I’m something of a hopeless history nerd and have been reading about the Spanish Civil War a lot lately. It’s of particular interest as I have family in Spain and visit very often so recognise many of the places discussed.
Anyway, this seems a good time to share the excellent cover of Ay Carmela by The Ex, taken from their EP 1936: The Spanish Revolution. If you don’t own it, I’d definitely recommend tracking down the release.
I thought that as a music reviewer, I should probably do the obligatory favourite ten releases of the year post and so here it is. Rather than spend much time over it, I simply chose these off the top of my head, not in order. I guarantee I have forgotten at least one important favourite…
Field Rotation - Acoustic Tales
Kogumaza - s/t
Pillowdiver - Elliott, Lou & Bill
Loscil - coast/range/arc
Tim Hecker - Ravedeath, 1972
Earth - Angels of Darkness, Demons Of Light
Richard Moult – Celestial King For A Year
Antonymes – The Licence to Interpret Dreams
Western Standards - Space Is A Place
Felicia Atkinson – The Driver
Another Day The Same is now available for free download - for as long as my Bandcamp credits last anyway:
I’ve recently begun writing for Apple Magazine, a new digital magazine which is released weekly through Zinio and, soon, the iOS Newsstand.
We’re already on the second issue with the third about to be out any day now. You can buy one issue or get a subscription to the magazine here or just look on Zinio.
For the past couple of months I’ve been part of a team of folks designing and testing a Mac OS X audio application for a software development company called Shedworx. It’s called Music Converter Pro and is designed to convert all kinds of audio files easily and quickly. There’s a free version too, both up on the Mac App Store:
My role centered around coming up with features which I’d like to see in this kind of application as a musician and audio geek, in addition to some testing too - it was a lot of fun and made a nice change to see the software from the other side’s perspective.
I’ve had this for some time as part of the compilation Coal Mining Women but just stumbled upon it again this evening and think it’s worth sharing. According to the comments with the video, it’s the 1937 recording of Sarah Gunning singing.
The anti-capitalist sentiment seems topical at the moment…
The Outpost Radio Show is curated by a friend, Bryan Ruhe and regularly features some great music by all kinds of experimental artists. Bryan recently featured one of my tracks in a mix he did for the show, click here to listen.
Pillowdiver is the solo experimental music project of Berlin-based René Margraff. René is also half of the excellent duo Two People In A Room, who’s cassette tape release Wrapped In Plastic I covered on Fluid Radio here and enjoyed very much, so I was pleased to hear his latest effort.
This Pillowdiver offering is a 3”CD called Elliott, Lou & Bill and it is made available on Twisted Tree Line, which is the sister label to Somehow Recordings and specialises in releasing 3”CDs. Despite being fairly new to the scene, TTL has put out a high number of quality releases from artists like Darren Harper, Leonardo Rosado, Damian Valles and Ex-Confusion in its short life.
Elliott, Lou & Bill comprises three tracks of those names, in the same order and the EP begins with a noise which builds slowly in ferocity. It’s pretty far removed tonally from René’s 12K release, Sleeping Pills but is none the worse for it, highlighting another side to the artists’ repertoire. Each piece is really strong and cohesive, containing plenty of small details to get stuck into on repeated listens and the EP as a whole is just great, a definite high-point of the many essential 3”CD’s out this year so far and one which I’ve found myself listening to an inordinate number of times, very compelling indeed.
For a physical copy of Elliot, Lou & Bill, head over to Twisted Tree Line. Alternatively, you can pick up the EP from the Pillowdiver BandCamp page - while you’re there make sure to pick up the free Tony On A Bike EP.
The tourists have gone home, so our local beach is back to being deserted.
The “Elliott, Lou & Bill” ep has just been released by Twisted Tree Line.
I won’t have copies for sale but if it should sell out I plan to offer a digital release unless it is everywhere on the interwebz then anyway.
(If you are an interested writer, please get in touch.)
(via gacougnol)
