Search:j kaufman

Sounds like supergroup. Rarely have outstanding figures of such a variety of musical styles collaborated on one album to pay homage to a nearly forgotten artist, one of the few black Beatnik poets, Bob Kaufman.

"All Those Streets I Must Find Cities For" by The Plastik Beatniks is an attempt to acoustically reanimate Bob Kaufman, to return the Beat to him in a transatlantic collaboration. It is a shimmering psychedelic, at times jazzy concept album, sometimes reminiscent of Krautrock or hip hop, about a Beat-era poet who was as great as he was forgotten. It takes spoken word to a new level, as a transatlantic showcase of musical avant-gardes and a joyful "sound archaeology" of modernity, in which the tracks of the "Plastik Beatniks" meet the best voices of America.

The 12 wildly different songs and audi collages, on the transatlantically-produced album, "All the Streets I Must Find Cities For," is based on lyrics by Beat author Bob Kaufman. They were originally part of the radio play "Thank God for Beatniks," for which author Andreas Ammer ("Ammer & Einheit"), Notwist‘s Markus Acher and Micha Acher and loop maker Leo Hopfinger ("LeRoy") formed "The Plastik Beatniks." On the eastern side of the Atlantic they composed music and crafted soundscapes. On the west side of the ocean, they asked three of the most renowned singers, activists and producers in the U.S. to recite or sing Bob Kaufman's poetry.

Punk-pop icon Patti Smith immediately signed on to read Kaufman's poem "Ginsberg (For Allen)". Free jazz vocalist Moor Mother passionately performed Bob Kaufman's "War Memoir". American jazz clarinetist, composer, singer and “International Anthem” labelmate Angel Bat Dawid, a legitimate successor to Sun Ra, polyphonically read and sang such poems as "The Sun is a Negroe" and "West Coast Sound 1956" and included some clarinet solos on top. Also on the album, Bob Kaufman himself recites his previously unknown poems "Hollywood Beat", "Would You Wear My Eyes", and the "Jail Poem" "All Those Streets I Must Find Cities For". Beat chronicler Raymond Foye, who still lives at the Chelsea Hotel in New York, contributed an interview he conducted with late beatnik Allen Ginsberg about Bob Kaufman. Completing the circle was hip-hop artist Adam "DoseOne" ("13&God"), who once gave Markus Acher a well-thumbed volume of Bob Kaufman, whom he admired. He contributed some raps. Thus 12 tracks emerged, as diverse as the artists, poets and musicians who contributed to it. More than an album. An epitaph. A work for the eternity of Beat.

Regarding Bob Kaufman - of course the FBI kept a file on him – first as a sailor, then a communist, and finally a Beat poet. As one of the mainstays of the movement, he edited the literary magazine "Beatitude" in San Francisco and defined "Beatnik" to Allen Ginsberg: half rhythm, half sputnik. Bob recited his poetry loudly on the streets (when he wasn't sunk into years of silence in protest of the Vietnam War) and in the bars and bagel shops of North Beach. Once, he almost landed a pop hit ("Green Green Rocky Road"), which then made Dylan's companion Dave van Ronk famous. That Kaufman is today less known than his friend Allen Ginsberg may be because he was a black Beat poet, and also a Jew. This was not compatible with fame in the US of the 1950s. Though Kaufman had the same publisher, City Lights, as Ginsberg, he was frequently arrested and jailed, and was treated with electric shocks until he developed serious mental heath issues. There he wrote his "Jail Poems". The seventh of these lent this album its name:

"Someone whom I am is no one / Something I have done is nothing Someplace I have been is nowhere / I am not me What of the answers / I must find questions for? All these strange streets I must find cities for, Thank god for beatniks."

The album "CRYSTERIA" opens a new chapter in CRYSTAL BALL's history. In their 3rd decade, the band is far from just repeating itself, and you can find new, fresh, and energetic elements in their music.
CRYSTAL BALL took its time during the pandemic-related break to write lots of new material, so they could choose from over 30 Songs for the "CRYSTERIA" album.
CRYSTAL BALL's new guitar player Peter Berger also contributed many songs and ideas to this album. He was a very refreshing and motivating input.
The production of "CRYSTERIA", that was taken care of by Stefan Kaufmann, improved even further and reflects the bands live energy perfectly.
The album features the vocal duet "Call Of The Wild" with Ronnie Romero (Rainbow, MSG) whom the band got to know at a festival in Switzerland in 2018.
The album also contains the band duet "Crystal Heart" with the guys from Jaded Heart. This song was written by members of both bands.
As both bands are friends for a long time, CRYSTAL BALL invited Jaded Heart as special guest on their planned headliner tour in 2022.

