Month: March 2015

I MET THE MAKERS | 2015-03-30

On Wednesday 25th March Havas Media Labs, That Lot and Unruly teamed up to organize a truly exciting tech festival called “Meet The Makers”, which took place at the wonderful Unruly’s headquarters in the midst of Shoreditch, London. The idea behind the event was that of an afternoon during which established agencies, start ups and more generally digital content producers from a wide variety of sectors were able to showcase their services and products to interested folks with the help of live demonstrations, informative sessions and even live sketches. I had the great pleasure to attend the festival and the experience did certainly not lack highly interesting stimuli coming from the kaleidoscopic realm of digital technologies.

Probably out of a personal positive bias towards music and arts in general, what provoked the most thought in me, while navigating between unbelievable demos of projects involving augmented reality to bring customers’ interaction to the highest levels and truly fascinating insights from professional Viners, was actually the current enormous influence of digital technology onto the art production process, particularly music. I’m not referring here particularly to concrete digital tools and simulated instruments that can generate music themselves, but rather more to whole new horizons of feasibility where music creation and distribution meet with emerging affordances of digital technologies. For so many years now we’ve been hearing from all directions that the music industry, with particular emphasis on record labels, is on its one-way journey to the cemetery and that music, in many ways, is becoming totally devaluated because of free downloading or the exploding usage of streaming services on the part of listeners. Although there certainly have been huge changes and developments in that regard, the enthusiastic presence at Meet The Makers of digital agencies such as Universal-supporting “Globe”, video community platform “Genero.tv” as well as brand new forms of labels such as “PopShack”, fully demonstrate that a relatively new, self-emerging set of collaborative intersections have strongly arisen since the digital takeover of the creative industries.

What counts here, in my opinion, is not necessarily how exactly to define or tag such new sets of services within the music industry – the discussion on which term suits their practices best among “music specialists”, “music strategists” and “entertainment networks”, to name just a few, could arguably be a very long one –, but rather that these new players have been able to take up the potential of the latest developments in digital technologies, adding to them a genuine touch of business vision in order to proactively react to shrinking businesses of an industrial segment undoubtedly in crisis. By fostering connected and collaborative communities through social media such as YouTube as well as creating unexpected partnerships between brands and artists, hybrid forms of content, or even counter-intuitive opportunities in previously unexplored territories, a number of such firms have apparently succeeded in transforming into valuable outputs something that for very long was seen as (commercially) lost: music compositions.

According to verbal answers received directly form professionals present at the festival, artists and their managements are now fully aware of these new kinds of possible partnerships and services, therefore it could be reasonably said that the market has already established itself and is thus ready to further flourish. Also, the same practitioners who were at “Meet the Makers” really wanted to emphasize that – obviously, I would say – the decision on whether to embrace the partnerships, collaborations, and projects suggested by these digital agencies and labels still fully resides in the hands of the artists themselves, hence demonstrating that everything happens theoretically on a consensual and “artistically” agreed basis. After all, the music world still remains a business of some kind, and it probably was only a matter of time until new forms of valorization would have started to promote again the most fundamental unity of capital of such market, the music itself. The necessary question here would be whether this new direction the music industry and the entertainment sector in general are taking is something worth the many compromises that go along with it. Surely, the authenticity and artistic ingenuity that have for so long been able to craft wonderful musical products from their conception until their release before the advent of an all-encompassing influence of digital technology should be totally reconsidered to say the least. Yet, what other real possibilities are there to react to the fundamental changes brought by digitization to the music and art sector? Honestly, the “make everything available for free” and “abolish all copyrights and monetary incomes” claims do not appear reasonable enough to me, at least on a short-term basis.

It seems as if a possible path to undertake has slowly been found and is apparently accepted by the majority of relevant stakeholders as a more or less sustainable solution in order to restart to churn out great tunes from the actors of the music business. One thing is for sure: in the credits for this new conceptual meta-album, now more than ever, digital technologies should not go unmentioned.

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

MEET THE MAKERS INVITE 5 0

YEEZUS’S NOT WELCOME TO GLASTO | 2015-03-23

Last week it was announced that Kanye West has been booked to headline Saturday night at Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, commonly known as Glastonbury (or Glasto, for insiders or willing-to-be-cool ones), taking place from 24th to 28th June. This festival is an incomparable institution and established benchmark for the music industry not only in the United Kingdom, the country which is hosting it, but literally worldwide. Almost everyone revolving around the music business eagerly awaits the announcement of its usually star-filled line-up and it clearly represents one of the global highlights of the live entertainment industry. This year, the announcement of Yeezus on Earth Kanye West as one of the headliners has been accompanied by an incredible amount of (mainly) negative reaction on the Interweb, which even peaked with an online petition launched to prevent the US rapper from performing at this year’s event. While I’m probably not among the best suited ones to comment on this – not the biggest Kanye’s fan, never been to Glasto (see what I did there?), not planning on going this year – I can’t do anything but say a few words about this outrageous outburst of negativity.

