A Short History of Modern Music

Using an interactive guide, Guardian and Observer critics chart the history of modern music, tackling a different genre each day and picking 50 key moments.

Everybody loves the Sunshine

Not quite the weather for this tune here in London at the moment.... but here's hoping ;)

Candy Flipping Strawberry Fields

Probably sacrilege to some people, but I really like this cover of the Beatles "Strawberry Fields Forever", by 90's duo Candy Flip.  (Who?)

Labyrinth Ear

Labyrinth Ear are synth-pop duo hailing from South East London.

An amazing electronic cover of a Disney song was what turned me onto them, but because they're such a new band (formed last summer) there wasn't much info out there... So I dropped them a line to see what I could see.  (Interview after the tracks)

You can get their Oak EP free off their site.

"Snow White" (video is taken from the Betty Boop film of the same name)


"White Gold" (Video features puppet work of the late Czech animator Jiri Trnka)


"Wild Flowers"

"Navy Light" (video taken from the David Bowie film "Labyrinth")

Morning Parade - Under the Stars (Labyrinth Ear remix)

- How did "Labyrinth Ear" come together?

Tom had made music for a while but hadn't really shared any of his music with anyone before, I'd never planned to be a singer and was applying for university to study fashion design, then Tom played me a couple of his tracks he had made several years ago and I was stunned, they were really good and no one had ever heard them before, I encouraged him to start producing again and to look for musicians and vocalists to produce for, he was unable to find people, so I reluctantly offered to do some vocals for a couple of tracks he had produced, we uploaded 1 or 2 onto myspace and the response we got was amazing. We haven't stopped since then! I never knew how satisfying it was to produce music and to finish tracks, I now feel like this what I should have been doing all along! All I can say is if you think you can't do something, just try it and see.

- What are your influences (musically and otherwise). 

Our influences are very varied and vast, my taste is quite odd sometimes, most of my music collection is made up of film soundtracks, Tom has quite a big music collection, a lot of electronic stuff. A few influences we both agree upon would be Arthur Russell, Joanna Newsom and John Maus.

Non musically, we're both very much into art and film. I'm into fashion, you also might have noticed that we like cats.

- How did "Snow White" come about?

This was our first track, I'd never written lyrics or songs before so we decided to do a cover. It was my idea to do 'I'm Wishing' from Snow White, it seemed a bit silly at first, but we were delighted with the result and completely amazed at the response we had to it.

- You're a pretty new band - what are your hopes for '11?

Yes, we are quite new. We're really excited about 2011 - we have a lot of aims for the year. At the moment we're working on lots more tracks, remixes, music videos, and playing plenty of shows.

The making of "Wanderland"

Hermanos Ingleso are Belgium brothers, and an electronic music duo.  I recently stumbled upon this deadly tune "Wanderland", but I was even more impressed with the video, which was recently awarded "Best Belgian Music Video 2010" at the International Film Festival Leuven. 

In fact, I liked it so much that I dropped the directors, Kristof Luyckx & Michèle Vanparys, a line and asked them a few questions!

God bless Vimeo - it makes it so easy to connect with film makers whose work you like :D (Interview below the video)

- What was your creative inspiration for the video?

Kristof:  The album artwork of Hermanos Inglesos contained birds (from encyclopedia books), so I took this as a starting point.

The title 'Wanderland' and lyrics like 'take me to your dreams' inspired me to find an idea so we could show lots of "dream sequences". Or in this case a psychedelic trip. I had the idea of 'birds doing drugs', and then letting them hallucinate and have a bad trip and then an overdose. But because the song is rather positive and sweet, we decided to soften the idea and make it more suggestive. Hence the "magic berry".

Michèle:  Kristof was going mad with the delirious drugged bird :)

I knew Hermanos  would find this maybe a bit too much, so we softened it down.

And afterwards I think this was a better thing for the storyline.. 

How did you go about planning and making it?

Kristof:  Hermanos Inglesos approached Michèle. We had about 1,5 month to make the video. We had creative freedom, the only thing they asked was to include the two musicians. But we spoke with Hermanos Inglesos about the idea/style before executing the storyboard. And after getting the storyboard/animatic approved, we continued designing and animating.

