Ich komme nicht drum herum euch dieses Album ans Herz zu legen. Wer Sigur Ros mag, wird diese Platte lieben; und spätestens jetzt ist klar von wem die Rede ist:
Jónsi Birgisson
Dieses Jahr bewegt sich der Sänger und Gitarrist der wahrscheinlich bekanntesten isländischen Band auf Solofaden und legt ein Debüt vor, was sich wirklich sehen lassen kann.
‚Go’ kam im April endlich in die Läden und ich konnte es kaum abwarten mir das Album anzuhören. Meine Erwartungen waren hoch, denn Sigur Ros zählt nun schon seit Jahren zu meinen absoluten Lieblingsbands, und zu meiner Erleichterung kann ich sagen, dass mir die Platte wirklich sehr gut gefällt.
Die neun Lieder sind dynamischer und teilweise alles andere als ruhig wie es ein Sigur Ros Liebhaber eigentlich gewohnt ist. Aber genau das mag ich an der Platte so gern; Jonsi experimentiert und erfindet sich, meiner Meinung nach, mit seinen eigenen Vorstellung neu; und überzeugt!
Er befreit sich von dem sehr ruhigen Ambiente der Sigur Ros Alben; singt Teile seines Albums auf Englisch ein und setzt lässt einer Vielzahl von Instrumenten einfach seinen Lauf. Das Ergebnis hat mich überrascht; man erkennt eine klare Abgrenzung zu Sigur Ros, was jedoch alles andere als negativ ist.
Man kann es schwer beschreiben, was er genau anders macht und wie es wirkt. Meiner Meinung nach muss man dieser Platte einfach einen Versuch geben, denn Jonsi ist mit ‚Go’ wirklich ein wunderbares Album gelungen. Für mich ist Jonsi ein Talent seinesgleichen; die Stimme und seine Art Musik zu machen ist einmalig und deswegen so besonders. Es gibt wirklich wenige Musiker, die mit so kleinen Mitteln so viel Gefühl vermitteln können.
Meine persönlichen Höhepunkte der Platte sind: ‚Animal Arithmetic’ ‚Tornado’ und ‚Around Us’.
Wie immer verlinke ich euch Jonsi’s offizielle Homepage; dort habt ihr die Möglichkeit euch das gesamte Album kostenlos anzuhören.
alles liebe und viel spaß beim reinschnuppern;
gerade ‘crazy’ geschaut und direkt in dieses lied verliebt:
sehr einfach; sehr ruhig. aber vielleicht gerade deswegen so interessant.
wünsche euch noch einen schönen, regnerischen sonntag:
finally.
First off i want to apologize that it has taken me nearly two months to add a new post to my blog, everything has been so incredibly busy during the last few weeks and i hardly had time to sit down and write a proper post on here.
This is just a quick update to let you guys know that i’m still here, still working on ideas. i’ve got three articles nearly ready to be published but i guess they still need a final touch until i’m truly happy and content with them.
But before i take off again, here are two videos of a very talented guy who goes by the name of OrtoPilot. I’ve talked about him before and here are two videos which i have been listening to pretty much all day long. I found his channel about three years ago while searching for a cover of The Kooks’ Naive and kept on listening to his covers from then on. You should definately visit his channel and listen to his covers and also his own songs because in my opinion musicians like him are sometimes so underrated; its sort of unfair that he gets so little attention but having such a great talent.
As always, I tagged a link to his youtube channel at the bottom of this post. Enjoy, subscribe and leave some love.
A big thank you to everyone who still visits my blog, its nice to know that even a few people keep on reading my blog. Please don’t hesitate to leave me a comment, I would love to hear from you.
Today’s article is about a band I have liked for ages and rediscovered them in winter last year when they released their current record ‘Armistice’.
The American band ‘MUTEMATH’ was formed in 2003 and has released two albums and three EPs so far. In early 2007 they also released a live record called ‘Flesh and Bones Electric Fun’ from their concert in Las Vegas in the fall of 2006.
The quartet is lead by Paul Meany who also started the project of MUTEMATH. He is pretty much the allround talent of the band. He plays the keyboard, rhodes piano, bass, keytar and sings the lead vocals. Darren King, who plays the drums and does all the programming of their songs, formed the early duo with Paul Meany in 2001. They knew each other from Meany’s former band ‘Earthsuite’.
Later, Greg Hill and Roy Mitchell-Cardenas (a link to his blog is tagged at the top of this article) joined the band and the first EP with the name of ‘Reset EP’ was released in early 2004. I personally really like this EP because it is one of the quietest records they have produced so far and it hardly contains any rock elements, my two favourite songs of this EP are ‘OK’ and ‘Reset’. Both of them have areally quiet and simple sound, hence you can fully concentrate on Meany’s beautiful voice which I absolutely adore. Its so unique and full of emotion especially in their early works.
