 |  Music: Music blog | guardian.co.ukArticles published by guardian.co.uk Music about: Music blog http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog рекомендовать друзьям >> |
- New music: Jai Paul – BTSTU
One year on, this internet hit is released in its finished version. And the phenomenon continues ...
When Jai Paul's demo of BTSTU emerged last March it sent the music blogging community into meltdown. Superlatives were thrown around like confetti and – as with any good blog phenomenon – a lack of information about the song's creator only fuelled the interest. Made in under an hour on a basic computer program (and featuring a strange sax solo on the outro simply because that was the only instrument his friend could play), it was only emailed to blogs after Paul's brother heard it and got excited. Fast forward a year and the song has emerged in its finished form via XL Recordings, who won a signing war with practically every other label. So why the fuss?
The brilliance of BTSTU is the way it juxtaposes elements that shouldn't really work together – the way the falsetto vocals ride over the big drum claps, or the big juddering synth riff that rumbles under a gorgeously melodic chorus. The finished version isn't a million miles away from the demo, but the devil's in the detail, with just a few extra elements thrown in for good measure (the way the beat drops out suddenly at 1:34, just before he sings "but ..."). Expect big things.
BTSTU is available to buy on iTunes now.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Music Weekly podcast: Brother
Brother are our guests on this week's Music Weekly podcast. They talk to Michael Hann - who, like Brother, hails from Slough - about how their music is overlooked by writers who concentrate on the image, the provocative quotes, and comparisons with Oasis. He finds they're lovers not haters, and are nice boys really.
In the studio, Alexis is joined by Jude Rogers and Rebecca Nicholson to review new tracks by Fleet Foxes, Austra and Danger Mouse's collaboration with Danielle Lupi and Norah Jones.
You can read the article about library music Jude wrote and refers to here, and as Rebecca referred to lots of current artwork including triangles, please do leave your suggestions on new cover sleeves that feature geometric shapes on them in the comments below.
Talk to us by following us on Twitter and like our page on Facebook too.
Переслать - Readers recommend: songs about animals
Have a prowl through your music collection and let us know the songs that best reflect the wonders of the animal kingdom
As the Guardian's "unsettling animal picture of the week" slot demonstrates, we have a love-hate relationship with our fellow creatures. We find them frightening and fascinating. They can be our friends and companions, but also our enemies. And – let me be frank – some of them are delicious to eat.
The way animals move, their strange habits, their unpredictability: beasts astonish humankind, a fact reflected in the music we make. Sometimes musicians use recordings of animals, their noises and rhythms, as part of their compositions. Some songwriters, regrettably, have become overly sentimental about pets.
So have a prowl through your music collection and press the "paws" button on the songs that reflect the wonders and mysteries of the animal kingdom. And let us know about them by posting a comment below.
The toolbox:
* Listen to others' suggestions and add yours to a collaborative Spotify playlist .
* Previously on Readers Recommend.
* The Marconium (blog containing a wealth of data on RR, including the songs that are "zedded")
* Guide to "donds", "zedded", and other strange words used by some of the RR regulars (courtesy of the Marconium).
* The 'Spill (blog for the RR community)Please do:
* Post your nominations before midday on Tuesday if you wish them to be considered.
* Write a few lines advocating the merits of your choices.But please don't:
* Post more than one third of the lyrics of any song.
* Dump lists of nominations. If you must post more than two or three at once, please attempt to justify your choices.Here are the results of last week's Readers recommend: opening album tracks.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Will Lady Gaga take the Easter No 1?
The release of Lady Gaga's single Judas at Easter hasn't caused much of a stir. Has religious controversy in pop music run out of steam?
Speculation over the Christmas No 1 is a well-loved annual tradition, but spare a thought for its forgotten sibling, the Easter No 1. Despite Easter involving a Sunday, from a pop perspective it's nowhere – the province of evangelical groups trying to hoof the likes of Delirious into the Top 10. Even Sir Cliff won't get involved. Raise a glass this Easter, then, to Lady Gaga, whose Judas is that rarity – a shot at the Easter charts that actually has something to do with the season.
In this respect it's Gaga's answer to Like a Prayer. Madonna's impassioned meditation on sex and faith was released a month before Easter, and was topping charts worldwide by the time Holy Week came round. The similarities don't extend to the music, though. Judas comes across like a demented remix of Bad Romance – verses of angry metallised shouting, which lurch into a chorus straight out of the Boney M playbook. It's a mess, but an oddly energising and enjoyable one – something that sounds quick and scrappy from an act forever in danger of appearing too calculated. It also seems to fit into a minor tradition of quasi-blasphemous Eurodisco – or maybe it's just that Army of Lovers' preposterous 1992 hit Crucified sounds so immense that I want it to be a tradition all by itself.
