having collaborated together previously thanks to Alex's work in the Berlin-based groups Dictaphone and Bodi Bill. With Vision and Voice firmly in place, Alex chose Matthias Geserick on bass duties; Geserick then chose Thomas Fietz on electronic drums to complete the quartet. Together they pared back the songs, rearranging pieces and building new aural edifices to attach their visions to. Occasionally they would find that melodies had reverted almost to their initial state, suggesting an inherent magic that remains timeless.
Indeed the melodies within their debut album Pressures feel out of time and space, imbued with a wide depth of energy and emotion. Embedded within are eleven tracks that thrum with the tremendous mass of our lives: the structures of social philosophy and hierarchy we place upon ourselves, and which are placed upon us. Cautionary tales of paranoia, protest and colonialism, the barriers of thought, religion and language, the fallacies of power and the weight of impermanence are translated into the language of liquid pop which wears its influences deftly and proudly. Though every member comes from a different musical background, be it classical or hip-hop, they each know how to weave their aural loves - which include Massive Attack, Tricky and Blonde Redhead - together into a shimmering cosmic blanket of sound. Through a blend of R&B-inspired rock and soulful electronic chamber pop, Marichen's lyrics are given a backdrop on which to live, to extend fingers into the ears and mind of the listener. These are more than songs; they are stories, mapping out a world both private and individual.
Many of the songs on Pressures began life as performance pieces tied to artwork, such as the bouncing sub-hip hop groove of "Pirates" and the chiming, unexpected twilight menace of "Take Over". Some, however, are entirely new pieces unique to UNMAP's strange and wonderful world, such as the foreboding "Altar" and the angelic "Monkey Effort". The group produced the album in Chez Cherie Studios with the help of Shitkatapult founder Marco Haas (aka T. Raumschmiere) and Apparat/Warren Suicide's PC/Nackt, giving it that unmistakably Berlin vibe with touches of Marichen's Irish storyteller roots apparent in the narratives. Delicately strummed strings and booming piano weave amongst her words, alternately pulsing with warmth and commandingly cold. It's something special, unique and captivating, and it will echo in your ears long after the album is over. 


Hear the new single, The Golden Route here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC0l6wGFuZ8

Hundreds "Aftermath" Out March 14th (Free Download and Video)

It's been two years since their self-titled debut album was released but with their second offering, Aftermath, Hundreds return stronger than ever with the same, if not more, conviction, passion and excitement. Only a band like Hundreds could return with the same vigour whilst maintaining that enchanting, cool elegance that has become their signature sound and attitude.

After endlessly touring half the world, the Milner siblings were searching for a new approach to writing their music. They moved to the countryside and built their own studio in the middle of nowhere, starting from scratch, they began to write Aftermath. In their quiet seclusion, the band found their new approaching, writing organically and eventually producing twelve perfect tracks.

Aftermath is the story of opening up and letting go, growing older, but also of refreshing naivety and unconditional utopia. "Beehive (Prelude)", an instrumental version of a track from the album, is the perfect introduction for what's to come. 

"Beehive (Prelude)" Video:http://youtu.be/B0CxG9oInFI
"Beehive (Prelude)" Download:https://soundcloud.com/hundreds/beehive-prelude

Nugent & Belle "Doves" Stream, live show in London, December 17th

Artist: Nugent & Belle

Free Stream: Doves

Live: The Garage, London - December 17^th 

               

Something pretty amazing happens when these two ladies from Ireland and Scotland, respectively, come together. First noticed by industry legend Rob Dickins (ex-Chairman of Warner Music) who signed them to his label Instant Karma in the noughties as part of The Alice Band, Amy Belle and Audrey Nugent are quite simply a duo of great distinction.

After the group disbanded the girls went their separate ways for a few years, during which time Audrey wrote with several major artists including Chris Martin and Tim Wheeler of Ash. Meanwhile, Amy performed on stage with Rod Stewart at the Royal Albert Hall and went on to sign a record deal with Epic in New York. But having formed a strong bond whilst negotiating the treacherous waters of survival in a country/pop band, the two never completely lost touch and when Amy relocated back to London from Glasgow, they found themselves living down the road from one another in North London. Inevitably, it was meant to be and Nugent & Belle started jamming and writing again.

