New Music 2014 - Part 34 - Awna Teixeira - Wild One

To be quite honest this is a heads-up for March 2015 but after her 2012 début 'Where The Darkness Goes', which I still play often, I couldn't resist giving it a mention right now. The album itself is done and dusted. What she is trying to do now is raise money via Kickstarter to give it the launch and promotion that it deserves. Here are the bare facts: she is aiming to raise 9900 Canadian Dollars (£5500 to all intents and purposes) and in old music industry terms that is small change - the sort that would soon be frittered away on 'expenses' by those that...

Here is ten minutes of music from the album accompanied by stunning video of the wilds of her adopted home of Canada.

You can pledge a minimum of Canadian $1 (£0.56) and every little helps. For CAD 25 (about £14.35) you can have a signed CD and that includes delivery to the UK if that is where, like me, you are located.
She is going to reach the target but it has to happen by 10 October. I want that signed album so I pledged. Needs and wants are quite different things.
She needs this to happen more than any of us want material goods.
There is a theme that the LP both explores and seeks to support the wider understanding of; and that is depression.

Update (8 October 2014, 21:00 UTC+1):
The target was reached with 50 hours still on the clock. If you fancy owning a signed copy of 'Wild One', but haven't done so yet, then you can still pledge until the cut-off time (in about 48 hours).

New Music - Part 26 - Kevin Devine

Kevin Devine is probably little known, at least to most of us here in the UK. He has used crowd-funding to produce two albums, one acoustic and the other not, that will be released shortly and simultaneously (and that is an interesting concept in itself).
Here is a track, For Eugene, from one of them.
The oh-so-subtle, that you might hardly even notice, backing vocal is courtesy of Isobel Campbell. It is a far cry from her three albums (and an EP) with Mark Lanegan, but equally an extremely interesting call to arms.

I have only become to know of this in the last hour. I'm always really pleased to hear about things like this. 

Casual Conversations With A Woodpigeon

It is about to appear, I have mentioned this artist and band before, and yet this début EP also remains unknown to most.
Here it is... 'Casual Conversations With A Woodpigeon'.

As album titles go it is, I think, on a par with 'Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose'. It's not a short name, but an unforgettable one, and that matters. It is also a self-released EP, funded using Kickstarter. It is officially launched on March 26...

I'd heard bits and pieces before this point but then saw Cloudi and her band live at the first North Dorset Folk Festival last autumn and was very impressed. Still wondering? Well here they are live at Urban Outfitters, in Southampton, this very afternoon.
  

The second edition of North Dorset Folk Festival has a new venue, Marnhull Village Hall, and will take place on Saturday October 26, 2013.
Tickets go on sale soon. See you there.

New Music 2013 - Part 4 - Funding For Something to Happen

We all know it. Music costs - illegal music costs us all more - but that aside making it is far more expensive than buying legal recorded music. There are various options, rarely ever open to new and aspiring artists until recently, to harness the enthusiasm of music fans to directly fund a project they want to reach realization. One such, that has recently rolled-out in the UK, is Kickstarter. I have previous experience with it in its US version and that was without issue (a US based project that was very successful).
As is all such speculative investment it is not without risk but there are upsides - the investment can be small (from £5 typically, but that may be proportional to the sum required for the project), a definitive end date for the appeal for funding and no penalty if the desired target is not reached. Funds are only taken and then released to the appellant upon successful attainment of the target - if it isn't reached you lose nothing.
OK I thought, when I heard Kickstarter was coming to the UK; I won't go looking. I'll wait and see what comes along and grabs my attention although it was never likely to be anything other than music...
This, though I didn't know it at the time, proved to be that appeal. About five weeks ago I attended the first North Dorset Folk Festival. It was a great day and one of many acts was Cloudi Lewis.

I have reviewed it briefly.
So why did I choose to support this? Well, quite simply that performance was wonderful. A band doing what they want to do and if that is the current vogue then that's all to the good. If it wasn't then, hell, they'd probably do it anyway. That, to be honest, is the attitude that the music industry needs even more of right now. I'm prepared to put a small sum of money behind that dream...

There are green shoots, as the old saying goes, but they still need feeding and encouragement to survive.

New Music 2012 - Part 18 - Audio Fiction - Worlds Apart

New York's Audio Fiction, which I have mentioned before in relation to their 2009 self-titled album, has just announced the completion of its successor 'Worlds Apart'. It will be released "sometime this summer".  I have no more specific date but here is the artwork for it:

This one was almost entirely funded using Kickstarter: Yet another nail in the coffin of the majors... and I don't think for a moment that the band will mind me saying that.
I'm currently listening to the album 'Audio Fiction' (2008) but I've heard some of the demos from 'Worlds Apart' and, well, I just can't wait to hear it all as it is finally intended to be.