It was very low-budget (like most music videos), but we did this for our portfolio and self-promotion (and do enough commercial work to compensate).

Michèle:  Hermanos contacted me, because they had seen a little test movie on my blog and they liked the `girly sweetness` in it ..  but they had no idea what they wanted to make... "something with birds" ..!

They had almost no budget either, so we had to come up with a style that was easy and quick, also because of the short deadline..

So I called kristof, who i`d knew as a great illustrator and graphic designer/motion graphics animator ..

and he was immediately enthusiastic, even do we didn`t really knew each other and i don`t think he really knew my work.

Because I had no time to work on it and we had the deadline ahead he started with the main idea and made the main style of the movie..

- What motivated you to work together, and what do you think the ingredients for a valuable partnership are?

Kristof:  Michèle asked me if I had time and wanted to direct the video. We knew each other, but haven't worked together before. But it went very well, we both concluded afterwards.

Michèle:  I liked his graphic style, very minimal.  And i had never directed a movie by myself (exept my graduation project) 

so, with the deadline and the opportunity that we could make  whatever we liked, 

I thought getting someone like Kristof on this project would make it .. better :)

And  once we went to a guitar movie together, so i knew, he had my kind of taste in music :) very important if you work together!

Michèle and Kristof are both based in Ghent, Belgium.  Anticipating great things from both of them in the future!  Check out more of their work here:

http://www.kristofluyckx.be

http://www.michelevanparys.com/

CREDITS:  Music video for Hermanos Inglesos feat. MeMe (Wanderland).

Directed by Kristof Luyckx & Michèle Vanparys.

Design: Kristof Luyckx & Michèle Vanparys

Art Direction: Kristof Luyckx

Editing: Stijn Deconinck & Kristof Luyckx

Animation: Michèle Vanparys, Michélé De Feudis, Dries Bastiaensen & Kristof Luyckx.

A Juicy Intro

Great mash-up of The XX and The Notorious B.I.G.  No youtube video (yet) but you can listen to it here.

"You've Got the Love" - Candi Staton

I suppose one good thing came from hearing 'The XX's murderous cover of "You've Got the Love" last night.  It motivated me to educate myself about one of the greatest house tunes of all time.

It's been covered many times (most famously by 'Florence and the Machine'), but the original single came out in 1986.  It was a soul/disco/gospel track by a band called 'The Source' (actually just an alias for Source Records), with vocals from an overlooked single by Candi Staton, "You got the love".

Staton, an American gospel singer, had recorded the tune for a 1980s documentary about an obese man who was trying to lose weight.  The film went straight-to-video, Staton forgot about the song, and didn't even know her vocals had been sampled until she was told that she had a number 1 single!

"They were calling my house saying I had a number one record in England, and I said, 'What song? I haven't released any song.' When they told me it was "You Got the Love", I said I'd never made a record called that. Then I got off the phone and realised - it was the one from the diet video - which was never supposed to be put on a record at all!"

The most well-known house mix (released in 1991) layered the vocal track over an instrumental version of Frankie Knuckles and Jamie Principle's "Your Love".

Ravers everywhere assume the track is about romantic love, but actually the lyrics are about Jesus.  Praise the Lord for Candi Staton and dieters everywhere!  Without them we'd be missing one beautiful piece of music.

Sometimes I feel like throwing my hands up in the air
I know I can count on you

Sometimes I feel like saying, "Lord, I just don't care"
But you've got the love I need to see me through

Sometimes it seems the going is just too rough
And things go wrong no matter what I do
Now and then I feel like life is just too much
But you've got the love I need to see me through

When food is gone, you are my daily meal

When friends are gone I know my Saviour's love is real
Your love is real

You've got the love, you've got the love, you've got the love

You've got the love, you've got the love, you've got the love

Sometimes I feel like throwing my hands up in the air
I know I can count on you

Sometimes I feel like saying, "Lord, I just don't care"
But you've got the love I need to see me through

Oh, it gets so rough sometimes
Oh, the going gets so hard
But I know:

You've got the love, you've got the love, you've got the love

Sometimes I feel like throwing my hands up in the air
I know I can count on you

Sometimes I feel like saying, "Lord, I just don't care"
But you've got the love I need to see me through

It's all I can do sometimes to keep it together
But I know you've got it; you've got the love

You've got the love

Sometimes I feel like throwing my hands up in the air
I know I can count on you

Sometimes I feel like saying, "Lord, I just don't care"
But you've got the love I need to see me through.