Audrey and Amy soon decided to collaborate on a new album. Self-funded and working mostly with friends and a sterling cast, helping for the love of the project, they produced an eclectic and often beautifully moving album entitled 'Seeing Stars'. Recorded at KT Tunstall's residential studio in Hungerford, Nugent & Belle’s debut offers eleven tracks that showcase some of the most stunning examples of female harmonies, melodious country- tinged folk and pop set to cinematic imaginings of life and love as lyrical prose.

Artists ranging from Alison Krauss through to Joni Mitchell and KT Tunstall all spring to mind, though it’s fair to say these girls have their own delectable sound. With a soft release digitally earlier this year, iTunes and Rolling Stone magazine were quick to pick up on its potential but with a physical release planned in early 2014 and a headline show at The Garage in London on December 17^th Nugent & Belle deserve your attention right here and now.

Album track ‘Doves’ available to stream: https://soundcloud.com/nugentandbelle/doves

Brilliant new album from Get the Blessing, out January 20th

Get the Blessing were one of my favourite finds of last year. Now they're back with a great new album. A review is forthcoming, but for now here's all the important information.

GET THE BLESSING                                               

‘Lope & Antilope’

Release Date: 20 January 2014

Label: Naim Jazz Records naimcd199

CD,  Digital + 180gm vinyl

UK tour in March 2014 

Bassist Jim Barr once remarked that Get The Blessing were “total outsiders” and  “the punk entry” when they won the 2008 BBC Jazz Award for Best Album with ‘All Is Yes’. Almost six years later and four albums down the line, the same could still be said to hold true, albeit with a little more age and wisdom at their disposal.  Lope & Antilope is the band’s fourth album (second for Naim Jazz) and whilst to some degree the thrashing rhythms of previous albums have advanced into more mellow territory, the irreverent and mischievous attitude is still very much in evidence: with a fixation for words that end in ‘ope’ Get The Blessing return with their most sophisticated album to date and UK tour to follow.

Formed in 2000 to share a fascination with the improvisation and monophonic nature of Ornette Coleman’s earlier works, the Bristol-based four-piece can now boast a truly international fan base and the last two years have seen them take their cellophane masks half way round the world and back (it was the rhythm of movement and travel experienced on the road that gave way to the new album and inspired the title). Throughout this time, the line-up has remained the same with Portishead rhythm masters Jim Barrand Clive Deamer on bass and drums respectively, Pete Judge on trumpet and Jake McMurchie on saxophone. And all this despite other commitments for everyone, not least Deamer’s recruitment as Radiohead’s second live drummer in 2012. The band’s old friend and collaborator – and Portishead guitarist - Adrian Utley also returns to make a guest appearance with Bat for Lashes guitarist Tim Allenbrought in to engineer the recording sessions.

Conceptually Lope & Antilope is different from previous albums as it makes use of sounds collected whilst on the road but crucially, is almost all improvised. With the urge to leave their comfort zone and break some of their recording habits, the album was recorded in an empty pottery in Pembrokeshire. With nothing written, everything on the album came out of four days of improvising. The starting point was often experimentation with sound effects, both acoustic and electric, to which a groove would be added, then a tune, or a solo and so forth. As the band put it, it’s  “the culmination of 4 days of recording, 3 years of gigging and 12 years of drinking tea and gin.”

The use of guitar effects pedals and other electronic gizmos had become a big part of what the band do live, but until now had never been fully integrated into the recording process.  As well as extensive use of delay by the horns, the rockiest track on the album,  ‘Little Ease’ also features the trumpet routed through a distortion pedal, bought for a song on the way to the first day of recording (it also features on ‘Trope’). The saxophone is treated in a similar way, producing the Theremin-like pitch bends that can be heard on ‘Quiet’. This could lead you to think that Lope & Antilopeis an effects heavy, raucous album, but in fact the opposite would be more accurate. Lope & Antilope is more textured than previous work, shifting from the atmospheric ambience of ‘Luposcope’ to the pulsing, almost Nordic menace of ’Viking Death Moped’ – but all the way through maintaining the trademark bass riffs that carry the album through giving it that quintessential Get The Blessing Sound.

