Bella Union is 15 (Part 2) - EOTR 2012

It has certainly taken me a little longer than I intended to put this, the second half of my account of Friday at End Of The Road Festival (EOTR), together but my ambition increased as I was writing the first part and I decided to include some stuff about bands that were performing but that for reasons of clashes I was unable to catch on August 31 but have had the good fortune to see live at other recent festivals.
I am indeed going to start with one of them, London four-piece 'Veronica Falls', fronted by Roxanne Clifford that appeared on the Big Top Stage at 20:30 on Friday (whilst I was watching 'The Low Anthem' on The Garden Stage).
Here they are performing at the first No Direction Home Festival at Welbeck Abbey back in June this year - a festival that has the same team as EOTR behind it.

  

They were excellent then, notably including several new songs not on the album, and I heard similarly good reports about their more recent performance at End Of The Road.

    

The act that had preceded them on this stage at EOTR was the Swedish electro-gaze duo of Fredrik Balck and Maria Lindén, with bass and drums for the live gig, otherwise known as 'I Break Horses' and touring their 2011 début album 'Hearts'. It proved to be a quite fascinating dichotomy. Whilst on the recorded version, to which I am listening as I write this, the music is really rather soothing and fittingly autumnal - evoking mists and mellow fruitfulness - the same proposition live is by turns squally and unpredictable; decidedly that of the darker side of autumn, of gales and lashing rain but also sudden, striking glimpses of the sun. Given the recent renewed interest in releasing live albums, which really ought to be the basis of a future post, this would certainly be an interesting prospect.

'I Break Horses', The Big Top Stage, EOTR 2012 performing Winter Beats.

  

The first Bella Union act to grace a stage on Friday was a four piece from Oklahoma that, in terms of live music certainly, was quite new to me. I was impressed...

'Horse Thief' live on the Big Top Stage at about 11:55 on Friday morning.

So good in fact that one way and another I saw them play two complete sets within the same calendar day - and there aren't very many acts or artists about which I can say that.

As for the next band what can I say? It is the third time I have seen them live at EOTR in four years... It is of course 'The Low Anthem'...

On the Garden Stage, where else, at 20:20 on Friday.

  

Then came the really big decision. 'Midlake ' headlining The Garden Stage at 21:45 or 'Beach House' doing that duty on the Woods Stage from 21:30. This was for me one of the easier decisions of the day and there was no chance that it would be anything other than watching all of one or all of the other. I have seen 'Midlake' twice live but never Baltimore's 'Beach House'...

'Beach House', The Woods Stage at EOTR 2012 at 22:03 Friday evening.

        

This was one set, of only a few, where I had no particular interest in being right at the front --- for me it was almost entirely about the music performed live and it certainly did not disappoint.

When they came off stage, at about 11pm, there came the realization that it was now 11 hours of live music today and with four hours more still to go - and then to do it all over again for the next two days.

Lots more to come... New Music 2010 - Part 1

I seem to have done a lot of looking back in the last few weeks and there is still more to be written - thinking about all the live performances I have been lucky enough to see has bought back many memories particularly of festivals - and a selection of singles that have made me take notice should be some fun too.
While I'm thinking, and with few important releases due in the last weeks of 2009, here are a couple that I'm looking forward to in early 2010 and both are by returning artists, very different in style, the existing output of which I already have and like.

The first, rather delayed by the very sad events of 2008, is the second album by Leeds' Corinne Bailey Rae. The self-titled début from 2006 still sounds as good to me now as it did the first time I heard it back then and I'd be very surprised if The Sea were to disappoint. Very much of relevance in 2010 is the fact that she is also an awesome live performer.

The first single is 'I'd Do It All Again'. It is on radio play lists now and recent performances of new material at small venues have garnered very positive reviews. She is an artist I have not heard live and I would like to put that right in 2010, which is also true of the next act.

The lead single is 'Norway' and apparently the album Teen Dream doesn't disappoint either. I'm a huge fan of the Baltimore duo Beach House and both albums; Beach House (2006) and Devotion (2007).


For this album they are again signed to Bella Union in the UK which, as far as I am concerned, says a great deal.

This I think, is not even the start of it...

Why pay too much attention to detail?

I've been having something near to a week off from blogging - to listen to music instead - although to do that properly a week off work would be far better but that is simply not going to happen right now.

I'm fascinated by what people are looking for when they end up visiting this meagre blog and in particularly how often it now seems to concern lyrics. I'd love to add my best efforts for the albums I own and that people have looked for but for which lyrics are not readily available on-line. The only real problem is simply the time it takes to do it.
I'd like to do this for both Ilya (Bristol, UK and San Ilya in the US) They Died For Beauty and the all-American Ilya (Poise Is The Greater Architect and Leaving Sans-Souci) plus many other albums too numerous to mention.
If you can do some of them, even a single song, then you can easily set up a blog of your own. If you don't want to do that you could even post them here if you wanted - a blog can have more than one author.

I have an admission to make:
Today I received an album I didn't order, or at least that is what I thought, but truth to tell when I looked at my order had I accidentally ordered the wrong album (Beach House rather than Devotion) by the by the correct band (Beach House). It was a stunning lack of attention to detail but I have done this this sort of thing before and, as one of my work colleagues might well say in such circumstances, "it is all part of the tapestry of life". It is also how I discovered that there are two bands called Ilya!

Beach House - Beach House, 2006 (US) and 2007 (UK)

It is not really a problem except in that it makes me now want to buy the one, Devotion, that I intended to buy in the first instance even more.

On a quite different tack entirely it seems that Amy Studt now has a release date (28 April 2008) for her second album My Paper Made Man and that the lead single will be Chasing The Light. [See source.] It does seem, however, that Blogger did not archive and index this earlier post correctly so here it is again and I'm sorry if you have seen it all before.

Saturday, February 09, 2008

Whatever happened to Amy Studt?

The album False Smiles (2003): do you remember it?

Probably not, and I'll forgive you if you don't, so we need an update on another artist who, much like Fefe Dobson, was apparently ditched in the mania that accompanied the realisation that downloading was for real.

Well, although the above is an image from her 2003 incarnation, the one at the top of this post is not. She will be back in 2008 with a new album - My Paper Made Man - and Guy Sigsworth (sometime Madonna-producer and, with Imogen Heap, one half of Frou Frou) seems to be involved with it too, which is no bad thing in my mind.

Posted by Richard G at 12:12 AM

Reality Check - Part 1.

When you feel inclined to despair here are some possible delights for those that like wandering away from the national radio music machine.
Should you be tired of Duffy et al (at least in the UK and, as it just sometimes
happens, I am not) then here are a few things that you probably won't have heard on whatever radio station(s) you usually listen to:

Beach House - Devotion

This is their second album and a paean to 21st century lo-fi: the main issue is that Baltimore duo Victoria Legrand (vocals and synths) and Alex Scally (guitars, including slide-guitar no less) also make it all sound like 1980s music never put a beat wrong! No wonder they are now signed to Bella Union [BELLACD160X] in the UK and it is available on vinyl too, but currently only on import from mainland Europe or the US.

If you don't fancy that just now, but are willing to indulge my liking for new French music, you could probably do worse than listening to The Teenagers.

Reality Check: they do what teenagers do.

They just happen to do it much better than most!

I nearly forgot to mention that, while they are a French three-piece and slightly older than they might perhaps seem to be (they are all in their early twenties), they can do foul-mouthed lo-fi pop better than anyone. The album Reality Check is due for release in the UK on Merok on 17th March and a vinyl release is also on the cards.

This post has threatened to become much longer than I expected. Part 2 will follow very shortly.