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ALEX REVIEWS MUSIC (ARM): TOM DELONGE – TO THE STARS… DEMOS, ODDS & ENDS | 2015-04-22

Welcome back to another ARM blogpost. Again, the picking choice was hard on this one, having just witnessed the global celebration of Record Store Day and being forced to set aside other recent releases such as Alabama Shakes‘s Sound & Color or even waiting just for another bit before the highly anticipated The Desired Effect by Brandon Flowers and My Morning Jacket‘s The Waterfall would have been published. Yet, partly because of my past (and present) blink-182 and Angels & Airwaves (AVA) fandom and party because of the recent publicly aired band drama causing quite an uproar, I felt like I had to give Tom DeLonge’s first ever solo album To the Stars… Demos, Odds and Ends a try.

Freshly released in Europe’s mainland a day ago (21st April), the half-EP half-LP is allegedly containing blink-182 demos “along with a few extra tracks”, summing up to a total tracklist of 8 units (-1, considering instrumental filler “Landscapes” as a non-song). The album had already been sort of previewed by the anticipated release of singles (?) “New World” (to which a very angst-filled music video has been dedicated), acoustic ballad “The Invisible Parade” as well as skateboarders’ new anthem “Circle-Jerk-Pit” (which, not surprisingly, soundtracks a video made of skating pools, beers and pretty girls). With the exception made of the latter, which is almost too messy to be properly understood, the two songs Tom decided to release before the actual full-album publication are, sadly, in fact the only remarkable compositions present on the effort. Fluctuating between AVA nostalgia (“Suburban Kings” could’ve easily been born out of “Rite of Spring”‘s ribs) and quite embarrassing blink-182-success formulas (“Golden Showers in the Golden State”: “First Date” and “The Rock Show” anyone?), the album doesn’t appear to be able to take a shape on its own, even after repeated listens. I’m actually saying this with genuine disappointment, being a long-time DeLonge fan myself and having always appreciated his ability to reunite big melodies with compactness and effective lyrics.

To be fair, the record itself got in fact promoted as a kind of B-sides bucket of his, possibly intended as a concrete and material response to blink-182’s intentions to continue as a band even without him (Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba has so far replaced Tom on guitar and vocals in the line-up). Still, this isn’t probably the best self-esteeming reply Tom could have given to both his previous bandmates and the public/fans at large. Why not waiting a little bit more and instead releasing another solid AVA album like last The Dream Walker, maybe with a little help of his (new) friends (Ilan Rubin)? Directionless, at times dull and repetitive, “To the Stars” doesn’t really deserve to get associated with his songwriting abilities (maybe with the exceptions made for the aforementioned “New World” and “The Invisible Parade”), not least because even initially-promising “An Endless Summer” and “Animals” turn out, unfortunately, to be truly dislikable with time. Ok, “Suburban Kings” and “Golden Showers in the Golden State” aren’t bad songs at all, but they nonetheless sound desperately over-heard and too familiar to past successful attempts of his.

This one seems to be an extremely busy year for Tom, according to his own statements to the press (announcing the release of 4 albums and 15 co-written novels all this year, come on…), and while he’s always been someone who doesn’t necessarily like to take breaks between musical, cinematic, and entrepreneurial projects, his explicit plans appear to be too ambitious even for a persona like his. Probably, hadn’t he released this very album, he could’ve managed and allocated his resources more wisely into a more thoughtful product, ideally released later this year or even during the next one. Yet, sometimes the urge to respond to unclarity and defeats can be stronger than anything else, pushing its way through light and converting into forced pieces of art. The result in this case? Tom still De…longing for blink-182.

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

TOM DELONGE

“TO THE STARS… DEMOS, ODDS AND ENDS”

2015, TO THE STARS…

http://www.tomdelonge.me

TDL_TTS

VELO REC IS SPINNING ITS WHEEL | 2015-04-12

I’ve decided I’ll use this one as a small space for some shameless self-promotion. Actually, to be fair, I’d say it’s a healthy mix of well-deserved publicity, personal involvement, and genuine interest, not least because I’m talking about music, once more with love. Therefore, if you allow me, it’s not even the case that I’m diverging that much from the usual editorial strategy I’ve been adopting for this page, if there ever was such thing. Anyways, enough said for the introduction: this time I’m devoting this blogpost to the London-based house record label VELo REC (check out their logo attached below).

One of the reasons I’m writing about VELo REC, founded in early 2014 by two Swiss guys in Shoreditch, is that a couple of weeks ago I started helping them out a bit with their social media accounts, which, by the way, I highly encourage you go check out and support (they’re present on Facebook, Twitter, Ello, Instagram, and obviously, since they’re producing house music, on SoundCloud and MixCloud). So far it’s been real fun for me, I’m learning a lot from their insights from that wild beasty jungle called ‘music industry’ and I’m truly enjoying working with and around their music products. In this regard, VELo REC usually releases a one-artist-focused Single/EP each month, with their April’s release “Low House, Vol. 1” featuring Paris-based DJ and producer Parsifal about to come out on 13th April on Beatport, initially. Then, after a two-week exclusive availability on the online music store specialised in electronic music, the Single/EP normally hits (literally) all other digital stores around for the general sale.

