Songbird
Nov
15
The Sleeping Years
By Rachel | Album Picks | 3 Comments
The Sleeping Years is the solo project of Dale Grundle. A singer songwriter from Coleraine in Northern Ireland. The Sleeping Years have released three 5 track EP’s: You and Me Against The World, Setting fire to sleepy towns and Clocks and Clones all released this year. Gentle melodies and hushed vocals fill these EP’s and I love every second of it.
In other news it has been hot and dry here, yuck! And my keyboard seems to be working fine now, of course after I order new keyboard. Is that not just the way of things? Cheers!
Hope you enjoy the music of The Sleeping Years!
mp3:Â Clocks and Clones
mp3:Â Untroubled
Clocks and Clones EP 2007
The Sleeping Years on myspace
Nov
12
A Cover Eases PC Woes
By Rachel | Music Mix Up | 6 Comments
On Saturday I was preparing a post when suddenly my keyboard became possessed and started repeatedly and mysteriously pressing the letter “M” even though I was not touching the keyboard at all. Then when I did press the letter “M” nothing happened…First the letter “A” now I have a new laptop keyboard that is only a few months old and I have to get another one. *Profanities* Anyways needless to say I think it might be time to give my laptop the necessary tender loving care it deserves by updating the memory and wiping it clean…Of course this will only happen after I back everything up. Good times.
Today is Veteran’s Day here in the States and yet I still have to be at work, which sucks to say the least. And after The Decemberists canceled the rest of their tour I thought why not post this lovely cover they did of Bjork. What the hell!
mp3: Â Human Behavior – Bjork covered by The Decemberists
Read: Interpreting Bjork 2004Â Â GET IT
Nov
9
Priscilla Ahn On Grey’s Anatomy
By Rachel | Music Mix Up | 10 Comments
Photo by Henry Diltz
Priscilla Ahn was on Grey’s Anatomy last night her song Rain was featured on the popular TV show. I have featured her a few times on Untitled you can check those out HERE and HERE and also I highly recommend checking out the song Lost below it is beautiful and one of my favorite songs by her…I will keep you posted on this song bird hopefully we can look forward to a full length album from her sometime in the near future. :)
Happy Friday everyone!
mp3:Â Rain
Priscilla Ahn EP
mp3:Â Lost
Demo Better Than Any From A Record Label
Priscilla Ahn on myspace
Nov
6
Mercy Arms, Kept Low EP
By Rachel | Album Picks | 5 Comments
Mercy Arms is a four member band that hail from Australia their debut EP was just released in September and I am just really liking their sound. A little rough but they are still a very young band and I look forward to hearing more from them indeed.
In other news? I don’t really have any besides the fact that I am bored as hell at work and I despertaely need to find another job. I just can’t seem to find a job that makes me happy nor have I been able to find a place where I can thrive. This job pays well but I am not doing anything creative and I am not gaining any real experience for the field I want to work in, the only plus side of this job is that it pays well but even that doesn’t seem to get me out of bed in the morning. So once again I am back to the drawing board while I am working at this job…Good times right? Well at least I have good music. :-)
mp3:Â Kept Low
mp3:Â Ending To Begin
Mercy Arms 0n myspace
Kept Low 2007Â (Levity)
Nov
3
Guitar Hero III
By Rachel | Music Mix Up | 7 Comments
Last weekend Guitar Hero III finally came out…Weee! I was quite excited to say the least, new songs, wireless guitar and the ability to play online against others? I was sold. The graphics have a bit more bite to them as well…All in all I am pretty happy with this version and basically the ability to play online against others definitely makes this version an improvement.
