And here is something else that’s not new but nevertheless will be hot in 2010, plus the band “Woods”

LO-FI!

Yeah, everything that sounds like Timbaland wasn’t even in private-plane-sight of the production is already roaming myspace and the hip music magazines, there are hints of shoegazer coming back on the radar and of course, the quirky and raw soundbites of experimental postpunk and freak folk.

The band with the unforgiving name* “Woods” will therefore hopefully get a piece of the action because their music is a nicely carved out nightmarish vision of psychedelic guitar-fondling, overpowering atmosphere and great songwriting with music that avoids cheesy attitudes with contorted melodies and dissonant vocals but still manages to get you all emotional and teary-eyed with songs like the wonderful “to clean” or “rain on”. With the latter they do remind me of John Frusciante’s painfully intimate “To record water for only ten days” which is probably one of the best references you can get.

They belong to the New Yorker label ” Woodsist Records” that apparently is a new haven for off-putting yet great alternative music.

To Clean (yeah, they got a video for that song! And it makes me feel weird…don’t know if that’s good or not)

*Try to google that name, it’s a nightmare and you will have killed at least one kitten out of shear frustration before you find something related to the band.

I am smelling an (old) new trend for 2010 including more John Vanderslice for everyone!

It’s not new but it has been a while since they have been in the spotlight. I am talking about quirky solo-acts, especially male ones because the females have pretty much flooded our playlists this year, that there probably was a secret testosterone-meeting at which it was decided to get going next year. And they already popped up here and there, Dan Deacon, Windmill, Kid Harpoon, Boy eats drum machine, Ramona Falls etc. The magic word is, however, not just ballsy men-songwriting but unique, weird stuff that might seem off at first sight but grows on you bit by bit until it reveals all of its beauty in a breathtaking epiphany. Ok, maybe a bit less dramatic. But there is this trend of opening up all limits of genres, styles and instruments, which makes artists like Boy eats drum machine so awesome because you just don’t know what comes next and isn’t this the most amazing feature of music, when it can surprise you over and over again? This doesn’t, of course, exclude quirky and weird female artists (I actually think that it is fantastic that there is such a vast amount of exciting women out there who don’t flash their panties repeatedly to cover up bad songwriting) but the males really have to prove themselves, so we don’t return to My Brightest Diamond, Joanna Newsom and Bat For Lashes and never look back. And after a long search, I also found a male solo artist whom I haven’t introduced already. Pew.

John Vanderslice

I am a huge fan of music with grand gestures. That’s why Rufus Wainwright and Sufjan Stevens are very dear to me. John Vanderslice shares those gestures, however, with electronic sweets here and there which turns his songs a bit askew, small dissonances, sounds and (scripted) glitches that punch cheeky holes in the otherwise dramatic compositions. Mr Vanderslice calls his sound occasionally “sloppy hi-fi” which has potential to make it into my music-almanac. Furthermore, he earns the term songwriter because his lyrics are highly referential to our culture, politics and society, so if you want to learn something just listen to him.

Fetal Horses (This must be one of the best song-titles I’ve ever encountered)

Ramona Falls – Listen up Menomena Fans!

Sometimes, I could just hit myself in the nuts, that is, if I had nuts. We had Ramona Falls at the radio station since weeks and because it was inbetween shitty bands, I didn’t really pay attention but alas! It’s Brent Knopf, my favourite Menomena voice and apparently the man behind the haunting piano tunes. His solo stuff is a bit softer but just as Menomena so much more interesting than 99% of the present music scene AND it is beautiful beyond comparison. It’s actually quite sickening how talented Danny, Brent and Justin are, together and solo. Brent worked with dozens of people on this project which got its name from a waterfall of Brent’s childhood memories. Because there are so many people involved, I won’t name them, Wikipedia and probably the album cover will take care of that. Let me just say that I am in awe of Mr Knopf and his musical ideas and that I already cherish every single note of Ramona Falls. This is the kind of music that is so good that you actually feel as if you’ve just fallen in love when you listen to it. His album “Intuit” is out, so get it because it won’t get better than this.

