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'Experimental' Bands // p 2 of 3

Darren's favorite bands for his Song Of The Day filtered by Experimental
502 Bands
Fugazi

Fugazi

Fugazi (/fuˈɡɑːzi/; foo-GAH-zee) is an American rock band that formed in Washington, D.C. in 1986. The band consists of guitarists and vocalists Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto, bassist Joe Lally, and drummer Brendan Canty. It is noted for its style-transcending music, DIY ethical stance, manner of business practice, and contempt for the music industry.

Fugazi has performed numerous worldwide tours and produced six studio albums, a film and a comprehensive live series, gaining the band critical acclaim and success around the world. Fugazi has been on an indefinite hiatus since 2003.

History

Formation and early years (1986–1989)
After the hardcore punk group Minor Threat dissolved, MacKaye (vocals and guitar) was active with a few short-lived groups, most notably Embrace. He decided he wanted a project that was "like The Stooges with reggae", but was wary about forming another band after Embrace's breakup. MacKaye recalled, "My interests were not necessarily to be in a band, but to be with people who wanted to play music with me."

MacKaye recruited ex-Dag Nasty drummer Colin Sears and bass guitarist Lally, and the trio began practicing together in September 1986. After a few months of rehearsals, Sears returned to Dag Nasty and was replaced by Canty (earlier of Rites of Spring). One day, Picciotto, Canty's Rites of Spring bandmate, dropped by during a practice session to see how his friend was getting along; he later admitted he secretly harbored the idea of joining the group. But Picciotto was disappointed that there seemed to be no place for him.

After some uncertainty from Canty about what he wanted to do with his future, the trio regrouped and booked their first show at the Wilson Center in early September 1987. The group still needed a name, so MacKaye chose the word "fugazi" from Mark Baker's Nam, a compilation of stories of Vietnam War veterans, it there being a slang acronym for "Fucked Up, Got Ambushed, Zipped In [into a body bag]".

The band began inviting Picciotto to practices. Inspired by use of a foil in hip hop, Picciotto sang backup vocals. After his band Happy Go Licky broke up, he became more involved with Fugazi. MacKaye eventually asked Picciotto to become a full member, and he accepted.

Fugazi EP & Margin Walker – 13 Songs (1988–1989)
Fugazi embarked on its first tour in January 1988. In June 1988 the band recorded its debut EP Fugazi with producer Ted Niceley and producer/engineer Don Zientara (who became a longtime collaborator), and shortly afterward embarked on an arduous tour of Europe.

At the tour's conclusion in December, the band recorded songs for its intended debut album. But the band was spent from touring and found the resulting sessions were unsatisfactory. The track list was cut down to an EP and released as Margin Walker the next year. Both EPs were eventually combined into the 13 Songs release in late 1989. Upon the band's return from Europe, Picciotto, unsatisfied with singing, began playing guitar too.

Source Wikipedia

 'Waiting Room'

'Waiting Room'
Tuesday, January 12, 2021

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Goat

Goat

Goat is a Swedish alternative and experimental fusion music group. The band originates—according to its own publicity—from Korpilombolo, Norrbotten County. Their first album World Music, was released on 20 August 2012 by Rocket Recordings, and in North America on the Sub Pop label. The group released their third studio album, Requiem, in October 2016.

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 'Talk To God'

'Talk To God'
Monday, July 1, 2019

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Helado Negro

Helado Negro

Roberto Carlos Lange (born 1980), better known by his stage name Helado Negro, is an American musician. In 2019 he was awarded a United States Artists Fellow in Music and also the recipient of a 2019 Grants to Artists award in Music from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. In 2015 he received a Joyce Foundation award.

A South Florida native, born to Ecuadorian immigrants and based in Brooklyn, Roberto Carlos Lange's upbringing provides essential elements to his songwriting, including his consistently bilingual—English and Spanish—lyrics. Exploring the expressivity within intense states of being, Latinx identity, and pluralistic sensibilities, his music as Helado Negro is an engrossing statement achieved through lyrically personal and political avant-pop music. Since Helado Negro's 2009 debut album Awe Owe, Lange has cultivated an untraditional approach to songcraft that places his voice on an adventurous musical impulse without shying away from familiar pop appreciation, through multiple projects under various aliases.

Helado Negro released his 2019 album This Is How You Smile through RVNG Intl., a Brooklyn-based music institution. This Is How You Smile received an 8.5 rating and Best New Music from Pitchfork.

Early life

The son of Ecuadorean immigrants, Helado Negro (Roberto Carlos Lange) was born in South Florida in 1980. He grew up in Lauderhill and Davie.