The set list (single player career mode):
1. Starting Out Small
* “Slow Ride” – Foghat
* “Talk Dirty to Me” – Poison
* “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” – Pat Benatar
* “Story of My Life” – Social Distortion
* “Rock and Roll All Nite” – Kiss (Encore)
2. Your First Real Gig
* “Mississippi Queen” – Mountain
* “School’s Out” – Alice Cooper
* “Sunshine of Your Love” – Cream
* “Barracuda” – Heart
*Â Guitar Battle vs. Tom Morello (Original Composition)
* “Bulls on Parade” – Rage Against the Machine (Encore played with Tom Morello)
3. Making the Video
* “When You Were Young” – The Killers
* “Miss Murder” – AFI
* “The Seeker” – The Who
* “Lay Down” – Priestess
* “Paint It, Black” – The Rolling Stones (Encore)
4. European Invasion
* “Paranoid” – Black Sabbath
* “Anarchy in the U.K.” – Sex Pistols
* “Kool Thing” – Sonic Youth
* “My Name Is Jonas” – Weezer
* “Even Flow” – Pearl Jam (Encore)
5. Bighouse Blues
* “Holiday in Cambodia” – Dead Kennedys
* “Rock You Like a Hurricane” – Scorpions
* “Same Old Song and Dance” – Aerosmith
* “La Grange” – ZZ Top
*Â Guitar Battle vs. Slash (Original Composition)
* “Welcome to the Jungle” – Guns N’ Roses (Encore played with Slash)
6. The Hottest Band on Earth
* “Black Magic Woman” – Santana
* “Cherub Rock” – The Smashing Pumpkins
* “Black Sunshine” – White Zombie
* “The Metal” – Tenacious D
* “Pride and Joy” – Stevie Ray Vaughan (Encore)
7. Live in Japan
* “Before I Forget” – Slipknot
* “Stricken” – Disturbed
* “3’s & 7’s” – Queens of the Stone Age
* “Knights of Cydonia” – Muse
* “Cult of Personality” – Living Colour (Encore)
8. Battle for Your Soul
* “Raining Blood” – Slayer
* “Cliffs of Dover” – Eric Johnson
* “The Number of the Beast” – Iron Maiden
* “One” – Metallica
*Â Guitar Battle vs. Lou (The Devil Went Down to Georgia – Steve Ouimette)
* “Through the Fire and Flames” – Dragonforce
___________________________________________
 I thought I would post a couple of my favorite songs that are loads of fun to play…And I highly recommend checking out this game yourself either at your local Best Buy or a friend’s house…You will be hooked in no time. Happy Saturday!
mp3:Â My Name Is Jonas – Weezer
Weezer (Blue) 1994Â (Geffen Records)Â GET IT
mp3:Â Paint It, Black – The Rolling Stones
Nov
2
The Buzz
By Rachel | News & Info. | 3 Comments
Paste Magazine has decided to follow suit by starting a “pay what you want” campaign for a subscription, the min limit is a $1.00. I have to say this is well worth it, I already have a subscription to Paste thanks to Tara but I am planning on renewing so that I can take advantage of this awesome deal. Check it
In other news one of my favorite online mags Stylus Magazine closes it’s doors and I am terribly depressed as I was a big fan. R.I.P.
I will be back later on today with a new music post so check back soon. Till then everyone have a lovely Friday.
Oct
30
Music Mini Mix
By Rachel | Music Mix Up | 13 Comments
I am tired…Think I am ready for some days off…Like Thanksgiving, I can’t wait till Thanksgiving that is going to be awesome. But let us look at the now shall we? Well tomorrow is Halloween all across America and all though I am not really the festive Halloween type I always like to hear what people decide to dress up as. So lets hear it people…What are you going as for Halloween? Or what did you dress up as this past weekend?
Also a mini new music mix…
mp3:Â The Days – The Fairer Sex
Two Can Win 2007 (Ionik Records)
mp3:Â The Way On – The Owls
Daughters and Suns 2007 (Magic Marker Records)
mp3:Â Birds On The Wing – Viva Voce
Lovers, Lead the Way! / The Heat Can Melt Your Brain 2007
Oct
29
It’s All About Vinyl
By Rachel | Album Picks | 10 Comments
Vinyl has been reborn so to speak and it is a beautiful thing. Check out this article at Wired:
Vinyl May Be Final Nail in CD’s Coffin
By Eliot Van Buskirk
As counterintuitive as it may seem in this age of iPods and digital downloads, vinyl — the favorite physical format of indie music collectors and audiophiles — is poised to re-enter the mainstream, or at least become a major tributary.
