Here we go with a run down of what was hot this year in music…
10 – Patrick Wolf – Hard Times
Patrick Wolf was not on my radar before I caught his performance at this year’s Great Escape Festival. Hard Times was the 2nd single release from his album ‘The Bachelor’ and makes a statement with lyrics like “mediocrity [is] applauded” and “ignorance is still adored” against a backdrop of rock guitars, celtic strings and electro beats. Wolf is creative, original, musically accomplished and always has something interesting to say.
9 – Frankmusik – Better off as Two
Better off as Two is one of many excellent tunes on Vincent Frank’s debut album ‘Complete Me’. Showcasing his falsetto vocals this also benefits from quirky production and a rousing chorus. He’s also brilliant live and was arguably one of the highlights of Bestival 2009.
8 – Hockey – Song Away
Hailing from Portland Oregon Hockey have been making waves on the festival circuit in Europe throughout the summer and this track is the 3rd release from their debut album ‘’Mind Chaos’’. It might be blatantly commercial but it’s neatly peppered with references to the 80’s and a real toe tapper. I love this band and this track never gets dull.
Christmas songs. Some people love them, and some hate them. There are certainly differences of opinion in the Music Jobs offices as to whether Cliff Richard, Noddy Holder, The Pogues & co. are part of that warm seasonal feeling, or more likely to invoke a baul-baul assault on the purveyor of such torturous material.
We decided to make a Spotify playlist of some of the best / worst / most discussed / most amusing / most disturbing Christmas songs, and, assuming there’s no riot in the offices today, we’d love to hear your views!
Tracklist:
Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas – Stu: Best
Let It Snow – Tara: Best (I’ve included the fantastic Ella Fitzgerald version ~Lee)
Slade’s Merry Christmas Everybody – Matt: Worst; Stu: Best
The Darkness’ Christmas Time – Lee: Best
Clay Aiken’s Merry Christmas With Love – Tammy: Best
The Pogues’ & Kirsty MacColl’s Fairytale of New York – Matt: Best
John Lennon’s Happy Xmas (War is Over) – Matt: Best
John Denver’s Please, Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas) – Tammy: Best
Cliff Richard’s Mistletoe and Wine – Stu: Worst
Rockin Around the Christmas Tree – Tara: Best (the Brenda Lee version, which will forever remind me of a young Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone ~Lee)
Special mention for Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite, which I stumbled across via a twitter link this week. Although unavailable on Spotify, you can check it out here.
Happy (or Harrying?) Holidays,
Lee “I can only bear to hear Christmas songs for one day, and so I do all my shopping on Christmas Eve” Jarvis
Oh the beloved Grammys. Where did it all go wrong? For a start, you have a “Best Alternative Music Album”, which, although it actually has some great and well-deserved nominees in there this year, the title alone makes it sound like it’s something that only sells 200 copies for EMO kids to listen to in their basement. Next… Lady Gaga. Have you actually listened to any of her music? Distictly average, and I’m being kind there. “Ooh, but it’s her style and character too” I hear her fans pout. Well, Roisin Murphy has been doing that for the last decade (including a great performance at Sonar 2008). “Best Electronic / Dance Album”? Let’s not even go there!
Soundcloud is possibly my favourite music website. I use it at least every week for a variety of music purposes. I love the clean feel of the site and the intuitive simple functions. It is such a user-friendly and well evolved website, that it is hard to believe they are just celebrating their 1st birthday. As any kind of musician, label owner, radio / podcast show host and more, Soundcloud is a great way to send and receive music, and it provides an efficient way to distribute, privately or publicly. It is becoming a hugely popular tool, and yet their friendly nature is still seen across the site. In their words, “We’re a few people who moved from Stockholm to Berlin, found some more cool people there and set up a small company to create the best dedicated music site in the world.”
Quick Facts
* SoundCloud is an online audio platform for music professionals that makes sending and receiving music simple and efficient.
* Accounts are accessible to everyone.
* SoundCloud is in use by many of the worlds leading electronic music producers and labels.
* Some people think of SoundCloud as an email application but for music, and with a play button.
* Founded in 2007 by Swedes Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss and based in Berlin–Mitte, Germany.
Kurran and the Wolfnotes debut single ‘Whatabitch’ stands as the perfect introduction to the way that this band have brought an unmistakable noughties twist to the alt-folk sound, with an playful hint of The Strokes complimenting the otherwise straight up trad-sound. With New Yorker Kurran’s faltering, heartbroken croon and textbook Isle of White Festival circa-1968 guitar jangle it’s half medieval minstrel, half basement bar sleaze.