Get The Blessing live dates 2014:

2 Mar    Capstone Theatre, LIVERPOOL

5 Mar    XOYO, LONDON

6 Mar    Hare & Hounds, BIRMINGHAM

9 Mar    Jazz Festival, BRISTOL

10 Mar  Arts Centre, WARWICK

27 Mar  Sheffield University SU, SHEFFIELD

29 Mar  Clitheroe Grand, CLITHEROE

Naim Jazz Records was founded in 2008 in order to provide a platform for deserving British jazz talent. In dedicating itself to artistic freedom and superb technical and creative quality, Naim Jazz has built a diverse and exciting roster including Neil Cowley Trio, Empirical, Kairos 4tet, Get The Blessing, trioVD, Stuart McCallum and Sons Of Kemet.

www.naimjazz.com

Naim Hi Definition:  Listen to this album as the artist intended, by downloading it in 24bit 48khz WAV, FLAC and Apple Lossless from the Naim Hi Def Download Store, one of the world’s first independent label websites to sell fully uncompressed music. www.naimlabel.com

cHANTAL cLARET

cHANTAL cLARET

Stream: ‘Pop Pop Bang Bang’:http://goo.gl/wYjCC4

“Imagine Tina Turner fronting Outkast at Bette Midler’s bat mitzvah.”

               

That’s how singer-songwriter Chantal Claret describes her solo debut The One, The Only…, a stunning album that swings with retro rhythmic swagger and songs that feel like revitalized Motown gems. Co-written and co-produced by Chantal, the album is meaty, beaty, big and bouncy, with Chantal putting a modern twist on early '60s femme-pop. "I wanted to make music that sounds like it could've been written in the '60s or '70s, but with a big fat hip-hop-like low end," she says. "Luckily for me, a lot of amazing people came together to help me pull it off--not because they were looking for a payday, but because they believed in the songs and that means everything to me. I hustled my ass off to make this record happen. I'm really proud of it and hope people have as much fun listening to it as I had making it." Chantal enlisted the likes of Rob Kleiner (David Guetta, Cee-Lo), Pigeon John, Lionshare, Mher Filian and mixer Mark “Exit” Goodchild (Erykah Badu, Cee-Lo) to help bring her musical vision to life.

For more visithttp://chantalclaret.com or contactjamie@cannonballpr.com

Nine Inch Nails Tour News

NINE INCH NAILS

ANNOUNCE UK TOUR FOR MAY 2014

Nine Inch Nails has announced details of a full UK tour in May 2014. The tour – their first in this country for 6 years – will take in 6 venues across 6 cities including the o2 Arena in London, full dates below. It follows the release in September of their critically acclaimed new album Hesitation Marks.

Tickets go on general sale from 9:00 AM Friday from www.kililive.com/nin. Pre-sale tickets will be available from 9:00 AM this Wednesday on tour.nin.com. Fans must be a member of the NIN website to access tickets (membership is free).

Nine Inch Nails played a series of festival shows throughout the summer before embarking on the Tension 2013 tour throughout North America, which runs until the end of this month. Their performance at Reading/Leeds festival this year and at their intimate London show at Scala proved they are once again delivering one of the best live shows on the planet.

Nine Inch Nails is considered a pioneer in the industrial music movement and has been highly influential in the evolution of electronic music. Its recordings - which include the RIAA Platinum-certified Pretty Hate Machine (1989), Broken (1992), The Downward Spiral (1994) and With Teeth (2005) - have revolutionized detailed digital production. The band has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide, released a remarkable series of singles, including the No. 1 Modern Rock radio hits "The Hand That Feeds," "Only," "Every Day Is Exactly the Same" and "Survivalism". For a more extensive history of Nine Inch Nails, visit http://thehistory.nin.com/.

