Monday, November 23, 2009

U2 at Glastonbury 2010!


U2 will headline next year's Glastonbury festival on the Pyramid stage on Friday 25 June 2010 it was confirmed today.

It will be their first appearance at the festival, something Bono says they have been working up to their whole life.

The 26-year-old rumour has finally come true," Michael Eavis, the festival organiser said. "At last, the biggest band in the world are going to play the best festival in the world! Nothing could be better for our 40th anniversary party. And there are even more surprises in the pipeline."

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Lady Gaga - The Fame Monster



Preview THE FAME MONSTER Now at Rhapsody!

Beginning today, you can stream THE FAME MONSTER in full exclusively from Rhapsody’s The Leak! Gaga’s new album is out this Monday, November 23rd but head over to Rhapsody for your exclusive first listen! You can also check out all of the songs from The Fame Monster including "Bad Romance & "Telephone" feat. Beyoncé this week on MTV & VH1!

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Great Lake Swimmers on tour in UK

CANADIAN FOLK ROCKERS GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS TOUR IN NOVEMBER Following a highly successful trek across Europe in the spring of 2009 to promote the release of their new album, ‘Lost Channels’, Canadian folk rockers Great Lake Swimmers return in November for another tour, including London Jazz Café on Nov 18. Dates are below. ‘Lost Channels’ received rave reviews around the world upon release, with many in the media comparing Great Lake Swimmers favourably to the likes of Fleet Foxes, Iron & Wine and Cowboy Junkies.



GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS

Sat Nov 14 BELFAST Speakeasy
Sun Nov 15 BIRMINGHAM Glee Club
Mon Nov 16 MANCHESTER Deaf Institute
Tues Nov 17 BRISTOL Metropolis
Weds Nov 18 LONDON Jazz Cafe

Friday, November 13, 2009

Google Wave

I've just got an invitation from Google to try out their new Google Wave product.

It's one of the hottest tickets on the internet right now and I have invites to give away.



If you want to try it out, leave a comment to this post or send an email to aboutthemusic@googlemail.co.uk

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation
and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

What is a wave?

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

The Beatles - on record

THE BEATLES ON RECORD, a new documentary premiering on HISTORY on Wednesday, November 25 at 10pm, charts The Beatles' extraordinary recording journey from Please Please Me to the epic Abbey Road LP and reveals how they developed as musicians, matured as songwriters and created an enduring body of work that pushed the boundaries of studio recording, changing the course of musical history and popular culture. There will be additional airings of the special at later dates across A&E Television Networks (AETN).

Narrated entirely by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and Sir George Martin, THE BEATLES ON RECORD features over 60 songs, rarely seen footage and images from The Beatles' archives along with never-before-heard outtakes of conversation from the original recording sessions. The result is an intimate look at the creative process behind each of the band's Abbey Road Studios masterpieces. The documentary is directed by Bob Smeaton, who directed the landmark Beatles Anthology series and created mini-documentaries for The Beatles' recently released re-mastered albums on CD.

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

The Mountain Goats



I first encountered the Mountain Goats when I was handed "The Sunset Tree" for review for Alternative Ulster and it ended up in my top 10 records of 2005. I was struck by their distinctive voice and lyrical style.

If you haven't discovered the Mountain Goats then MLive.com offers a primer.

Troy Reimink writes:

"During the past few years, John Darnielle has become one of my favorite songwriters. He's the creative energy behind the Mountain Goats, and basically IS the band in the same way Owen Pallett is Final Fantasy, Conor Oberst is Bright Eyes and so on.

Also, Darnielle is wildly prolific -- he's released nearly an album a year since he started recording in the early 1990s -- and consistent, which makes entering the Mountain Goats catalog a bit intimidating. (Though it's hard to go wrong with any of his 4AD output.) Here are a few suggestions:

Whenever I make a mix CD for somebody in the month of January, I include "This Year," which includes the captivating, who-can't-relate refrain of, "I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me":

Darnielle has penned two of the greatest breakup songs in the history of the form. The more approachable is "Woke Up New," which kicks off "Get Lonely" (sort of a breakup concept record) and devastatingly chronicles the narrator's inability to perform basic daily tasks for the first time following a relationship's end:

The real gut-wrencher, though, is "No Children" from the "Tallahassee" record, which kind of makes you wish every day was Valentine's Day, don't it?

Last year's "Heretic Pride" was a typically solid effort that closed with one of Darnielle's loveliest compositions, "Michael Myers Resplendent," a deliriously spooky campfire singalong.

My all-time favorite Mountain Goats song was the first one I ever heard, "Palmcorder Yajna" from the "We Shall All Be Healed" album. There's an eerie, early-REM quality to the lyrics, which give me the chills for reasons I don't really understand. Like this: "I dreamt of a camera pointing out from inside the television / And the aperture yawning and blinking / And the headstones climbed up the hills." Unfortunately, the best video I can find is a cover version by Ben Gibbard:

The band recently released "The Life of the World to Come," a collection of songs each inspired by a single Bible verse. Here's a moving performance of "Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace":

The further back you go into the catalog, the more lo-fi it gets. Of the pre-4AD releases, I'm fondest of "All Hail West Texas," mainly because of "The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton" whose chorus -- "Hail Satan!" -- you might agree serves as an interesting counterpoint to the more recent biblical material:

Monday, November 02, 2009

The Swell Season - Strict Joy

About The Music is a huge fan of The Frames and it's front man Glen Hansard. We loved the Swell Season, Hansard's collaboration with Czech pianist Markéta Irglová.

I heard them play together a few years ago at the Lisburn Arts Centre in Ireland. After starring in the low budget, Oscar winning film "Once" they are now bona-fide big stars. However the fame and glamour was a bit much for the relationship but the wonderful thing is, they still make music. "Strict Joy" is not a break up album, just a record by friends who used to be lovers. Let's hope there are more to come.

The Observer Music magazine had a short piece about how the couple fell in, and now out of love