On the subject of the title they’re quick to stress that no one’s calling anyone a bitch, and that the term is used purely in the weary expressional sense, lest the feminists gather at the gates. Kurran explains, “It might not be the most romantic title but it’s about, from a guys perspective anyway, maybe getting the shorter end of a stick. There’s always got to be one person, and in this case it’s me.”
But anyway, they’re bored of talking about how they got together and they hate explaining what their songs are about, but our wolf based icebreakers (Prime example: wolves mate facing away from each other) prompt a more enthusiastic response. So on the cusp of the release of their debut single we invite them, currently recording in a spider infested garage in North London, to ponder what the future holds. Let’s get conceptual. What will the single they release in twenty years sound like compared to this one?
“Well it’ll be after the technological singularity, so you’ll just think of a song and you’ll hear it,” says Kurran, “But then it’s always the same, whenever technology goes too far people go back to the retro thing and we’ll be there shouting, ‘Here come the luddites!’ Just like now I guess, because after nu-rave and that, shall we say blip, fiddles are hot again, which is fine with us.”
Groans echo around the table at the emergence of the term “buzz band” but there’s a general consensus that maybe if they were doing this a few years ago people probably wouldn’t have been sitting up and paying attention. But with the re-emergence of a strong Brit-folk school the luddites become the cool kids, by doing what they do best.
While their sound may lend itself to comparison to a whole host of their contemporaries Kurran doesn’t see his band as a flash in the pan. He’s never more sincere than when he says, “I look and bands like Radiohead who have amazing discographies and I want to be able to look back in twenty years and say, ‘Yeah, every single one of these albums speaks for a part of my life’ where as now, with the hype thing people just churn out songs like… it’s fucking ridiculous. We want to spend a little bit more time on the songs we’ve got, but there’s always that pressure that once the song’s there it’s done, but we want to put the care in now when it’s important. We just want to make sure we’re proud of everything we’ve done and if that takes a little longer then that’s just how it’ll be. It’s all about the music! As original as that sounds.”
“The way I think about it,” says Kurran, “There are a few special people who get the chance to do this as their career and that’s it, that’s our goal, I want to be one of those people. It’s not about fame, it’s just to be able to play music for your whole life. It’s like when I was fifteen and heard NOFX and Rancid and I thought, ‘Woah, those guys are playing and it doesn’t look that hard, friggin sweet, I could probably do that.’ So I did!” With secret influences like that, who’s going to stop him?
Kurran and the Wolfnotes will be on the road with Ex-Lovers during October/November for a co-headline tour;
November
Sun 1st- Edinburgh, Electric Circus
Mon 2nd- Glasgow, King Tuts
Wed 4th- Nottingham, Bodega
Thurs 5th- Birmingham, Hare & Hounds
Fri 6th- Cambridge, Portland Arms
Lost My Dog ‘Connect’ is an opportunity for budding DJs, producers and anybody with an interest in the dance music industry to meet and learn from some the UK finest underground House artists, alongside LMD label bosses and record shop staff.
Lost My Dog has teamed up with legendary record store Swag Records, based in Croydon, London, who have been long-time supporters of the label and who introduced artists such as Nathan Coles, Harold Heath and Nick Dare to LMD.
On the afternoon of Saturday 7th November you can hear sets from Rhythm Plate, Giom, Pete Dafeet, Nick Dare and Terry Francis as well as get their advice on music software, hardware, production tips, DJing and learn how they got their first break.
Also in attendance will be Lost My Dog label bosses Najan Ward and Ian Straker who will be giving advice on how to approach labels, things to consider if you are interested in starting your own label and all aspects of the dance music industry. And of course the hugely experienced Swag Records team will be on hand to talk to and serve up the latest hot 12”s. If you’re looking to work in the dance music industry this is a rare and free event that should definitely not be missed.
Date: Saturday 7th November 2009, 12:00 – 18:00
Location: Swag Records, 42 Station Road, West Croydon, London, CR0 2RB
DJs / Producers:
Rhythm Plate / YSE (Lost My Dog, Winding Road)
Pete Dafeet (Lost My Dog)
Giom (Lost My Dog, Aroma, Blackcherry)
Nick Dare (Lost My Dog, Reform Recordings)
Terry Francis (Fabric, Wiggle)
LMD Label Bosses:
Ian Straker
Najan Ward
Pete Dafeet
plus
Liz, Paul and the Swag Records team.
I hope some of our UK Music Jobs members can check it out!