Cassandra Jenkins' An Overview on Phenomenal Nature emerged from the blue earlier this year. With pandemic unknowns and political upheaval leaving most at frayed ends, the New York-born musician’s assuring voice and expansive fresh take on songwriting created a much needed reflective space for listeners worldwide. As 2021 comes to a close, Jenkins revisits those flowing textures and refrains with (An Overview On) An Overview On Phenomenal Nature, a collection of previously unreleased sonic sketches, initial run-throughs, demos, and sound recordings from the cutting room floor that provided the scaffolding for what became one of this year’s most critically acclaimed albums.

When Jenkins visited Josh Kaufman’s studio this summer, they opened up their original sessions to uncover the ideas that were shed in the creative process. The new collection, (An Overview On) An Overview On Phenomenal Nature, isn’t merely a retrospective; it acts as a clear-eyed addendum as well as a compelling origin story, coming to life as a subconscious companion to the original album.

First takes of “New Bikini” and “Hailey” are born from opposite starting points; while “New Bikini” began as an airy alto meander, “Hailey”’s origins lie in an upbeat dance track. On “Crosshairs (Interlude),” Jenkins’ pitched vocal delivers a straight monotone, recasting the format as poetry with music highlighting her words, and “Ambiguous Norway (Instrumental)” lifts the ambient nature of the mournful song into glimmering waves. The demo version of “Michelangelo” contains alternate lyrics “I’m Michelangelo, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle,” a lost contrast to the later verse where Jenkins’ likens herself to the sculptor. On “Hard Drive (Security Guard),” we join Jenkins as she listens to a passionate museum guard whose promised “overview” of the exhibit on view builds into a monologue of observations on art, politics, feminism and the human condition. This candid interaction evolved into the cornerstone and title of Jenkins’ album.

Before they decided to make an album together, Jenkins brought Kaufman a song called “American Spirits.”The dusky ballad takes us to the Texas plains via a voicemail from the payphone of a county jail (“Miss Cassandra”). Cassandra sings, “Time here burns through the sunsets / Like you and a pack of American Spirits” over warm instrumentation with a vocal delivery that reinforces Jenkins’ unwavering tenderness towards her subjects.

(An Overview On) An Overview On Phenomenal Nature bookends Cassandra Jenkins' musical output this year with nuance, coloring in the corners, and giving us another window into her ever-expanding world of chance encounters, experiences, and sonic textures. They glimmer like the sun’s changing patterns on the wall as a new day gets going.

As funny as it may sound, Anaïs Mitchell has spent the past 15 years in some kind of hell. OK, not actual hell, but the multi-faceted world of Hadestown, a musical project she began in Vermont in 2006 that has grown into a Tony®- and Grammy®-award-winning Broadway phenomenon with touring editions now delighting audiences as far away as South Korea.

“I experienced so much joy working on Hadestown, but it just kept ramping up and up and requiring more and more attention,” Mitchell admits. “I had to become so single-minded and really put blinders on to my other creative life.” As it did for many artists, the COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly offered Mitchell a blank slate to reconnect with her own music. The result is a new self-titled album made with close collaborators from Bon Iver, The National and her own band Bonny Light Horseman, Mitchell’s first collection of all-new material under her own name since 2012’s Young Man in America.

“I was nine months pregnant when the pandemic reached New York, so we made an 11th hour decision to leave and have the baby in Vermont,” Mitchell recalls. “We left the city and had the baby a week later, and then like everyone, we were in the midst of this unprecedented stillness. It felt like I could see behind me: oh, there’s New York City. There’s Hadestown. There’s my life with just one kid. A certain kind of stress and expectations. In Vermont, we moved onto my family farm and lived in my grandparents’ old house, with a new baby. I’d look at pictures on my phone from a few months earlier and wonder, whose life was that? This record, and the songs that are on it, came out of that time. I got into a flow again that I hadn’t felt in a really long time.”

