Little Red: Waiting (promo video)
Waiting / Wait Is Over’ is the second succulent single to be taken from Melbourne’s rock ‘n’ roll revisionaries Little Red’s debut album ‘Listen To’. It follows hot on the tail of the recent success of ‘It’s Alright / Coca-Cola’, which quickly built them a fan base of tastemaker luminaries, including BBC Radio 1’s Zane Lowe, Radio 2 stalwarts Radcliffe & Maconie, and XFM’s John Kennedy, and also found a home on the XFM playlist, and as BBC 6 Music’s breakfast show ‘Record of the Week’. Session invitations on the table from XFM and Absolute add to the eager anticipation for their very first UK shows in November.
The AA single is another tasty double helping of ‘instant-vintage’ pop from the band that effortlessly blends genres from rhythm and blues, reggae, soul, funk, doo-wop, and garage into sub 3 minute singalongs.
Mon 9th - XFM X:Posure Night at Barfly Camden (8.45pm)
Tues 10th - Rough Trade East Instore (7pm - FREE)
Fri 13th - Pure Groove Instore (1.15pm - FREE) /
Fri 13th - The Lexington Headline/Album launch show (10pm)
Sat 14th - Be at Proud (10pm)
myspace.com/littleredmusic
Darwin Deez ‘Constellations’ Rough Trade 7” pre-order
Listen and stream more of Darwin over at the ever fashionable myspace
Been in London working with Gold Panda this week. We did a fair bit of improvisation, which is something I’ve never really bothered with. I’ve always thought it was more fun to be involved in the improvising than in the listening/watching. Which is still true, but it was so much fun to make that now I’m into it.
I’ve also wondered for years how electronic duos work - especially since most of the acts I grew up listening to were duos. It seemed alien to me, I was so used to making electronic music alone and taking time to perfect a beat that adding anyone else into the mix was weird. How can you tweak stuff for hours if someone else is there?
So anyway, we did some live laptop stuff: generating sounds, trying to stay in time and sampling each other’s noises and the telly to create something new. I haven’t listened to the results other than a little blast when we finished. I’m kinda thinking maybe I won’t. But it felt and sounded good at the time.
We also spent some time at The Roundhouse working in the studio there with some sound engineering students. That was pretty great, and the fact that a lot of time was spent teaching the students mic techniques made us feel less bad about not really having any songs for them to record. Still, we recorded some drums and had time to record another long improvised track - this time with me on drums and Panda working the MPC. This was again, pretty enjoyable (in a different way to improvising in a traditional band).
All in all, I kinda realised how electronic collaboration works, and that improvisation is no longer a strange idea that I cannot be bothered with. It’s still probably more fun to make than to listen to, but still, I think I’ve been missing out.
Brilliant. Inspired. On the dot. Accurate.
Little Red album launch at the Lexington. Artwork by Paul Blow. Brilliant!
More on 'Quit MySpace Day'
Earlier, I linked to the Music Think Tank article without any of my own commentary, but it seems to be generating a lot of discussion so I wanted to add a few thoughts.
While I like the idea of everyone spontaneously quitting MySpace as it exists today, it simply isn’t going to happen. The gist of this ‘Quit MySpace Day’ piece is right on, though. MySpace doesn’t know what it has going for itself and the team there simply can’t capitalize on the unbelievable asset it has developed. Maybe the threat of people quitting will get their asses in gear.
Several of you folks have called for bands to simply abandon MySpace and head for a better service like Bandcamp or SoundCloud. One big problem with that. No one on earth knows about these services yet, save, what, a few thousand savvier nerds? Don’t get me wrong, I love these services - they do so many things right. But c’mon. If you’re a band, you have to be where the people are and MySpace has the audience (see my previous post on this subject here).
Another really important thing to remember - MySpace doesn’t require any ‘learning curve’ by the general public. Pretty much everyone knows how to operate it - and everyone knows how to find and connect with bands there. That alone is a huge deal. Even though it hurts to say it, you want to make connecting as smooth as possible, and MySpace give bands that opportunity.
Many of us are simply yearning for the MySpace Music team to take the greatness they have (audience) and start building more functional, open and clean tools for band promotion and management within that structure. The potential is so obvious and so huge anyone even remotely connected with web and music can see it plainly. Why can’t MySpace?
