In 1992, Eno talking about his interference with Roxy Music and his musical career, said: “As a result of going into a subway station and meeting saxophonist Andy Mackay, I joined Roxy Music, and, as a result of that, I have a career in music. If I’d walked ten yards farther, on the platform, or missed that train, or been in the next carriage, I probably would have been an art teacher now”. In life turning on a particular point to left or to right, sometimes makes the difference. Eno took the right turn and went on his own way. He didn’t get along with Bryan Ferry, he quit the band on completing the promotion tour for the band’s second album, “For Your Pleasure” in 1973, but he becomes an important musician, composer, record producer, music theorist, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.
Eno’s solo work has been extremely influential, pioneering ambient and generative music, innovating production techniques, and emphasizing “theory over practice”.He also introduced the concept of chance music to popular audiences partly through collaborations with other musicians.By the end of the 1970s, Eno had worked with David Bowie on the seminal “Berlin Trilogy,” helped popularise the American punk rock band Devo and the punk-influenced “No Wave” genre, and worked frequently with Harold Budd, John Cale, Cluster, Robert Fripp and David Byrne, with whom he produced the influential “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” in 1981. He produced and performed on three albums by Talking Heads, including “Remain in Light” in 1980 and produced seven albums for U2, including the famous “The Joshua Tree” (1987), and worked on records by James, Laurie Anderson, Coldplay, Depeche Mode, Paul Simon, Grace Jones and Slowdive, among many others. Read more Brian Eno with Rick Holland – Drums Between The Bells (2011)
2011
Helms Alee – Weatherhead (2011)
Helms Alee were formed in 2007 by Ben Verellen (of the Harkonen, Roy, and These Arms Are Snakes), Dana James and Hozoji Margullis. “Weatherhead” is a boiling mixture of fury and beauty melting together vibrating and smooth acoustic elements and raging post-hardcore riffings, delivering perfect balance of what we mainly labeled as “alternative rock” and post-metal. Dana James have a powerful and expressive voice, she both singing and howling while Ben Verellen sometimes bring some extreme raw vocals as support. “Weatherhead” sounds cutting, dirty, full of energy, but still, they built in smooth and beautiful moments which gives a gloomy shining and more dynamics to their songs and this powerful album.
The trio sliding between styles and genres, switching from metal to psychedelic, from hardcore to folk, but they do all this extremely fluidly. Read more Helms Alee – Weatherhead (2011)
Thievery Corporation – Culture of Fear (2011)
While Brits have Massive Attack, Americans have Thievery Corporation. In 1996 Thievery Corporation released “Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi”, their debut album, and with it they defined an entire genre of music and crystallized their distinct “outernational sound” aesthetic. Thievery Corporation was formed in the summer of 1995 at Washington D.C.’s Eighteenth Street Lounge by Rob Garza and Eric Hilton. Over the next 14 years the duo would write and record four more critically acclaimed studio albums (“The Mirror Conspiracy” – 2000, “The Richest Man in Babylon” – 2002, “The Cosmic Game” – 2005, and “Radio Retaliation” – 2008), three remix albums (“Abductions and Reconstructions” – 1999, “Babylon Rewound” – 2004, and “Versions” – 2006), and various DJ mixes and film soundtracks (“The Outernational Sound” – 2004, and the recent Babylon Central Film Soundtrack). On the album “The Cosmic Game” featured high-profile guest singers including Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction, David Byrne, and Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips.
In 2006, the band also recorded “Sol Tapado” for the AIDS benefit album Silencio=Muerte: Red Hot + Latin Redux produced by the Red Hot Organization. In 2006 they toured around the United States, playing at Lollapalooza and they were the opening act on August 1, 2009 for Sir Paul McCartney at FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland. Read more Thievery Corporation – Culture of Fear (2011)
Anitek – Mind Express (2011)
Flowing and glowing, Anitek brings to the surface a smooth and colorful mixture of jazz, trip hop, downtempo where classy sounds and modern textures are overlapping and completed each other. Dave Nunez aka Anitek is a Trip Hop Producer from Morristown, New Jersey. He has been playing piano for 15 years, along with cello, clarinet, guitar, bass, drums and is also a scratch DJ. His main influences are Rachmaninoff, Dvorak, Medeski Martin, DJ Krush, Bonobo, Amon Tobin, DJ Shadow, Rjd2, Bonobo, Photek, Danny Elfman, John Williams and Fat Jon. He often incoperates genres such as Orchestral, jazz, funk, Electronica, Lounge, Ambient, and Underground Hip hop into his music, creating a lush, melodic Soundtrack for either lyricists, commercials or film, but also writes classic music as well. Read more Anitek – Mind Express (2011)
Echofikibausik – Addicts of chillout (2011)
Echofikibausik comes from Kraków, Poland and mixing dubstep, dub, downtempo, raggae, jazz, chillout, trip-hop, ambient and nu-jazz into an exciting sonar cocktail. You can grab for free his latest release from his Bandcamp page for free, this smooth and groovy five track album entitled “Addicts of chillout”.