Dubbed by NPR as “one of the greatest songwriters of her generation,” Mitchell is a master of the worlds of narrative folksong, poetry and balladry. Those talents are evident from the first moments of the new album, as Mitchell narrates what she calls “an unbearably romantic” trip over the Brooklyn Bridge colored by Bon Iver member Michael Lewis’ heartstring-tugging saxophone accompaniment. “Having left New York, I was able to write a love letter to it in a way I never could when I was living there,” she says. “It was like, fuck it. This is how I feel. There is nothing more beautiful than riding over one of the New York bridges at night next to someone who inspires you.”

Produced by Mitchell’s Bonny Light Horseman bandmate Josh Kaufman, the album proceeds to chronicle Mitchell’s reconnection with the Vermont roots that have been so formative in her life and music. “Bright Star” finds her making peace with the idea of being at peace in the familiar setting of her grandparents’ house, while “Revenant” was inspired by paging through a box of journals and letters belonging to herself and her grandmother — “a very pandemic activity,” she says. “That house is literally my happy place. I can picture myself as a kid, in this house, laying on the carpet with a sunbeam coming through the sliding glass door. There’s something about it that is really connected in my mind to my childhood and a very free, imaginative, creative time. “Revenant” has a lot to do with that house and reconnecting with my childhood self.”

Mitchell concedes that she tends “to be someone who thinks it has to be hard in order for it to be good or beautiful,” but that feeling has changed, partly thanks to her deep connection with musicians she’s met through the 37d03d collective established by The National’s Aaron and Bryce Dessner and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. During the pandemic, some of those artists participated in a “song a day” writing group — an idea Mitchell says is usually “totally opposite of how I roll. But it really helped me to gain access to some kind of trust and intuition and flow. I began a bunch of these songs while doing that.”

“It unlocked something that allowed me to finish a bunch of songs I’d been sitting on, and feeling a bit paralyzed about how to finish them,” she continues. “Because no one was touring, it’s not like I was playing them for anyone before we were in the studio. In other times, I’ve trotted things out in advance. Here, it was like, here’s all these brand new songs. Let’s discover what they can be. That was really exciting.”

That discovery process took flight at Dreamland Recording Studios outside Woodstock, N.Y., which Mitchell describes as “this weird, janky, beautiful church - it’s my favorite studio in the world.” Kaufman, Lewis and Big Red Machine drummer JT Bates formed a core band around Mitchell, while Aaron Dessner and Thomas Bartlett joined the sessions mid-week on guitar and piano, respectively.

After the appropriate COVID tests came back negative, “it was a pretty extraordinary feeling to hug, kiss and share the same space playing together,” Mitchell says. “We went into that world for a week and didn’t leave the studio for any reason. I felt very safe with all those guys. It was warm and joyful.”

Mitchell says this environment brought out unexpected details in the material, which was recorded almost entirely live together in the room. “Sometimes we tried separating things out, like vocals, but we always ended up back in the room together,” she says. Indeed, after spending the better part of a day recording overdubbed versions of “Little Big Girl” that nobody loved, the musicians gave up and tracked it again live. “We got so frustrated that we went in and I was like, I’m just going to sing this as hard as I fucking can. It felt like that’s what the song wanted to be,” Mitchell says. “It felt like all those songs wanted to be recorded as live as possible.” The exception to the rule was Nico Muhly's arrangements for strings and flute, which were added from New York City afterward.

Mitchell will debut the new material during various headline tours in the U.S. and Europe in 2022, at which she’ll be accompanied by players from the album. On stage, she can’t wait to further hone the sights, sounds and scenes that bring the songs to such vivid life. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to write in the voice of other characters, especially with Hadestown. It’s fun for me, but these songs are not that,” she says. “Weirdly, they’re all me. The narrator is me. That’s why it felt right to self-title the album. It felt like after so many years of working on telling other stories, now here are some of mine.”

As funny as it may sound, Anaïs Mitchell has spent the past 15 years in some kind of hell. OK, not actual hell, but the multi-faceted world of Hadestown, a musical project she began in Vermont in 2006 that has grown into a Tony®- and Grammy®-award-winning Broadway phenomenon with touring editions now delighting audiences as far away as South Korea.