First things first, in response to the huge amount of shitstorm devoted to the decision – and apparently quite exceptionally – Glastonbury’s organiser Emily Eavis took some time to write dedicated words of commentary in the “always-useful-in-these-cases” Guardian. She said that she and her father Michael wouldn’t normally comment on such a online campaign, “but given the enormous amount of media coverage from all corners of the globe we felt compelled to respond this time”. According to gatekeeping criteria applied by news practitioners her main response was: “We think the story this year should not be: ‘Why is Kanye coming?’ but: ‘How amazing is it that Kanye is coming?'”. But what struck me even more than such filtered headline is the following passage from Emily’s letter to the paper, which I think entails too many truths about current self-indulgent and disruptive online mentalities:

“I’ve realised over the years of announcing line ups that, literally, whoever you reveal will be met with some hate online. I have such faith in humanity, but believe me, some of the vitriol being thrown around this week has made me question the dark underbelly of the web. Who are those people silently shouting in disgust, throwing out threats from behind their screens? It certainly isn’t pleasant to be on the receiving end of that. I can’t even imagine how it makes Kanye feel.”

Besides the fact that every music or art festival should be a celebration of talent, open-mindedness and diversity a priori and should make every artist feel welcome, I don’t really think contesting Glasto’s decision to pick Kanye as headliner with the launch of an online petition is really holding ground even on a more facts-oriented level. He’s arguably the biggest pop-star in the world, does what he does pretty well as well as confidently and can always assure with 100% certainty a hell of a live show, like it or not. Again, not the biggest Kanye’s fan myself – he’s actually making it quite hard to make himself likeable, cf. the recent drama scenery with Beck at the Grammys  – but even if you can’t stand a single note off his music or don’t wanna look at him at any cost, as Emily rightfully pointed out, he’s just grabbing a “particular two-hour slot on one of the 100 stages at our five-day event” off of the precious time of thousands music connoisseurs who know everything better anyway. Also, even after doing the effort of neglecting to expand on the fact that petition-starter Neil Lonsdale has never been to Glastonbury before and should therefore be the last one to claim authority with regard to the sake of the festival, it’s hard not to see such explosion of rage against Glasto’s decision as only enabled by the clustering anonymity of the web and, above all, a rising tendency of disentanglement on the part of users who feel more and more disconnected from each other.

I believe Emily is sadly right in calling the portion of online haters involved in the anti-Kanye campaign the “dark underbelly of the web”: why are they spending so much energy onto something they can probably not even change anymore on the one hand, and which they should peacefully and serenely accept as a clear representation of the present mainstream music landscape on the other hand? Is this episode not a clear manifestation of a larger tendency taking place online which commands to criticise, intoxicate, and wreck as much as possible in any given case – just take a look at the comments section of a random YouTube video to see what I mean by this – behind the apparent safety of a device connected to the Internet? To me, such members of the “dark underbelly of the web” should be reminded that real life is lived disconnected from the web, there is where the magic can still happen and where individual energy is really worth using. The Internet can be a very weird and wicked place.

Anyways, I really hope Kanye’s going to rock the shit outta that main stage and gonna make everyone shut up by the intensity and greatness of his performance, which all in all should be the only real criterion used to judge his suitability to be playing there at that time. After all, he deserves to be there just like any other mainstream huge artist who’s played the main stage during a headlining stage across Glasto’s history before. Funnily enough, this unwelcoming atmosphere that embraces the approaching of the festival could also be the perfect pre-condition for Kanye to put on the perfect response in form of a show outta sight. Wouldn’t that be the biggest of ironies?

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

HI HIS NAME IS MARK | 2015-03-18

I’m sure you’re all more or less familiar with the popular Californian pop-punk band blink-182. I’m less sure on whether you’re aware of the fact that its bass player is called Mark Hoppus, is aged 43, and besides making seats vibrate he’s also a singer – sometimes producer – as well as a quite successful entrepreneur. Yes, because a part of his musical activity Mark is also the founder and owner of – surprise, surprise! – Hi My Name Is Mark (HMNIM), a company established in 2012 and self-described as: “a group of like-minded friends who are equally passionate about making great clothes, awesome art, cool objects, and unique pieces. We set out to make great things together and work with people and brands who share our aesthetic and sense of humor”.

While the label HMNIM itself was already buzzing around even before 2012 – for instance, I remember a series of iTunes podcasts with that name revolving around the music industry and various scenes hosted by Mark himself around 2006-2007 – it wasn’t until the last couple of years that the brand really established itself and definitely took off. In fact, something that’s really cool about the company is that they do not limit themselves to the selling of fine clothing pieces (some of which I’ve already purchased, they’re rad), but they’re also always coming up with great collaborations offering, amongst others, watches, visual prints, playing cards and thermos bottles. To have an idea of what it is exactly I’m referring to, just take a look at this.