We’d all love to make some changes to myspace - but it still fills a void - design, streaming, download, discovery and e-marketing. does bandcamp and soundcloud do this? no. Very different capacities. Should we dump facebook just because as users we’re all using Twitter more and more? hell no. And Myspace is no longer about ‘networking’ but from a music / artist point of view, is there an alternative? No. It seems to me that all the musc tech guys want us to bin myspace, whilst all those that still use it for music discovery and a very very quick overview of a band - still rather like it. Interesting none-the-less
Lisa Mitchell is just finishing her tour with Newton Faulker across the UK and heading out in support of her debut album ‘Wonder’.
The second single taken from Wonder is ‘Coin Laundry’ and is released next week across the UK, supported by a brilliant mix by Starsmith (Marina & The Diamonds and Frankmusik protegee). Further information is enclosed as an attachment.
She recently performed packed out headline London shows, along with appearing at Glastonbury and Hard Rock Calling, and is currently touring the UK as support to Newton Faulkner before embarking on her own UK tour in November. Dates as follows;
7th November- Birmingham Academy 3
8th November- Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
10th November – Brel, Glasgow
11th November- Night & Day Cafe, Manchester
12th November- Eastney Cellars, Portsmouth
13th November- The Louisiana, Bristol
14th November The Portland Arms, Cambridge
myspace.com/lisalisamitchell
lisamitchellmusic.com
Peggy Sue in America, shots by Katie Harkin of Sky Larkin
Mark is one of the rare voices in the sphere of music futures that speak with sense and logic. See his recent blog post on Google Music which excites me hugely; do we at least have an alternative to MP3’s via iTunes and Amazon (read FLAC and WAV files at the same cost as iTunes and Amazons MP3 offering)
You can follow Mark on Twitter here
Oho, Google Audio. Interesting.
(via artistspaid)
LITTLE RED: WAITING / WAIT IS OVER
Released 30th November 2009 on Lucky Number
‘Waiting / Wait Is Over’ is the second succulent single to be taken from Melbourne based rock & roll outfit Little Red’s debut album ‘Listen To’. It follows hot on the tail of the recent success of ‘It’s Alright / Coca-Cola’ which quickly built them a fan base of tastemaker luminaries including BBC Radio 1’s Zane Lowe, Radio 2 stalwarts Radcliffe & Maconie and XFM’s John Kennedy and also found a home on the XFM playlist and as BBC 6 Music’s breakfast show ‘Record of the Week’. Session invitations are also on the table from XFM and Absolute when the band arrive in the UK this November for their eagerly anticipated very first UK shows.
The AA single is another tasty double helping of ‘instant-vintage’ pop from the band that effortlessly blends genres from rhythm and blues, reggae, soul, funk, doo-wop, and garage.
With ‘Waiting’, Little Red offer stunning imagery of the girl-chase, like an updated prom-style teen movie, “sweaty palms, I lose my calm beneath the disco ball”, and teeter on the edge of losing control, “I’m so tired, she’s got me wired, but I don’t know what on!” It’s all harmless fun, but deadly serious at the same time! The beauty is the simplicity and directness of their sub 3 minute pop songs, but, somehow, like all the best bands, they still have time to drop 8 bars of instrumental at the top to give you an instant & instinctive feel for what’s to come. It’s like the fine art of storytelling, offering a suspense & mystique in their delivery, but never hiding a necessary detail when the time is right, & never overselling their yarn!
On ‘Wait Is Over’ singers Dom & Tom share alto & baritone leads respectively, backed by the band’s trademark super-sweet four-part harmonies! Lyrically, ‘50’s romanticism combines with the contrasting emotions in building relationships as the two swap lines. “I was feeling at the end of my rope” becomes “I feel all my troubles are gone…all that’s left in the past, we’re together at last.” Despite the band’s backyard dwellings they rap with the syncopation of urban brothers, delivered with a natural rhythmic soul that’s like Phoenix with their happiest song to sing!
November dates:
Mon 9 – The Barfly, London (XFM X:Posure)
Tue 10 – Rough Trade East, London
Fri 13 – The Lexington, London
Sat 14 – Proud Galleries, London
Little Red are: Adrian Beltrame (Guitar, Vocals), Dominic Byrne (Vocals, Guitar), Quang Dinh (Vocals, Bass), Taka Honda (Drums), Tom Hartney (Vocals, Percussion).
The single will be released on limited seven inch vinyl and digital download.
www.myspace.com/littleredmusic
Hecuba - The Magic
Hecuba: myspace.com/hecubahecuba | hecubahecuba.com
Hecuba “The Magic” from the album “Paradise” on Manimal Vinyl.
Directed by Isaiah Seret & Jon Beasley.
Visual Effects by Benjamin Kutsko.
Produced by Shadie Elnashai.
