Jim Blacks rocking jazz

Accidentally picking up a cd illustrated by one of my favorite japanese artists, Yoshitomo Nara, at the great recordshop Jazzkælderen, made me do one of those weird things I do now and again (with great success): I bought Jim Blacks Splay (2002) because I liked the illustrations on the record. And yet again I did it with success.

Yoshimoto Naras drawings seems innocent at first glance, but after looking at them for a while you´ll recognize that they are nowhere near innocent. On the contrary, they are in their own sarcastic, funny way mad and wild, satanic and sad. The same can be said about drum-madman Jim Black and his fellow musicians, when they play their drum and bass driven, sax and clarinet spiced, improvised jazz on a scale between some hard rocking beats and some slow, dreamy compositions (some would call it post-rock), that eventually will cling on to you like glue on a stick.

While I am madly searching for even better examples of Jim Blacks mad drumming, you can have a taste at Jim Blacks My space or take the one minut music lesson by Mr. Black himself.

Download Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour - Part II

Our old link for downloading Bob Dylans brilliant radio show is not working. Try here instead! If the Rapidshare system is to slow - try the Pirate Bay and other torrent sites, where the episodes are starting to appear!

New Jesse Sykes release mp3

In 2004 I saw an overseen and beautiful concert on Roskilde Festival with the dark alt. country music of Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter. Now she is ready with a new album, Like, love, lust & the open halls of the soul. It's the third album from the band created from the ashes of Whiskeytown and Hominy. To me the new album sound less depressed, and more interesting til folks not as addicted to depressed country as I am! Take a listen to two new mp3s!

LLL

Station Grey

Or stream the new album here!

Endrick Brothers

When someone lists The Byrds, Roger McGuinn, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Band, Crosby Stills & Nash, Neil Young, REM, Wilco, Golden Smog, Jayhawks, Teenage Fanclub, Randy Newman, Tom Waits, Allman Brothers, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Big Star and Grant Lee Buffalo as their influences, I can only stand up and applaud (except for Creedence CR who just have too many lousy hits to be excused). This is what Scottish alt. country band Endrick Brothers does at their MySpace site where you can check out two songs from their 2005 debut "Built to last" and two from the coming "Attraction versus love" to be released in February.

These songs are instant hits in my taste. They are not particularly fancy or innovative but simply made of old-fashioned irresistable song crafting. Danish readers should note that Endrick Brothers are about to support fellow alt. country act Richmond Fontaine on their European tour which brings them to Voxhall, Aarhus on Feb 27th and Vega, Copenhagen Feb. 28th. Meanwhile, I'm stuck here in Toronto and will miss this. Bugger! I'll have to make do with events over here, starting with The New Pornographers next Saturday. So don't worry, I'll live ;-) But I will surely follow Endrick Brothers closely from now on. How about you?

Baugur *country* Group

The Icelandic corporate giant Baugur, who have been busy buying up half of Denmark in the past few years, forgot to renew their icelandic web-domain in the beginning of January.

This gave a few friends a great opening at getting the domain they've wanted for their country group "Baugur". Since the beginning of January, the band has received all mail sent to *anyone* @baugur.is. Crammed with business offers, they still managed to put a song out!

www.baugur.is

www.myspace.com/baugur

Revisit Ryan

Blogster favourite Ryan Adams has surely increased his online activity since returning home from the European tour with his band The Cardinals in late '06. Besides making piles of demo experiments available at his site, now he streams two entire shows of last year's tour as well. And, surprise surprise, one of them is no other than the gig at Vega, Copenhagen in October where Indie Laundry was well representated among the audience.

This indicates that he must be quite satisfied with that evening and can only agree 200%. For any Ryan fans who might read this, I sense there will be news regarding upcoming album(s?) very soon. Just a hunch, though...

Anna Ternheim - Stort grattis till priset!

I don't wanna write to much about P3 Guld 2007 from Sweden. These kind of awardshows have a tendency to overlook what's beneath the often crappy mainstream surface.
Well a few of the better ones had glory days and The Knife won the award for best liveshow. I havn't checked them out live, but these guys are special. Swedes are interessting people and Anna Ternheim is one of them. She won for best female act and I kind of like her attitude. I don't wanna mention who won for best male - his style is not of this blog. Stort gratiss till priset!

MySpace: Anna Ternheim

The Knife: We share our mother's health (Trentemöller)

Air "Pocket Symphony" leaked to torrent sites

The new Air album "Pocket Symphony", set to be released March 6th, has leaked to torrent sites such as www.mininova.org. There's no doubt that the album was either leaked by someone that's close to the band or involved with the distribution process.

I ran a search on the hype machine and found that blogs are already posting tracks from the new album:

Redhead Girl

One Hell of a Party (Featuring Jarvis Cocker)

Somewhere Between Waking and Sleeping

I'm all for torrents, but it must really suck for bands when they can't even keep their own release dates!

The same thing happened to LCD Soundsystem when their new album "Sound of Silver", set to be released on March 20th, was leaked in December.