As a high school student during the early 1990s, Roberto Carlos Lange would stay up late watching "Liquid Television" on MTV. Intrigued by the experimental videos and animation he saw there, he "was fascinated by the mystery of how they were made, and was curious as to how to make them."

In 1999 he enrolled at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Savannah, Georgia, to study Computer Art and Sound Design. His sound studies focused on installation, performance and experimental art. During his time at SCAD, he participated in experimental sound and art shows, and he began to develop his musical work by purchasing an MPC sampler to create music. He graduated in 2003 with a B.F.A. in Computer Art from SCAD.

Source Wikipedia

 'Ya No Estoy Aquí'

'Ya No Estoy Aquí'
Wednesday, April 5, 2023

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 'Telescope'

'Telescope'
Monday, August 15, 2022

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 'Aureole'

'Aureole'
Monday, October 25, 2021

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John Lennon

John Lennon

John Winston Ono Lennon MBE (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, and peace activist who co-founded the Beatles, the most commercially successful band in the history of popular music. He and fellow member Paul McCartney formed a much-celebrated songwriting partnership. Along with George Harrison and Ringo Starr, the group would ascend to worldwide fame during the 1960s. After the group disbanded in 1970, Lennon pursued a solo career and started the band Plastic Ono Band with his second wife Yoko Ono.

He was born as John Winston Lennon in Liverpool, where he became involved in the skiffle craze as a teenager. In 1957, he formed his first band, the Quarrymen, which evolved into the Beatles in 1960. Lennon began to record as a solo artist before the band's break-up in April 1970; two of those songs were "Give Peace a Chance" and "Instant Karma!" Lennon subsequently produced albums that included John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, and songs such as "Working Class Hero", "Imagine" and "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)". After he married Yoko Ono in 1969, he added "Ono" as one of his middle names. Lennon disengaged himself from the music business in 1975 to raise his infant son Sean, but re-emerged with Ono in 1980 with the album Double Fantasy. He was shot and killed in the archway of his Manhattan apartment building three weeks after the album was released.

Lennon revealed a rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, writing, drawings, on film and in interviews. Controversial through his political and peace activism, he moved from London to Manhattan in 1971, where his criticism of the Vietnam War resulted in a lengthy attempt by the Nixon administration to deport him. Some of his songs were adopted as anthems by the anti-war movement and the larger counterculture.

By 2012, Lennon's solo album sales in the United States had exceeded 14 million units. He had 25 number-one singles on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart as a writer, co-writer, or performer. In 2002, Lennon was voted eighth in a BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons and in 2008, Rolling Stone ranked him the fifth-greatest singer of all time. In 1987, he was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Lennon was twice posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: first in 1988 as a member of the Beatles and again in 1994 as a solo artist.

Source Wikipedia

 'Isolation'

'Isolation'
Friday, July 5, 2019

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 'Look At Me'

'Look At Me'
Wednesday, March 13, 2019

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Kaada

Kaada

John Erik Kaada (born 28 July 1975 in Stavanger, Norway), also known by the mononym Kaada, is a Norwegian singer-songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist. Kaada's career spans a string of solo albums, motion picture soundtracks, high-profile collaborations with key players such as Mike Patton, as well as numerous live appearances at home and abroad.

Kaada´s debut in a recorded format came with his 2001 solo album Thank You for Giving Me Your Valuable Time. A musical blend of woo-wop, show tunes and jungle rhythms into a coherent mix of live instrumentation and electronic elements, fusing elements of five decades of popular music. Thank You for Giving Me Your Valuable Time firmly established Kaada as a key voice on Norway´s blossoming music scene. The album was named as one of the ten most important releases of the year by Billboard (magazine)

2006 saw the release of Music for Moviebikers (Ipecac Recordings), a collection of lush arrangements set as soundtracks for imaginary films. The album features an evocative quality as it sets out to bring the two musical worlds of Kaada together; the one of the recording artist with the cinematic film music one. The albums´s 22-strong ensemble consists of traditional instrumentation with strings, vocals and electric guitars as well as homemade instruments and some exotic folk music performers hailing from various corners of Europe. The strings were recorded in the Vigeland mausoleum in Oslo.

