Interesting mix of painting, illustration, music, film & more on Vahram Muradyan’s website.
vahrammuradyan.com (Thanks, Vahram!)
Posted in Art
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Fat Freddy’s Drop– the acclaimed New Zealand outfit who make a sweet blend of jazz, funk, dub, reggae and soul– have announced a new single, Pull The Catch, which is out on 1 December 2008 through Kartel. The track was allegedly inspired by an early morning fishing trip (?!) and will be proceeded by an album, Big BW, in Spring 2009. European tour dates have also been announced. Links below for more details.
“A sunny, reggae-infused taster of things to come “Pull The Catch” is idiosyncratic FFD, which draws on the band¹s unique lifestyle and laidback outlook on life. Much like “Cay’s Crays”, from their award winning debut album “B.O.A.T.S.”, “Pull The Catch” was born out of a fishing trip in their idyllic setting of New Zealand’s South Island. A spot of pre-dawn fishing, with vocalist Dallas, and his uncle led to the group returning from their trip singing an almost fully formed song, which was recorded immediately in their conveniently placed beachside studio.”
↓ MP3: Fat Freddy’s Drop: “Flashback” (128kbps)
Tour dates + music @ myspace.com/fatfreddysdropnz
Fat Freddy’s Drop @ AmazonMP3 / iTunes
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Hustle Simmons are a Philly based duo who recently dropped their self-titled LP; a must-check release for any true-school heads. The promo video for single The Run Down is dope; it has an early Dilated Peoples type vibe complete with pummeling beat and solid rhyme delivery. 4.5/5
myspace.com/hustlesimmonsmusic
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The searing gospel, gushing organs and straight-up Americana of Alberta Cross cries out ‘Nashville’ or ‘Neil Young protégés’, and the last thing you’d expect to find behind the bluesy swagger of tracks like The Thief & The Heartbreaker is a band of straight-talking Europeans.
But that’s how it is. Swede Petter Ericson Stakee and Londoner Terry Wolfers met through a chance busking encounter (”one day I turn up and there is this tall bloke with a hat and long dark coat busking in my spot”) and went on to form Alberta Cross, with Sam Kearney, Austin Beede and Alec Higgins filling out the band’s line-up.
With a couple of acclaimed releases at their back (the 2007 EP Leave Us Or Forgive Us and 2008’s mini-album The Heartbreaker & The Thief) the band have relocated to the US and are now sitting pretty as part of the Ark Recordings roster, with a slew of US and UK (supporting indie megaliths Oasis) tour dates ensuring plenty of converts to their New World sound.
////////
earz-mag.com: I understand Petter (Ericson Stakee) and Terry (Wolfers) were the driving force behind Alberta Cross forming. How you two meet and what made you want to make music?
Petter Ericson Stakee: “We met in London’s beautiful east end.”
Terry Wolfers: ”I would go out busking almost every day to get a bit of cash and had managed to find a couple of great spots where people would be quite generous. One day I turn up and there is this tall bloke with a hat and long dark coat busking in my spot. At first I thought this guys gonna get a smack. As he started singing I thought, wow this bloke can really sing! So I decided to wait and hear a bit more before I confronted him.”
“After he had done a couple of songs I approached Petter and really wasn’t concerned about the spot anymore but was he writing any of his own material. And so it began. We didn’t really start the band with the idea of getting a record deal, (we) just wanted to write great music as most of the bands playing around at that time were more about riffs and dance beats, we felt we were more about soulful songs with beautiful melodies.”
earz-mag.com: The more obvious influences in Alberta Cross’ music are Americana, country and folk. Are there any bands that people would be surprised to see on your list of influences?
TW: “I don’t think you can be surprised by what artists get influenced by, you can take influence from every area of life! Growing up you hear so much music, from the stuff your parents, grandparents listen to; your brothers and sisters, music at school, radio and tv. It covers so many genres of music over a great amount of time. For example the classical violinist Nigel Kennedy is influenced by rock, especially Jimi Hendrix. Great artists and musicians will take influence from everywhere.”
Read the rest of Cross-country: Alberta Cross
Posted in Interviews & Music
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Simon Wild is an illustrator from Suffolk UK with tonnes of lovely work at his portfolio.
SimonWild.com (Thanks, Simon!)
Posted in Art
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Jeremiah Ketner seems to get better and better! If you live around Chicago in the US I wholly reccommend his upcoming solo show “Morning Showers” at the Melanee Cooper Gallery. Opening reception is on November 7, 5-8pm, and the exhibition runs until December.
Previously:
Jeremiah Ketner presents: Source Material
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One Day at a Time: new music from ex-Sneaker Pimp Kelli Ali. Photo: Laura Jade
This has been a good couple of weeks for new music! Kicking off the podcast we have the awesome Max Richter-produced One Day at a Time by ex-Sneaker Pimp Kelli Ali, followed up with new music by Lone, School of Seven Bells, Dutch hip-hop-gamer Hayzee and loads more.
