The musical arrangement of The Milk-Eyed Mender is fairly simple. It is mainly Joanna’s childish voice accompanied by harp, piano or occasionally harpsichord. Her songs are influenced by Appalachian folk and are absolutely beautiful and delicate in their simplicity. As highlights of the The Milk-Eyed Mender album I would definitely recommend: “Peach, Plum, Pear”, “This Side of the Blue” or “Sprout and Bean”. You know what? Check the whole album out, it is absolutely worth it.

Joanna toured here in Australia about a year ago supported by Smog.
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Unfortunately “First Impressions of Earth” start to get a bit boring halfway through.
Songs sound very similar. Cassablancas vocals are clearer and more “up-front” in the mix comparing to previous excellent albums “Is This It” and “Room on Fire”. But that’s about it. The length of the album 52 minutes is not a helping factor either, there is just not that much exciting and new happening and listener might get slightly bored. Very good start, but overall an average album for The Strokes.

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Quieter more delicate tracks such as: “Team Handed”, “Friend of the Night” or “Emergency Trap” are mainly based around dominant piano, what is a new very interesting feature of Mr. Beast.
The Album consists of 10 tracks and its total length is about 43 minutes. Songs are obviously shorter, averaging in 3-4 minutes each, which I think was a very smart move. It makes the whole album sounding very fresh. Also balanced order of songs with different moods and tempo keep up the tension through the whole 43 minutes and makes Mr. Beast a very spontaneous-sounding album.

Mr. Beast is probably Mogwai’s best work to a date yet. It is an amazing effort especially these days when there is so many bands trying to sound just the same.
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Format shifting will become legal once these new laws area passed. People will be allowed to conver their own CDs or other media to other formats. This will also make recording of television and radio shows for later viewing legal. This practice is currently prohibited by law, despite the fact that millions of people are doing it regularily.

Universities, schools, cultural institutions and libraries will be allowed to use copyright material for non-commercial purposes. On the other hand, police will be given more power to fight internet privacy, and courts will gain powers to give larger payouts against pirates.
Read the full story…

From musicians contributing on this album it is definitely worth mentioning Chris Gunst (Beachwood Sparks, ex-Strictly Ballroom), Rachel Haden (That Dog) and Benjamin Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie), among the others.

Tamborello did a fantastic sample editing job. The way the songs are structured and put together is simply genius. Quirky beats, loads of clicking and ticking but surprisingly everything fits perfectly.

DNTEL’s music contains such pristine melodies and is so effective in its stimulation of one’s emotions that you fall in love with this album right away.
Dominating synths, powerful bass lines, strings, acoustic guitar and a whole array of samples would be just a very short description of DNTEL’s music.

I personally find very interesting and motivating how much of a power and beauty is in a simple arrangement of sounds. It makes you want to sit down with your laptop and to experiment composing your own dreams.

The whole album is well balanced but I have to point out track 7 “Why I’m So Unhappy” vocals by Rachel Haden (That Dog), which is an absolute jewel! It slowly goes on for about 7 minutes dramatically developing and fading out. The female vocals sound extremely fragile and intimate as if whispering to you ear. And you just don’t want it to stop.

“Life Is Full of Possibilities” is definitely a masterpiece!

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Editors are not trying to hide the obvious influences and they are obviously not inventing anything new. The Back Room is actually a good example how even repeating of already heard patterns can be interesting when played with as much passion and intensity as delivered by Editors. Their melodies will get stuck with you for hours.

As my favourite tracks I would recommend you slower “Fall”, dreamy “Open our Arms” and super intensive “Bullets”. Of course there is much more to it but don’t you explore yourself?

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Fisherman’s Woman is absolutely beautiful in its honesty and simplicity. It makes you think of the best work of Nick Drake or similar. Just close your eyes and listen. Let Emilliana take you to her beautiful innocent dreamy world.

My favourite tracks> Honeymoon Child, Thinking Out Loud, Heartstopper…

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“Cross Your Eyes” track four sounds like a B-side of Beta Band or Gomez single.
“Blue Eurasians” is a seven minute instrumental piece. This time it reminds me of Scottish band Mogwai. The track beautifully oscillates between softer and harder played parts. Result is fantastic.
Track six “Hawaii in Ten Seconds”. Slide guitar and vocals. Hello!! This is Elliot Smith! Even the vocals sound like his.
Track seven “How Cruel”. Elliot Smith’s melody sung with Pink Floyd-ish vocals. The melody slowly graduates to an intense instrumental finish. This is very interesting.
“Fields” number eight on the album. Introducing flute and some strange percussions. To me this is very much of a pure Kingsbury Manx track. This is beautiful.
“New Old Friend Blues” were continuing in the same feel as the previous “Fields” track.
“Silver Trees” is the last track on the album and you couldn’t imagine a more beautiful closing track a’la Kingsbury Manx.
Even though the musical influences are pretty obvious they are treated with such loving care and attention that you can’t disagree. You just love it!

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Through the years the duo worked on loads of different side projects such as the super band The Reindeer Section (Delgados, Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai..) They also worked on their solo projects, Aidan’s Lucky Pierre and Malcolm released two excellent solo albums (5:14 Fluoxytine Seagull Alcohol John Nicotine 2003, Into the Woods 2005)

From album to album they included more and more instruments in their recordings. Beautiful string arrangements, organ, piano, female vocals and live drums mostly provided by Arab Straps colleagues friends musicians.

Talking about Arab Strap’s latest release “The Last Romance” there really isn’t that much new happening on this album comparing to what we heard before. The only thing I would point is that the songs are much more upbeat and that the drums are played live. As my personal opinion I very much prefer slower more intimate part of the album, I think that is where Arab Strap are the strongest.

And finally surprise, surprise: lyrics are still about drinking and shagging.

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Matthew Herbert has an early teenager experience as a keyboard player in Glenn Miller swing tribute band and since then he continued experimenting with different sounds and electronic gadgets in a context of dance music.

Album “Goodbye Swingtime” proves Matthews excellent compositional skills. For his album recordings he invited the Britain’s finest swing musicians. Then he cuts the recordings into samples and experiments with different approaches and sound processing. Amazing Dani Siciliano provided vocals for most of the tracks.

The opener “Turning Pages” begins with by some strange electronic noise and dissolves into a beautiful instrumental jazzy track with horns, bass, drums and keyboards.

Next is a very retro sounding “Everything’s Changed” with Dani Sicilliano’s vocals.

Track three ”Fiction” with gentle female vocals. Almost like a story telling dramatic staccato beat builds up into a piano accompanied melody.

“Three W’s” is an excellent track with slow electronic beat, female vocals and beautiful horns.

“Chromoshop” includes a whole array of electronic samples with a difficult almost Miles Davis-ish song structure.

I could continue like this with every single track. There is something interesting about all of them.

Herbert’s “Goodbye Swingtime” is a very fresh and modern swing sounding album and is definitely there not to be missed.

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