“I experienced so much joy working on Hadestown, but it just kept ramping up and up and requiring more and more attention,” Mitchell admits. “I had to become so single-minded and really put blinders on to my other creative life.” As it did for many artists, the COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly offered Mitchell a blank slate to reconnect with her own music. The result is a new self-titled album made with close collaborators from Bon Iver, The National and her own band Bonny Light Horseman, Mitchell’s first collection of all-new material under her own name since 2012’s Young Man in America.

“I was nine months pregnant when the pandemic reached New York, so we made an 11th hour decision to leave and have the baby in Vermont,” Mitchell recalls. “We left the city and had the baby a week later, and then like everyone, we were in the midst of this unprecedented stillness. It felt like I could see behind me: oh, there’s New York City. There’s Hadestown. There’s my life with just one kid. A certain kind of stress and expectations. In Vermont, we moved onto my family farm and lived in my grandparents’ old house, with a new baby. I’d look at pictures on my phone from a few months earlier and wonder, whose life was that? This record, and the songs that are on it, came out of that time. I got into a flow again that I hadn’t felt in a really long time.”

Dubbed by NPR as “one of the greatest songwriters of her generation,” Mitchell is a master of the worlds of narrative folksong, poetry and balladry. Those talents are evident from the first moments of the new album, as Mitchell narrates what she calls “an unbearably romantic” trip over the Brooklyn Bridge colored by Bon Iver member Michael Lewis’ heartstring-tugging saxophone accompaniment. “Having left New York, I was able to write a love letter to it in a way I never could when I was living there,” she says. “It was like, fuck it. This is how I feel. There is nothing more beautiful than riding over one of the New York bridges at night next to someone who inspires you.”

Produced by Mitchell’s Bonny Light Horseman bandmate Josh Kaufman, the album proceeds to chronicle Mitchell’s reconnection with the Vermont roots that have been so formative in her life and music. “Bright Star” finds her making peace with the idea of being at peace in the familiar setting of her grandparents’ house, while “Revenant” was inspired by paging through a box of journals and letters belonging to herself and her grandmother — “a very pandemic activity,” she says. “That house is literally my happy place. I can picture myself as a kid, in this house, laying on the carpet with a sunbeam coming through the sliding glass door. There’s something about it that is really connected in my mind to my childhood and a very free, imaginative, creative time. “Revenant” has a lot to do with that house and reconnecting with my childhood self.”

Mitchell concedes that she tends “to be someone who thinks it has to be hard in order for it to be good or beautiful,” but that feeling has changed, partly thanks to her deep connection with musicians she’s met through the 37d03d collective established by The National’s Aaron and Bryce Dessner and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. During the pandemic, some of those artists participated in a “song a day” writing group — an idea Mitchell says is usually “totally opposite of how I roll. But it really helped me to gain access to some kind of trust and intuition and flow. I began a bunch of these songs while doing that.”

“It unlocked something that allowed me to finish a bunch of songs I’d been sitting on, and feeling a bit paralyzed about how to finish them,” she continues. “Because no one was touring, it’s not like I was playing them for anyone before we were in the studio. In other times, I’ve trotted things out in advance. Here, it was like, here’s all these brand new songs. Let’s discover what they can be. That was really exciting.”

That discovery process took flight at Dreamland Recording Studios outside Woodstock, N.Y., which Mitchell describes as “this weird, janky, beautiful church - it’s my favorite studio in the world.” Kaufman, Lewis and Big Red Machine drummer JT Bates formed a core band around Mitchell, while Aaron Dessner and Thomas Bartlett joined the sessions mid-week on guitar and piano, respectively.

After the appropriate COVID tests came back negative, “it was a pretty extraordinary feeling to hug, kiss and share the same space playing together,” Mitchell says. “We went into that world for a week and didn’t leave the studio for any reason. I felt very safe with all those guys. It was warm and joyful.”