Talk to almost anyone in the music business’ vital indie and DJ scenes and you’ll encounter a uniformly optimistic picture of the vinyl market.
“I’m hearing from labels and distributors that vinyl is way up,” said Ian Connelly, client relations manager of independent distributor alliance IODA, in an e-mail interview. “And not just the boutique, limited-edition colored vinyl that Jesu/Isis-style fans are hot for right now.”
Pressing plants are ramping up production, but where is the demand coming from? Why do so many people still love vinyl, even though its bulky, analog nature is anathema to everything music is supposed to be these days? Records, the vinyl evangelists will tell you, provide more of a connection between fans and artists. And many of today’s music fans buy 180-gram vinyl LPs for home listening and MP3s for their portable devices.
“For many of us, and certainly for many of our artists, the vinyl is the true version of the release,” said Matador’s Patrick Amory. “The size and presence of the artwork, the division into sides, the better sound quality, above all the involvement and work the listener has to put in, all make it the format of choice for people who really care about music.”
Because these music fans also listen using portable players and computers, Matador and other labels include coupons in record packaging that can be used to download MP3 versions of the songs. Amory called the coupon program “hugely popular.”
Portability is no longer any reason to stick with CDs, and neither is audio quality. Although vinyl purists are ripe for parody, they’re right about one thing: Records can sound better than CDs.
Although CDs have a wider dynamic range, mastering houses are often encouraged to compress the audio on CDs to make it as loud as possible: It’s the so-called loudness war. Since the audio on vinyl can’t be compressed to such extremes, records generally offer a more nuanced sound.
Another reason for vinyl’s sonic superiority is that no matter how high a sampling rate is, it can never contain all of the data present in an analog groove, Nyquist’s theorem to the contrary.
“The digital world will never get there,” said Chris Ashworth, owner of United Record Pressing, the country’s largest record pressing plant.
Golden-eared audiophiles have long testified to vinyl’s warmer, richer sound. And now demand for vinyl is on the rise. Pressing plants that were already at capacity are staying there, while others are cranking out more records than they did last year in order to keep pace with demand.
Don MacInnis, owner of Record Technology in Camarillo, California, predicts production will be up 25 percent over last year by the end of 2007. And he’s not talking about small runs of dance music for DJs, but the whole gamut of music: “new albums, reissues, majors and indies … jazz, blues, classical, pop and a lot of (classic) rock.”
Turntables are hot again as well. Insound, an online music retailer that recently began selling USB turntables alongside vinyl, can’t keep them in stock, according to the company’s director, Patrick McNamara.
And on Oct. 17, Amazon.com launched a vinyl-only section stocked with a growing collection of titles and several models of record players.
Big labels still aren’t buying the vinyl comeback, but it wouldn’t be the first time the industry failed to identify a new trend in the music biz.
“Our numbers, at least, don’t really point to a resurgence,” said Jonathan Lamy, the Recording Industry Association of America’s director of communications. Likewise, Nielsen SoundScan, which registered a slight increase in vinyl sales last year, nonetheless showed a 43 percent decrease between 2000 and 2006.
But when it comes to vinyl, these organizations don’t really know what they’re talking about. The RIAA’s numbers are misleading because its member labels are only now beginning to react to the growing demand for vinyl. As for SoundScan, its numbers don’t include many of the small indie and dance shops where records are sold. More importantly, neither organization tracks used records sold at stores or on eBay — arguably the central clearinghouse for vinyl worldwide.
Vinyl’s popularity has been underreported before.