The brand’s official logo, which I kindly reported for you below, is a weirdly comfortable and darky octopus kinda looking scarily at you, and since everyone – myself included – has been wondering from the beginning what it should be representing, Mark took the time to explain it on the website:

“What’s up with the octopus?  I’ve been using the octopus logo over the past few years, and throughout, people have asked, ‘What’s up with the octopus?’ It’s an easy answer. Music. Friends. Art. Travel. Adventure. Quotes from your favorite movies. The ocean. Punk rock clubs. Video games. Websites that make you laugh. Literature. Photos of good memories. London, Los Angeles, New York, and everywhere in between”.

Well, I personally think that not only this is a pretty clear explanation, but also that Mark is doing something quite unique and I gotta say I like and endorse it a lot. To have such a great amount of different artistic sources of inspiration reunited onto a single website is certainly something I haven’t find so often on the Interweb. Clearly, Mark’s been able to exploit his halfway celebrity-status to count on a decent fanbase from the beginning, but nonetheless you can really tell he believes in what he’s putting forward and this, after all, remains the main positive factor driving this project.

Probably my favourite part of the brand is its blog, which includes regular visual updates, audio files, and a re-launched HMNIM podcasts series, that so far has hosted guest appearances who go by the names of Alex Gaskarth and Jack Barakat of All Time Low and Tom DeLonge’s new replacement in blink-182 Matt Skiba (by the way, I suggest you take a listen to that specific episode if you need some calm after the storm of their recent line-up controversy). It’s precisely the podcasts that make me really happy, mainly because I think Mark is extremely brilliant at hosting guests from the art world in general (incidentally, he also had his own TV talk show on Fuse called “Hoppus on Music” from 2010 to 2012, just to show people he’s also good at doing it in front of a camera, certainly not to be taken for granted for a punk-rock bassist), but also because the topics handled during them are really interesting. And he’s got an irresistible laugh: everytime he laughs I just go along, I can’t avoid doing it, and it’s pretty fun, you should check it out.

Yet, HMNIM is not only Mark Hoppus, there are a number of additional great personalities involved in the project, of whom you can all find out more directly on each artist’s personal bio on their website. So, don’t get fooled or somehow deceived by the company’s name: his name is certainly Mark, but he’s just one brick in a wall of inspiring artistic content made available to everyone thanks to great dedication, exciting collaborations, and fine production amongst a group of friends. What more could we allow ourselves asking for?

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

HMNIM

ALEX REVIEWS MUSIC (ARM): COLD WAR KIDS – HOLD MY HOME | 2015-03-14

It’s time for another ARM blogpost. I felt the need during the past few days, and although I wasn’t really sure what exactly I was gonna examine, I knew it’d have happened quite soon. Well, after some deep back and forth reflections taking into consideration various possibilities (including the new Angels & Airwaves‘s The Dream Walker and Marmozets‘s The Weird and Wonderful), my decision has fallen on the new record of the Californian indie-rock outfit Cold War Kids, called Hold My Home and released last 21st October 2014 under Downtown Records. Now, I realise that this must not sound like the newest of records that have come out recently, but to be fair there’s some kind of a back story to be told with regard to the release date, at least as far as the European mainland is concerned. In fact, before digging into the proper musical part of this ARM, there’s  something of a background anecdote that shouldn’t remain unnamed, hopefully so to shine some light onto what I consider a very badly coordinated publication promotion on the part of Cold War Kids’s management.

While the initial release date for Hold My Home was set to be the aforementioned 21st October 2014, outside of the USA and Australia the album hadn’t come out until the beginning of March 2015. So, except from lead single “All This Could Be Yours” – originally released on 15th July 2014 (!) – and following stand alone tracks “First” and “Hot Coals” (incidentally the first three songs in the album’s tracklist), the vast majority of good old folks in the world had to patiently wait until the first days of this month to enjoy Hold My Home in its full length. You may now ask yourselves “Ok, right, all good and interesting: but how did this come about?”. Well, believe me I’ve asked myself that question a million time and I haven’t managed to find a proper answer yet. I’m not kidding, as far as I’m concerned – and I indeed did some research on this over the course of the last months – there’s still no official explanation for this delay of almost five months between the release in the USA/Australia and the rest of the world, neither from the band itself (I’ve asked them various time on Twitter, no answer gotten), nor from the label or the management side. So, as you may deduce, Hold My Home wasn’t necessarily welcomed to the market with the best of the conditions a band could potentially wish for.

However, despite (or maybe precisely because of) this legal/promotional/marketing long-lasting burden that accompanied Cold War Kids’s latest effort, its definitive release triggered a big sense of relief, at least in me. The album, although not being their best one, presents some very fresh sounds that echo unlike anything else around at the moment. Drawn by the initial triple combo of singles, Hold My Home delivers a genuine representation of a honest, direct, and believable indie-pop-rock with loads of piano/keyboards and some retro-vintage ambient feelings. There are some immediate no-gos as well, though: tracks like “Nights & Weekends”, “Flower Drum Song”, and “Harold Bloom” can’t really take off even after repeated listens, and all this appears as something quite unfortunate. Those three tunes definitely not worth the presence in an album otherwise way above average compared to the material out currently, also bearing in mind Cold War Kids’s relatively notorious status in the mainstream music industry. By contrast, the aforementioned opening trio composed by “All This Could Be Yours”, a rather fast-driving crafter indie anthem of modern times, “First”, probably the most poppy and ear-wormy tune on the album (it’s actually quite irresistible), and “Hot Coals”, a more raw and uncomfortable but pleasant reminiscence of early 00’s indie sound-alike, truly give the record a notable twist. These three songs, in addition to the electro-synth dominated “Drive Desperate” and personal favourite (as well as upcoming single, judging by the recently released official video on YouTube) “Hotel Anywhere”, mark a pretty clear quality distinction in the album making the first half absolutely rad and letting the thread lose its way as tracks go on, with the exception made of closing treat “Hear My Baby Call”.