Mitchell says this environment brought out unexpected details in the material, which was recorded almost entirely live together in the room. “Sometimes we tried separating things out, like vocals, but we always ended up back in the room together,” she says. Indeed, after spending the better part of a day recording overdubbed versions of “Little Big Girl” that nobody loved, the musicians gave up and tracked it again live. “We got so frustrated that we went in and I was like, I’m just going to sing this as hard as I fucking can. It felt like that’s what the song wanted to be,” Mitchell says. “It felt like all those songs wanted to be recorded as live as possible.” The exception to the rule was Nico Muhly's arrangements for strings and flute, which were added from New York City afterward.

Mitchell will debut the new material during various headline tours in the U.S. and Europe in 2022, at which she’ll be accompanied by players from the album. On stage, she can’t wait to further hone the sights, sounds and scenes that bring the songs to such vivid life. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to write in the voice of other characters, especially with Hadestown. It’s fun for me, but these songs are not that,” she says. “Weirdly, they’re all me. The narrator is me. That’s why it felt right to self-title the album. It felt like after so many years of working on telling other stories, now here are some of mine.”

NYC-based collective MICHELLE release their debut album,
‘AFTER DINNER WE TALK DREAMS’, via Transgressive
Records.
 MICHELLE recently announced new 2022 US tour dates with
Mitski. The band also toured with Arlo Parks and followed with a
string of dates with Gus Dapperton in November and a UK and
European headline tour in February.
 Born-and-bred New Yorkers, MICHELLE formed in 2018 and
are comprised of Sofia D’Angelo, Julian Kaufman, Charlie
Kilgore, Layla Ku, Emma Lee and Jamee Lockard. The
predominantly POC and queer collective mix and match the
writing and production groups amongst the six of them.
 The hallmarks of MICHELLE’s music - layered vocal harmonies,
analogue synthesizers, vibrant percussion, smouldering hooks -
dominate the sonic landscape of their upcoming album, with the
four female vocalists pushing the boundaries of their
considerable singing talents while Charlie and Julian fine tune
the production. Despite all the tinkering elsewhere, it is
important to note that the vocals remain largely untouched and
appear in their organic state.
 Songs hop across genres, from funky R&B to bedroom slow
jams to amped-upbeat-heavy anthems and more. The
songwriting on ‘AFTER DINNER WE TALK DREAMS’ has been
elevated, as there is a depth and prowess at work that makes
good on the promise of the band’s early songs, something they
admit was learned by reflecting and allowing room for artistic
growth.
 “crisp R&B with a bright indie flourish… musical serotonin you’ll
want to bathe in for hours” - NME
 “A formidable new collective with a genre-bending approach to
songwriting” - The Line of Best Fit
 “like an aural hit of Vitamin D” - DIY
 “we can’t get enough” - Gay Times
 LP pressed on Ocean Blue vinyl.

Acclaimed singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Amy Helm is set to release What the Flood Leaves Behind (Renew Records/BMG) on June 18th. Produced by Josh Kaufman (Taylor Swift’s Folklore, Bob Weir, Bonny Light Horseman) who is also featured on piano, guitar, and mandolin, the record brings Helm’s powerful, emotive vocals to the forefront. After recording 2018’s This Too Shall Light in Los Angeles, Helm returned home to Woodstock and Levon Helm Studios to record What The Flood Leaves Behind. The historical significance of returning to that special place built by her father clearly resonated with Helm. “Going back to the place where I learned so much about how to express music, how to hold myself in music, how to listen to music,” she begins, “It was humbling in a funny way. I could see clearly where I came from and where I am now in my life. I was singing from a different place now and for a different reason.”

“Nothing ever really disappears,” Cassandra Jenkins says. “It just changes shape.” Over the past few years, she’s seen relationships altered, travelled three continents, wandered through museums and parks, and recorded free-associative guided tours of her New York haunts. Her observations capture the humanity and nature around her, as well as thought patterns, memories, and attempts to be present while dealing with pain and loss. With a singular voice, Jenkins siphons these ideas into the ambient folk of her new album.
An Overview on Phenomenal Nature honors flux, detail, and moments of intimacy. Jenkins arrived at engineer Josh Kaufman’s studio with ideas rather than full songs — nevertheless, they finished the album in a week. Jenkins’ voice floats amid sensuous chamber pop arrangements and raw-edged drums, ferrying us through impressionistic portraits of friends and strangers. Her lyrics unfold magical worlds, introducing you to a cast of characters like a local fisherman, a psychic at a birthday party, and driving instructor of a spiritual bent.