UK TOUR MAY 2014

Sunday 18^th               Birmingham LG Arena
Tuesday 20^th              Glasgow Hydro Arena
Wednesday 21^st         Cardiff Motorpoint Arena
Friday 23^rd                 London The O2
Saturday 24^th              Nottingham Capital FM Arena
Sunday 25^th                Manchester Phones 4u Arena

WWW.NIN.COM

https://www.facebook.com/ninofficial 

https://twitter.com/nineinchnails

Lotte Kestner - Bluebird of Happiness

There's a moment, a few short seconds into the first listen to, it seems, any release Anna-Lynne Williams is involved in, in which a comfortable sense of peace and calm descends. Yes, that voice, that voice is still intact. If anything, it is improving as time goes by. No, I didn't think it was possible either. More than this though, Bluebird of Happiness finds Lotte Kestner confidently hitting her stride, consistently knocking song after song out of the park, equal parts direct and fragile, stretching the bounds of her sound and showcasing a bravery in the mix which marks the album out as surely one of the best singer-songwriter releases of 2013.

China Mountain and Stolen, the albums to precede this one, have both spent considerable amounts of time being kind to my ears, and Bluebird of Happiness is a welcome addition to that wonderful canon of work. I know I often say this when writing about an album, but really, to pick out individual songs for praise or comment is to miss the point somewhat. This collection of 12 songs, which includes an interesting cover of Halo, works best when listened to in one sitting, as a whole piece of work. That way the journey through Wrestler, via Turn the Wolves' deliciously eery minor progression, via When It's Time and Sweetheart, all the way to closers Cliff and Little Things can take its fullest effect. It's all very well having a great voice, but you can't live on that alone, and each of the songs listed here bring something. Williams has always been a strong writer, with a great ear for a melody and a poetic lyric, but this is her strongest, most cohesive collection of songs to date. The atmosphere which is established with opener String is largely maintained throughout the album, as Anna-Lynne transports the listener in to songs of lost and broken love, sorrow, as well as physical and emotional suffering. I really don't think there's anyone who is putting out better music of this type than Lotte Kestner at this point, nor has there been for quite some time. The ability she has to wear her heart on her sleeve whilst simultaneously remaining cryptic and artistic in her exploration of the good and bad of life marks her out as one of the 21st century's great artists. If only more people would sit up and pay attention....

Elle Macho - Import

"Elle Macho is the most powerful band of noise in the world today. Combining elements of the melody, aggression and sexiness, they triumphs each time and gains the multiple contests throughout the world."

Beginning your press release with the above quote, citing your genres as:
Indie/French Pop/Very Rock and including Serge Gainsbourg and Gilgamesh in your list of influences are all very brave (some would say bizarre) moves to make. The great thing about Import, though, is that Elle Macho somehow manages to deliver on each and every of their lofty claims and promises about their own greatness. The band consists of Butterfly Boucher, David Mead and Lindsay Jamieson. Butterfly's previous solo record was something of a hit with me. Here, the melodic nous of that album is augmented with a solid slab of attitude and aggression. Boucher is joined by the creative guitar of David Mead, and by Ben Folds alumni Lindsay Jamieson on drums. Jamieson also twirled the sticks for the much-feted (by me at least) Astronaut Pushers back in the day, so this is a Nashvillian supergroup of sorts.

What we have here is a collection of 10 flat-out great songs. Allez La Danse and This Is Not a Love Song stick out on first listen, but over time, each and every song has sunk into my psyche and forced its way out in the form of humming, air drumming, jiving (I do jive, but only privately) to the stops, starts and twitches, and generally marvelling at the balance between intelligent, pop songwriting, and creativity in structuring and progression. There isn't a song here you won't tap your feet to. Fact. There isn't a song here which is lacking a nifty twist in the rhythm section (Glow in the Dark), or a tag section which goes somewhere unexpected (Conquistador). At the same time, however, these are the kind of pop songs that should be invading your radio, interrupting your restaurant dinner because you have to work out the drum pattern with spoons, and leading you to make it your life's ambition to see the band in a small, sweaty room. 

If we lived in a fair world, Elle Macho would be huge. Make it happen

Please stop Pretending I'm Not Human

Please Stop Pretending I’m Not Human

"Good morning sir. May the Lord God grant you the healing that you need. Amen"

I had an interaction this morning, of which this was the sum total. As I was pushing along towards Abington Street in Northampton, a man walked towards me, said those words, hit me on the shoulder and carried on walking. He did not look back. I know. I checked.

