Working For A Nuclear Free City are the latest subjects of our Lounge Act Video Recaps from SXSW 2008, have a look and listen at this great video of them performing “Quiet Place” at EAR Studios in Austin.
Right in the middle of scheduling our Lounge Acts for SXSW, we came across this video for “No Surprise” which served as our introduction to James Yuill. Eager to hear more, we snapped up his latest disc Turning Down Water For Air, added it to our playlist and a few e-mails later, he’d accepted our invitataion to play live for WOXY listeners worldwide.
A singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from London, James’ music has been described as ‘folktronica’, which blends the influence from two of his favorite artists: Nick Drake and Radiohead. Not surprisingly then, his session saw him shifting ably between an acoustic guitar and some electronic machinery, usually during the same song. He’s also been in-demand for his remixing skills, recently adding his touch to songs by Au Revoir Simone and The Answering Machine.
Three of the four songs in his Lounge Act appear on his latest CD while the fourth, a cover of Radiohead’s “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box”, has become a trademark of James’ live shows. Turning Down Water For Air is available digitally in the US and directly from his own Happy Biscuit Club label. Definitely an artist we expect to hear a lot more from in the future.
Setlist
She Said In Jest
This Sweet Love -interview-
Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box
No Surprise
Another great video from our time at SXSW to share on this Friday. It’s These New Puritans, doing their song, “Elvis.” Here’s hoping it helps get your weekend started right…
Yet another successful episode of the blogger hour hit the airwaves this week as we had Jared from 5acts, a great Washington D.C. based music blog in for the show. Jared made a point to choose artists that have yet to make their debut on the WOXY airwaves in an attempt to expose our audience to some new musicians.
It was a great hour, listen in below, and check out the setlist right here as well…..
From the moment we heard “Lightbulbs” on the Artrocker radio show last Fall, we began to seek out more about The Answering Machine. Martin, Patrick and Gemma formed the band in 2005 while attending the University of Manchester and initially used a drum machine, Mustafa Beat (get it?), before adding Ben to round out the quartet.
After releasing just two singles, “Oklahoma” and “Silent Hotels”, they were invited to play the 2007 Glastonbury Festival. “Lightbulbs”, their third single, appeared in November prior to making the trip to SXSW in 2008. Their Lounge Act session at EAR Studios marked their first performance of any kind in the USA and includes all three of their singles. Obviously, we think they’re awfully special and have an extremely bright future.
As a matter of fact, the band has attracted the attention of producer Tony Hoffer, who’s previously worked with Beck, Belle & Sebastian and The Fratellis, and has expressed interest in possibly recording the band in the future.
Enjoy another great video today from Ed Harcourt, performing “Shadowboxing” during SXSW at EAR Studios in Austin. Thanks again to the good people at Soft City Lights and PROJECTMILL.
After relentless worldwide touring due to the great success of Peter Bjorn & John’s Writer’s Block album, Peter Moren has slowed things down a bit for his solo debut. The Last Tycoon is released April 8th on the Quarterstick label here in the U.S. and it is a stunningly simple record. Inspired by folk pioneers of the 1960’s & 1970’s, Peter worked with his friends Daniel Varjo (of the Concretes) and Tobias Froberg and it’s obvious that he had fun working on some songs that wouldn’t really fit for PB&J.
In this intimate performance, the songs are presented as stripped down as possible: it’s just Peter and an acoustic guitar. He only made a few appearances down at SXSW this year and we were thrilled that he spent some time with us and played a few tunes off The Last Tycoon. You’ll hear four tracks from the new cd and then he presents a reworked version of an old PB&J song to close out the set.
We haven’t heard any new music from Ladytron since the release of their great Witching Hour album back in 2005. That record came in at #63 on our 97 Best Of 2005 countdown and “Destroy Everything You Touch” was one of our favorite cuts that year. The band then spent two years touring the world and were even personally invited by Trent Reznor to open up shows for Nine Inch Nails in early ‘07 across Europe.
They left life on the road behind them long enough to hit the studio in Paris and complete their highly anticipated 4th studio album. They produced it themselves along with a little help from Vicarious Bliss (aka Andy Gardiner from Ed Banger Records) and Alessandro Cortini. The band cites disparate influences like Grace Jones, Dr. John and Os Mutantes for the sound of Velocifero.
The album will be released by Nettwerk Records on June 3rd. The first official single “Ghosts” will be hitting the air here on WOXY very soon, but we’ve got another track off the album to premiere for you now as a free download.
“Black Cat” (no, it’s not a Janet Jackson cover!) finds Mira Aroyo singing in her native Bulgarian over a stark soundscape that includes a slow building bass groove and distorted drums. Enjoy your first taste of Ladytron’s new cd and keep listening to WOXY.COM for more tracks from the album to debut soon!
Since we last saw this San Francisco band, they’ve been hard at work on their follow-up to 2006’s No Midnight. They recently signed to the FADER label who will be releasing their 2nd full-length album later this year. We were able to grab the guys for a session on their way in to Austin and they gave us a nice preview of the new disc playing four new songs and an older favorite from the debut disc.