Jenkins’ last record, 2017’s Play Till You Win, confirmed the veteran artist’s talent. Evident of Jenkins’ experience growing up in a family band in New York City, the album showcased her meticulous songwriting and musicianship, earning her comparisons to George Harrison and Emmylou Harris. Jenkins has since played in the bands of Eleanor Friedberger, Craig Finn, and Lola Kirke, and rehearsed to tour with Purple Mountains last August before the tour’s cancellation. Her new record departs from her previous work in its openness and flexibility, following her peripatetic lifestyle. “The goal is to be more fluid, to be more like the clouds shifting constantly,” she says. The approach allowed Jenkins to express herself like she never has.

On album opener “Michaelangelo,” before the heavy drum beat and fuzz guitars enter, Jenkins sings quietly “I’m a three-legged dog, working with what I’ve got / and part of me will always be looking for what I lost // there’s a fly around my head, waiting for the day I drop dead.” Phenomenal Nature thrives in this dichotomy between ornate sonics and verbal frankness, a calming guided tour to the edge. Later, on “Crosshairs,” amid lush strings, she sings conversationally: “Empty space is my escape / it runs through me like a river / while time spits in my face.”

“Hard Drive,” the third track and album centerpiece, opens with a voice memo Jenkins recorded at The Met Breuer: a guard muses about Mrinalini Mukherjee’s hybrid textile and sculpture works, which were then on display in a retrospective titled Phenomenal Nature. “When we lose our connection to nature, we lose our spirit, our humanity,” she explains. Stuart Bogie's saxophone & Josh Kaufman's glittering guitar make way for Jenkins' spoken word which constellates scenes from her life, gradually building and blossoming as she recreates a meditation guided by a friend who incants, “One, two, three.”

Sounds of footsteps and bird calls run through the album’s glittering conclusion, “The Ramble.” Meditative and bright, it recalls how Jenkins felt while writing and recording her new material: “Everything else is falling apart, so let’s just enjoy this time,” she said. If Phenomenal Nature has a unifying theme, it’s the power of presence, the joy of walking in a world in constant flux and opening oneself to change.

The Pet Parade,” the title track to Fruit Bats’ newest album, might be a surprising opening track for longtime fans of Eric D. Johnson’s beloved indie folk-rock project. The six-and-a-half-minute tone poem smolders and drones over just two chords, inspired by the strange and silly community events that he saw growing up outside of Chicago, in La Grange, Illinois, in which people dressed up and showed off their pets. Decades later, The Pet Parade emerges in troubled times, living within what Johnson refers to as the beauty and absurdity of existence. While many of the songs on The Pet Parade were actually written before the pandemic, it’s impossible to disassociate the record from the times. As an example, producer Josh Kaufman (Bob Weir, The National, and Bonny Light Horseman, in which he plays with Johnson and Anaïs Mitchell) was brought in for his deep emotional touch and bandleading abilities. However, Johnson, Kaufman, and the other musicians on The Pet Parade drummers Joe Russo and Matt Barrick (The Walkmen, Fleet Foxes), singer-songwriter Johanna Samuels, pianist Thomas Bartlett (Nico Muhly, Sufjan Stevens), and fiddler Jim Becker (Califone, Iron & Wine) were forced to self-record their parts in bedrooms and home studios across America. Still, says Johnson, “The songs have enough intimacy that it doesn’t sound like it was made a million miles away.” Such tension and turmoil also impacted the lyrics of The Pet Parade. While “Cub Pilot” and “Here For Now, For You” began as more traditional love songs from a personal “I” to a specific “you” Johnson quickly realized that these songs needed to comfort broader audiences, changing the words to a more inclusive “we” and “us.” So too in “The Balcony,” a song ostensibly about a particular space in his grandmother’s apartment, but one that evolved into a metaphor on patience. At times upbeat and reassuring (“Eagles Below Us”) and at times quietly contemplative (“On the Avalon Stairs”), The Pet Parade marks a milestone for Johnson, who celebrates 20 years of Fruit Bats in 2021. In some ways still a cult band, in other ways a time-tested act, Fruit Bats has consistently earned enough small victories to carve out a career in a notoriously fickle scene. And Johnson himself who has played in The Shins, composed film scores, gone solo and returned back to the moniker that started it all, and most recently, earned two GRAMMY® nominations with Bonny Light Horseman doesn’t take this long route of life’s pet parade for granted. “I’m still really excited to make records,” he says. “Lucky and happy and maybe happier that things went slower for me. I’m savoring it a lot more.