Tracklisting
1 - Kelli Ali - One Day at a Time - Rocking Horse [One Little Indian LP]
2 - Lone - A Ridge Between Mountains - Cluster Dreams [Dealmaker EP]
3 - School of Seven Bells - Half Asleep - Alpinisms [Ghostly International LP]
4 - Hayzee - Press Start - The Next Level EP [Self Released EP]
5 - Ghislain Poirier - No More Blood feat. Face-T (Hudson Mohawke remix) [Ninja Tune EP]
6 - Hauschka - Barfuss Durch Gras - Ferndorf - [FatCat LP]
7 - Speaker Bite Me - Starcake (Loppen) - Live Recordings 2001-2002 [Self Released LP]
8 - Nobody Presents Blank Blue - Sonic What! (Acoustic) - Dive [Ubiquity EP]
Information
The earz-mag.com podcast runs every second wednesday delivering a dose of interesting new music from around the world’s mainstream and underground music scenes. Mp3 files are encoded at 112kbps.
You can subscribe to the podcast in your preferred newsreader using this rss feed, or subscribe in iTunes by going to “Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast” in your iTunes menu and pasting in the feed URL ( http://earz-mag.com/feed/podcast ). Support the artists involved by purchasing music at iTunes or AmazonMP3.
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Weegie(ish) indie baladeers Frightened Rabbit are about to release a live album– the oddly-titled ‘Liver! Lung! FR!’– which was recorded at the Captain’s Rest in Glasgow this July. The whole thing is pretty much all listenable over at the FatCat Records site, so enjoy feasting your ears on some rather genius arthouse indie.
Bad news for anyone not in the Americas though– although the album is released there in a mere two weeks, the official date for a UK & Rest of World release is March 2009 (?!!). To keep you moist until then here’s some grimey PUNKCAST footage from FR’s first ever US show in 2007. We also interviewed Scott Hutchison back in September August.
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BREAKFAST CLUB: commissioned by Entertainment Weekly. I caught up with Los Angeles based illustrator, zine-maker and author of several graphic books, Mark Todd. Between illustrating for clients including New York Times, Rolling Stone and Spin Magazine, Mark has pursued his unique visual style through zines, comiccs and graphic books. He frequently collaborates with his wife and fellow illustrator Esther Pearl Watson. For more info check marktoddillustration.com and funchicken.com.
MS: How did you get into drawing / illustration? Were you creative as a child?
MT: “Like a lot of kids growing up in the late 70’s and early 80’s in the U.S., things like comics, the Star Wars craze and heavy metal hair bands had a huge influence on me and my friends. One of the earliest memories of drawing was when my dad showed me how he draw war scenes as a kid. Army men, airplanes bombing, etc. I was probably about 7. Then I drew a lot because of Star Wars, the death star, space fights, etc. When I was 15 or so, I got into collecting comics and that whole dungeons and dragons role playing thing. I wasn’t into that so much but I really liked creating my own comic characters, and giving them stats like the D and A games. Agility, strength, powers, weapons, etc. So I was pretty creative a kid. I think I knew that I wanted to draw for a living for a long time. I remember telling kids in my 6th grade class that I was going to be an artist and that I was going to art school after high school.”
MS: What was the transition to adult illustrator like-– did those influences from childhood– the comics, the superheros, etc– stay with you?
MT: “They did. At first I tried to be what I thought a real artist was. I majored in fine art and created really bad, dramatic works full of emotion and angst. It wasn’t until a bit later that I started to look back, referencing childhood imagery, etc. When the chairman of art center college at the time, Phil Hayes, discovered that I was from Las Vegas, he really encouraged me to go with that. To pull my work from what I grew up with: the wedding chapels, neon lights, all the gaudy and tacky stuff. It became a great jumping off point. I would go back home to visit, take pictures, talk to friends and create art from it all. [>>]”
BAD ASSES: illustrations from Mark's series, now a book out on BlueQ.
“[>>] I rediscovered my old comic collection in my bedroom closet, old sketchbooks of the superhero stuff. The superhero stuff I have been doing lately, the altered comic covers, etc. are really pretty recent. The last few years or so. My wife, Esther Watson, also an artist, and I both seem to be extremely influenced by our surroundings. When we moved a few hours north of New York city for a bit, into a big old house on a few acres of farmland, our styles changed again. I started paintings flowers and Esther began her landscape series. Before that we had lived in Brooklyn and were painting grittier, rougher things. Now that we are in Los Angeles, it has evolved again. I think the whole film industry out here has something to do with it. I feel that the work i am creating now is my best yet. And thats a good feeling. I am glad that I am still really excited about what I create. It’s hard to always keep that going.”
Read the rest of Interview: Mark Todd
Posted in Art & Interviews
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Sian Alice Group is the brainchild of multi-instrumentalists Rupert Clerveaux and Ben Crook, with the group’s über-talented line-up completed by Sian Ahern (vocals), Sasha Vine (piano, vocals, violin), Andy Ingle (guitars) and Douglas Hart (bass). The group’s debut album 59:59– a title matched by the record’s length in minutes and seconds– is a wonderfully intoxicating dart of leftfield post-rock, which fuses a range of disparate genres with startling success. Moments of drone-inspired ambience (as on Interlude 19′39”, As the Morning Light) sit comfortably alongside the psychedelic dirge of Way Down To Heaven and Motionless, glimpses of free jazz / improv (on the introduction to When…) and the spaced out aesthetic of When… and Heartless. With 59:59 Sian Alice Group present an advanced listening that contemporaries Portishead, Sigur Ros and Radiohead would be proud of.
↓ MP3: Sian Alice Group - Larsen B
Purchase Sian Alice Group - 59:59 at iTunes
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