With head-banging, strobe lights, and electric guitar solos, First Aid Kit brought a new energy to the Palace Theatre in January.
Sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg just released their fourth album, ‘Ruins.’ The album features songs that fit the texture we’ve come to expect from First Aid Kit — folksy sounds with beautiful harmonies — as well as expanding the group’s palette to include a harder-rocking sound.
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Claudio Conti – Old Clouds Fell
Claudio Conti is an Italian songwriter whose style is rooted in the same romantic pensiveness that marks the music of Tim Buckley, Nick Drake, Gene Clark. and Tim Hardin. Largely drawn to psychedelic music, folk rock, and 80’s indie rock, he considers Gram Parsons, The Doors, The Smiths and early R.E.M. as his main influences.
His new 14-track album ‘Garnet Dusk’ is a very ambitious and personal album with moods alternating between the chaotic experiences of a man in his early to mid-thirties, the solidification of his beliefs and worldview, including its flaws and qualities.
‘Garnet Dusk’ addresses such issues as migration and maturity – the product of deep thinking about the impervious, inevitable situations that life dishes up, usually not on a silver platter. This album was equally inspired by the sound of the ocean as by a woman’s departure. This is Conti’s attempt to explain unusual encounters like ships passing slowly in the night.
“This album is about the mysticism of love and rediscovered affection. The truth in children’s eyes and parents’ lack of consideration. And the frustrations, the illusions of flippancy that take us far from certain situations and on a detour towards the firmness of our insight, the channel of real life, where we find the life source that we really need,” says Claudio Conti.
Back in 2003-04, Conti self-released a sequence of home recordings called ‘Botticelli’, followed by the ‘Handmaids Skim The Marble’ EP in 2008 and the ‘Northern’ EP the following year. Having spent a significant amount of time in the UK and the United States, his various life experiences there allowed him to further shape his expressive-musical style and influences, resulting in the album ‘Every Forest Has Its Shadow’ (2012), which he fully wrote and then recorded with psychedelic folk rock band Magic Salad.
After a two-year hiatus, Conti split his time between Chicago, Los Angeles, and London last year, and decided to officially release his first solo album ‘Saltworks’ (recorded in 2013-14) with Seahorse Recordings and was very well received by Italian magazines and webzines.
This latest album ‘Garnet Dusk’ is like fire in the sky, lasting just a short while but holding your core intuitions – carpe diem. Then comes the night with its glorious shadows and blinding lights… a reel for the poets… a tryst for the unsatisfied.
“A sumptuous violin courtesy of Alessio De Vita immediately demands the full attention of the listener as Conti’s light, calming tones perfectly accompany. It magically refrains from upping the tempo and serves as an almost angelic call to the heavens”
– Louder Than War“Claudio Conti uses a folk scenario in which he weaves songs that you never get tired of – this is a pleasant and fluid earful… an inward-looking journey the artist leads us on discreetly”
– Rockit“Here unfolds a cherished and evocative dimension with swaying images of pure and luminous harmony”
– Music Map“Claudio interprets this genre uniquely, sneaking in races of British folk-rock under the influence of Jeff Buckley’s intimate vocal dynamics and the liquid atmosphere of a superb electric guitar”
– TempiDuri“You could easily become enveloped by the notes in Conti’s music or the genuineness of his vocals”
– Sound36 MagazineLINKS:
http://www.facebook.com/Claudio-Conti-1479110699037058
http://twitter.com/claudioconti70
http://soundcloud.com/claudio-conti-1981
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkwofKkFAABqlS_hjhcTpmA/videos
http://open.spotify.com/album/3qE7dqbAJTLmCSI7TgYbUs
http://itunes.apple.com/it/album/saltworks/id949723409
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=claudio+conti+saltworks
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/claudioconti -
Michael P Cullen – Do You Believe
A man in a suit, an old semi-acoustic guitar and a voice like sandpaper dipped in honey. Michael P Cullen tells stories of longing and regrets in a unique and textured baritone with echoes of American mid-century pulp writers, 60s Vegas cabaret, and Southern Gothic Americana. He has often been compared to Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, and Nick Cave but his unique blend of Noir, New Wave, Stax and Northern Soul ultimately defies comparison.