Although this amazing U.S. popsike gem seems to have remained under the radar since it was first released in 1969, copies of an original pressing of this LP fetch several hundreds of dollars among the small circle of collectors that have managed to discover the amazing works of Don Beckmann and David Rea.

Their only LP was originally released on their hometown Denver’s Stylist Records label back in 1969. The production is amazing: to the strength of the duo’s compositions and their guitar and vocal talents, a complete band is added, plus impressive orchestrated arrangements with scores provided by Dan Goodman and Mark Schuster and conducted by Ben Kaufman, the result being a deliciously beautiful album that could be a missing link between the works of Simon & Garfunkel and those of soft pop maestros like The Free Design or Harper's Bizarre or baroque pop legends The Left Banke.

'Open Door Policy' is The Hold Steady's 8th full length studio album and the follow up to 2019's 'Thrashing Thru The Passion'. Produced by Josh Kaufman (The National, Hiss Golden Messenger, Josh Ritter), this new release once again finds the 6-piece line up in peak form in what Craig Finn describes as "the best band we've ever been". The Hold Steady is: Bobby Drake (drums), Craig Finn (vocals), Tad Kubler (guitar, vocals), Franz Nicolay (keyboards), Galen Polivka (bass), and Steve Selvidge (guitar, vocals).

Muzz ist eine neue Band, die aus Musikern besteht, die man vielleicht schon aus anderen Bands oder Projekten kennt. Allen voran natürlich Paul Banks, Sänger von Interpool, Teil von Banks & Steelz oder auch bekannt durch seine Soloprojekte Banks oder Julien Plenti. Die beiden anderen Mitglieder sind Matt Barrick an den Drums (The Walkman, Jonathan Fire*Eater, Tour-Drummer bei den Fleet Foxes) und Josh Kaufman, der ein Teil der Indie-Folk-Band Bonny Light Horseman ist und bei Produktionen von The National, The War On Drugs oder The Hold Steady mitgewirkt hat. Paul + Matt + Josh = Muzz

Shovel Knight began as a modest, yet highly promising Kickstarter project in March 2013. Billed as 'a groundbreaking love letter to 8 bits!' by Indie developer Yacht Club Games, this 2D side-scrolling platform game released in June 2014 to universal praise and accolades. Fans and industry professionals praised Shovel Knight for its charming retro-2D visuals, humorous story, fun characters and strong gameplay design, which all came together to offer a game that is nostalgic yet very modern. The efforts of Yacht Club Games paid off when Shovel Knight was won the prestigious 'Best Independent Game' award at The Game Awards 2014. The game's chiptune soundtrack, composed by Jake Kaufman and Manami Matsumae, is integral to the game's modern-retro identity and has been similarly praised for its outstanding arrangements, memorable melodies and strong technical composition. This definitive soundtrack contains all music from the original Shovel Knight game released in June 2014, with a vinyl tracklist crafted by Jake Kaufman himself. The package cover and inner-gatefold have been designed exclusively for the soundtrack by Hitoshi Ariga; an interview with co-composer Manami Matsumae; and character artwork from the game.