2009 ´s outing Junkyard Nostalgias with its myriad sounds and instruments. The album was conceived as a self-proclaimed homage to the thousands of Polish workers that have come to Norway to earn a better living and to fuel the country´s economy with cheap labour. Junkyard Nostalgias featured Kaada playing all of the instruments on the album, solidifying his very personal universe of sound. Kaada have said about the album that he made it to justify buying hundreds of instruments on eBay

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 'Burden'

'Burden'
Wednesday, August 18, 2021

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 'Care'

'Care'
Monday, March 23, 2020

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L'Rain

L'Rain

Taja Cheek, known professionally as L'Rain, is an American experimentalist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and curator known primarily as the lead vocalist and songwriter of her eponymous band. Her self-titled debut, L'Rain, was included in best-of-year lists by publications including Pitchfork and Bandcamp Daily; her second album, Fatigue, was counted among Pitchfork's "Best New Music". She has collaborated with artists including Vagabon, Helado Negro, and Naama Tsabar, and performed with Kevin Beasley at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

L'Rain has been recognized for experimental music that draws on a vast number of traditions and genres in a practice and aesthetic Cheek calls "approaching songness". Reviewers have variously identified her style and influences as including free jazz, ambient, noise music, and disco; experimental pop and dance; "psychedelic orchestral pop" and "distorted shoegaze"; krautrock, outsider music, and hip hop; R&B and avant-garde rock; gospel, funk, and post-punk; and soul, drone, avant-pop, and musique concrète.

Early life and career

Cheek was born and raised in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where she lived with her mother, father, and grandparents. Her father, Wyatt Cheek, worked in music marketing and promotion for entities including Select Records and Kiss FM; her grandmother ran a liquor store; and in the 1950s her grandfather owned a neighborhood jazz club. Cheek's mother, Lorraine C. Porter, taught physical education, health, math, and science in Brooklyn schools. The stage name L'Rain is an homage to Porter, who died before the release of the self-titled debut.

Cheek studied ballet and modern dance at The Ailey School and learned piano, cello, and Baroque recorder before picking up bass in high school, then forming and joining groups that included an Iron Maiden cover band. She attended Yale to study music but dropped the major, citing factors including a lack of diversity among the program's course offerings. She transferred to the American Studies program, where her major included a concentration in visual, audio, literary, and performance cultures; in 2011, she completed her Bachelor of Arts degree with distinction. While at Yale she worked as music director of radio station WYBC and booked shows.

After graduating, Cheek returned to New York. She resumed playing in and co-leading Brooklyn bands including Throw Vision; the group released their debut in 2013 and a 7" EP in 2015. She also began presenting and curating public art, working with organizations such as Creative Time and the High Line. In 2014, Cheek was a site manager for the Funk, God, Jazz, and Medicine: Black Radical Brooklyn exhibit, installing a radio station in a pink Cadillac outside the Utica Avenue A/C subway station in homage to Jitu Weusi, black nationalist community arts center The East, and jazz nonprofit and festival the Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium. The same year, she co-organized "The Kara Walker Experience: WE ARE HERE", a public gathering of people of color at the Domino Sugar Refinery for Kara Walker's installation A Subtlety. Cheek began working for contemporary art institution MoMA PS1 in 2016, with curatorial work including co-organizing the Sunday Sessions and Warm Up series; as of 2021, she serves as Associate Curator.

In 2017, Cheek released the self-titled L'Rain on New York City-based label Astro Nautico. She composed and performs vocals, keyboards, synthesizers, guitar, bass, samples, and percussion on the album; L'Rain also features Alex Goldberg, Jeremy Powell, Kyp Malone (of TV on the Radio), and Andrew Lappin, who co-produced the album with Cheek. Pitchfork included L'Rain among their 20 Best Experimental Albums of 2017, and Bandcamp Daily listed the release as #10 in their Best Albums of 2017. L'Rain's second album, Fatigue, was released on Mexican Summer in 2021. The album met with wide acclaim, with positive reviews from outlets including Pitchfork and NPR. Cheek provides vocals and plays guitar, bass, synth, keyboards, piano, percussion, tape effects, and airhorn on the album, which also features an expanded roster of twenty collaborators.

In July 2021, Cheek performed at Mass MOCA after a week-long residency. She toured with Black Midi in the Fall of 2021 and will be touring with Animal Collective in Spring 2022.

Musical style

L'Rain often layers and loops her vocals, and her work frequently features samples from her collection of hundreds of field recordings, some pitch-shifted or otherwise manipulated beyond recognition. She has spoken in interviews about her work's tendency to evade or reject categorization, saying that she is "more interested in a Barthes, Death of the Author, approach to genre", values illegibility, and seeks to complicate assumptions about the relationship between identity and aesthetics: "I’m hyper-aware of how marketing and packaging happens for Black people and women and Black women I like feeling a sense of agency in how those stories are told".