Songs for the young at heart - compilation

A very nice sideproject by Dave Boulter and Stuart Staples of the Tindersticks entered my ears today. I guess way too early, but from my chair I can report that it's a must buy when it's finally released 23rd of feb.
The project called "Songs for the young at heart" is quite fascinating, I guess more for englishmen than for danes, but also for me. Recently I've been exploring music for enfants and this release is ace and a pleaser for, well, for the young at heart.
Inspired by memories from their childhood of music from the radio, school room and television, “Songs for the Young at Heart” features the sunny, simple, dark and sad songs from the halcyon days of school holidays and endless summer afternoons.
Hand picking a selection of guest vocalists and story tellers, the album includes the likes of Cery’s Matthews singing a sublime version of “White Horses”, Bonnie Prince Billy’s melancholic version of “Puff the Magic Dragon” and Jarvis Cocker reciting the tale of “Albert & The Lion”. Buy it

Puff the magic dragon - feat. Bonnie Prince Billy & Red

Richard Hawley - ex. Pulp - great croon for rain

Once again my workmate dropped a nice cd on my table. This time Richard Hawley - a guy which I've heard of but never encountered for real. Now I have met him and he is a nice guy!
Hawley first named a name for himself as a ace guitarist in The Longpigs, along with session and live work with Pulp, Beth Orton, All Saints and Robbie Williams.
His soloalbum Cole's Corner from 2005 is a true gem. It's a collection of broken love songs and you can almost feel the rainy streets and dim streetlamps when his guitar rings from the past. It storytelling music.
The record is lonely and magical, romantic and sad. The music is rockabilly, country, traces of the vintage-'40s pop, jazz, and even some blues blend together.
His string-laden arrangements is prime Lee Hazlewood and the voice is croony as ever. Very intimate and warm. Makes it the first choice on a rainy day.
Besides being a hopeless romantic he has on several occation insisted that his mind is full only with “confused thoughts and Guinness". That makes a fine blend, I'd say. Buy it here.

Richard Hawley - Coles Corner

Jarvis Cocker & Richard Hawley - a cheat (Lee Hazlewood cover)

2007 - what's in the musicbox top 10

Point your finger to the future and peer into the crystal ball and uncover what the musicscene will be like in 2007 - or something. Metacritic has compiled that long releaselist with bands. Quite some interessting ones there. But also much bands as Arcade Fire, Of Montreal, The Shins, etc. etc. These bands always gain lots of bloghype, so we don't wanna add to much there.
BBC has done the crystal ball thingy and put their money on ten new bands to watch in 2007. Some of these already has a blogosphere folilowing and others will.
I don't wanna comment on these bands, but just add that in my taste some of them are simply nice and some are not. But it's certain that quite a lot of these bands will enter the mainstream charts for some reasons or other. Be your own judge, it's not all indie! The chart:

10: The Rumble Strips(mp3)
9: Ghosts (mp3 via Headphonesex)
8: Just Jack (mp3)
7: Cold war kids (mp3)
6: Air Traffic (mp3)
5: Alex Sheppard (mp3)
4: The Wombats (mp3)
3: Klaxons (mp3)
2: The View (mp3)
1: Mika (mp3)

Ratatat at Loppen - mp3

Once again Loppen.dk at Christiania, København, impress me as a venue. Somehow they are able to get small, really cool acts to play here.
The 21st of february they mastered to hire Ratatat, which is Evan Mast and Mike Stroud from New York mixing rock and electronica with huge crativity. Their second helping Classic is a small piece of art in my opinion connecting fun, outgoing synth with something more introvert and melancholic, like it's insisting on being a serious piece of work in which you have to listen very carefully.
It's fresh and nostalgic at the same time and even though it's layered with instruments, riffs and acoustic guitars, it's not complicated.
I'm curious on what this might sound like live. So I'm going!

Ratatat - Seventeen years (Ratatat-album)

Ratatat - Wildcat (Classics-album)

Canadian partygirls Toronto - go Motor!

Good indiebrother Mogens will be landing in a couple of hours in Toronto, Canada. It's his new home for some month, so I've done my best to wrap a little dirty menage a trois for him as a welcome, or go-away present as it is.
The two invited for this rendezvous are of course two bad-ass girls from his new hometown Toronto and since they won't (I expect not) be in the airport, I better pack them together here. Both are unique musicians have both done albums with Broken Social Scene, so you better meet them.

Girl #1 up is Emily Haines, 32 years old, soloartists with The Soft Skelton and leadsinger in dance-pop group Metric. She is also a part time member of Broken Social Scene.
You better check out her solo-stuff with The Soft Skeleton because it's quite amazing. Emily Haines has Scott Minor from Sparklehorse, Broken Social Scene’s Justin Peroff, Stars' Evan Cranley and Metric's Jimmy Shaw in The Soft Skeleton.
And dude, you're more lucky, 'cause Emily Haines plays a full webcastet concert at NPR All Songs Considered tomorrow at 9:30 pm, Washington time.

Girl #2 is Leslie Feist, 31 years old, and is quite a unique, clever and beautiful girl as well!
She has played punkmusic, toured with some of the biggest canadian acts, like By Divine Right and opened for the Tragically Hip.
She released her debutalbum in 1999 and joined a couple of other bands before she helped Broken Social Scene in the recording of their sophomore effort, You Forgot It in People, 2002. Both The Postal Service, Bright Eyes and BSS has covered her stuff.
And dude, you're lucky, 'cause Leslie Feist is up with new stuff very soon, says reports from your new source for useful musicinformation, Toronto's Eye Weekly. Leslie Feist is a pretty amazing girl as well. More Feist galore at Rbally.

Both ladies needs much more attention than this entry leaves room for. So do them good, let them grow on you and remember their faces - you might meet them at the local bar. Enjoy:

Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton - Doctor Blind

Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton - Winning

Leslie Feist - Sally's Song (live @ Park West, Chicago)

Leslie Feist - Secret Heart

New video: Gruff Rhys "Candylion"

The upcoming album by the Welsh Super Furry Animals is one of 2007's releases I look forward to the most. While waiting, I stumbled upon this video from the new solo album of lead singer Gruff Rhys' (could it be any more Welsh?). It's called "Candylion" and the title track is a very sweet melody. The simplistic, understated style of the video reminds me of Paul Simon's classic "You can call me Al". See for yourself. Right down to some of their expessions and postures it makes me think of Chevy Chase.