Whatever its doubtful charms, Judas hasn't created much of a storm. The biggest Gaga story this week has been her bizarre album artwork – the singer's face Photoshopped on to the front of a motorbike – and her new single has been met with a comparative shrug. Nobody seems particularly bothered, let alone offended, by it. Which is odd, because your first impression of Judas is of a record desperate to be talked about.
This week's destruction of Andres Serrano's Piss Christ by French fundamentalists suggests that in the wider culture, controversial religious art can still be a flashpoint for anger and confrontation. The combination of pop, God, flesh and sin ought to, on paper, get people excited. But Judas hardly fits the bill – perhaps it's too confused to be a talking point, or simply not good enough. Or perhaps the idea of religious controversy in pop has run out of steam.
The glory days of doubt in pop were the 1980s – not just Madonna, but the "satanic panic" around heavy metal and classics of agonised sixth-form theology such as XTC's Dear God and Depeche Mode's Blasphemous Rumours. The XTC track jettisons the band's typical knotty cleverness for a direct lyric and a winsome children's chorus. I find the results toxic, but it became their best-known song in the US. It's no coincidence that doubt-ridden pop such as this found an audience when rock was at its most generally messianic, in the years directly after Live Aid when the world's problems could apparently be solved by a furrowed rock star brow and a beseeching lyric.
Sincere longing for redemption is part of pop's DNA, something it inherited from gospel. What happened to rock in the 80s, though, was that its feelings of religiosity – the sense of scale and awe, as well as that yearning for salvation – turned into something quite abstract. The catalyst was U2: thoughtful Christians whose music pulsed with an unfulfilled sense of something vast and just out of reach. But that something might not have been God; it might have been America, or rock music itself.
Religious feeling in rock turned into a mirror. By the 90s yearning was an end in itself, a kind of spiritual effects pedal applied by bands such as Verve and Spiritualized to puff up their music. Even by 1992, what was striking about that Army of Lovers single was that its intentional kitsch seemed more refreshing and honest than the unintentional kind rock had sunk into. In short, religious imagery in pop – whether used to resonate or shock – feels exhausted, and there's not much Lady Gaga can do to shift that. Which means that the best pop song about Judas remains Jesus Christ Superstar by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. Heaven help us.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Jahan e Khusrau's magic Sufi music
An ancient music whose purpose is to make listeners more gentle, the World Sufi Music festival was in England this year
The enchanting sound of one the oldest instruments in the world, a ney, or reed flute, is echoing into the candlelit air, while on stage a woman adorned in beautiful scarves spins, imitating whirling dervishes. Welcome to Jahan e Khusrau, the ninth World Sufi Music festival. Staged annually in India, this is the first time it's been held in England, at the Southbank Centre's magnificent Alchemy festival.
What is it about this ancient music that cuts across geography as well as time, inspiring artists all over the world, from Taken by Trees to Mercan Dede, Youssou N'Dour to the Master Musicians of Joujouka? According to Muzaffar Ali, the festival's director:
The essential thing about Sufi music is that it can bridge the gulf between east and west. The philosophy of [13th century Sufi mystic] Rumi is that the soul is universal. You can't confront Sufism with fundamentalism. It is a delicate thing, like the colours of a rainbow; you can't touch it or it vanishes. Its purpose is to make you more gentle and tolerant; beyond that it has no purpose.
Even if you don't understand the lyrics, the music needs no translation. Its great emotional force conveys love in all its shades, from the yearning for love to the anguish of love lost, from human to divine love, expressed in the impressively versatile voices of singers such as Hans Raj Hans and Azalea Ray, and in the haunting sounds of the instruments.
In Sufi Soul: the Mystic Music of Islam, a fascinating film screened at the festival, it is emphasised that Sufism is "peace-loving, pluralistic and tolerant", an antidote to negative stereotypes about Islam. Although Islamic hardliners condemn music as a distraction from God, forcing Sufis underground, music and poetry are intrinsic to Sufism. In the film, Mercan Dede explains how during his first gig, he put the sound of the ney against techno beats, and realised how the sound of the ancient instrument could reach any audience. Both the style and content of Sufi music cut across boundaries: the rhythms of Sufi drums, for instance, lend themselves to mixing with a variety of other musical styles.
The Sufi creed is to bring solace to the human heart and a few days spent at Jahan e Khusrau does indeed inspire a sense of fellow-feeling. When someone pushes into me on the tube ride home, I smile instead of scowl.