Wieder legen Die Goldenen Zitronen alle zehn Finger in die Wunden und wühlen darin
herum, dass es wehtut.
... und einmal mehr halten Die Goldenen Zitronen voll drauf mit den Waffen der Kritik, sezieren, spießen auf
und polieren Widersprüche. Nach nun schon einigen Jahrzehnten sind die Goldies noch immer eine
Punkband. Aber eine, die sich, die eigene Szene und die eigene Musik hinterfragt und Punk als eine Haltung
definiert, die Haltung sucht, sowohl musikalisch als auch inhaltlich. Das lässt uns immer wieder überrascht
aufhorchen, klanglich und textlich und vieles bringt uns zum Grübeln. Auf "More Than A Feeling" ist die
Gruppe arbeitsteiliger vorgegangen als auf früheren Alben, die Genese ist eher an zeitgenössische Hiphop
Produktionen angelehnt. Und so krachen hier Acid, DAF, Ernst Busch, Kendrick Lamar, Punkrock,
Störgeräusche und Experimente mit Sequencer und Drummachines zusammen. Die Goldies äußern sich
immer so, wie es bisher noch niemand gemacht hat. "More Than A Feeling" ist nicht zuletzt auch eine
Sammlung von verzweifelten Spottliedern, von denen man nicht weiß, was schwerer wiegt, der Spott oder die
Verzweiflung über das Verspottete.

It is said that every generation casts its mind back to a previous era in times of crisis; the resources that will allow us to decode the questions of our moment may lie in the myths of another era.

Le Renard Bleu, the new musical and cinematic collaboration between Lafawndah and composer Midori Takada, and filmmakers Partel Oliva, takes a cross- generational echo as ground zero for recovering a crucial myth for uncertain times: the blue fox.

As transmitted by Takada, the fox appears in both ancient Senegalese and Japanese folktales as the trickster archetype; belonging both to the heavens and to the earth, the fox is the agent of chaotic good, shaking the world up when its energy has become stagnant. Above all else, the fox is famous for its cunning nature.

Renard Bleu marks the first new music released by Takada in nearly twenty years; it would be difficult to overstate the importance of her return to the public eye. Her first solo record, 1983's Through the Looking Glass, has been rediscovered and heralded as a lost classic; the influence of her percussion trio, the Mkwaju Ensemble, continues to permeate and inspire a new generation entranced by its lucid beauty, playfulness, and sensual patience. Takada has performed in numerous film score orchestras, including the ensemble for Akira Kurasawa's Dreams, coincidentally a key influence on Renard Bleu.

In the ensuing years, Takada has worked closely with theater group the Suzuki Company of Toga on productions of Electra and King Lear, an experience, she says, that allowed her to pursue 'a unity of music, body and space.' Recent live solo performances have evinced the depths of her exploration of all three.

Equally, it is Lafawndah's freedom of tone, decentralized maps of ancient and modern music cultures, and alloying of devotional intensity with modern songcraft casts her as a distinct relative of Midori Takada's.

Over the course of two EPs, self- directed music videos, and countless live performances, Lafawndah has drawn out an uncompromising exploration of how theater, situational intervention, and choreography can amplify the affective palate of forward pop music. One can trace the influence of artists such as Meredith Monk, Carlos Sara, and Andy Kaufman as much as musical antecedents AR Rahmann, Missy Elliott, or Geinoh Yamashirogumi.

It is in a mutual commitment to this unity that Lafawndah, Takada and Partel Oliva find fertile aesthetic common ground.

The music of Renard Bleu originated in Takada's preoccupation with the legend of the fox; after constructing a vivid instrumental composition dramatizing the spirit animal's journeys through waterphone, bells, marimba and various forms of drums, Lafawndah responded - in her inimitable mix of fairytale and undertow-- with melodies and lyrics capturing a dialogue between her and the fox himself. Eventually, the duo met in Tokyo for a week of communing with the material at Avaco Creative Studios, where new elements were composed on site.

Created in partnership with KENZO and premiered today via their channels, it was Partel Oliva who imagined a contemporary cinematic frame for the myth of the fox to re- appear, creating a hybrid of choreography and narrative around Takada and Lafawndah's performance of their joint composition (also titled Le Renard Bleu.) Returning to film in Japan for the third time, Partel Oliva's moving image work (Club Ark Eternal, The Pike and the Shield) has set the standard for and revolutionized the fashion art film. Their deployment of original music, dance, and a highly stylized mis en scene coalesces here in the casting of Los Angeles krump artist Qwenga as the eponymous fox, stalking the halls of the ancient Noh theater in which Takada and Lafawnda's performance takes place.

Why call up the myth of the fox now In Le Renard Bleu, Lafawndah and Takada's collapsing of distance between generations, styles, and milieus intimates that the relationship to time must be shaken. The future lies in fragments in the past; to remember is to recover it; the fox rises to thicken the plot.