While Cheek is the sole fixed figure in L'Rain recordings and performances, she says the project follows a "more nuanced and collective [model]" than that of the "lone genius or creator": "I’m trying to find a way to nurture my own voice and singular vision, especially as a Black woman musician, while also acknowledging that I work collaboratively with a team that is essential to the project." As of June 2021, L'Rain's bandmates are Ben Chapoteau-Katz, Justin Felton, and Alwyn Robinson.

Source Wikipedia

 'Blame Me'

'Blame Me'
Saturday, December 11, 2021

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Mexican Institute of Sound

Mexican Institute of Sound

Mexican Institute of Sound (MIS; Spanish: Instituto Mexicano del Sonido — IMS) is an electronic music project created by Mexico City-based DJ and producer Camilo Lara. Along with groups like Nortec Collective and Kinky, M.I.S. is part of a growing Mexican electronica movement, encouraging fusions of folk and more traditional music with modern sounds.

Career

Lara's annual Christmas compilation of the year's best tracks and early Mexican Institute of Sound songs became a collector's item in a niche market. This hobby led Lara to collaborate on remixes under the moniker of Mexican Institute of Sound for bands and friends such as Placebo, Le Hammond Inferno, Gecko Turner and Babasónicos. In 2005, he officially founded the M.I.S. project, relying on classic Mexican music samples ranging from the 1920s to the 1960s mixed with Esquivel vocal samples and modern scratches/beats. M.I.S. has 5 albums. Mejico Maxico, Piñata, Soy Sauce, Politico and Disco Popular. 3 EP's Extra Extra Extra!, Suave Patria, IMS vs Sant.

In 2006, Mexican Institute of Sound released its debut album, Méjico Máxico, on Nacional Records. It is a pastiche of electronica, dub, cha-cha-cha, cumbia and spoken word. The album helped M.I.S. garner critical acclaim in publications like Spin, the New York Times, and URB, as well as radio support from such tastemakers as KCRW (Los Angeles), Indie 103 (Los Angeles), KEXP (Seattle), and KUT (Austin).

Mexican Institute of Sound released its second album, Piñata, in 2007. The disc continued the vision established by the debut as a collage of musical influences that reflect Lara's impression of life in the sprawling metropolis of Mexico City. Special guests include members of Tom Tom Club, Fantastic Plastic Machine, and Babasónicos.

Songs from M.I.S. releases have been featured in ABC's Ugly Betty, Showtime's Californication, New Line Cinema's Pride and Glory, a Dos Equis national advertising campaign, and the EA Games FIFA 08 video game, which features El Microfono. In Australia, "Escríbeme Pronto" was featured in a 2009 ice-cream advertisement.

In 2010, MIS released the song "Suave Patria" for the parade for the Bicentennial of Independence of Mexico; the homonymous EP contains six tracks. Camilo created this music in an attempt to evoke some passages of the Mexican Constitution and represent a soundscape Homeland. Their song "Alocatel" was featured in EA Sports' FIFA 10. Their video for their song "Katia, Tania, Paulina y la Kim" from Piñata has been featured on Link TV.

In 2012, they released their fourth studio album, Politico, which contained songs that relate, as the album title implies, to a political environment. "Es Toy" was one of its most successful singles. In 2013, MIS made a radio station on East Los FM Grand Theft Auto V, while the song "Es Toy" appears in the game. In 2014 Camilo Lara recorded his fifth studio album, with Toy Selectah. With Red Bull's help, they are recording in Jamaica, the US (New York and Los Angeles), London, and Brazil. The disc had many collaborators, including Ana Bárbara (Latin Grammy Mexican singer-songwriter), Sly and Robbie, Toots Maytals, Gogol Bordello (Eugene), Nina Sky, Money Mark, MC Lyte, N.A.S.A., Kool AD (Das Racist), Kut Masta, Kurt Chrome Sparks, Eric Bobo (Cypress Hill), Tanto Blacks, Chedda Helado, Negro Kita, Kaine Notch, Maluca Mala, Benjamin Lozinger (Mø), DJ Lengua, Matty Rico, Tiombe Lockhart, Angela Hunte, Mela Murder, Los Master Plus, Centavrvs, Sergio Mendoza J. (Los Planetas), Carlos Ann, Ohmega Watts, DJ Dusty, Stro Elliot Pharo (The Leftovers), Dezzie Gee (The Leftovers), Speakz, Nic Haircourt, and Pilar (Los Abandoned). In 2015 Camilo released his fifth album, 'Compass' alongside Toy Selectah.

