Early Christmas Pressie - Free Music From Me To You.

OK, here you go, my christmas pressie from me to you - Behind Every Word, my latest solo album, for free. 

Feel free to download it. If you want to pay something for it, please do. I shan't complain.

Alternatively, post a link to something free and cool for me to check out and call that a christmas pressie too! 

And please pass on the link, or the files, to your friends. Stick it on a USB stick and give it to someone as a really cheap christmas present. I won't tell them if you don't ;) 

Here it is - enjoy, and have a superb Christmas. Or whichever other fabulous winter-time festival you and yours celebrate. 

The Everybody - Avatar

OK, this is proper awesome. The Everybody are Joey Santiago and Dave Lovering from The Pixies - yeah, so it's going to be amazing, right? 

Right. 

Anyway, the album is out, it's $4 to buy (FOUR DOLLARS!!) but there are a couple of great packages, including a $40 option that gives you actual royalty free stems from the album to remix, use and SELL. Yup, this is just a creative commons love-in, you're allowed to make songs out of their songs and sell 'em. Joey told me earlier this year that it was his year for 'giving it back' - he wasn't making it up :)

This is brave, heady stuff. The music that I've heard so far from the album is great (I've just downloaded it), but with a pedigree like that, what are the chances of them messing it up? Pretty low. :) 

But, if you're sceptical enough not to spend a speculative $4 to hear it, you can just hit play on the embedded player below and listen here - 

Enjoy - and don't forget to thank @joeysantiago and @davidlovering on twitter :) 

15 Albums That Changed My Life - the Spotify Playlist.

Back in February, I wrote a blog-post on my main site, entitled '15 albums that changed my life…'

It's a great intro to the music that has shaped my life for the last 37 years. 

Now I've done the Spotify Playlist to go with it. so you can hear them all, if you happen to live in a country that has Spotify. 

Enjoy.

(And here's my list of favourite albums from the last decade on my stevelawson.net blog ) 

We Are The Banzai Buddy Band!

Comedy music is a REALLY tough thing to do. If it's not funny, you fail. If it's crap music, you fail. You have to win twice to win once. But when people get it right, it can be awesome. Frank Zappa often got it right. Flight Of The Conchords get it right. Rosie Thomas separates out the two and manages to be an incredible singer songwriter AND a genius stand-up. 

Enter The Banzai Buddy Band. Think Zappa updated for an internet generation. Actually, it's pretty much half way between Zappa (especially Mike Outram's insane guitar playing) and Flight Of The Conchords (geek references, pastiches, cheesey drum programming). 

It works, it's fab, go and buy it. (pay what you like on Bandcamp, via the widget below.) 

http://theelectriccampfire.bandcamp.com/album/we-are-the-banzai-buddy-band">In The Lair Of The Dungeon Master by The Electric Campfire http://theelectriccampfire.bandcamp.com/album/we-are-the-banzai-buddy-band">In The Lair Of The Dungeon Master by The Electric Campfire

Debbie Davies' British Council video

Over the last few months, I've been involved with an amazing collaboration between the Tuttle Club and the British Council (via their thinktank, Counterpoint) to look at ways that the work, ethos and message of the British Council can make use of social technologies. 

My part in it was to do some training/explaining/inspiring of BC staff relating to what's made possible by social media (along with the genius that is Christian Payne, AKA @Documentally)

One of the other projects was making videos that tell stories about the BC, that look at what the BC does and how people understand that. There are a few, and they're all fab, but this one made by Debbie Davies is particularly funny. 

Enjoy 

Things that happen now that couldn't happen before...

So, my friend Kate (@radiokate on twitter) saw this a she was coming up the escalator last night. This morning she posted it to the web via twitpic, tweeted about it, loads of us saw it, shared is, and in just a few hours it's had over 4000 views.

No magazine, TV, media involved. Just an amazing pic, captured on a phone, shared with friends, and re-shared a lot.

Imagine if she'd taken this in the 90s. On film. Had to wait to get it processed, decide it was worth submitting, work out how to, get a second print, send it in and leave it to some magazine picture editor to decide it was worth sharing.

Not any more.

This my friends, is a very good thing.

via twitpic.com

 

John Moulder - Bifröst

Yesterday was eMusic-refresh-day for me - 50 virgin downloads waiting to be used on all kinds of hitherto unknown musical delights.

One of those unexpected pleasures is this album by John Moulder - I found via a list of ECM albums, which lead to be searching for albums by bassist Arild Andersen, this was in the list of albums he was on, I liked the cover, had a listen and loved it.

I know very little about John Moulder - his own website is pretty crappy, his record label site is even worse... Maybe you know him - if so, let me know interesting things about him below.

I also can't find any proper full track previews of his music (duh!), so the ones on eMusic will have to do til he gets smart and lets us actually hear his music...

Anyway, it's fab, worth a listen and dropping a few downloads on.

via emusic.com

 

Renaud Garcia Fons - Berimbass

There's a truism in music that the greatest technical exponents of a particular instrument are rarely its most engaging composers or improvisors. There are a handful of glaring exceptions to this rule - John Coltrane, Keith Jarrett, Michael Manring... And Renaud Garcia Fons. 

He's a French double-bassist, who was around on the esoteric French jazz scene for a while before forging his own path playing a beautiful mixture of jazz, chamber music and middle-eastern flavoured folk. His compositions are outstanding, his choice of musical associates is exceptional, and his bass playing is genuinely beyond anything I've ever heard anywhere ever on the instrument. Few bits of music have ever made my jaw physically drop. His tunes regular induce that reaction. 

Here's a vid on youtube, but pick up any of his albums - Entremundo, Oriental Bass and Arcoluz are all outstanding. 

REALLY looking forward to Slingers

I love seeing my friends do well. I like to watch them learn and grow and progress through life, especially when they're awesomely talented and it's just a matter of everyone else catching up with the facts.

So it is with Slingers - a sci-fi series written and created by my friend Mike Atherton, AKA Sizemore, that could well be the next Firefly, but please God without the getting inexplicably canceled mid-season... 

here's the sizzle for it. It looks like magic to me :)