Remember when young hot singers would be discovered via Youtube and feeling that the game had changed? Well, TikTok is now the path to a major label contract and the latest success story is that of Lyn Lapid.
Astral Drive is songwriter and producer Phil Thornalley’s vision of a long lost album from the 1970s that only existed in his own mind. A labour of love that is very much the statement of a lifelong music fan living in the modern world.
London-based soul quintet, Mamas Gun are sharing their new single “On The Wire” – the latest to be taken from their Golden Days album, due out this Friday (May 18) via Candelion.
Howard Ivans is really the musical vehicle for singer-songwriter Ivan Howard’s creative impulses. Howard is no stranger to the modern indie rock landscape being a integral member of The Rosebuds and GAYNGS.
We have been looking intently at the modern pop scene for some time now, hoping and praying that somewhere out there, there is an artist who is able to take the musical elements of the past and make it sound modern, and pointing the way to the future. Well, finally we think we have – and his name is Gabriel Garzón-Montano!
The Steve McQueens found time in between tours of Australia and South Korea to bring their magic jazz-soul-funk ride to home fans at the Annexe Sessions on Thursday, September 29th.
Background RJD2 (a.k.a. Ramble Jon Krohn), is an American DJ/producer/electronic musician based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is best known perhaps for the theme of the Mad Men TV series.
The late Arthur Lee and Love (the band Lee led & fronted) remains one of the most under-rated bands from the 60s/70s. Well, at least compared to their peers. Already well-documented is the fact that the likes of Jim Morrison (The Doors), Jimi Hendrix and Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin) were massive fans of this ground-breaking iconoclastic band. Certainly, the backward gazing bands of the 90s British indie scene owed a thing or two to Love.
One of the most freewheeling eclectic 60s bands, Love (which also included guitarist-songwriter Bryan Maclean, lead guitarist Johnny Echols, bassist Ken Forssi & drummer Michael Stuart) were never constrained by genres or styles and dabbled in folk, baroque pop, psychedelia, acid rock and even proto-punk (check out “7 and 7 Is” is below).
Not only that but the band can lay claim to producing one of the bona fide rock masterpieces of all time – the magnificent Love Changes.
However, due to drug problems and internal disagreements, the band’s commercial success dissipated in the late 60s, with Lee fronting a new set of musicians, but this incarnation of Love never garnered the widespread acceptance or acclaim of the original group.
Reel to Real was Love’s final official album and until now, has never been issued on CD! By the recording and release of this album, Love was essentially Lee with an assortment of session musicians but despite its marginalisation in rock history, deserves serious re-examination.
Not least for its daring coverage of a multitude of styles, despite its primary focus being on soul, R&B and blues-rock, one could imagine the young Prince, Lenny Kravitz or Terence Trent D’Arby listening to Reel to Real and copping one or two musical ideas.
Whilst modern pop fans would probably find themselves grooving to soulful gems like “Time is Like a River” and “Stop the Music”, alternative rockers might take a shine to off-beat numbers like “Singing Cowboy” and “You Said You Would”, which sound like Hendrix channeling Buck Owens! And that last song – “Everybody’s Gotta Live” – is the Lennonesque anthem Noel Gallagher wished he was smart enough to rip off!
The new reissue has rather illuminating outtakes which on occasion outshine the original tracks with their spontaneity and raw energy. There’s also a sloppy studio rehearsal of that classic Forever Changes outtake “Wonder People” for all your Love completists out there.