The Sydney-based lounge lizard artfully marries Southern Gothic dustiness to black-sequined seediness in a way that actually reveals a true sense of class.
Monster Magnet Records (Los Angeles)True Believer is a hedonistic, lush, red velvet-curtained fragile and beautiful album. Imbued with the sexual frustration and louche ambivalence of Robert Forster from The Go-Betweens and underpinned by a Nick Cave-like gothic baritone darkness, each listen reveals more complex layers, greater humor and a melodic strength. Every song is great – flashes of Tindersticks and Leonard Cohen weaving in and out of this lounge-room lothario performing in a haze of smoke and whiskey.
Back Seat Mafia (London)Songs about regret, bitterness and a love gone sour. The vocals are a rich baritone cocktail of spoken word, singing and crooning while [Tim]Powles provides seamless, charming accompaniment on the keys and drums. It’s intoxicating. It has to be experienced.
Rip it Up Magazine (Brisbane)Inspired by the likes of Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, and Tom Waits, you nevertheless get a very Michael Cullen experience. He is strong and has a distinctive baritone vocal that weaves through the music, making this album unique, and uniquely valuable. 4.5 Stars
Sydney Morning HeraldMix a stiff drink or three, crack open a pack of cheap cigarettes (I don’t care if you smoke… you want to experience this correctly or not?), and sink in your own glorious malaise, pondering where you could have done better for yourself. Michael P Cullen & The Soul Searchers understand.
Modern Fix (Wisconsin)Musicians/Instruments:
Michael P Cullen – vocals. Guitar. bass
Tim Powles – drums, percussion, vocals (Tim is a long time member of legendary Australian band The Church)Produced by Michael P Cullen & Tim Powles
Engineered by Tim Powles and Ted Howard
Mixed by Danton Supple (Coldplay, Morrissey many others)LINKS:
http://michaelpcullen.com
https://soundcloud.com/michael-p-cullen
https://bit.ly/MichaelPCullenYouTube
https://bit.ly/michaelpcullenfacebook
https://twitter.com/m1chaelcullen -
Vast Asteroid – Spacegaze
Racked during a magical week at the legendary Rancho de la Luna studios in Joshua Tree, CA by producer/engineer Andy Freeman, and highlighted by the likes of Dave Catching (Eagles Of Death Metal) as a special guest, debut of the newborn outfit Vast Asteroid is able to instantly bring together the lovers of shoegaze, cosmic rock, britpop and heavier stuff like stoner and desert rock.
Hailing from Los Angeles, Vast Asteroid is a supergroup of sorts, composed of The Warlocks bassist Mimi Star, seminal UK punk-rock
band Slaughter And The Dogs drummer Mark Reback and singer and guitarist James Poulos.After previously playing together in various configurations, the members coalesced around a shared love of the immersive, propulsive and passionate music of shoegaze, space rock, desert
rock, art grunge, and britpop. They also gave a name to this unique blend they together give shape to: spacegaze.And they got it right, judging by the cosmic afflatus that permeates their rock-hard wall of fuzz. This record is a glance at the night sky from the desert, and its otherworldly yet hauntingly familiar epic instantly blows your mind and soothes your soul. The songs foundations lay on a tremendously mighty rhythm section, that shakes your speakers as if an asteroid had felt into your back yard; while brilliant guitar riffs and vocals capture the listener and won’t ever free him. The extra guitar madness by Dave Catching on “Spacegaze” is the icing on the cake.
Songcraft is particularly treated, and the band shows the ability to take away everything that is not needed, leading us straight to the very essence of things.
Born from a brief writing and rehearsal period in and around the Highland Park neighborhood of L.A., the band’s debut full-length album, is out now.
LINKS:
https://www.facebook.com/vastasteroid
https://twitter.com/vastasteroid
https://vastasteroid.bandcamp.com