POGO

A few years ago on youtube I stumbled upon 'Alice' - a song entirely composed of sounds from the Disney film 'Alice in Wonderland'.  It was one of those moments where you feel you're experiencing something special.



Looking at his work is not only inspiring from a creative standpoint.  In these times of copyright/pirate warfare, Pogo seems to be giving massive corporations the finger, and getting away with it!  Read on...


Pogo (Nick Bertke) is an electronic music artist living in Perth, Western Australia. He creates music by taking chords, bass notes and vocal samples from a film, and sequencing the sounds together.  This sampling-and-remixing method of making music was first made popular in the 90's by House music producer and UK Garage influence Todd Edwards, but Pogo brought a new dimension to it by creating awesome electronic tunes from children's cartoons.

'Alice' is his most famous track (it's gotten nearly 5,000,000 views on YouTube) and since then Pogo has worked his way through the Disney films, producing tracks from 'Mary Poppins', 'The Sword in the Stone', 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang', and most recently 'Snow White' ('Wishery').




Interestingly, off the back of this "plagiarism", Disney/Pixar, contacted him and commissioned him to compose a track from their film 'Up'.  The condition was that he remove his previous Disney mixes from public view.  Nick adhered, and produced 'Upular', plus two more commissioned mixes from 'Toy Story' ('Toyz Noize' and 'Buzzwing').  When his contract with Disney ended, the old Disney mixes were made public again ;D  Which is great, because personally I think these commissions pale beside his self-inspired work.  (I quite like this one from TV series 'Dexter').



Not everyone is as sympathetic as Disney though.  When Pogo released 'Bangarang' - featuring footage and sound samples from 'Hook', Sony Pictures Entertainment freaked out.  Pogo responded, saying:

"My work serves as free viral marketing to the organisations that own the films I sample from. It's high time the music industry pulls its head out of its ass, and realises that today's remix culture is an asset, not a liability. To shoot down the potential here would be utterly illogical."

He removed the video, but several YouTube users protested by uploading their own, previously saved versions of it (the same had previously been done for 'Alice').  Amazingly, the outcry was loud enough to convince Sony that they had made a mistake, and 'Bangarang' was returned to YouTube within weeks.



Another commission came Pogo's way in the form of 'Pirates Of The Caribbean'.  He regards the mix as one of his best, but Jerry Bruckheimer Films decided they want nothing to do with it.  On his blog, Pogo says:

"The sad reality is, Swashbuckle was contracted work. I’d literally have to start saving the money that Disney would sue me before making the decision to upload it. But who knows? It might just come to that. My music is my mark in this world. If I have to pay to watch it entertain millions of people, then so be it."

What a cool guy.

He continues to inspire fans, who often make tribute videos to him, which he acknowledges and applauds on his blog.



And want to hear something that will make you sick?  He was born in 1988.  I need to find some more late bloomers ;)

I highly recommend checking out his website, where all of his tracks are availbale for download as mp3s.

Adele - "Someone Like You"

Adele is the antithesis of a late bloomer.  The English singer-songwriter, at the age of 22, has already produced two albums (imaginatively called "19", and "21".!)

This is a track from her new album "Rolling in the Deep", which comes out in January.

I'm not a huge fan of her earlier stuff - a bit too close to Lily Allen for me, but this soulful riff is just beautiful:

The Resonators

Saw these guys last night at One Taste Festival in Balham last night, and was very impressed.

The Resonators are a Reggae / Dub Step act.  Throw in a trumpet, a saxaphone, two soulful female vocalists, and four other musicians, and you've got one of the more original sounds I've heard in quite a while.


Creating fully live Dub, in addition they had amazing stage presence - every one of the 8 piece band bounced around and threw good vibes to a crowd alll-too-willing to accept them.  The result was smiles and dancing that I generally associate with day one of a music festival.  Good times :)


Highly recommended - check them out here:


Mandrake by Resonators


Sweet Love Affair by Resonators


Borderline by Resonators






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Children of Distance

Melodic rap - just the kind I like.

