Monthly Archives: February 2012
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Triphop fans rejoice! Here is your chance to see one of the seminal albums of the Triphop era performed live. Tricky is set to reunite with his original vocalist Martina Topley Bird. The duo will perform Tricky’s debut LP, Maxinquaye, at 3 UK shows.
The album released in 1995 was Tricky’s solo debut after leaving Massive Attack. Featuring the vocals of fellow Brit, Martina Topley Bird, the record saw 5 singles hit the UK Top 100 chart, while the album itself charted at #3 and was certified Gold. Maxinquaye ranked in the top 3 of year end polls from Rolling Stone, Spin, Melody Maker, NME and Village Voice. Q, Rolling Stone, Spin and Mojo ranked it amongst the most critical recordings of the 90′s.
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Astrobrite is the Chicago-based shoegaze noise-pop project from the musician Scott Cortez (of STAR and lovesliescrushing). For regular Strangeways Shoegaze Spotlight readers, this should sound somewhat familiar – last week in the Spotlight, Cortez’s project lovesliescrushing was covered. Cortez’s influence on the evolution of shoegaze, drone and dream pop is often criminally overlooked; both lovesliescrushing and Astrobrite deserve closer examination by any fans of these genres.
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While Greg Dulli has had success with his solo career and his band The TWilight Singers, he is still best known for fronting the Cincinatti, 90′s Alt-Rock band The Afghan Whigs. Fans of the Whigs are going to get a treat this spring. Dulli is going to be curating the 2nd night of the I’ll Be Your Mirror Festival, featuring a performance from the reunited Afghan Whigs.
I’ll Be Your Mirror is a sister festival to the UK’s long-running All Tomorrow’s Parties festivals.
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Indie-Synth darlings Craft Spells, are back with a new single and a forthcoming EP. The band began as a Bedroom Pop project in 2009 for Stockton, CA’s Justin Paul Vallesteros. It didn’t take long, however, for Blogs like Weekly Tape Deck, Pasta Primavera, No Modest Bear and Pitchfork’s Forkcast to take notice as well as Strangeway Radio. We were all over their 2011 debut LP Idle Labor which featured a seemingly endless supply of heavenly pop bliss on tracks like For The Ages, Scandinavian Crush, The Fog Rose High, Party Talk, From The Morning Heat, After The Moment and more! They spent much of 2011 touring with The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart as well as Captured Tracks labelmates, Beach Fossils.
Craft Spells have announced a follow up EP called Gallery due May 15 on Captured Tracks. Meanwhile, the band will be on display at SXSW.
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Here is the 3rd and final part of our series where we examine the many musical collaborations of Liz Fraser of the Cocteau Twins.
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Fancy a signed copy of New Order’s Live at the Troxy CD? Mojo Magazine wants to hook up in their new contest. To enter, submit the correct answer to this question:
Which cartoon catchphrase didn’t make the final cut on a 1985 New Order 12″?
If your correct answer is selected you will win a CD signed by Bernard Sumner, Gillian Gilbert and Stephen Morris plus newer guys Phil Cunningham and Tom Chapman. Enter to win at http://www.mojo4music.com/blog/2012/02/win_signed_new_order_cds_1.html.
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The critically acclaimed techno band, MOTOR, has switched gears on their new album Man Made Machine. Man Made Machine will be a vocal driven album featuring an impressive line up of guest vocalists. We have already heard the title track which featured a collaboration with Martin L. Gore of Depeche Mode. Also slated to appear on the album is Gary Numan and Douglas McCarthy from Nitzer Ebb.
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This has been a stellar week on the late night tv circuit. School Of Seven Bells made an appearance on Fallon performing their new single – The Night. And earlier in the week, Kasabian joined Letterman for a performance of Days Are Forgotten and Lana Del Rey performed Video Games on Kimmel.