“The Consumer Electronics Association said that only 100,000 turntables were sold in 2004. Numark alone sold more than that to pro DJs that year,” said Chris Roman, product manager for Numark.
And the vinyl-MP3 tag team might just hasten the long-predicted death of the CD.
San Francisco indie band The Society of Rockets, for example, plans to release its next album strictly on vinyl and as MP3 files.
“Having just gone through the process of mastering our new album for digital and for vinyl, I can say it is completely amazing how different they really sound,” said lead singer and guitarist Joshua Babcock in an e-mail interview. “The way the vinyl is so much better and warmer and more interesting to listen to is a wonder.”
– – –
Eliot Van Buskirk has covered digital music since 1998, after seeing the world’s first MP3 player sitting on a colleague’s desk. He plays bass and rides a bicycle.
Oct
29
It’s All About Vinyl
By Rachel | News & Info. | 11 Comments
Vinyl has been reborn so to speak and it is a beautiful thing. Check out this article at Wired:
Vinyl May Be Final Nail in CD’s Coffin
By Eliot Van Buskirk
As counterintuitive as it may seem in this age of iPods and digital downloads, vinyl — the favorite physical format of indie music collectors and audiophiles — is poised to re-enter the mainstream, or at least become a major tributary.
Talk to almost anyone in the music business’ vital indie and DJ scenes and you’ll encounter a uniformly optimistic picture of the vinyl market.
“I’m hearing from labels and distributors that vinyl is way up,” said Ian Connelly, client relations manager of independent distributor alliance IODA, in an e-mail interview. “And not just the boutique, limited-edition colored vinyl that Jesu/Isis-style fans are hot for right now.”
Pressing plants are ramping up production, but where is the demand coming from? Why do so many people still love vinyl, even though its bulky, analog nature is anathema to everything music is supposed to be these days? Records, the vinyl evangelists will tell you, provide more of a connection between fans and artists. And many of today’s music fans buy 180-gram vinyl LPs for home listening and MP3s for their portable devices.
“For many of us, and certainly for many of our artists, the vinyl is the true version of the release,” said Matador’s Patrick Amory. “The size and presence of the artwork, the division into sides, the better sound quality, above all the involvement and work the listener has to put in, all make it the format of choice for people who really care about music.”
Because these music fans also listen using portable players and computers, Matador and other labels include coupons in record packaging that can be used to download MP3 versions of the songs. Amory called the coupon program “hugely popular.”
Portability is no longer any reason to stick with CDs, and neither is audio quality. Although vinyl purists are ripe for parody, they’re right about one thing: Records can sound better than CDs.
Although CDs have a wider dynamic range, mastering houses are often encouraged to compress the audio on CDs to make it as loud as possible: It’s the so-called loudness war. Since the audio on vinyl can’t be compressed to such extremes, records generally offer a more nuanced sound.
Another reason for vinyl’s sonic superiority is that no matter how high a sampling rate is, it can never contain all of the data present in an analog groove, Nyquist’s theorem to the contrary.
“The digital world will never get there,” said Chris Ashworth, owner of United Record Pressing, the country’s largest record pressing plant.
Golden-eared audiophiles have long testified to vinyl’s warmer, richer sound. And now demand for vinyl is on the rise. Pressing plants that were already at capacity are staying there, while others are cranking out more records than they did last year in order to keep pace with demand.
Don MacInnis, owner of Record Technology in Camarillo, California, predicts production will be up 25 percent over last year by the end of 2007. And he’s not talking about small runs of dance music for DJs, but the whole gamut of music: “new albums, reissues, majors and indies … jazz, blues, classical, pop and a lot of (classic) rock.”
Turntables are hot again as well. Insound, an online music retailer that recently began selling USB turntables alongside vinyl, can’t keep them in stock, according to the company’s director, Patrick McNamara.
And on Oct. 17, Amazon.com launched a vinyl-only section stocked with a growing collection of titles and several models of record players.