Thus, overall a very decent album that builds up (possibly too) great expectation after listening to its first half and that loses itself along the way from track 6 to 10 (even the title-track isn’t really able to impose itself after time…). Nonetheless, a much appreciable musical statement made by one of the pioneers of modern indie-rock that, as usual, don’t miss one opportunity to experiment and surprise its fans with the album’s artwork too, in my opinion once again amazing (cf. image below). Welcome back Cold War Kids, for this time we’re ready to forgive your delay, but if this is the musical direction you’re intended to undertake, remember not to play with fire for too long.

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

COLD WAR KIDS

“HOLD MY HOME”

2014/2015, DOWNTOWN RECORDS

http://www.coldwarkids.com

CWK_Hold My Home

A PLEDGE FOR JOHN NOLAN | 2015-03-11

John Nolan is the lead guitarist and backing vocalist of my favourite band of all time, Taking Back Sunday, and he’s about to release his second full-length solo album (still untitled) as songwriter. John, a 37-year-old Long Island (NY) native, for this musical effort has decided to take an alternative route of promotion avoiding the classical collaboration with a proper record label, embracing instead the online direct-to-fan music platform called “PledgeMusic“, which can be considered as being conceptually related to more famous examples of this new wave of crowdsourced fundraising platforms taking over the art market such as Indiegogo and Kickstarter. This is an extract of what he had to say when explaining the selection process that brought him to choose PledgeMusic to launch his new project:

“I approached some record labels hoping that they’d see the value in doing the album this way but I wasn’t able to find one who shared my vision. It’s expensive to do an album at a producer’s studio with live musicians and that was their main concern. I had to make the record I wanted to though so I started looking into alternatives. When I found PledgeMusic it felt like the right fit. They offer a way to cut out the middleman, make an album with and for the people who want to hear it and they give you a support system.”

Well I think this new thing I’ve discovered is actually pretty cool, for multiple different reasons. First and foremost, PledgeMusic really seems to facilitate artists to reach out to their fanbase (members of which are in this case called “Pledgers”) in a direct and uncompromising manner. Using the platform musicians can pre-sell, market, and distribute projects including audiovisual material and references to live shows. Also, of course, the platform is being used to raise funds, but in its case only for musicians themselves, since the platform itself doesn’t retain any ownership to any music created. Another absolutely great and honourable aspect of PledgeMusic is that it actively encourages artists to include contributions to a charity as part of their project, and in John Nolan’s case up to 10% of all the money collected will be made available to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN, a pediatric facility focused on children’s diseases.

But that’s not the end of the story. Through PledgeMusic artists are able to personalise and craft their very own music production process and to outline it online, enabling fans to pre-order very cool packages of music, ranging from simple digital downloads of the tracks through vinyl and LP bundles to special edition items. Furthermore, musicians can frequently update their followers with blogposts, videos, exclusive demos to download, and much more while they’re working in the project on a dedicated section of each artist’s profile. They can also actively engage the community supporting them too, as for instance John recently did by asking his fanbase to pick the new album title, which I personally think is a pretty rad thing to do and shows just how much artists actually value their fans’ opinion about their musical outputs and try to integrate them in the artistic development of the end product.

Needless to say, as soon as John announced his new folk project a while ago I suddenly felt the urge to fully support him by giving him what I could in order to complete his album. In fact, there are still 3 days left before the end of his campaign and he’s been able to raise 96% of the goal so far, so if you’re reading this and have somehow become interested in the thing… well, I think it’d be pretty cool if he’d be able to reach his target soon. From what I’ve heard following him on the Interweb (e.g. on Twitter) while he’s currently on tour in the USA with his bandmates in Taking Back Sunday as well as quite big notorious supporting acts The Menzingers and letlive., the new album should be released in June this year, and most of the mixing and post-production has already been done or is currently undergoing (on a side note here, to be fair John is actually collaborating with a record label for his new effort – Collective Confusion Records – although the role of the company is merely confined to the pressing of vinyls and the development of pre-order packages).

So far John has previewed three tracks on his PledgeMusic-profile, which will all feature on his upcoming album: “American Nightclub 1999”, “Drinking Your Way To Confidence”, and “How Much (Early Days Version)”. I think they’re all great: they’re in fact listenable and downloadable as soon as one financially contributes to John’s project. It’s really worth trying making this thing happen – time hasn’t running out yet – not least to get a feeling of participation/contribution in what I’m sure will be a fantastic album made by an extremely talented and fine musician. It’s time to make John Nolan for president.