Here’s some stuff with him and his Digital Loop Recorder making it look as if what you see and hear is totally easy and not awesomly brilliant

And here’s the first single “I Say Fever” (I get excited even thinking about it)

My favourite Halloween Songs

Here is a poorly written BEST OF of my favourite songs used in Horror movies, plus one that is not used in any horror movie but is just awesome and kinda fits the theme.

Ode to the 80s – Gerald McMahon – Cry Little Sister

Because The Lost Boys is the best Vampire Movie for teens and Twilight sucks pumpkins in comparison.

(I did the big mistake to fall into the great Sisters of Mercy mix-up that circulates around the internet, of course, it’s the multitalented Mr McMahon who performed this song for “The Lost Boys”)

Artie Shaw – Jeepers Creepers

I love the first 60 minutes of the movie. However, when you see the “monster” it goes downhill from then (it’s the good old “let’s completely overdo it”-mistake) and please,
never ever watch “Jeepers Creepers 2″, I died because I wasn’t drunk enough to laugh off the bad acting and the horrible script.

Muse – Newborn

If you haven’t watched “High Tension”, I dare you to, it’s so well acted and horrific that it is already a classic of the French cinema.
Also, I always thought that many Muse songs are perfect for depicting a mental breakdown.

PS: If you haven’t seen the movie but want to, rather wait with this music video as it may contain spoilers

Grandaddy – A.M. 180

Not only are they used for the intro of Charlie Brooker’s Screenburn (and we all know how brilliant Mr Brooker is), no, they made “28 days later” even more edgy. Apart from that, you all should have their albums at home because they rule.

The Andrew Sisters & Glenn Miller – Mr Sandman

To be quite honest, the first Halloween movie is creepy but I hate the ending because somehow, it doesn’t really have an ending. It’s as if the editor had enough of it and quit before assembling the last 5 minutes. However, the soundtrack is one of the best horror movie soundtracks ever made.

This is the one without the movie, but it’s about ghosts and stuff, you know…

Menomena – Ghostship

I can’t praise this band enough, they are inventive, weird and manage to really make you think about their music. I take it as a compliment that my superior once told me off for putting “The Pelican” into the day-playlist of our radio station because he thought it was too disturbing and weird for the common radio listener. Well, they breed emotions, whether you like them or not, which essentially is the main goal of music, isn’t it?

Sweden, no wait, Finnland wins pt 1 – Rubik

Ah, this band is made of greatness.
There are quite some retro moments, this glamorous 70s sound where everything was grand and delicious, yet without the sleakness. Rubik are noisy, orchestral and messy and all that fits so well that I rather not name the bands they might or might not remind me of, because we really don’t have the time to spend the rest of the day reading bandnames, do we? They are just too diverse to do that and therefore, I am not going to.
All in all, this bearded piece of colourful music and brilliant musicians is so full of ideas, that they resemble a children’s picture of a day at the fair, actually, remembering the joy and excitement of childhood fits very well to their sound. If you ever feel like autumn and winter are dragging you down, just tune in this indie-pop beauty and you won’t even remember what sadness feels like.

This might be a hot shot for the next big thing in 2010. I’ll be damned if humanity doesn’t love them by then.

Favourite Songs – Love of an Orchestra by Noah and the Whale

Admittedly, the second album of the London-based Folkpop group is a lot less happy, perky and cheeky but as soon as you’ve settled with the new face of Noah and the Whale you will love the album because it’s a complex and beautifully arranged piece of work that is well crafted and best served from track one to track eleven without one skip.
And you will find the cheeky lyrics hidden in the slowly evolving pieces so don’t despair that there aren’t any “5 years time” or “two atoms in a molecule” anymore.
One of the highlights, nevertheless, is the uplifting “Love of an Orchestra” which might just as well be one of the best songs of 2009 and which is like a loud and cheery interlude.
Enjoy.

By the way, there is a movie accompanying this album, so watch out for it.

