Here’s the lovely new tune A Singer of Songs recently put up on his Tumblr. Perhaps this will be on the set list when we go on our little European tour?
Some songs just pop out. You pick on the guitar or hum in the shower or wrestle with the bed sheets on a sleepless night and all of sudden there it is. Like an unexpected visitor who has brought his or her own booze. They are little surprises that come from places you don’t really know.
Then there are songs that plow their way to you. Slowly. You see them make their way on the horizon and they get closer little by little. Step by step. ‘Shine’ is such a song. The melody fell upon me a year ago in autumn, then some words joined in during a walk in the hills in winter and finally it became a song this past summer. I love sunshine but I am not a great friend of summer. It makes me restless, and sometimes the only way to keep me from scratching walls is to write and record. So here it is: ‘Shine’. An expected visitor.
There will be a lot more soon. I am planning a tour around Europe with Ana Franco, Benjamin Shaw and Jeremy Sroka this coming autumn. I will release a free collection of outtakes and rarities for the occasion. Birdcircus is finishing an album. And I have recently formed a band with a singer I love a lot, and we are working hard on songs and some surprises. It is all coming your way, slowly. Little by little.
The Best Friends with Wolves Club • Don't Look Down (Single)
‘Don’t Look Down’ is being released as a single so people can get a little taste of what The Best Friends With Wolves Club are cooking up for their first full length release, coming out later this fall / winter. And the first taste is both tasty and free. I would write more about it, and maybe even throw in a clever metaphor, but I’m moving to England next week and am a bit short on time for being clever.
Luckily TBFWWC had some time to describe this sweet single:
“’Don’t Look Down’ is another attempt to communicate a real urgency and feeling of immediacy in our music. We’re young men, and I feel like that is the kind of world we live in at this point. A world of right now. A world of screaming and flailing at anything within reach.”
Head over to HI54LOFI RECORDS and check it out / download this brilliant single for free (or jump straight to Bandcamp and do the same.
Me and the Horse I Rode In On • Home and Other Places I'd Like to Visit
If you have yet to treat yourself to Henry’s brilliant ‘Home…’ EP, then there is no better time than right now. Originally just available as a digital download, he now has a limited amount (75) of gorgeous physical CDs up for grabs on his Bandcamp page. I can’t say enough how perfect this EP is, so maybe it is best you just swing by and check it out for yourself.
It’s the perfect time to get in on the MATHIRIO train before some new material comes out later this year.
Sean has been recording new tunes and I haven’t blogged about anything in many moons, so I guess the rest of the post writes itself. Or at least I hope it writes itself, as today is even busier than the others.
Why do the days before a vacation starts have to be so hectic?
One of the tricky things for bands who got used to using Myspace as their main connection point with fans and other artists is, making the leap away from the site invested so much time in to getting to grips with in the first place. It can be a daunting task to scrap what you know and dive into figuring out some thing new, especially since there is never a guarantee that the next ‘new thing’ you try won’t end up being bettered by the next ‘next new thing’. But, at the same time, sinking ships are not safe to ride around on.
Lieven (aka A Singer of Songs) was one of those artists who was reluctant to cut his ties with Myspace and start re-building his online presence else where. This is not because he is an ill equipped dinosaur of a bygone era, he is just one of those artists who does not spend a lot of time online to begin with. He’s also been busy. But he is also a friend. And friends don’t let friends exist solely on Myspace. So I sent Lieven an email and told him that I would get him set up properly on a few of the ‘essential sites’, and I would also hook him up with an official website.
Part of the motivation for this —besides getting Lieven’s music living in a nicer apartment— was to share with others what we did and what we used. And maybe go a bit into detail on how something was setup and why. It might just be me, but I find it helpful when people share these sorts of things. But I’ll save the ‘detail’ for some other posts and just give a quick run down of what we were able to knock out in 2 days:
Got his BandPage tab setup for his Facebook page (BandPage uses the tracks you have on your Soundcloud page and can even import your Tumblr posts)
Built an OFFICIAL WEBSITE that automagically: pulls in his feeds from Facebook and Tumblr; pulls in his music from Bandcamp and Soundcloud; and uses a custom domain (all for only $30 a year, using Flavors).
Anyways, I’ll probably post more about some of these above sites in future blog posts (if the rapture doesn’t muck things up), as I think they are all great sites and I know that if I wasn’t really aware of any of them, I’d dig if someone pointed them out to me (plus it gives me an extra excuse to try and learn how to use them better / smarter).
If you use any of the above sites, maybe swing by Lievens pages and say hello / like / follow. He’s as good a person as he is a musician.
Here is a video that Aubben (aka Craven Canary) and Lieven (aka A Singer of Songs) recorded back in the autumn of last year, a video that I have been meaning to share for quite some time. They recorded the track in preparation for their first show together, in a house somewhere in Tennessee. And then, a little after that house show, the three of us met up in the windy city. Oh nostalgia, where have you been?
The song was originally recorded with Hollie (aka Tiny Ruins) handling the vocals, but both versions cause equal amounts of goose bumps.
I decided to put together a little sampler of some of the great tunes and artists that are currently involved with whatever it is that HI54LOFI RECORDS is. The sampler contains a track from each of our current friendlies and the whole thing has been mixed into two sides of music. In practice, putting it on should feel a bit like putting on a record. There is no jumping around from track to track; each side is 25 minutes + and has to be listened to in the order it comes in. There is even a slight touch of crackle and fuzz. The whole thing is a free download (or you can ‘pay if you want’) and it comes with a sexy PDF booklet.
Listen to the album below, listen to the album over on HI54LOFI RECORDS, listen on Soundcloud, or just jump straight to Bandcamp and download the whole thing for free right now.
This compilation was original put together for the cool German online music rag Sonic Reducer, as they were doing a little feature on us. Happy 20th of April to you all, and remember… sharing is caring, so pass it along to your friends.
The Best Friends with Wolves Club • Cities Vanishing
We are super stoked to announce the latest The Best Friends With Wolves Club release. Cities Vanishing EP was recorded during the winter of 2011, during a two night stay in a cabin in Northern Ontario. Although the true recording landscape was that of a forest in the dead of winter, it really does sound like the EP is coming from an isolated radio station somewhere in outer space. TBFFWC have always had a hint of darkness to their lyrics, though this EP even sounds a bit darker than their previous work (the lovely female vocals come courtesy of the talented Craven Canary).
You can listen to the whole thing over on HI54LOFI RECORDS or you can jump straight to TBFWWC Bandcamp page where you can download the EP for the low price of free.
Today is the day that Colateral Soundtrack’s Collage EP is ‘officially’ released. It was actually available yesterday, but if you happened to miss out on hearing about it then, now is your chance to remedy that. The whole thing is a free download and wicked. And if you happen to live in an area still affected by winter, putting this EP on your headphones will actually help melt the snow.
This Mexican artist is releasing a fantastic album called Collage officially tomorrow. Which is a rather fitting name as it’s an album made of various sounds ranging from some of the best latin drums I’ve heard to classic sound bites. Think latin Monster Rally; where Monster Rally is to tropical as Colateral Soundtrack is to spicy latin flavor.
This album is best listened to front to back though each track works quite well on it’s own. ‘Me enamoro cuando…’ meaning “I fall in love when…” with the track ‘Buen dia’.
![Me enamoro cuando...[con Apache O'raspi] - Clltrlsndtrck](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ligwqkNshN1qzn099_1320169591_cover.jpg)