This isn't the first time this has happened to me in my life (I figure I must need an awful lot of healing, but then don't we all), but today, in the light of a lot of things that have happened in the last couple of years, the camel's back has been broken by the straw. And so, unusually for me, I'm posting a blog on Facebook, to make a plea:

Please, stop pretending I'm not human.

There, I said it. I have Cerebral Palsy, it is a neurological condition, through which I have decreased mobility, increased spasticity (I have a great deal of spasticity, I'm sure you'll all agree) and use a manual wheelchair to get around. As any of you who know my story will be aware, I am, in fact, very fortunate to have the level of ability, lifestyle, prospects, loving friends and family and everything else that I do have. I could easily, very easily indeed, be dead by now.

So what's the problem? Well, it turns out that, in spite of the fact that the government and welfare system are pressing in on disabled people to a greater extent than ever in recent times, this isn't the problem. It also turns out that, in spite of the fact that it is still demonstrably harder for disabled people to get jobs, build relationships and find, be accepted in to and maintain and develop community than it is for virtually any people group in our society, this isn't really the problem either. It also turns out that, in spite of this being the easy answer to any question or desire to apportion blame, God isn't the problem either and, wonder of great wonders, neither am I.

No, in actual fact, to my increasing disappointment, it turns out that Christians are the problem. 

Now, I am a Christian. I should be, I'm training to be a minister (I know, ridiculous, let's talk about that another time shall we). I also, those evangelicals amongst you will surely be pleased to know, believe that God is living, present, active, intimately interested, in love and involved in the lives of His people, and that He is engaged in the healing, reconciliation and redemption of the world, and the people, He made for Himself, as He delights in us, so that we might delight in Him. God heals. Now, today. I'm living proof of it. I know many of you are too.

But I've reached a point where I'm not sure I can put up with the dehumanising theology that many of us have foisted upon us by weak, possibly even false teaching. We all have a need. That need is Jesus. No less, but no more either. Jesus, I believe, fulfills every need that any of us has, or will ever have. More than that, He is who we were made for. We don't really have any other purpose other than to love Him, accept love from Him, love ourselves and love others. Nowhere, not anywhere, in all of Scripture, the experience of humanity, or just common sense, does it say, anywhere, that we will not have troubles in this life. In fact, when the Spirit is sent to be our friend, guide and counselor at Pentecost, isn't it actually because we WILL have problems in this life, whether they be being persecuted, sickness, relational difficulties, or even just living in a Conservative-led country. I've been thinking, and saying for quite a while now, that actually, it is a misunderstanding of God and His purposes for us as people, to think that difficulty shouldn't be part of our daily life. It should. It's crucial. It leads me to lean on Jesus in humility. It causes me to realise I can't do life on my own, and even if I could give it a go for a while, I don't want to, because it's a pointless waste of energy and time. The healing that I need, I am more and more convinced, is a healing of the heart, of my mind, of my perspective. I long to have a right sense of my own identity and importance, and to respect and honour God, as I seek to respect and honour others.

So, yes, I do need healing. As someone said to me recently, Jesus willingly allowed himself to be demeaned, slandered, hurt, criticised, insulted, even killed and, even as He (humanly)must have been frustrated and crushed in His disappointment, prayed "Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing." The gentlemen with whom I had my brief encounter has no idea what he has done or continues to do to me. He probably thinks he's doing a good thing, following a teaching, being obedient to God. He has no idea of the hurt and distress, questioning, and anger his actions caused me. I too, have no idea what led him to say what he said. I do know that, whether he meant for my physical body to be healed or not (I strongly suspect he did, but want to give him the benefit of any doubt) there's much in me that would benefit from being different or changed: character, temperament, behaviour, language, sense of humour (!) and so on. I need to be humble and keep coming back to God with those things and parts of my life.