After four years with no new material, MIS released their single "Mi T-Shirt De La NASA" in advance of the fifth studio album by MIS. 'Disco Popular' was released on Nov 3rd, 2017. Recorded in Jamaica, Mexico and the US, it contains appearances from: La Yegros, Calexico & Orkesta Mendoza, Press Kay, Lorna, Toots Hibbert, Sly & Robbie, Pamputae & Ranco and Adan Jodorowsky. That same year, Lara was brought on as a creative consultant to the animated film Coco. He helped director Lee Unkrich "navigate all the different rhythms from Mexico…to understand the geography of the music." He also helped arranged and produce many of the songs of the film and assisted composer Michael Giacchino. Under MIS, Lara provided the song "Jálale" to the film's soundtrack, and makes a cameo as a skeleton DJ in a party scene of the movie.

MIS contributed a cover of the Metallica song "Sad But True", featuring rappers La Perla and Gera MX, to the charity tribute album The Metallica Blacklist, released in September 2021.

Source Wikipedia

 'México'

'México'
Friday, November 19, 2021

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Peter Gabriel

Peter Gabriel

Peter Brian Gabriel (born 13 February 1950) is an English singer, songwriter, record producer and activist who rose to fame as the original lead singer and flautist of the progressive rock band Genesis. After leaving Genesis in 1975, Gabriel launched a successful solo career with "Solsbury Hill" as his first single. His 1986 album, So, is his best-selling release and is certified triple platinum in the UK and five times platinum in the U.S. The album's most successful single, "Sledgehammer", won a record nine MTV Awards at the 1987 MTV Video Music Awards and, according to a report in 2011, it was MTV's most played music video of all time.

Gabriel has been a champion of world music for much of his career. He co-founded the WOMAD festival in 1982. He has continued to focus on producing and promoting world music through his Real World Records label. He has also pioneered digital distribution methods for music, co-founding OD2, one of the first online music download services. Gabriel has also been involved in numerous humanitarian efforts. In 1980, he released the anti-apartheid single "Biko". He has participated in several human rights benefit concerts, including Amnesty International's Human Rights Now! tour in 1988, and co-founded the Witness human rights organisation in 1992. Gabriel developed The Elders with Richard Branson, which was launched by Nelson Mandela in 2007.

Gabriel has won three Brit Awards—winning Best British Male in 1987, six Grammy Awards, thirteen MTV Video Music Awards, the first Pioneer Award at the BT Digital Music Awards, the Q magazine Lifetime Achievement, the Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Polar Music Prize. He was made a BMI Icon at the 57th annual BMI London Awards for his "influence on generations of music makers".

In recognition of his many years of human rights activism, he received the Man of Peace award from the Nobel Peace Prize laureates in 2006, and Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2008. AllMusic has described Gabriel as "one of rock's most ambitious, innovative musicians, as well as one of its most political". He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Genesis in 2010, followed by his induction as a solo artist in 2014. In March 2015, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of South Australia in recognition of his achievements in music.

Source Wikipedia

 'Indigo'

'Indigo'
Friday, July 15, 2022

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 'We Do What We're Told'

'We Do What We're Told'
Monday, November 23, 2020

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 'Mother of Violence'

'Mother of Violence'
Wednesday, June 5, 2019

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Psychic Ills

Psychic Ills

Psychic Ills are an American experimental rock/psychedelic rock band from New York City, consisting of Tres Warren (vocals/guitar) and Elizabeth Hart (vocals/bass). They formed in 2003, and have released five albums, one compilation, four EPs and a number of singles. For the period 2005 to 2010, the band were signed to The Social Registry. Since then their albums have been released by Sacred Bones Records.

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 'Ra Wah Wah'

'Ra Wah Wah'
Saturday, August 3, 2019

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 'Hazel Green'

'Hazel Green'
Sunday, March 24, 2019

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Radiohead

Radiohead

Radiohead are an English rock band formed in Abingdon-on-Thames in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards), brothers Jonny Greenwood (lead guitar, keyboards, other instruments) and Colin Greenwood (bass), Ed O'Brien (guitar, backing vocals) and Philip Selway (drums, percussion). They have worked with producer Nigel Godrich and cover artist Stanley Donwood since 1994.

After signing to EMI in 1991, Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992. It became a worldwide hit after the release of their debut album, Pablo Honey (1993). Their popularity and critical standing rose in the United Kingdom with the release of their second album, The Bends (1995). Radiohead's third album, OK Computer (1997), brought them international fame; noted for its complex production and themes of modern alienation, it is often acclaimed as a landmark record of the 1990s and one of the best albums in popular music. The group's next albums Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001), recorded simultaneously, marked a dramatic change in style, incorporating influences from experimental electronic music, 20th-century classical music, krautrock, and jazz. Kid A divided listeners but was named the best album of the decade by Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times.