The Alchemy festival continues at the South Bank until 25 April.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Remembering TV on the Radio's Gerard Smith
The bassist's death has shocked fans and journalists alike. But as outsiders, we are unlikely to understand the grief felt by a band when they lose a member
I only ever met TV on the Radio's Gerard Smith once. It was three years ago in the Muzak-scented lobby of a west London hotel. Smith chucked the odd word into my hour-long interview with the band, but it was only when the conversation wandered towards the twin behemoths of Funkadelic and Led Zeppelin that he really perked up, remembering how he inherited LPs from older family members and how important those second-hand pieces of plastic became to him. When he did speak the rest of the band just let him talk – I remember thinking perhaps it didn't happen that often. Perhaps they just wanted to sit back and enjoy it.
I thought of that moment again this morning when I heard that Gerard had died, aged just 34, from lung cancer. There are few professions that expect young men to spend as much highly pressurised time together as music, and recently TOVTR singer Tunde Adebimpe told me how the band had nearly split after relentless touring. But he also said that however bad it got these were the only other four people in the world he'd want to talk to, and I think that cuts to the heart of how painful it is when a band loses a member and how unlikely we are to ever really understand how they feel.
It's a concept worn smooth by overuse, but the best sort of bands really are like gangs. They have their own language, mannerisms, tics, in-jokes and ways of dealing with the constant influx of label people, journalists and fans. When someone suddenly dies, all those outsiders want to know how they feel about everything right now. But that's impossible for them to say.
Thirty-one years ago Paul McCartney's immediate (media) reaction to John Lennon's murder was to say, "It's a drag," a phrase that, when spoken, was full of melancholy, but in print sounds flippant. A few weeks ago, Dave Grohl was asked about the death of his former Nirvana bandmate Kurt Cobain. Even 17 years later he still found it hard to talk about and was, in his attempt to preserve something for himself, brilliantly honest.
"I'm not really telling you the truth right now," he told a BBC reporter. "You're a journalist, and this is going out on the radio. You're not really entitled to know how I feel about these things because they're mine."
I once interviewed Chris Blackwell, who founded Island Records and signed Bob Marley. He told me that he only has one picture of him and Marley together (both felt it important that Marley wasn't photographed with his – white – label boss) and that's a copy. The original was destroyed in a fire and the photographer, sensing a serious payday, won't sell him the negative. Three decades certainly haven't dulled how Blackwell feels about his biggest star's death, at 36. "I will always remember Bob as being a fantastic person," Blackwell told me. "He had incredible charisma – when he walked in a room you knew about it. And he was very moral, he lead quietly and by example. The truth is I loved him very much indeed. It still feels ridiculous to me how he was taken so young."
Most of the time we – as outsiders – will only ever glimpse the pain felt when a band-member dies. But Danny Thompson – who played alongside folk legend John Martyn for years – was still genuinely upset by the singer-songwriter's death when I interviewed him a year later. Aged 70, he sat in his kitchen staring at a picture of the two of them as young men, arms flung around each other, their eyes lit up after what must have been a great gig. As he looked, he spoke as honestly as anyone could possibly do when someone they've never met before asks them about the death of a loved one. "Look at him," Thompson said, obviously moved. "Just look at my curly-haired mate ..."
Rest in peace, Gerard. It was good to meet you.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - New music: Nerina Pallot – All Bets Are Off (live)
This simple and affecting performance should hopefully put Pallot's career back on track
Nerina Pallot's career to date hasn't exactly been smooth. Initially signed to Polydor, her debut album was released in 2001 to limited success and just before a major tour the planned reissue was scrapped and she was dropped. For her second album she launched her own label – funded by remortgaging her house – only to then have a hit single (Everybody's Gone to War) and her previous album re-released by Warner Music (Pallot called the new mixes "spangly"). For the follow-up she was back on her own label and a planned trip to write with other songwriters (including Linda Perry) proved fruitless. Following writing credits on songs for Kylie Minogue (including her last single, Better Than Today), Diana Vickers and Joe McElderry, Pallot is now signed to Geffen and her Bernard Butler-produced album, Year of the Wolf, is out on 30 May. This live version of the gorgeous All Bets Are Off strips away all extraneous detail, leaving just Pallot and her piano.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать
 | Я - МАМА! Библия начинающим родителям Ваш путеводитель в ожидании малыша, во время родов, на протяжении первого года жизни и далее… Статьи к прочтению актуальные в различные важные периоды жизни Присоединиться → |
| rss2email.ru |
| rss2email.ru | отписаться: http://www.rss2email.ru/unsubscribe.asp?c=90855&u=756462&r=477547156 управление подпиской: http://www.rss2email.ru/manage.asp партнерская программа: http://partner.rss2email.ru/?pid=1 |