Check out Children of Distance's website at http://www.childrenofdistance.hu/index.php?... although it's pretty useless unless you speak Hungarian!

The XX - sold out?

If The Beatles were bigger than Jesus, are the xx about to rival Coca Cola?

London band, the xx, are no stranger to success. Their sound has that special quality that allows everyone to connect with it: it's fresh, unique, and yet familiar. Critics love it, and commercially it's been used for the 2010 Winter Olympics, and TV shows like "Grey's Anatomy", and "Beverly Hills 90210".

But global brand Apple have just released a new iPhone / iPod Touch application: beautifully-shot films of the band the xx, performing.

Just think about how often you idly play with your phone. Now imagine how many people have iPhones. In this age of digital interactivity, an iPhone app brings a level of infamy we can't even anticipate. the xx are going to the mass consumer audience.

Crossing a fame barrier is a sensitive moment in any artist's career. As time passes, and the growing fan base obsess over their subtle and lyrical sound, critics will wait with baited breath for "the (disappointing? mind-blowing?) second album". Like lambs to the slaughter, pressure like this can kill creativity.

I'm not going to make any stupid puns about these guys having the X factor (although I think I just did..?), but I feel these guys have the talent to produce a second album that parallels their incredible debut. However - a lot of success comes down to being supported creatively in difficult moments. I hope they have a good manager.

Anyway, here's my favourite part: sharing their music :) One of the great things about this band is that they don't have "a song". Each of these tracks stands alone. Enjoy.

"Crystalised" was used during the 3rd season of the TV show 'Gossip Girl'.



"VCR" was featured in an episode of 'Lie to Me'.



"Islands" was used in 'Grey's Anatomy'.

(This video was directed by Saam Farahmand. He later created "an audio-visual sculpture" of their album, which was the inspiration for the iPhone app.)



"Intro" was extensively used on television: in an AT&T commercial; during the series Cold Case; often during NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, for the BBC News Newsnight coverage of the 2010 general election; and also in Law & Order on the Dutch television network Net 5. (thanks Wiki)



"Heart Skipped a Beat" was featured in a 2009 episode of '90210'.



the xx are a trio from London, England, United Kingdom, formed in 2005. They studyied at Elliott School: a institution which also gave birth to Hot Chip, Burial and Four Tet. They have all just turned twenty.

Goodbye Horses

Tune.

The meaning (according to someone on youtube) :

In Eastern philosophy "horses" are symbolic/representative of the 5 senses - the things that keep us tied to the physical/material plane of existence. When you can transcend the limitations of these senses and achieve a higher level of consciousness, you are leaving the "horses" behind - "flying over them."
The song is about someone who is so affected so deeply by an event in their lives that they decide to give up the things that emotionally bind them to this world.

Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen turned 76 last week, so I decided to do a homage to the man who is, to me, the most talented songwriter within living memory.

He doesn't resonate with some people because they find his songs and voice depressing. I would argue that he's meloncollie rather than morbid - his lyrics full of a spiritual romance towards pain. He finds beauty in the dichotomy of life, and for me his music is sad, but hopeful.

I recently watched a documentary about him called "I'm Your Man", which had an interesting feature: several eminent musicians (including.... Bono...) do covers of his songs.

Anthony from Anthony and the Johnsons does a masterful version of "If it be Your Will" (one of my personal favourites). If you're not a Lenny fan, it's worth listening to it, and to Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah", to ascertain whether it's Cohen's music or voice that doesn't agree with you.

And for something a little different, musician / DJ / friend Dance Pig did this awesome remix of "Here it is". (Check out more of Dance Pig's stuff at www.dancepig.com)


Here are the Lenny originals, and a few more favourites:

"If it be Your Will" (1984)
"Hallelujah" (1984)
"Master Song" (1967)
"Who by Fire" (1974)
"A Thousand Kisses Deep" (2001)
"Alexandra Leaving" (2001)
"In My Secret Life" (2001)
"In the Chelsea Hotel" (1974)
"Here it is" (2001)


It's probably clear by now that I'm a fan ;)