We offer many ways to showcase and interact here at UK Music Jobs, and I thought I’d cover a little about sharing your music around the website, as well as featuring recent music added by some of our most active members.
As well as from appearing on your profile, recently added mp3s are also featured on our front page and all the key UK Music Jobs site pages – if you contribute regularly you are more likely to attract attention and earn new fans.
The members I have featured below are all fine examples of the value of keeping your profile up to date – adding mp3s, photos, videos, press cuttings and more will make your profile easy to search and attractive to other users and employers to read. Regularly adding info and media means that I am more likely to find you in our network – next time it could be your music shared here and across the UK Music Jobs online profiles!
If you would like to be featured in future UK Music Jobs blog posts, then update your profile regularly and leave a message on my profile wall (another feature that you should use for networking – look out for a future blog post!)
UK Music Jobs recently teamed up with Shoreditch Radio to do some live interviews with acts performing and attending the 1234 Festival in Shoreditch Park.
I am a huge fan of Gary Vaynerchuk, and his words have always resonated with what I try to with music and social media. Well, he recently posted a video blog with the title “Hey Mr DJ”, describing the way that DJs aggregate all the music that is out there and deliver it to you for one particular time of day or mood or party. He then uses the term “DJ” in a broad sense to describe the way that people are always looking for interesting content (not just music, but videos, wine facts, triathlon information, etc), but with the incredible amount that is floating around in 2009, people also need a recommendation system to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Many online streaming sites have various genomes / genius bar devices, but I believe that music fans connect better with real people, hence the rise of the DJ over the last 40 years. I have been a DJ myself for sometime, and believe that I have a knack for choosing records from the millions that are out there from around the world, and playing them to the right people at the right time. As an extension of that, I recommend albums and artists to friends and strangers via my online social networking profiles (such as Twitter or Facebook). Vaynerchuk takes this one step further, and suggests that there is great scope for those who can disseminate any kind of niche information from the web, and provide a place that people with a common interest can easily discover and connect.
The purpose of this post is not only to point out how we are here to help you with your search for that perfect music job, but to also point out that maybe you can do something of similar nature. Maybe you know everything there is to know about 18th Century string music, and so maybe you could make yourself the go-to source, not only creating your own content, but feeding out to other sources and narrating on similar articles across the web. Think about it – find your niche, and run with it! You can even start off by posting some interesting topics in our forums and see how many views they gather!
Here is Gary, with his video…
Gary’s original blog post is here, and if you are into social media and general web inspired banter, then I suggest you watch as many of them as possible!
I’ve long been a fan of Beverley Knight since I discovered her excellent 2nd album Prodgial Sista back in 1998. Since then she’s continued to churn out solid records varying from commercial pop (working with Guy Chambers on her 2004 record ”Affirmation”) to her last release the soul/motown influenced ”Music City Soul” in 2007.
After a two year hiatus Ms Knight, arguably the UK’s finest female vocalist, is back with the first single release from her 6th studio album ”’100%”’. The track was co- written by Beverley with multi-million selling songwriter Amanda Ghost (Beyonce, Shakira, James Blunt), and produced by hot up-and-coming London based duo The Rural (Gym Class Heroes, Beyonce)
Its a classy, up market slice of pop with Knight’s trademark powerhouse vocals resonating deeply against the infectious hook and slick production values. It deserves to do very well and get the Wonder from Wolverhampton back at the front of the pack where she belongs. Accept no limitations as the Queen of British Music is showing everyone how its done.
Beverley will also be undertaking her first UK tour in 2 years in support of 100% in November, following an exclusive sold out gig at London’s ICA on September 3 to launch the album.
Tour dates are as follows:
Thursday 3rd September –ICA, London SOLD OUT
Tuesday 3rd November – Ipswich Regent
Wednesday 4th November – Cardiff St David’s Hall
Thursday 5th November – Bristol Colston Hall
Friday 6th November – Wolverhampton Civic Hall
Sunday 8th November – Glasgow ABC
Monday 9th November – Preston Guild Hall
Tuesday 10th November – Liverpool Philharmonic
Thursday 12th November – Brighton Dome
Friday 13th November – Southampton Guild Hall
Sunday 15th November – Folkestone Leas Cliff
Monday 16th November – Norwich UEA
Tuesday 17th November – Manchester Bridgewater Hall
Thursday 19th November – Southend Cliff Pavillion
Sunday 22nd November – Sheffield City Hall
Monday 23rd November – Birmingham Symphony Hall
Tuesday 24th November – Gateshead Sage
Wednesday 7th April 2010–London Royal Albert Hall