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

John Nolan_PledgeMusic

A SHOUT OUT TO BRITISH SUMMER TIME IN HYDE PARK | 2015-03-07

It may be that it’s just because I’m in London, but I gotta admit that I was quite struck the moment I learned about an amazing festival taking place in the English capital’s iconic Hyde Park at the end of June called British Summer Time (BST). Proudly sponsored by Barclays (come on, somebody’s gotta do it nowadays…), the open air is characterised by a series of one-day off line ups encompassing five different days so far, and according to their website many more acts have yet to be announced. While I myself couldn’t resist not getting my ticket for Thursday 18th June (the day when New Yorker indie veterans The Strokes are headlining supported by Kayne West’s current favourite Beck and Future Islands, amongst others), it’s the whole line up that really stands out in my opinion. Being able to put together headliner acts so diverse and at the same time appealing such as UK-darlings Blur, Kylie Minogue, The Who and Taylor Swift (by the way the only day that’s already sold out, so far) it’s not something that we as audience should take absolutely for granted.

Again, it may be that I’m not used to UK and especially London’s high standards yet, but besides the fact that in addition to such supersonic headliners there are other big shots acting just as “minor appearances” filling up the blank time slots such as Nile Rodgers, Kaiser Chiefs or John Newman, I was truly positively surprised when I got to know about this series of gigs. Of course, the fact that all these fantastic days of music are taking place in beautiful (and hopefully sunny, at least on 18th June) Hyde Park, doesn’t do anything other than amplifying my excitement for it. Also, I really, really like the concept of the festival as being an aggregate of single, scattered days of autonomous line-up which you can deliberately pick for yourself (and of course this applied also to tickets-purchasing, which is always convenient). For, unlike the majority of summer music festivals I know, which normally follow the classic scheme of 4-5 days in a row of musical programme, BST covers the range of over a week with single artists-packages you can select. I honestly think that this kind of formula is probably one that’s gonna be pretty fruitful in the future of music shows and festivals, considering today’s highly busy audiences, issues of location management over a longer period of time, and not least the not always convergent tour schedules of artists. The only disadvantage that I’m aware of in the case of BST is that if someone’s willing to attend more than one single day, there’s no combo-tickets that can be purchased at once for multiple days, as far as I know. However, since the line-ups seem to be rightfully articulated with specific target audiences in mind, it’s probably unlikely that someone would actually take part in more than 2-3 single separate days (at least that’s the case for me, bearing in mind the tickets’ prices).

With that said, I’m really looking forward to seeing The Strokes for the first time after many, many years of admiration and respect. Despite wide criticism not only from established music press, but also from the fans themselves on social media, I actually really enjoyed their last two efforts, 2011’s “Angles”, even though it remains their faintest LP, and in particular “Comedown Machine”, which contains great musical pearls such as “Tap Out”, “50/50” as well as closing gem “Call It Fate, Call It Karma”. After many failed tentatives to catch them live on tour or at some star-filled European summer festivals, probably also influenced by their unpredictable stability as a band over the past decade, BST is finally enabling me to experience The Strokes live. And for this, I really wanted to thank and shout out to them.

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

Strokes_BST

ARCADE FIRE, PROFESSIONAL GUARDIAN | 2015-03-04

A couple of weeks ago I came across this news story on NME’s website. Not a huge connoisseur of Arcade Fire myself, for I only know a couple of songs pretty good, although I may’ve bought an album somewhen, but nonetheless I really had to read the whole article. In fact, my interest was already captured by the unusual headline used: “Arcade Fire’s Will Butler to write songs based on Guardian news stories”. The article is basically about this new thing the singer-songwriter Will Butler had agreed to do in collaboration with The Guardian from 23rd to 27th February where he’d write and release a song a day based on news stories produced by the liberal UK newspaper.

Well, I think this operation is at the same time very cool and really worrying. I’ve been interested in journalism and all its various forms and developments for a long time and, above all, I do consider it being a fundamental pillar of modern progressive societies, if functioning properly with discrete transparency and accountability. In addition to that, I’m at the moment interning at a journalism and society’s think tank called Polis based at my university (to be specific, I’m taking care of their Twitter profile), so I do feel a bit of a personal duty catalysing me to comment on this featuring.

On the one hand, I honestly see the collaboration as something useful to try out new forms of songwriting and inspiration generation in realms never really tried out before, particularly in an established way. As Butler himself – whose by the way solo debut album “Policy” is due to be released on 16th March via Merge Records – declared in an associated interview: “It’s a cruel thing, but sometimes you read something and think, ‘Uh oh. I could make something really meaty out of that'”. Thus, if he’s admitting to feel inspired by real-world phenomena and issues, who are we to stop him from doing that? After all, it was even the folk-Lord Bob Dylan himself who involuntarily kicked off his tradition, as he once declared that certain of his songs were actually based on news headlines. Yet, on the other hand, I’d have to ask myself: are songs and especially lyrics not always somehow triggered by what specific artists come across in their everyday life experience, whether consciously or unconsciously? I feel there is no real need to officially frame this process directly by setting up such kinds of collaboration. If one gets inspired by a newspaper’s story, then he/she should just go on and write the piece without feeling obliged to give back something in return or to somehow acknowledge the source of creativity. What is really missing here, for me, is the true point of the overall operation.