At the same time, I need you, friends, brothers and sisters, to help me out. We're all people. We all have strengths and weaknesses, and as I said above, I personally believe we all have a need. We all have the same need, whether our bodies are good, bad or indifferent. It remains the same whether you are a PhD toting MENSA member, or whatever the opposite of that is. It remains the same whether you have a Masters (or even an MTh!!!) in Theology, or the extent of your theological education and knowledge is thinking "this life is a bit crap, there must be more than this." Whoever you are and whatever you're doing with your life, we're called to life, to love, to hope, and to freedom, because of the God-man Jesus Christ. We need to come to him and ask, and receive, the life that he offers to us, afresh everyday. I honestly, truly believe, and not just because of pigheadedness or unwillingness to change, that to limit the view we have of what God wants to do with us to some kind of higher state of humanity where all the guys end up like George Clooney in his mid ER period, and all the ladies can strut their stuff like Angelina Jolie, but that in both cases we're also much more pious and Biblically literate, is just hogwash. But so many of our Churches look like they are aiming for this. Why is that?

Jesus, when he was resurrected, was recognisable by his wounds. They weren't shameful, they were signs of victory, of a war won once and for all. I'm proud of my weaknesses, the physical ones, and the ones you can't see. I rejoice in them, because they show me that I am real, I am alive, that I have experienced life, the way God intends me to experience it, warts and all. 

So yes, I do need healing. So do you. But I don't need healing in the way you think I do. Nor do you, my friend, necessarily need healing in the obvious ways that I can see. We need to relate to ourselves, to God, to one another, and come in humility to the grateful place of receiving whatever God has for us because, and I am certain of this, it'll be much better than any plan I can come up with for how I'm going to make my life better.

Please stop pretending I'm not human. To be human is an enormous, wonderful privilege and blessing, as well as a responsibility. It is to identify with God. God loved humans so much, He became one and came and lived among us, just so we could have a common experience and share in the wonder of it together. The fact that I am alive and breathing today is fantastic in itself. Jesus breathed in the same way that you and I do. He struggled in the same way that you and I do. He felt pain, loss, joy, elation, sorrow, excitement, the whole nine yards. He was also probably quite short, and not much to look at (check the gospels) and virtually everyone he ever spoke to misunderstood what he was doing, what he was about, and what the outcome of it all would be. He could have done anything he wanted to, but he loved humans so much, he let them make mistake after mistake after mistake in how they dealt with him, just so that they, and we, might have our own opportunity to see him as he really is, and respond to him. I don't need to walk to be human. You don't need to be a brainbox, or musical, or have people validate you by buying your CD, your book or anything else. We could all do with understanding the stupendous blessing and opportunity we have and pray that the whole world, not just those that look "broken" or "sick" might be healed, so that we can all enjoy it together.

Even as I finish this, I'm a bit nervous to post it. Some of you are Christians. A lot of you aren't, and may think this is all a bit silly, or ill-advised, or downright dangerous. I'm also a bit nervous because my theology isn't all neat and smooth-edged. I'm probably not exegeting correctly in parts. My hermeneutics are very suspicious, and I'm being entirely postmodern in a) thinking that anyone should give a monkeys (I nearly wrote something else there) about this, or b) that my opinion matters. But even so, this is honestly how I feel today, and I'm fed up of feeling like this.

As I've been writing and thinking about this, I've been really struck by a song from the new album from The Ember Days, Face in the Dark. The chorus says,

You healed the lepers when they called your name

You healed the broken

Will you heal me?

Now, Janell and Jason are acquaintances of mine. Their band is awesome, and I have a pretty good idea about the circumstances which led to this song, which give a huge amount of added poignancy to these words, which would otherwise seem pretty simple. Later, Janell sings

Take what's broken

Heal the pain

Take my heart

Have your way

What's broken in me? Is it my lack of ability to walk? I don't think so (you might have guessed that by now). 

So let's do a deal ok? Next time you walk past me in the street, if you feel led to pray for me to be healed, think again. If you still feel the need to pray for me to be healed, be ready for me to do the same to you, and be aware that I'm asking for a lot more than just to be able to walk when I pray for my own healing, and for yours. New life, transformation of character, personality, behaviour, situation. Let's go for that instead shall we. I think God's a lot more bothered about that. He's already raised the dead, so re-instating my dead brain cells probably isn't that big a deal anyway. What He really wants is for both you and I to understand more of who he is, who we are, and the wonder of what life together, and with him looks like. You can't do that while you're walking away from me in the opposite direction.

Walking's for losers anyway.

(If you're tagged, it's because I thought you might be interested, not because I think the kind of behaviour described above is likely to be something that you would do!)