Big labels still aren’t buying the vinyl comeback, but it wouldn’t be the first time the industry failed to identify a new trend in the music biz.
“Our numbers, at least, don’t really point to a resurgence,” said Jonathan Lamy, the Recording Industry Association of America’s director of communications. Likewise, Nielsen SoundScan, which registered a slight increase in vinyl sales last year, nonetheless showed a 43 percent decrease between 2000 and 2006.
But when it comes to vinyl, these organizations don’t really know what they’re talking about. The RIAA’s numbers are misleading because its member labels are only now beginning to react to the growing demand for vinyl. As for SoundScan, its numbers don’t include many of the small indie and dance shops where records are sold. More importantly, neither organization tracks used records sold at stores or on eBay — arguably the central clearinghouse for vinyl worldwide.
Vinyl’s popularity has been underreported before.
“The Consumer Electronics Association said that only 100,000 turntables were sold in 2004. Numark alone sold more than that to pro DJs that year,” said Chris Roman, product manager for Numark.
And the vinyl-MP3 tag team might just hasten the long-predicted death of the CD.
San Francisco indie band The Society of Rockets, for example, plans to release its next album strictly on vinyl and as MP3 files.
“Having just gone through the process of mastering our new album for digital and for vinyl, I can say it is completely amazing how different they really sound,” said lead singer and guitarist Joshua Babcock in an e-mail interview. “The way the vinyl is so much better and warmer and more interesting to listen to is a wonder.”
– – –
Eliot Van Buskirk has covered digital music since 1998, after seeing the world’s first MP3 player sitting on a colleague’s desk. He plays bass and rides a bicycle.
Oct
26
Thoughts In Rainbows
By Rachel | Album Picks | 4 Comments
Now that the dust has settled a bit on In Rainbows lets discuss…I will start off saying that Radiohead is not perfect in my mind, Pablo Honey is a great debut but I don’t listen to it regularly and Hail To Thief is really not one of my favorites by any means. So don’t get me wrong I am not going to sit here and stroke Radiohead’s dick or anything…Alright maybe a little…
When I got home from work on that Wed. I downloaded In Rainbows immediately, as I had to wait all day to hear it because I was late to work in the morning and was unable to download it before I left. I couldn’t wait to hear the album…And then I listened to it over and over again and took little breaks in between and then listened to it over and over some more. Because Radiohead is one of those bands where you have to give their music a little time, it is not love as soon as you hear it. Their music grows on you and sometimes it takes weeks and at times even years I think. For example when I first heard Kid A I hated it (I know can you believe it?) but then I gave it another chance years later and it has become one of my favorite albums of all time.
I was intrigued to say the least when I first listened to In Rainbows…The first two tracks are funky rhythmic gems and then the album slows down in pace a bit, sucks you into it’s world and personally for me I am lost by the time All I Need comes into play…
Now what have Radiohead done differently from that of Hail To Thief? In one word In Rainbows is unpredictable it is a funky jazz infused alternative rock album that only Radiohead could make. It doesn’t sound mainstream like Hail To Thief did, in fact I think In Rainbows leans in the direction of Kid A, but it is just not as ground breaking. But it is beautiful and unique and there isn’t a song on the album I don’t like…I continue to listen to it over and over all the way through from 1 to 10. It makes me fucking happy, puts a big smile on my face and I can’t wait till the box set comes out in December and I can’t wait to see them sometime in 2008.
2 of my favorite tracks off the album…
mp3:Â All I Need
mp3:Â Reckoner
In Rainbows 2007
Album only available HERE
P.S. My Playtagger tags are not working and I don’t know why so please be patient. The songs are still there though just click the link to play in your music player or right click the link to save. Thank you!
Disclaimer
Music found on this blog is for sampling only. If you like what you hear then support the artist. Buy their music, attend a show and spread the word. If you own the rights to any of the music featured here and you would like me to remove it contact me and I will remove the link immediately.
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