But a classic musical release is not the only quality thing VELo REC puts out periodically. In fact, they’re also hosting two very cool monthly podcasts called “VELo Radio Show” and “VELo Session” (which are all listenable and downloadable on their SoundCloud page). The first one consists of a radio-format episode in which usually the monthly artist gets widely introduced and hosts a special mix with favourite/notable electronic gems surrounding their release. The VELo Session instead is a one-hour guest-mixed podcast which highlights and shares some of VELo REC’s favourite new tunes around. As mentioned earlier, the genre they’re producing is generally house-related, with a slightly heavier focus on the tech- and deep- sub dimensions (so far they’ve counted on collaborations with artists such as Stefano Ritteri, Megan Faye, Tom Alemanno and Divalvi), so expect all of their publications to revolve around that musical cluster.

On top of all that, VELo REC is currently planning various additional projects involving, amongst others, a huge 1st-year-of-label birthday party at the end of May, a brand new blog, and some very cool merchandising. On a more hurried note, in addition to all the released material and podcasts, you can definitely go check out a short snippet from Parsifal’s “Low House, Vol. 1” (out tomorrow) on their SoundCloud profile. If you happen to like it, too, nothing is stopping you from supporting them by buying the thing as well.

All in all, the label is absolutely worth a in-depth check out for anyone interested in house and electronic music in general, the guys are talented and creative: their artistic wheel is definitely spinning at higher rates!

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

VeloRec_Logo

THE RISING TIDE OF SOCIAL MEDIA: REFLECTIONS FROM #EVNSOCIAL | 2015-04-04

It is certainly not the biggest of all surprises that the main substantial takeaway from attending an industry-driven summit on social media trends – organized at the LSE on 26th March thanks to a successful partnership between the European Broadcasting Union and Polis – is the conviction that social media are fundamentally reshaping what it means to do good journalism in the public interest. Probably a little more unexpected was the fact that such an agreement was almost unanimously shared by all stakeholders practicing in the realm of public service broadcasting. That is, the public service entity does in fact represent a category which is not exactly the definition of precursors with regard to adaptations to new innovations, large-scaled reorganizations, and more generally willingness to undertake strategic changes in the media landscape, not least because of their often underestimated burden of having to deliver performance under the pressure of optimizing the use of incomes generated by the license fees paid by the respective populations.

Probably the most interesting point coming out of the event was, in my opinion, the inherent juxtaposition between repetitive claims that “there is no such thing as ‘best practice’ in the use of social media” – even comparing it to the art of painting by Mike Mullane, Head of Media Online at EBU – on the one side, and the deep readiness to “philosophically reinvent” the notion of public service on the other side, with the latter process especially emphasized by NRK’s Head of Social Media Ingeborg Volan. In a way, it is as if everyone agrees that for healthy media outlets there is no way of bypassing social media use in the current landscape, but at the same time there are very little existing points of reference that could act as initial guidelines in implementing social media strategies onto traditional editorial processes. I think that this sort of dilemma does nothing more than rising both the excitement and the risk perception on the part of media practitioners willing to invest in social media presences.

Actually, a number of speakers, captained by Director General of Swedish Radio Cilla Benkö as well as BBC News’s Jeremy Skeet, tried to outline some conceptual pillars concerning the initial embracement of social media, addressing particularly the most skeptical ones in the field, expressing in this case that “you really have to be on social media simply because your audience is on social media” or again “social media journalism can and should be fun”. Whether these and similar statements really help in formulating concrete strategies for the use of social media on the part of public service broadcasters is probably to difficult to tell. Rather, it is the enthusiasm and believable conviction manifested by the majority of the speakers when talking about their (current or future) use of social media that should, as it appeared to me, be the best and most honest promotional tool for investing in it.

I really like the suggestive idea that something practically uncontrollable a priori like social media and their impact on content strategies and management are meant to fundamentally reshape a cornerstone of modern secular societies such as the functioning of public service broadcasting. In some ways, some hesitation on the part of the players necessarily affected by its now fully recognized establishment in the digital media universe is partially understandable. Probably to overcome such initial indecisions, if not fears, of journalists about to embark in the social media adventure, Swedish Radio has been clever and kind enough to produce – in my opinion – a very useful as well as publicly accessible Social Media Handbook available as PDF for all those who do not have a single clue on where to start from.

I believe it is fair to say that, if even public service broadcasters have come to the agreement that social media is no longer “the future” but an inescapable, powerful reality that cannot be ignored, it is really time to preach their actual establishment in journalistic practices almost globally (or at least on an European level, judging the countries of origin of the speakers present at the summit). While it is no secret that commercial and private media have already fully invested in social media resources a while ago, at least with regard to the intensity of the investment, there are no excuses left for their colleagues operating in the public service sector to follow the trend and start surfing along on the multiform wave of social media channels. After all, did we not already hear at some in history point that, in the end, a rising tide lifts all the boats?

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

P.s.: this blogpost has also been published on Polis’s blog in a slightly edited form.

#EVNSocial_Image

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