Archive for the ‘Singer SongWriter’ Category
Song of the Day: Lips Songs – Everything to me
Everything to me by LIPS Songs
Relax, sit back and let the day unwind, let go of the struggle and enjoy the moment. Lips Songs brings the gentle casio synth into the background of our day like a soft breeze on a cool august evening. The minimalistic and humble pace of this Brooklyn New York solo artist is true easy listening. There’s a slight Corrine Bailey Rae cuteness that is inexorable but pleasant and brings an sweet innocence to the tracks. You could just reach out and pinch the song’s cheeks.
Hear all Lips Songs’ tracks on SoundCloud.
Song of the Day: Andain – Promises
From the San Francisco California/ Hason Ohio based duo electronic music group Andain springs a fount of light-weight beautiful trance music that is perfect for the soft sound music lover. Their soft airy vocals and music box chimes paint dreamy love songs and emotive soundscapes. Many of their other tracks fall square into the dance trance genre with steady pulsing drum beats and long fade-in fade-out synth intros and pumping heartbeats with high-hat accompaniment. However, this song Promises, along with the rest of the songs on their soon to be released full debut album should prove more diverse than their previous works that they began with when they were first founded in 2001. The group has recollected and I’m looking forward to the rest of what their new album.
Andain’s new sound movement is familiar to fans of Imogen Heap, M83, Kate Havnevik and other creators of love inducing electronic music appropriate for any fantasy film, authors of deeply emotive and powerful music who tend to incorporate more classical instruments and more classical vocal elements.
Song of the Day: Y – iamamiwhoami by Jonna Lee
Despite the lack of explicit publicity and direct expositionary language from the creators of this video, there is a lot still communicated through the song and video, several other music videos with similar themes were released on the same YouTube channel for “iamamiwhoami”. The artist in the video undoubtedly is Jonna Lee a Swedish singersongwriter. The YouTube phenomenon saw this video “y” release after others entitled b, o, u-1, u-2, n, t; all spelling “bounty”. There are some additional anonymous and mysterious things surrounding the project, which can be read on the Last.fm description, including the anonymous acceptance of the Swedish Grammy Award for “Innovator of the Year” in 2011.
There are several aspects to the creation that is this music video, the meaning of the lyrics in the context of the music video, the music video itself and what it portrays, and the greater relationship of this music video to the others released by this artist and what it means for us as music fans, listeners, and lovers of art and things of beauty.
First to summarize everything, to save you from reading everything I write, below, let me say that I love this song, on many different levels and that all are due their own respect. The music video portrays an abstract fantasy world without very much explained, however, my best interpretation is that the artist is an individual who has become aware of the truths of our world, the lesser known or fully understood horrors of our world that humanity has reaped over the years and still today against the natural environment on which we all depend and also upon each other. However, there is hope, not great hope, but still chance for us to find salvation and to heal the damage that has been done to us.
The knight represents the ignorant systems of our world carelessly fulfilling a mission of violence upon a misunderstood enemy, ourselves and our world for short term gains and pride. While the king represents a humbled and destroyed earth that has suffered greatly and whose kingdom is near its end. The impaling of the knight is a just revenge from nature executed by some unknown force. The tone of the video is somber, and the lack of exposition or (explanatory language) forces us to try to make sense of it. Maybe the average person might not know what any of this might mean and that’s why I’m writing about it.
I will write more about the other aspects of the video later. Feel free to write your own interpretations in the comments below. And please share this Song of the Day blog with others.
The latest video that they released is entitled “;john“, watch it below.
Folk Song of the Day: Russian Red – Loving Strangers
Lourdes Hernández is the heart and soul of Russian Red. I heard this beautiful song of hers while watching the film Room in Rome. Her simple but touching acoustic love songs contain a genuine sweetness and innocence made unforgettable by her talented and ranged voice. Although from Spain Lourdes sings in English to allow wider reception and understanding of her music. Listen to more of her songs on the Russian Red’s MySpace page and learn more at the Eureka Records music page for Russian Red.
Song of the Day: FC Kahuna – Hayling
London Indie Pop Electronic music group FC/Kahuna, aka Jon and Dan Kahuna, rocks. Take a look! Bigger description of this DJ duo group coming soon on Song of the Day.
Song of the Day: White Sea – Overdrawn
Morgan Kibby singular talent and creator of White Sea, a new addition to the indie pop music scene. Her voice debuted on M83′s synth pop album Saturdays = Youth, which features one of my favorite songs We Own the Sky.
Whitesea is playful and intimate, invites us to come and join the party, but is also mature and carefully layered. Understanding that Whitesea emerged from the inspired vision of Morgan Kibby waiting patiently to emerge from within her as she taught herself how to use ProTools after touring with M83 in 2008. You can imagine the thoughts one might have while teaching themselves how to use a program while knowing that after understanding how to use it you can create your dreams. Like an violist having to learn how to build their violin before being able to play.
