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cologne - 01/2012
listening to edward sharpe & the magnetic zeros - 40 day dream

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros is an American band led by Alex Ebert, vocalist of the power pop group Ima Robot. Their first full-length recording, Up from Below, was released July 7, 2009, digitally and July 14, 2009, physically on Community Records. Their first show as a full band was played July 18, 2007, at The Troubadour in West Hollywood, California.

After breaking up with his girlfriend, moving out of his house with his lifelong friend Nicholas Raymond Kellen, and joining a 12-step program for addiction, Ebert began work on a book about a messianic figure named Edward Sharpe. According to Ebert, Sharpe "was sent down to Earth to kinda heal and save mankind...but he kept getting distracted by girls and falling in love." Ebert later met singer Jade Castrinos outside a downtown Los Angeles cafe. In the summer of 2009, Ebert, Castrinos, and a group of musicians toured the country by bus as Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros. Their first show in 2009 was at the Marfa Film Festival in Marfa, Texas. The band recorded their debut album, Up From Below, in Laurel Canyon. Produced by Aaron Older and Nico Aglietti, it was released on July 14, 2009.

source: wikipedia

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kovalam / coconut bay - india 12/2011
listening to metronomy - the look

Metronomy are an electronic music group formed by Joseph Mount in Totnes, Devon, England in 1999. The current band consists of Joseph Mount (composer, singer, keyboards and guitar), Anna Prior (drums and vocals), Oscar Cash (saxophone, backing vocals, guitars and keyboards) and Gbenga Adelekan (bass guitar and vocals). Their music consists of instrumental electronic music and more recently, with the release of Nights Out, vocal electronic pop music. Mount also releases remixes under the name Metronomy, and has remixed many artists including Gorillaz, Roots Manuva, Franz Ferdinand, Klaxons, Goldfrapp, The Young Knives, Zero 7, Ladytron, Kate Nash, Lady Gaga and Lykke Li.

Metronomy have released three albums of original material, Pip Paine (Pay The £5000 You Owe), Nights Out and The English Riviera which was released in April 2011.

source: wikipedia

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listening to bon iver - minnesota

Bon Iver ( /boʊn iːˈvɛər/) is a Grammy-nominated folk band founded in 2007 by American indie folk singer-songwriter Justin Vernon. It includes Michael Noyce, Sean Carey, and Matthew McCaughan. Vernon released Bon Iver's debut album, For Emma, Forever Ago independently in July 2007. The majority of that album was recorded while Vernon spent three months in a remote cabin in northwestern Wisconsin. The name Bon Iver is derived from the French phrase bon hiver, meaning "good winter" or "have a good winter".

Justin Vernon is joined live by Sean Carey (drums, vocals, piano), Michael Noyce (vocals, baritone guitar, guitar) and Matthew McCaughan (bass, drums, vocals). Noyce was Vernon's guitar student during high school.

Carey approached Vernon during one of the first Bon Iver shows, telling him he could play and sing all the songs. Thereafter, the two played a number of them together. McCaughan and Vernon met while on tour with indie-rock band The Rosebuds in May 2007.

source: wikipedia

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alleppey - india 12/2011
listening to superpitcher - holiday hearts

Aksel Schaufler better known by his stage name Superpitcher, is a German producer affiliated with Cologne's Kompakt music label.

Superpitcher made his first appearance on Kompakt's Total 2 compilation album in 2000 with the song "Shadows". In 2001, he contributed a track to Kompakt's first Speicher 12" and released Heroin, a three-track 12" with three different sounds; "Tomorrow" was later included on that year's Total 3. On 2002's Total 4 there was another track by Schaufler, an electro-pop cover of Brian Eno's "Baby's on Fire". Soon after that, Schaufler released his second 12", Yesterday, which featured re-workings of the songs "Tomorrow" and "Heroin". He also made another appearance that year on Kompakt's fourth Speicher 12".

Since stepping out, Schaufler has done steady remixing work for the likes of Dntel, Carsten Jost and several others. In early 2004, Superpitcher released Here Comes Love. A year later, he released a mix album for Kompakt called Today.

Superpitcher and Michael Mayer have collaborated under the pseudonym Supermayer. Their debut album, Save The World, was released on September the 17th 2007 in Europe and September the 25th in the USA. The duo performed under the pseudonym at the 2008 Festival Internacional de Benicàssim and at Copenhagen Distortion in 2009.

source: wikipedia

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alleppey - india 12/2011
listening to grimes - dream fortress

There is a powerful harmony in Grimes. It is a project which is both musical and visual, embodying the arts of 2D, performance, dance, video and sound. Claire Boucher weaves these together to a strong rhythmic effect, “the marriage between the voice of a human and the heartbeat of a machine” [Bullett Magazine].

Boucher, born in Vancouver, Canada, came to Montreal in 2006. Her experience as a performer is deeply embedded in the illegal DIY loft culture of Montreal, where Grimes was one of the prominent figures in the scene surrounding Lab Synthèse – a 4600sq ft re-appropriated textile factory. She developed in a scene where punk ethos and pop music collide, resulting in a distinct sense of community, religiosity and psychedelic revelry.
Visions arises as Boucher’s fourth release in less than two years. Geidi Primes (2010), initially released as a limited 30 cassette run and free download, then followed by Halfaxa (2010) – arguably one of the first witch-house or lo-fi R&B releases. On Darkbloom (2011), Grimes begins taking her first steps as a producer, bringing together the experimentation behind her early work and a cutting edge pop aesthetic.

Each album tackles a different set of influences and styles. Her newest album, Visions, incorporates influences as wide as Enya, TLC and Aphex Twin, drawing from genres like New Jack Swing, IDM, New Age, K-pop, Industrial and glitch. This approach has marked Grimes as a curator of culture, and allowed the project to remain flexible and evolving.

A phantasmic state for the deep listener, sourcing the long forgotten spells running alongside humans for centuries and forcing them through a hyper-futuristic filter. Compositional and vocal delivery are coloured with an emotional trauma. Despite a generally upbeat demeanour, an urgency permeates the music. Calling us between our history and the future it uses the pleasure of minimal rhythms and dance to entice, but beyond its rich, software-sculpted cohesiveness, and vocal energy, runs a very real and odd world.

She describes her work as “the only means through which I can be fully expressive. It is both an ethereal escape from, and a violent embrace of my experience. The creative process is a quest for the ultimate sensual, mystical and cathartic experience and the vehicle for my psychic purging. Visions was conceived in a period of self-imposed cloistering during which time I did not see day-light. ”

source: www.arbutusrecords.com