However, these may be considerations concerning more the artistic-musical dimension of the relationship. I think one should also be aware that The Guardian itself could really gain something by such a featuring with someone who’s without doubt a really valuable musician. I’m not only talking about a healthy portion of promotion across target audiences (even though I concede that it’s debatable who’s really profiting between Butler and The Guardian on a mere publicity-level). I’m actually also referring to an interesting analysis that could be done of how their news stories can get perceived by someone who’s deployed to turn them into musical pieces. What is being consider relevant? What can be left out? Are such conceptions of values shared across the two parties or is there a big discrepancy in the output? This is exactly where the operation gets really fascinating, in my opinion: to see how something rather static presenting events and facts happening in the world in a journalistic way gets converted into an art effort. Still I think it’s not extremely surprising that The Guardian has come up with something like this. Thus, it’s certainly right to say that the UK newspaper has always been very successful in re-inventing itself both on- and offline as well as in finding new ways to undertake ‘alternative’ approaches to traditional news reporting across time, being it by redesigning specific features, undertaking risky editorial choices, or simply establishing new columns. It’s almost become its recognised trademark, and probably also what it makes it so popular.

For those interested, the result of the featuring between Will Butler and The Guardian’s website can be admired and heard here. I’m not gonna judge on the five songs themselves – after all, this isn’t an ARM blogpost – I really just wanted to let these thoughts out on the overall collaboration. Which, at the end of the day, I’m not really sure if I genuinely like or quietly fear. The answer is probably that since it was The Guardian that was implied, maybe the whole thing doesn’t seem so out of control after all. Great initiative, yet with an obscure goal.

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

ALEX REVIEWS MUSIC (ARM): RYAN ADAMS IN CONCERT AT HAMMERSMITH APOLLO | 2015-03-01

I haven’t stated anywhere that the ARM column would have been limited only to actually recorded music or album releases in general. Therefore, I’m now totally exploiting the opportunity to share some lasting emotions and perennial thoughts I’m currently experiencing derived from the show I attended last Friday night, namely Ryan Adams’s Londoner stop at a sold out Hammersmith Apollo supported by the lovely and extremely talented Natalie Prass. Not only was the venue itself fabulous and breath-taking, but also the overall experience provoked by the magic force of the US alt-country rocker was truly one of a kind. I won’t forget it anytime soon for sure.

I gotta say, this was the first time seeing him live for me. It’s also fair to say that it’s only recently, let’s say the past two or three years, that I’ve really gotten into him and his repertoire. Also, I’ve been literally obsessed with his last self-titled album having it on repeat since last December. It just encapsulates everything modern rock music should be about: from the widest range of transmitted emotions to a large variety of incredible and good-sounding melodies, harmonisation, and songwriting. With that said, I was obviously extremely delighted to notice how Ryan played a good six songs off of such newest effort, including amongst them Grammy-nominated rocky intro “Gimme Something Good”, personal favourite and emotionally intense “Stay With Me”, as well as the delicate and fragile ballad “My Wrecking Ball”, which all appear to me as very good examples of how stunning this last album really is. But there was a lot more to it than a wonderful set-listed focus on his most recent self-titled output, which I undoubtedly took as a personal gift arranged relying on the fact that I was in the audience. Jokes aside, with over two hours of live performance and an overall amount of 23 songs played (see setlist below), Ryan had the chance to navigate through his immense and highly-prolific catalogue spanning over more than 15 years and ranging from intimate tunes such as “Dear Chicago”, “My Winding Wheel”, and “Oh My Sweet Carolina” (performed as a wonderful duet with opening act Natalie Prass), going through more well-known tracks like “New York, New York” and “When the Stars Go Blue”, all the way until the more recent “Kim” (probably one of the greatest songs of 2014) and the Springsteenian “I Just Might”.

Another element that made Friday night unforgettable was the spectacular choreography that was set up as background to Ryan and his backing band The Shining (by the way, very convincing), showing a rather minimal design composed of many fragmented light bulbs attached across the whole surface that worked just perfectly. Moreover, yet another highlight of the evening occurred as the North Carolina-native successfully improvised a brand new song out of a random line shouted at him by a member of the audience (“I Ate Something Off The Street”), which not only received massive praise from the whole public and was in fact as pretty great as it was hilarious, but it also warmed up well Ryan and his guitar before jumping into the aforementioned “Kim”.