What’s more, her EP titled “The Frontier is available for download for free from the UrbanOutfitter’s website.
FREE DOWNLOAD OF THE NEW EP “THE FRONTIER” BY WHITESEA
There’s much more to know about Mogan Kibby and Whitesea on her MySpace page here. On Facebook,
Indie Alternative Music: Jo Hamilton – There It Is
Singer Songwriter Jo Hamilton’s music is light, playful, intimate, captivating, and fully featured. Her songs are anything but standard, each one introduces a variety of styles, intros, creative harmonies, instruments, and melodies. Her voice is reminiscent of Annie Lennox and Feist but with the creativity and playfulness of Bjork. One can only appreciate the artfulness of her music video and use of non-traditional instruments.
Jo Hamilton’s debut album “Gown” features this song along with several other journeys in sound and harmony that are sure to pleasantly surprise. Perhaps Jo’s eclectic style can be attributed to her multi-cultural and always traveling up-bringing which took her around the world to places that most people would never imagine could be combined together into one lifetime.
Take a look at this short film which covers the making of her album Gown to get a better feel for who Jo is and get a deeper glimpse into her enchanting world.
Jo’s album was released under the creative audiophile record label Poseidon Records out Birminham UK.
New Electronic Song: tyDi feat. Tania Zygar – Vanilla (Original Mix)
I just noticed Tania Zygar on a friend’s Facebook page and decided to investigate. I was very impressed. Part of the credit goes to “tyDi”, AKA – Tyson Illingworth, the #1 DJ in Australia who’s hit it big on Armin Van Buuren’s Armada record label. The combination of talent and experience with both of these young musical heavy-weights is all you need. It really doesn’t get any better than this. If you think it does, please share the love in the comments below or on the Song of the Day Facebook or Twitter page. We all love great music and there’s no reason to keep it all to yourself.
Get tour dates, watch more music videos, photos, discography and more on the official websites here for Tania Zygar and tyDi.
New Songs: Throw Me The Statue – Lolita
This playful tune comes from a band that got its humble start in the form of a mix tape for a girl. The band, Throw Me A Statue grew from 2005-2007 on a local Seattle DIY record label Baskerville Hill with a friendly local following of friends attending shows which grew and started getting press. In 2007 the group got picked up by another record label out of Indiana Secretly Canadian and re-released their album in February of 2008 which has led to good reviews and an international tour.
I’ll just copy the rest of their story directly from the space age font on their Official Throw Me The Statue bio page.
In the beginning of 2009 the band began work on the follow-up LP and headed into the studio for the first time. With Phil Ek (The Shins, Built to Spill, Band of Horses) on board as co-producer, the group consisting of Reitherman, Aaron Goldman, Charlie Smith and Jarred Grimes sought to enlarge the scope of TMTS’ lo-fi bedroom pop. The resulting full length record entitled Creaturesque will be released in the US and Europe by Secretly Canadian on August 4th, and soon thereafter in Aus/NZ by PopFrenzy and in Japan by MerryGate Records.
After reading the lyrics for this song and watching the music video a few times I feel like I just had a fruit wonderful smoothie rich in love-sick adolescent hormones and high-school memories, it’s healthy for the body but the sugar high leaves my thoughts a little fuzzy. I can’t quite put my finger on a proper clinical analysis of the whole affair but I found a line here in my notes that seems to sum it all up, “I love this song, stop thinking, just enjoy it”. I guess when you’ve got a Lolita on your brain there’s not much thinking required.
New Songs: Houses – Reds (Dir. Lamar+Nik)
1) Houses is an anonymous lo-fi electronic duo out of Chicago, Illinois. They are signed to Lefse Records.
That’s all Last.fm has to say about this band. But you can find out a lot about them on official Houses website, like that they recorded a lot of the original material for the album while living in a tiny tree cabin in a remote part of the jungle near Hilo Hawaii without any running water or electricity. That they moved back to Chicago when they ran out of money and now have the album out and were blessed to have a great director duo for their music video Nik Harper, Lamar High, and Nicholas Owen aka Lamar+Nik. The male and female pair that makes up the indie music group Houses is apparently anonymous as they blurred out the face of the girl in the video. I would venture so say this means that the two value their own privacy, and also understand quite well the dangers of fame in the world of entertainment. So I’ll further conclude that the couple is also very intelligent as they are not doing something that is common among music artists, which is to reject the idea of self branding of your own music, although this can be argued. But at the bottom line they at least didn’t jump into the “look at me, I’m cool” wagon that a lot of music artists choose to take as a way to promote their own music through “I want to be like that cool person” associative thought which fans tend to have (idolatry). So good for them! I hope they make more music.
You can buy their CD or LP, Houses “All Night” which is for sale on Lefse Records.