Boy Eats Drum Machine

On his myspace page it says Turntable-Nerd which might be the first time, I heard those two words combined. I didn’t think that it was possible or would work but it does.
Boy Eats Drum Machine is a lot of fun, in fact “Two Ghosts” is next to Windmill’s “Big Boom” the one song that gets you out of every winter-depression (I know, it’s not even winter but we’re already depressed, gee…). Many of his songs are less silly and pop-inspired, he more often dives into turntable-weirdness, like a mad scientist/DJ but it’s mesmerizing because you want to know in which direction he turns the songs. And his voice is pretty awesome. In real life his name is Jon Ragel but Boy Eats Drum Machine is much more cooler, which means that whenever you meet him, you have to call him exactly that. Maybe with an added Mr, you don’t want to be impolite.
So here we go, some turntable-nerdiness by Mr Boy Eats Drum Machine:

The Crack In The Sea (he actually reminds me of Jamie Lidell, the way there are so many things going on, although the two girls in the background are a bit distracting in the way that they don’t remind me of Jamie Lidell.)

And don’t forget the homepage, it’s really sweet and was cooked with love, sweet love, you can tell by the smiling clouds.

The Lovely Feathers – Canada does it again

You gotta admire the Canadians for their approach to music. I always feel as if they are the only ones who pick up fairly popular genres and twist them a little bit, that the familiar becomes something old and new alike. Add something blue and borrowed and you would have a perfect wedding. The Lovely Feathers for example have those Britpop traces of bands like The Rifles (“In the valley”) or The Twang but they add a certain folky querkiness to it that turns it around. The band from Montreal has hairy members (you know, beards and natural, wild hairstyles that defy every hairgel) and have this rough attitude, although their music doesn’t sound like it. Maybe that’s it. Always trust bands with beards.

Lowiza

Flashy Python

Alec Ounsworth could never go unnoticed in a karaoke bar. Even after years of plastic surgery we would all start to scream the second he would start to sing.
And because brilliant minds (well, Clap your hands say yeah has to be full of brilliant minds) never really can stop working, he has not only one but two solo projects.
His new project Flashy Python not only caught my attention with it’s funky name and the even more funky song-title “let’s hallucinate together” (hell, yeah!) but also with Menomena-like crazyness of free-jazz and electro-diddleing that actually would cause me to run away without looking back but just fits well when it’s layered over echoes of Alec’s voice, as if you’ve been in a nightmare and just woke up next to a drunken sax-player.
I like that kind of music, it’s nothing to listen to for 24/h a day but is necessary to keep you wanting more new, more unique and more demanding music. Because this is as demanding as it gets, you can’t really listen to music like Flashy Python without REALLY listen to it.

Alec Ounsworth (there are no good-sounding Flashy Python videos out there, so here’s the man solo as sensitive songwriter, I’ll try to remember and get a Flashy Python video as soon as I find one – till then, take a listen to the homepage)

The Low Anthem

In case you haven’t heard of them, this is one of the bands of 2009 who made folk proud.
I actually hesitated to write about them because I thought that they are old news but I just can’t get around The Low Anthem because songs like “cage the songbird” are nearly spiritual.

Cage the Songbird

It’s the wide range of only the best of country and folk in America that makes their music so brilliant. Ben Knox Miller and Jeff Prystowsky – the solid base of the group – have been in bands of all types and genres and therefore know how to play confident and professionally.
Some angry Bob Dylan in “Champion Angel” or this anachronistic Fleet-Foxes feel in “Charlie Darwin”, The Lown Anthem feel like tired souls, dusty roads and strong hearts. Ben Knox’ voice is like nighfall and sometimes even has the soft timbre of Peter Gabriel (you can’t get better than that). I haven’t heard that much folk-range since the Deadly Snakes who are my personal all-time favourites when it comes to garage-folk-whatnot music, so let’s hope, they keep on playing so long that I can take my great-grandchildren to their concerts.

The Horizon is a Beltway (hell, I love musicians who obvisiously have fun whilst playing, especially if their location looks like a serial killer’s hideout)