Moving along in timeline, the Live DVD/CD was released in late 2006, but as I am not such a big fan of live records I never really got into listening to their live footage. Most importantly, their first long-play record under their own name was released in the same year. ‘MUTEMATH’ was and still is their most successful record which makes sence to me because i think that this records contain a lot great songs and their own individual sound has also improved since the bands foundation.
My favourite songs from this record are ‘Break the same’, ‘Typical’ and ‘Control’. I actually got to know this band through their single ‘Typical’ and it is still my all time favourite song by them and was also nominated for the Grammy the next year. On this record the band used a lot more rock elements than before but at the same time they started to play around with a few post-rock elements which makes the record more interesting. By mixing up different music elements on this CD MuteMath succeeded in producing a record for a wider range of people who like post-rock on the one hand and alternative rock on the other hand. This might be the reason why I have liked this band for all this time and because they do not stick to one particular music genre it is always exciting to listen to their new records because they seem to change from year to year.
In 2009 the band was on the ‘Twilight’ Soundtrack with the song ‘Spotlight’ so that’s why the band got pretty famous by the end of last year. At the same time they released their second LP called ‘Armistice’. I was actually kind of disappointed by this album, maybe because I have not listened to it so much but also because I miss the rock elements on this record. The previous songs were also really quiet and under a higher post-rock influence than they used to be, but this record just doesn’t do it for me. Except for one song which has been stuck in my head for weeks now. The song is called ‘Clipping’ and I really enjoy listening to it because there is a part in the middle of the song where a violin is playing and that gives the song a really unique touch because you will hardly ever find instruments like that in their songs.
Another song I would recommend is a song from the ‘VIP Tour Edition bonus tracks’ and is called ‘Armistice (2nd Line Version)’ featuring the Rebirth Brass Band. It sounds a lot different to their usual music because they are featured by the tuba and sousaphone player Philip Frazier and his brother and the trumpeter Kermit Ruffins. This combo of MuteMath and a Brass Band is really interesting, quite a shame they didn’t include that song on the actual record.
To finish up today’s post I would highly recommend you guys to give this band a listen. Paul Meany’s voice is simply amazing and really relaxing to listen to after having a hard and exhausting day :)
The band is playing a number of shows in the United States this summer; I am dying to see this band live so I really hope they are also coming around to Europe soon!
enjoy listening, leave me comment and spread the word :)
with love and thanks.
the heading of todays post is the theme of my very first playlist for this blog because spring is slowly coming along and I picked out a few songs for you guys to say goodbye to winter :)
This is the first time that I have put quite a lot of time and effort in choosing songs a theme playlist and I tried to combine different bands with different genres but all sounding well within a similar atmosphere. I really, really hope you guys enjoy listening to these songs and I would greatly appreciate your feedback :)
- Get Well Soon – Prelude
- Miike Snow – Burial
- Pinback – How We Breathe
- Alu – Martian Rendezvous
- Hugh Wilson – Falling Away
- Herman’s Hermits – No milk today
- Green Apple Sea – El Fin Del Mundo
- The Good, The Bad & The Queen – Nature Springs
- Pinback – Good To Sea
- Gisbert Zu Knyphausen – Wer Du Bist
- Girls in Hawaii – Casper
- Interpol – Narc
- Calexico – Two Silver Trees
- Beirut – Monna Pomona
- Dinosaur Jr. – Plans
- Port O’Brien – High Without The Hope 72
- Cloud Control – I’m Your World
- Blek Le Roc – 1.25
- The xx – Basic Space
- Sufjan Stevens – Chicago (Adult Contemporary Easy Listening Version)
If you do not have the songs yourself or if you like to listen to the complete playlist you are more than welcome to contact me either through my lastfm account or by leaving me a comment at the bottom of this post! I will paste a link to my lastfm page there too because I created the playlist under the same name on my page for you as well.
with love and thanks
Hello again!
It has been quite a while since I posted a proper entry on this but I will try my hardest to blog at least once a week because I came up with so many things to blog about.. so hopefully I will be able to get that done more frequently in the future.
This post was kind of requested by a neighbour of mine on lastfm, and I have been reading about this band in numerous music magazines and webblogs etc. so it was about time to give this band a proper listen and to maybe blog about them.
- so here it is! :)
The band I’m talking about is called Mumford and Sons.