Check out the performances that you might have missed, as well as the tour dates to see if the bands are coming to a city near you. Continue reading →
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In 1991, when lovesliescrushing was born, it’s safe to say that no one out there was doing anything quite comparable to the soundscapes they were creating. The band’s sound doesn’t adhere to traditional song structures or traditional vocal delivery; the emphasis has always been on texture, layering of effects, guitar tonality, and experimentation with unorthodox noise makers, i.e. vibrators, nails, screw drivers, metal – whatever could produce a new tone or sound to add to their otherworldly sound. The lovesliescrushing sound has also always been typified by loops, lack of drums, and Scott Cortez’ particular skill at ‘wreaking all manner of beautiful sonic mayhem from his guitar.’
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Shirley, you can’t be serious! Garbage hates love and well…they’re just not your kind of people. Shirley Manson, Butch Vig and the rest of the gang are plotting their epic return and they’re using the Internet to tease, torment and tantalize you. Their 5th record, Not Your Kind Of People is set for a May 15th release, and over the last few months, they have been dropping teaser preview trailers. Recently, they reached out to their adoring fans, affectionately referred to as their ‘Darklings’ and requested submissions of love-hating art. They compiled the best of those submissions for a preview of the new single, I Hate Love, from the forthcoming Not Your Kind Of People LP.
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Here is part 2 of our series where we examine the many musical collaborations of Liz Fraser of the Cocteau Twins
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On stage at DLD in Munich, John Taylor announced Here Right Now, a data visualization project inspired by the bands most recent album “All You Need Is Now.” The experiment is a partnership between Duran Duran and San Francisco-based Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA) that aims to display people’s ‘Now’ from around the world.
The project’s goal is to visualize, photo by photo, the different perceptions of common words, ideas, and events that people have in different parts of the world, at different times.
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More New Order news…this warms our hearts. We love hearing about New Order! Whether it is new of reissues, live dates, band in-fighting, rumored and then debunked lost tapes or….the Ultimate New Order Playlist!
BBC’s Now Playing @6 Music is giving us all the chance to do something we love to do anyway, right? Make best-of lists… They are looking to make the Ultimate New Order playlist and are reaching out to fans to contribute.
Choose from:
* Your favourite New Order records – from the classics Blue Monday and True Faith to album tracks, rarities, covers and remixes
* Influences and inspirations from Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder to Derrick May
* Collaborators from Arthur Baker to The Chemical Brothers via Billy Corgan, Bobby Gilespie and Scissor Sisters
* Any New Order solo or side projects, maybe The Other Two, Electronic or even Revenge?
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Smiths fans unite! Your favorite band is now the subject of a new indie film. Shoplifters of the World takes place on the day that broke our hearts, the day that The Smiths called it quits in 1987. The story, inspired by real events deals with a ‘fan’ who storms a heavy metal radio station and holds the DJ at gunpoint, demanding 24 hours of Smiths music.
Surprisingly, the film makers have secured rights to 20 Smiths songs for the film by Stones In Exile director, Stephen Kijak. Amongst the cast thus far are Jessica Brown Findlay (Downtown Abbey, Misfits), James Frecheville (Animal Kingdom), Jeremy Allen White (Shameless), Thomas Brodie Sangster (Love Actually, Phineas and Ferb), Skylar Astin, Zosia Mamet (The Kids Are All Right, Parenthood, Mad Men and United States of Tara) and Will Poulter (The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Son Of Rambow. The latest rumors have renowned Smiths fan, Russell Brand as the DJ. Hang him? We’ll see…
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Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has apparently found buried treasure in the basement of his new restaurant that is being built in a former bank in Manchester. The basement contained many old safe deposit boxes dating back to 1935 – some still containing valuables. Along with gold and a guns, the chef stumbled across the real treasure – rare Joy Division and New Order master tapes! The total value of the haul is £1.1 million! Oliver has since given everything found in the basement to the treasury. At this time no comments from members of New Order have been made to the media – but we here at Strangeways have our fingers crossed that the masters might contain unreleased material, especially considering there were only 2 studio albums released by Joy Division before the death of Ian Curtis.
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