Radiohead's sixth album, Hail to the Thief (2003), mixed rock and electronic music with lyrics inspired by the War on Terror, and was the band's final album for EMI. Their subsequent releases have pioneered alternative release platforms such as pay-what-you-want and BitTorrent; Radiohead self-released their seventh album, In Rainbows (2007), as a download for which customers could set their own price, to critical and chart success. Their eighth album, The King of Limbs (2011), an exploration of rhythm, was developed using extensive looping and sampling. A Moon Shaped Pool (2016) prominently featured Jonny Greenwood's orchestral arrangements.

Radiohead had sold more than 30 million albums worldwide by 2011. Their work places highly in both listener polls and critics' lists of the best music of the 1990s and 2000s. In 2005, they were ranked 73rd in Rolling Stone's list of "The Greatest Artists of All Time"; Jonny Greenwood and O'Brien were both included in Rolling Stone's list of greatest guitarists, and Yorke in their list of greatest singers. In 2009, Rolling Stone readers voted Radiohead the second-best artist of the 2000s. They will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019.

Source Wikipedia

 'House of Cards'

'House of Cards'
Saturday, May 2, 2020

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 'Codex'

'Codex'
Monday, September 9, 2019

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Rain Tree Crow

Rain Tree Crow

Rain Tree Crow is the sole album released by English band Rain Tree Crow, a reunion project by the members of the new wave band Japan. Recorded in 1989 and 1990 and released in April 1991, it was the first time that members David Sylvian, Mick Karn, Steve Jansen and Richard Barbieri had collaborated as a four-piece since 1982.

The album peaked at number 24 on the UK Albums Chart.

Background and content

Trouser Press wrote: "the album doesn't sound drastically different from any of their previous work together, but successfully revives Japan's late-period neo-tribal rhythms and vaguely Asian feel."

The name Rain Tree Crow was chosen to mark a break from Japan's past, with the intention of creating a new long-term project. As the music turned out to be less commercial than originally envisaged, all members of the band aside from Sylvian became amenable to the idea of retaining the Japan moniker, in order to gain maximum exposure. Virgin records pressured the musicians to let them market the album under the name Japan; however, Sylvian was adamant that this would not take place. Sylvian’s opinion prevailed and the album was released as by Rain Tree Crow.

Release and reception

"Blackwater" was released as the album's only single and reached number 62 in the UK Singles Chart in March 1991. The album reached number 24 in the UK Albums Chart.

The album was remastered and reissued on CD in 2003. The B-side track from the "Blackwater" single, "I Drink To Forget", was included on this reissue, but omitted on the later vinyl reissue of March 2019.

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 'Blackwater'

'Blackwater'
Friday, October 16, 2020

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Ryuichi Sakamoto

Ryuichi Sakamoto

Ryuichi Sakamoto (坂本 龍一 Sakamoto Ryūichi, born January 17, 1952) (Japanese pronunciation: [sakamoto ɾʲɯːitɕi]) is a Japanese composer, singer, songwriter, record producer, activist, and actor who has pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto influenced and pioneered a number of electronic music genres.

Sakamoto began his career while at university in the 1970s as a session musician, producer, and arranger. His first major success came in 1978 as co-founder of YMO. He concurrently pursued a solo career, releasing the experimental electronic fusion album Thousand Knives in 1978. Two years later, he released the album B-2 Unit. It included the track "Riot in Lagos", which was significant in the development of electro and hip hop music. He went on to produce more solo records, and collaborate with many international artists, David Sylvian, Carsten Nicolai, Youssou N'Dour, and Fennesz among them. Sakamoto composed music for the opening ceremony of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, and his composition "Energy Flow" (1999) was the first instrumental number-one single in Japan's Oricon charts history.

As a film-score composer, Sakamoto has won an Oscar, a BAFTA, a Grammy, and 2 Golden Globe Awards. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) marked his debut as both an actor and a film-score composer; its main theme was adapted into the single "Forbidden Colours" which became an international hit. His most successful work as a film composer was The Last Emperor (1987), after which he continued earning accolades composing for films such as The Sheltering Sky (1990), Little Buddha (1993), and The Revenant (2015). On occasion, Sakamoto has also worked as a composer and a scenario writer on anime and video games. In 2009, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the Ministry of Culture of France for his contributions to music.