Formed in late 2007 and released two EPs called ‘Mumford and Sons’ and secondly ‘Love your Ground’ before releasing their first album in late 2009 called ‘Sigh no more’. And this is what I have been listening to in the last few hours because its stuck in my head. The record consists of twelve songs and they all manage to sound different to each other; sometimes just a tiny little bit, but throughout the record the band tries out heaps of different sounds and music elements. The band pulls up a number of different music instruments such as a banjo (which is really recognisable in a lot of their songs and gives them a really unique touch), a contrabass and a piano, besides the usual guitar-bass-drum setting.
‘Dustbowl Dance’ is the loudest and most active kind of song on the record, even though it starts with a quiet piano intro, whereas the last song ‘After the Storm’ gives the record a really nice and sound ending to the album.
My favourite song so far is ‘Awake my Soul’ because it seems to be so different to the sound of the whole record and I really like the last third of this song where Marcus Mumford, the Vocalist and Guitarist, takes off with his chorus once again while the guitar sounds really clear and harmonizes really nicely with the banjo (played by Country Winston).
The other two members of the band are Ted Dwane who plays the contrabass and Ben Lovett who plays the keyboard while both also sing the back-up vocals.
It was kind of hard for me to find a similar band to ‘Mumford and Sons’ because I do not listen to a lot of folk music and I also find that Marcus Mumfords’ voice is really unique. It gives their songs a whole new sound and makes them even more beautiful. His voice is comparable to ‘ortopilot’. He is a guitar-playing guy who uploads his cover versions of all kind of different songs on ‘YouTube’. I will put a link to his ‘YouTube’ channel on the bottom of this article, as well as the bands lastfm page and their homepage. But do not forget to give ‘ortopilot’ a listen because his cover versions are really good, he gives the songs a whole new sound and he also has an amazing voice, as already said.
For everyone in Europe who now got excited about this band, you can get even more excited because the band will be touring around Europe from February until April, of course there will be a lot of concerts in their home country, Great Britain. Luckily, they are also playing a show here in Cologne after their last show was completely sold out, so were the other two shows in Germany.
Leave me a comment, spread the word and of course enjoy listening to this fantastic band!
Thanks alot for reading and following.
Beirut
Monna Pomona
One of his very first song under the name of ‘Beirut’ and also one of Zach Condon’s most beautiful and most melodic songs he has ever made.
Happy New Year everyone!
I thought it was about time to update this for you guys again, the first post of 2010 is a request from a good friend of mine, because we have seen this band live even though we actually didn’t plan to.
In late November we went to see the ‘Editors’ in Cologne and they had two support bands, the first one was ‘Wintersleep’ and were followed by ‘The Maccabees’. My friend and I arrived earlier than we had planed, because since other support bands at previous concert weren’t any good we planed to arrive just in time for the ‘Editors’.
Luckily that plan didn’t work out because the bands were running late so we saw the whole performance of ‘The Maccabees’, which we can be really lucky about in the long run. The band turned out the be a really good live band because the singer Orlando Weeks is gifted with an amazing voice and his fellows Hugo White, Felix White, Rupert Jarvis and Sam Doyle pulled off an amazing show also.
This was also approved by the crowd; a large number of people seemed to really ‘go with the flow’ after a few songs and the atmosphere was really heating up. They also got a really good feedback on lastfm. I will post the link in the link box at the bottom of this article; there you can also download a few free songs of ‘The Maccabees’.
They played the following set, my favourite song turned out to be their opener which was really nice:
1. No kind words 
2. One hand holding
3. Wall of arms
4. Dinosaurs
5. Can you give it
6. Young lions
7. First love
8. William Powers
9. Love you better
Remarkable about this set is that the only played one single song from their debut ‘Colour it in’ called ‘First love’. The rest of their set is from their current record ‘Wall of Arms’ which I personally prefer; my favourite songs from that record are currently ‘No kind words’ and ‘Can you give it’. Both kind of different to each other, but especially ‘No kind words’ seems so different to the rest of the record.
I have never really heard a voice similar to Orlando Weeks but their sound is comparable to other fellow british ‘indie bands’ such as ‘Eight Legs’, ‘The Cribs’ or ‘The Rakes’ even though they unfortunately split up last year. ‘The Maccabees’ might sound like a typical british band which just starts to have their first big gigs and start to be known outside of their country but thanks to their vocalist they are able to distinguish themselves from the ‘british indie sound’ which has brought out so many good bands.
If you want to learn more about the band I added the link to their homepage and to their lastfm page, from there you can access them on myspace, twitter and everything else.
For you lucky people living in the United Kingdom, ‘The Maccabees’ will be touring around the country until the end of February, you shouldn’t miss it!
Leave a comment and spread the word.
