aspire to enquire

Ren Harvieu and Karen Elson

Spot the supermodel...

I was instantly captivated by this version of Train Song by Karen Elson and Ren Harvieu, who I've been discovering this week thanks to The Guardian's Spotify app (which I may write separately about).

I'm never one to complain about this kind of voice hitting the mainstream, and I guess/hope that now that Lana Del Rey has proved the business case, we'll be hearing a few more.

Her album is out tomorrow, May 14th. Listen to Through the night and not Open up your arms

Gotye

I just discovered this chap Gotye from Australia through a random but awesome spotify playlist. The video's ok, the edit gets a bit annoying at times but I really like his musical aesthetic, if you know what I mean. It keeps pushing forward but it still has all this space around it and it's actually quite melancholy.

He's playing up in Manchester in March, I might try to get along.

Also featuring Kimbra, who also appears to be awesome.

The show must go on an app

This is interesting - the Royal Opera House have commissioned Hide&Seek studio to create a new app thing which has turned out to be a fun iPhone game.

It acts as a new digital revenue stream and potential audience-grower for the institution, which is doubtless dealing with all kinds of cuts and strains like the rest of the UK public culture sector.

Apart from being fiendishly hard, it's a really fun and surprisingly engaging way to explore behind the scenes of an opera production, and the payoffs from working through the levels can be quite funny, especially if you're as bad as me.

I'll be really interested to see if this does help ROH financially - the app is reasonably pricey, but I imagine their brake-even point will still require quite a few sales - but I'm even more interested to see what its effect on audiences and young career starters is.

Many years ago in biology class I almost decided I wanted to be an ecologist when I grew up, because of a fun worksheet we had to do where we had to find the best place to re-house some newts. We had to think about water flow, tree cover, sewage, other predators, all kinds of things. As a 13 year-old that was just about the level of encouragement I needed to plan my future. I wonder if moving sets around and working lighting rigs in The Show Must Go On will inspire more young people to get involved behind and in front of the stage, even if it is only 3.5 inches wide for the time being.

Download it!

The Dø

Too Insistent by The Dø

An intriguing band with mix of folk/hip hop/beats, they almost sit somewhere on the unlikely line between Gorky's Zygotic Mynci and M.I.A. But that probably doesn't hint to enough of the genres split into each song. 

I've only just really found out about them just now but I think they've been around a few years. They're playing in Hoxton Bar and Grill on November 23rd, if you fancy it?

Fleet Foxes write my current life story

I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see
And now after some thinking, I'd say I'd rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me

But I don't, I don't know what that will be
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see

What's my name, what's my station, oh, just tell me what I should do
I don't need to be kind to the armies of night that would do such injustice to you
Or bow down and be grateful and say "sure, take all that you see"
To the men who move only in dimly-lit halls and determine my future for me

And I don't, I don't know who to believe
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see

If I know only one thing, it's that everything that I see
Of the world outside is so inconceivable often I barely can speak
Yeah I'm tongue-tied and dizzy and I can't keep it to myself
What good is it to sing helplessness blues, why should I wait for anyone else?

And I know, I know you will keep me on the shelf
I'll come back to you someday soon myself

If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm raw
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore
And you would wait tables and soon run the store

Gold hair in the sunlight, my light in the dawn
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore
Someday I'll be like the man on the screen

 

Picture borrowed from thisbonustrack.com

Don't mess with the bees

I think I've seen this music video a few years ago, but I just came across it again on Le'Loi. It is very good. I love that the whole concept could have come from the director mis-hearing the lyrics.

On the subject of bees, this video for The Bird And The Bee using OSX was fun wasn't it?

I don't really understand this video

Bonnie Prince Billy, Workhorse. Directed by Harmony Korine.

Found through the Purple Diary

It's a beautiful song, and a haunting video that I can't even begin to get, but it's resonating a lot at the moment so I thought I'd share it.

Taken By Trees - Anna

She & Him

The Topshop blog is a good read if you're in the market for occasionally interesting pop-culture references as they happen, or a good indication of what's more or less about to go mainstream. You also get a sense that the people writing it are just really nice, and passionate about what they're doing. This week, this awesome video from She & Him - a project by M. Ward and the beautiful Zooey Deschanel.

It's a fun video and a quick listen on spotify has meant that I'll probably be listening a lot more from now on. Although it's funny that a video called 'in the sun' was shot inside.. but who's checking.

Kate Walsh

It's not often that you hear Debussy cello sonatas at live gigs, but that's what happened to me the other week when I went to watch Kate Walsh at The Tabernacle, a beautifully converted venue in the Portobello Road area. Kate Walsh is one of my favourite artists, and I've been lucky enough to have seen her five or six times now.

I can't remember if I've mentioned her here before, but I thought I would share a video from her YouTube, of a live recording of 'June Last Year',my favourite song off the new album; Light & Dark.

I think this is Kate's third studio album, with the most recent two setting themselves apart from the first by a few years and a stint at BIMM in Brighton, where Kate is still based. That's how I first came across her music many years ago. Whenever I see her at gigs now I mumble something about the Open House, my ex local and a lovely pub. Anyway. Much like another Brighton resident, Emiliana Torrini, Kate's third album has found a way to take the best parts of albums one and two, and show a real evolution of sound and style.

The first album, Clocktower Park, was produced very nicely, and the songs were very listenable. They were also much more heavily orchestrated than the songs that followed on Tim's House. For me, having heard Tim's House first, the extra instrumentation on Clocktower Park went a long way towards hiding what I've now been able to be more sure of listening to Light and Dark; that the songs on Clocktower Park weren't anywhere near as sophisticated as those on the follow-up album. 

It's hard to explain, as the Clocktower Park songs all sound good and I've spent a lot of time listening to them, just like with Emiliana Torrini's Love In The Time Of Science. But when you hear the songs stripped back in the way they were on Tim's House (and Torrini's Fisherman's Woman), you can really begin to appreciate the songwriting at work. The versatility of Walsh's songs has been proved every time I've been to see her, as she's had a completely different accompaniment each time, giving the songs a whole new setting.

Now that I have my copy of Light and Dark, the departure from record number one is even more apparent. Kate and Tim Bidwell (who also produced Tim's House, in his house), have re-introduced the orchestration, building on the solid foundations laid down in the previous album. The results are simple but intricate, melodious but challenging.  

Hearing the new songs live was a delight and I'd encourage you to go along if you can over the next few weeks.