Source Wikipedia

 'The Wuthering Heights'

'The Wuthering Heights'
Monday, February 3, 2020

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 'Bibo No Aozora'

'Bibo No Aozora'
Wednesday, November 14, 2018

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Sonny Sharrock

Sonny Sharrock

Warren Harding "Sonny" Sharrock (August 27, 1940 – May 25, 1994) was an American jazz guitarist. He was married to singer Linda Sharrock, with whom he recorded and performed.

One of few guitarists in the first wave of free jazz in the 1960s, Sharrock was known for his heavily chorded attack, his highly amplified bursts of feedback, and his use of saxophone-like lines played loudly on guitar.

Early life and career
Sharrock began his musical career singing doo wop in his teen years. He collaborated with Pharoah Sanders and Alexander Solla in the late 1960s, appearing first on Sanders's 1966 album, Tauhid. He made several appearances with flautist Herbie Mann and an uncredited appearance on Miles Davis's A Tribute to Jack Johnson.

He wanted to play tenor saxophone from his youth after hearing John Coltrane on Davis's Kind of Blue on the radio at age 19, but his asthma prevented this. Sharrock said repeatedly, however, that he still considered himself "a horn player with a really fucked up axe."

Three albums under Sharrock's name were released in the late 1960s through the mid-1970s: Black Woman (which has been described by one reviewer as bringing out the beauty in emotions rather than technical prowess), Monkey-Pockie-Boo, and an album co-credited to both Sharrock and his wife, Paradise (an album by which Sharrock was embarrassed and stated several times that it was not good and should not be reissued).

Career revival
After the release of Paradise, Sharrock was semi-retired for much of the 1970s, undergoing a divorce from his wife and occasional collaborator Linda in 1978. In the intermittent years until bassist Bill Laswell coaxed him out of retirement, he worked as both a chauffeur and a caretaker for mentally challenged children. At Laswell's urging, Sharrock appeared on Material's (one of Laswell's many projects) 1981 album, Memory Serves. In addition, Sharrock was a member of the punk/jazz band Last Exit, with Peter Brötzmann, Laswell and Ronald Shannon Jackson. During the late 1980s, he recorded and performed extensively with the New York-based improvising band Machine Gun, as well as leading his own bands. Sharrock flourished with Laswell's help, noting in a 1991 interview that "the last five years have been pretty strange for me, because I went twelve years without making a record at all, and then in the last five years, I've made seven records under my own name. That's pretty strange."

Laswell would often perform with the guitarist on his albums, and produced many of Sharrock's recordings, including the entirely solo Guitar, the metal-influenced Seize the Rainbow, and the well-received Ask the Ages, which featured John Coltrane's bandmates Pharoah Sanders and Elvin Jones. "Who Does She Hope To Be?" is a lyrical piece harkening back to the Coltrane/Davis Kind of Blue sessions that had inspired him to play. One writer described Ask the Ages as "hands down, Sharrock's finest hour, and the ideal album to play for those who claim to hate jazz guitar." Sharrock is perhaps best known for the soundtrack to the Cartoon Network program Space Ghost Coast to Coast with his drummer Lance Carter, one of the last projects he completed in the studio before his death. The season 3 episode "Sharrock" carried a dedication to him at the end, and previously unheard music that he had recorded for the show featured throughout most of the episode. "Sharrock" premiered as the 23rd episode on March 1, 1996 on Cartoon Network.

Source Wikipedia

 'Black Woman'

'Black Woman'
Thursday, February 2, 2023

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 'Once Upon a Time'

'Once Upon a Time'
Saturday, December 5, 2020

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Sparklehorse

Sparklehorse

Sparklehorse was an American indie rock band, led by singer and multi-instrumentalist Mark Linkous. Sparklehorse was active from 1995 until Linkous' 2010 death by suicide.

Sparklehorse's first album, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot (1995), was a modest college radio success. In 1996, while touring Europe with Radiohead shortly after the album's release, Mark Linkous consumed a combination of anti-depressants, valium, alcohol, and heroin in a London hotel room. Unconscious and with his legs pinned beneath him for almost fourteen hours, the resulting potassium build-up caused his heart to stop for several minutes after his body was lifted up. The ensuing surgery almost caused him to lose the use of both legs and as a result he needed to use a wheelchair for six months and he required dialysis for acute kidney failure.

Good Morning Spider (1998) was recorded following this incident. Critics have conjectured that Linkous's brush with death inspired the sombre tone of the album, though Linkous stated that much of the material on GMS had already been written. One song that did result from it is "St. Mary", which is dedicated to the nurses at the eponymous hospital in Paddington where Linkous recuperated.