Yet, I must say the best moments for me were both the absolutely touching “This House Is Not For ‘Fucking’ Sale” (as introduced by Mr Adams himself), to which for a fair amount of reasons I can relate so much, and the last two songs of the evening, the forte-piano-driven “I See Monsters”, which took whole new forms and dimensions  performed live, and the classic folky tune as well as fans-favourite “Come Pick Me Up” (also accompanied by a lovely vocal dialogue with Prass). The closing track is probably his most famous recorded one, and for that matter it really didn’t disappoint live either, as much as the overall show in general. Moreover, acting as a sort of almost surreal glue keeping the gig together, there was a deep sensation of emotional involvement experiencing on the part of all of the audience members, without any kind of social compromising camouflage. That is, before last night I’d never had the sensation of being among a crowd of over 8000 people all keeping unbelievably quiet and standing literally still for Adams’s most delicate solo performances in order to enjoy them as intensively as possible. You really almost couldn’t hear any kind of noise coming from the audience, and still if you’d looked around, there’d have been an overwhelming wave of other companions coming from all directions simply looking at The Man and sipping from bottles of beer or cheap glasses of wine. In fact, it was something unique, rare, intimate, and shared among many fellow-attendees at the same time. It showcased a beautifully inspired Ryan, who didn’t step back when it was time to joke around with the mic and interacting with the audience, but who also took care of taming the stage with just his emotional voice and the help of six strings on an acoustic guitar. Everything worked out so perfectly well. Everything from the music, through the choreography, to the fans’ reaction. Unsurprisingly, after all, since it’s Ryan Adams.

This is the rad setlist he performed:

Gimme Something Good

Let It Ride

Stay With Me

Dear Chicago

This House Is Not For Sale

Everybody Knows

My Winding Wheel (acoustic solo)

Dirty Rain

Magnolia Mountain

New York, New York

I Ate Something Off The Street (improvisation)

Kim

Two

My Wrecking Ball

I Just Might

I Love You But I Don’t Know What To Say

Your Fool (Natalie Prass cover)

Oh My Sweet Carolina (w/ Natalie Prass)

La Cienega Just Smiled

Trouble

When the Stars Go Blue

I See Monsters

Come Pick Me Up (w/ Natalie Prass)

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

Source: Gigwise

Source: Gigwise

BETTER WATCH SAUL | 2015-02-24

Gotta say I’m pretty caught up with “Breaking Bad” (BB)’s newly aired spin-off TV series “Better Call Saul” (BCS), again created by those wicked masterminds who go by the credentials of Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould. Although the show is officially only 3 episodes in, I feel like it’s already taking an unbelievably wonderful direction. Of course, as a long-time fan of what I’d have to consider the best TV product of all time (or at least that I’ve come in contact with), it wasn’t a difficult task for me at all to immediately feel closeness as well as tender empathy with the now-small-time-lawyer James McGill, who – surprise, surprise, who’d have said that?! – over the course of 7 fictional years will develop into the skunky ‘too cool for school’-attorney in law Saul Goodman folks have gotten to meet in BB.

Excuse me the spared dense description of both the BB and BCS’s story lines and extensive plots but I think there are enough well-written paragraphs out there on the Interweb providing this service for those who aren’t familiar with the two shows.  This take is just to shout out to another great piece of art minutely crafted off of the golden bones of what could have been a very dangerous source of corpsy-screenplay if treated and steered incorrectly. Yet, both the immediate appearance of radically-tensed action of the first three episodes of the first season as well as the introduction and adaptation to the show of very solid and extremely appreciable characters (the Kettleman couple, and Julie Ann Emery is too pretty [!], Nacho Varga, and James’s brother-and-also-lawyer Chuck McGill above all) is building up an extensive amount of high expectations with regard to the continuation of the overall series (which, by the way, has been already successfully commissioned for a second season and which you can watch on Netflix).

If it hasn’t become clear enough with these lines yet that I can’t do nothing but suggest you to embrace in the adventure of drawing in the magic of BCS, then I’m doing it right now anyway: well, it’s totally worth it. Drama, black-comedy, fictional-realism, just comedy without drama, just drama without comedy (and judging by the first episodes the tendency may well be this one…), call it whatever it may best suit you. Fact is, you should totally give this show a try, especially now that it’s still in its initial phase of taking-off in order to not miss out too much and don’t get anxious about potential spoilers as it was the case with BB. By the way, once again, I’m already sure this one is going to take home a consistent amount of awards emulating what its older brother has been doing in the past five years or so. 100% sure.

Furthermore, the very kind and generous production team of BCS has been also putting on a lovely podcast which follows the series with conspicuous commentary and analysis episode-by-episode. Captained by BCS editor Kelley Dixon on the moderating mic, so far it has hosted no others than show creators themselves Gilligan and Gould, alongside main star Bob Odenkirk in episodes 1 and 2). It’s actually pretty great (and it may be the only truly official podcast accompanying the series too, if I’m not mistaking), it delivers plenty of anecdotes and behind-the-scenes revelations of the shootings and, beyond everything, it helps contextualising not only each episode but also the big picture of the series in a beautiful and funny manner. I’ll only concede the fact that they may tend to be rather long (over 1 hour and 15 min each), although, first of all, for me they’re not too long at all, and second, they never get boring, honest to the Lord.

All in all, I’d really suggest you harvest my council of embarking in the BCS cinematic adventure, at best with the addition of the complementing podcast, but I’ll leave you that also just the TV series can do a lot of good to you. You definitely better watch Saul.