I didn’t manage to dig out any background information about Echofikibausik, but the music is quite enough. “Addicts of chillout” is a slow glowing, sparking material with smooth jazz perfume and nice electro and ambiental textures. Read more Echofikibausik – Addicts of chillout (2011)
Proyecto Mirage – Slaves Of Capital (2011)
Reminds me of Atari Teenage Riot and their latest release, “Is This Hyperreal”, “Sleves Of Capital” is the 6th full-length album by this duo from Madrid, Spain, consist of Alicia H. Willen and Francisco Planellas. Proyecto Mirage was founded in 1990 and took off from the sound and style of the classic electro-pop bands of that time. Influences comes from bands such as Esplendor Geometrico, Whitehouse, SPK and in the journey to found they own sound, Proyecto Mirage merged both pop and industrial orientations of industrial music with drum´n´bass, techno and Rock elements delivering harsh, hard electronic music.
Once again, the spanish duo delivered an excellent album full of noisy, extremely explosive techno-industrial, complemented with classic ebm, hardcore techno, 80’s electropop and contemporary electronica components. Read more Proyecto Mirage – Slaves Of Capital (2011)
Coerce – Ethereal Surrogate Saviour (2011)
Coerce was formed in late 1999 in Deal, Kent, UK by Adam Smart – Vocals, James Wells – Guitars, Chris Williams – Bass and Liam Foy – drums and hey registered the name Coerce with The Worldwide Band Name Registry, still, there’s a band using the same name from Australia… a band split between Adelaide and Melbourne formed in 2008 by Mike Deslandes, Matt Adey, Karl Roberts and Justin Bond. The Brits declare on their MySpace page that they are playing Alternative / Hardcore / Metal while the Australians defined them self playing Big Beat/German pop/Tropical…
While there’s quite much confusion – an lack of information – on both bands pages and once again, somebody chosen a name before checking out if the name is available, I take no responsibilities for any further misunderstanding.
“Ethereal Surrogate Saviour” it’s quite off of Tropical/Big Beat, actually its bring to the surface a contorted, crushy and sometimes quite chaotic and gloomy post/experimental metal with roots back to hardcore but flavored with psychedelic and progressive spices being inspired by different bands from King Crimson to Tool and Pantera. find an unique path between progressive rock and metal and the noisy, stoner/doom infiltrated post-hardcore and merging these different styles into one they came up with something quite special and exciting.
It’s not an easy listening, but life it ain’t easy and in times when almost everybody is nothing but “a copy of an imitation”, Coerce sounds absolutely refreshing, they comes like a salvation against monotony and uniformity. Read more Coerce – Ethereal Surrogate Saviour (2011)
Omega Lithium – Kinetik (2011)
“Kinetik” is the second full length album by this four piece Croatian band and they melt down dark, epic metal into the Rammstain masterd, so-called Neue Deutsche Härte industrial metal while the band is fronted by female singer Mya Mortensen. Her band-mates are Malice Rime – Guitars and Synthesizers, Zoltan Harpax – Bass and Torsten Nihill – Drums, Percussion. The band was formed in 2007 in Umag, and is signed to Drakkar Entertainment, a part of Sony BMG.
The band’s debut album, “Dreams in Formaline”, was released in 2009 and its first single, “Stigmata”, was played on the MTV rock chart and peaked to the 4 place on the MTV Adria Rock chart, receiving a constant airplay for more than 2 months. The video also appeared on other European and worldwide TV stations in their daily charts. On YouTube Stigmata received more than a quarter of a million views, which is the highest viewing number for a debut song in this genre. Read more Omega Lithium – Kinetik (2011)
DIY – Burn Studio
I just discover it – via Victor Love, thankx bro! – but it seems pretty fun and might be very useful for some interested in new experiences to create music. Burn Studio is an on-line audiotool to play and record music and make remixes of existing and shard track while you – obviously – can share your own stuffs. You can work with Beatbox 8, Beatbox 9 and Machiniste drum-machines, three synthesizers: Pulverisateur, Bassline and Tonematrix, all the useful effects including Tube, Stereodetune, Slope, Reverb, Pitchdelay, Phaser, ParametricEQ, Gate, Flanger, Delay, Crusher, Compressor, Chorus and Rasselbock using audio tracks, samples, midis and the tools you need: Splitter, Merger, Kobolt, Minimixer, Crossfader, Centroid. You can start from a new “empty project” or dive into one of the three existing templates, a Dubstep template by Infyuthsion, a Techno demo by Sandburgen or the Drum ‘n’ Bass demo by Cgman. I had some fun with the noisy Dubstep template for the beginning and I think it’s awesome. Read more DIY – Burn Studio
August Burns Red – Leveler (2011)
Being quite skeptical ’bout everything labeled lately “metalcore”, songs such as “Internal Cannon”, “Cutting the Ties”, “Carpe Diem” and “Salt & Light” from the fourth studio album by American band August Burns Red, convinced me to give them another chance. State that they have been inspired and influenced by bands such as Between the Buried and Me, Misery Signals and Hopesfall, their powerful, technical, filled with heavy breakdowns and groovy riffs and not at least some nice, acoustic or slow passages which offering release and an exotic flavor, is quite the essence of what actually metalcore means now days. Merging some almost traditional heavy metal riffings with intense modern metal with roots back to death metal and adding raw, extreme vocals, August Burns Red comes crushing and this combination of melodious themes with blowing brutality, I had to admit, it’s quite efficient and have some charm. Still, when a million plus one bands are begun doing the same kind of thing, using the same schemes and cliches, don’t really matter how intense they doing it, all the excitement is gone and the thing becomes pretty boring. Some Pantera lyrics came back haunting: “be yourself, by yourself…” Read more August Burns Red – Leveler (2011)