In 1999 Sparklehorse performed at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto. 2001 saw the release of It's a Wonderful Life, featuring appearances by Tom Waits, PJ Harvey, Bob Rupe, Nina Persson and Dave Fridmann. Whereas much of Vivadixie... and Spider were recorded solely by Linkous on his Virginia farm, the new album was a more collaborative work. Linkous expressed his satisfaction with the overall sound of It's a Wonderful Life, which was engineered by Joel Hamilton, while also claiming that he would have preferred to include more experimental and instrumental material.

On September 25, 2006, Sparklehorse released their fourth album, Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain, collaborating with Danger Mouse, Christian Fennesz, and Steven Drozd. This album featured the radio release "Don't Take My Sunshine Away" and a remastered version of "Shade And Honey", which Linkous originally wrote for Alessandro Nivola to sing in the 2003 movie Laurel Canyon, as well as a virtually unchanged re-release of "Morning Hollow," the bonus track from It's a Wonderful Life.

In 2008, Sparklehorse recorded a cover of the song "Jack's Obsession," from Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas for the official compilation album Nightmare Revisited. In 2009, Sparklehorse teamed up with Danger Mouse and David Lynch in the project Dark Night of the Soul.

In 2009, Linkous teamed up with electronic ambient-music artist Christian Fennesz to create In the Fishtank 15, a wafting album EP of experimentation and dreamy atmospherics. The last four live shows, Linkous did together with Fennesz during a European tour that was held during October 2009.

Source Wikipedia

 'All Night Home'

'All Night Home'
Sunday, July 2, 2023

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 'It's a Wonderful Life'

'It's a Wonderful Life'
Friday, February 4, 2022

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 'Waiting for Nothing'

'Waiting for Nothing'
Wednesday, February 3, 2021

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 'Knives of Summertime'

'Knives of Summertime'
Saturday, July 18, 2020

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 'Devil’s New'

'Devil’s New'
Monday, September 23, 2019

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 'Goodnight Sweetheart'

'Goodnight Sweetheart'
Friday, April 19, 2019

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 'Sea Of Teeth'

'Sea Of Teeth'
Sunday, March 17, 2019

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 'Painbirds'

'Painbirds'
Thursday, December 27, 2018

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 'Piano Fire'

'Piano Fire'
Wednesday, September 19, 2018

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Sun Kil Moon

Sun Kil Moon

Sun Kil Moon is an American folk rock act from San Francisco, California, founded in 2002. Initially a continuation of the defunct indie rock band Red House Painters, Sun Kil Moon is now the primary recording moniker of vocalist and guitarist Mark Kozelek. The project is named after the Korean super flyweight boxer Sung-Kil Moon.

Following the delayed release of Red House Painters' final studio album, Old Ramon (2001), vocalist and guitarist Kozelek began recording new material under the name Sun Kil Moon with bandmates Anthony Koutsos (drums) and Jerry Vessel (bass), alongside Geoff Stanfield and Tim Mooney. The resulting album, Ghosts of the Great Highway, was released in 2003 to widespread critical acclaim. The project's second studio album, Tiny Cities (2005), was composed entirely of Modest Mouse cover songs.

In 2008, the band released its third studio album, April. Recorded as a three-piece by Kozelek, Koutsos and Stanfield, the album was well received and featured guest vocal appearances from noted indie rock musicians Will Oldham and Ben Gibbard.

Inspired by classical guitar music, Kozelek recorded Sun Kil Moon's fourth studio album, Admiral Fell Promises (2010), as a solo act, and continued to record mostly alone on its follow-up, Among the Leaves (2012). In 2013, Kozelek released three studio albums under his own name before releasing Sun Kil Moon's sixth studio album, Benji, in February 2014, to widespread critical acclaim and increased exposure, with the band releasing their seventh studio effort, Universal Themes, in 2015. Sun Kil Moon's eighth studio album, Common as Light and Love Are Red Valleys of Blood, was released in February 2017, which was followed by their ninth studio album, This Is My Dinner, in November 2018.

Source Wikipedia

 'Somewhere'

'Somewhere'
Friday, February 28, 2020

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 'Young Love'

'Young Love'
Thursday, October 31, 2019

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 'Truckers Atlas'

'Truckers Atlas'
Wednesday, September 18, 2019

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 'Ocean Breathes Salty'

'Ocean Breathes Salty'
Saturday, August 24, 2019

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 'Duk Koo Kim'

'Duk Koo Kim'
Tuesday, June 25, 2019

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 'Song For Richard Collopy'

'Song For Richard Collopy'
Saturday, October 20, 2018

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 'Tonight In Bilbao'

'Tonight In Bilbao'
Sunday, October 7, 2018

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Bands, p 2 of 3

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