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

BetterCallSaul

ALEX REVIEWS MUSIC (ARM): TAKING BACK SUNDAY – HAPPINESS IS: THE COMPLETE RECORDINGS | 2015-02-21

I used to write reviews of new records and music I bumped into on Facebook a while back (like 6-7 years ago), and since now I’m trying this new thing out I thought it would be a good idea to keep that tradition going and to kick off with something similar. You can think of this as some kind of 2.0 music review revival. I’d call this section, column, feature or whatever “Alex Reviews Music” – and I’ll probably shorten it to ARM – because it’s literally what I’ll be doing in it, no magic, persuasion, or tricks involved.

Obviously, as I don’t like to do things the standard way, I’m starting with a review of a very non-conventional record. In fact, Taking Back Sunday’s “Happiness Is: The Complete Recordings” it’s a so-called “deluxe version” of their sixth studio album released at the beginning of 2014, called “Happiness Is”. This new version contains the entire fruits of their recording process, i.e. including the outtakes that didn’t make the final cut of the album itself plus three additional acoustic renditions of album tracks, and comes in various formats ranging from simple digital to a limited edition 7″ box set with signed cover card as well as individual art for each song. Also, before we go any further, I assume it’s right to say that, because of a deep personal involvement with this band’s repertoire, I won’t be able to objectively assess the intrinsic musical value of this art piece without tending to a overwhelmingly positive judgement. Nonetheless, I’ll do my best to stay true to my apparently distant position I’m supposed to incorporate while writing for ARM.

While it’s worth acknowledging that the record itself has yet to be released (it’ll on 24th February), I thought I’d take the opportunity to write about both the standard 11-track sequence entailed in “Happiness Is” and the extra song that’s already been disclosed, namely “How I Met Your Mother” (by the way also the B-side of the main single “Flicker, Fade”: this is why folks were already able to listen to it last year).

Precisely the main hit single and de facto album opener “Flicker, Fade” makes the effort of quickly delivering a statement of where the album positions itself within the band’s catalogue. Playing with swinging moods of heavy punches in ya face (best heard immediately in the intro) and sweet harmonic but still melancholic verse/bridge takes, it best kicks off Taking Back Sunday’s latest album without any kinds of compromises. The following track, “Stood A Chance”, also a single and host of an extremely funny video, takes care of poppy-upbeat feelings in the listener juxtaposing them with rather darky connotations in the lyrics. Also, this song has probably the best bridge/breakdown the band has ever made, which in a way is very reminiscent of the one in “What’s It Feel Like to Be a Ghost?” off of Louder Now (2006), which was leading this special chart until “Stood A Chance” came along (one can’t really miss the similar ambience). The next pair of tracks, “All The Way” and “Beat Up Car”, simply summarises the finest moments of this album and demonstrate an incredible maturity on the part of the five-pieces outfit from Long Island. They’re both able to reach much depth both lyrically and melodically and show increased songwriting and performative ability by all of the five members, with special mentions for lead singer A. Lazzara and drummer M. O’Connell.

Further highpoints in the album are the punky and probably guitarist E. Reyes’s influenced “They Don’t Have Any Friends”, especially where the singing melody of the pre-chorus is simply irresistible, the very much direct and personal “Better Homes and Garden” – already a candidate to become a fan all-time favourite – and album closer “Nothing At All”, which showcases Taking Back Sunday at its most calm and introspective ever. Instead, not really convincing are the opening “Preface” (why not rather include “How I Met Your Mother” in the record replacing it with such a noisy and superficial introduction?, cf. below), the ballad-like “It Takes More”, a solid track but honestly nothing more than it and probably more at home in their fifth self-titled album (2011), as well as the rather dry “Like You Do” and “We Were Younger Then”, although these last two show increasing potential with augmented amounts of listening.

As promised, a last mention is well-owed to “How I Met Your Mother”, main tune “Flicker, Fade”‘s B-side and first of the bonus tracks entailed in the deluxe version. The song is unlike anything else the band’s released so far, in the sense that it really never leaves high-tension moods across the whole duration playing with a continuous climax and can be considered one of their heaviest efforts alongside with “El Paso” (off their self-titled). With once again drummer M. O’Connell at his top, retrospectively this track, if included in the standard album, could’ve covered the only minor omission of it: namely a real outrage of hard walls of distorted sound which goes hand in hand with fine melody as well as great harmonisations (the tunes in the album that get closest to reach this are probably “Beat Up Car” and “They Don’t Have Any Friends”). Needless to say, if the other two extra tracks included in the complete recordings version (“This Is Happening” and “Can You Feel That [Here I Am])” are on the same level of this one quality-wise, there is so much to be excited about them being released to the public. At that point, if these promises are to be maintained, the band’s sixth effort can literally be considered artistically complete.

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

TAKING BACK SUNDAY

“HAPPINESS IS: THE COMPLETE RECORDINGS”

2015, HOPELESS RECORDS, INC.

www.takingbacksunday.com

TBS_Complete Recordings