On our stereo: Thu 06/08/09

Dub Colossus – Return To Addis (Real World)
Remix EP of the Ethiopian/English dub collective

Joyce & Tutty Moreno – Samba Jazz & Outras Bossas (Far Out)
Stylistically speaking, as per the title.  Although they neglected to include “Awesome,” which it is

Candi Staton – His Hands (Honest Jons)
A powerful soul singer whose career recently reached a peak when she played Croydon Festival (this reviewer is from Croydon)

Bob Holroyd – re : cycled | re : visited | re : mastered (Long Tale)
Diverse album featuring gamelan, flamenco, classical and techno styles

RinneRadio – Pole Stars (Rockadillo)
Ambient percussive bizarretronica with choppy vocal samples

Esbjörn Svensson Trio – Good Morning Susie Sohø (Superstudio)
Jazz from the school of ‘what the hell are they doing to that instrument?’

We Fell To Earth – We Fell To Earth (In Stereo)
Lo-fi other-worldly electronica

Cinematic Orchestra – Everyday (Ninja Tune)
Cinematic (as the name would suggest) epic hip-hop/funk/jazz

Hope Sandoval – Through The Devil Softly (Nettwerk)
Ethereal, downbeat acoustic guitaring and singing.  Available late September (when i really should be back at school)

Fact of the Day:
Luminiferous aether (or ether) was once believed to be a medium or substance that light travels through. Then quantum physics got involved and things got a lot more complicated.

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On our stereo: Tue 28/07/09

Genesis - Turn It On Again: The Hits (Virgin)
Collins-era compilation

Legends Of Benin – Various Artists (Analog Africa)
Another great AA compilation. “Afro-Funk/Cavacha/Agbadja/Afro-Beat”

Sam Carter – Keepsakes (Captain Records)
Laid back smooth-pop with intricate guitar lines

Bob Holroyd – re : cycled | re : visited | re : mastered (Long Tale)
Diverse album featuring gamelan, flamenco, classical and techno styles

The Cure – Disintegration (Fiction)
Moody but melodic pop-goth album from 1989

Sine Weaver – The Sit Off (Steal My Oil)
Crazy electronic beats made listenable by the melodic overtones

Fact of the Day:
A sine wave is what you would hear on the test card (the picture with the girl and a doll playing noughts and crosses) at 3 o’clock in the morning on BBC 2.  It also has no harmonic frequencies.

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New Properganda! Issue 13

The new issue of Properganda has arrived!

As you can see, the cover artist for this issue is one Martin Simpson, famed for his guitaring and sing playing abilities.

Also featured are Loudon Wainwright III, Billy Bob Thornton, Real World Records and their artists, Topic’s 70th anniversary box set (you’ll hear more about this later) and the usual bucketload of reviews.

The mag will be available at your local good record shop or venue by the end of next week so make sure you pick yourself up a copy.

You can also read the online version by clicking here.

Don’t forget that you can enter our competition to win yourself every CD reviewed in the magazine too!  Just click here to visit our website.

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On our stereo: Tue 21/07/09

Philip Glass – Another Look At Harmony Part IV (Somm Recordings)
Musical ideas stretched in ways you never thought possible

The Afghan Whigs – 1965 (Columbia)
Post-Sub Pop ‘soul grunge’ from Greg Dulli’s (Gutter Twins, Twilight Singers) Afghan Whigs.

Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears – Tell ‘em What Your Name Is! (Lost Highway) (again!)
Bluesy big band fun

ABBA – Gold (Polydor)
You know who ABBA are!

Karate – Unsolved (Southern)
Very interesting indie-jazz-rock

Tom Russell – Blood and Candle Smoke (Proper Records)
Upcoming album from smokey-voiced country star.  Due out September

Pixies - Bossa Nova (4AD)
Seminal/sell-out (depending on your opinion) album from screaming alt-pop-punk legends

Highrise - Various Artists (Rockers Revolt)
Reggae album highlighting the anti-knife and gun campaign of the same name

Bellafea – Cavalcade (Southern)
Post rock noisy/nice shenanigans

Fact of the Day:
Someone here at Proper (who will remain nameless) once wrote a song for Eurovision.  It actually got used in the finals too, despite being shockingly bad.  I put ABBA on to show them how Eurovision songs are supposed to sound.

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Win Tickets to Tower Festival!

The Tower of London, also known as Her Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress, is a place synonymous with incarceration, execution and torture.  So what better place to host a ten-day music festival, The Tower Festival?

A Beefeater

The festival takes place from Thu 10th until Sun 20th September this year (2009).  Amongst the performers will be Nigel Kennedy, Leslie Garret and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa as well as performances of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Yeoman of the Guard and a celebration of Mile’s Davis’s Kind of Blue on its 50th anniversary.

Another Beefeater

But as well as all of this WOMAD are putting on a pair of days over the second weekend (Sat 19th & Sun 20th).  Amongst the acts will be The Imagined Village, Tony Allen, Justin Adams & Juldeh Camarah, Khaled, Abdullah Chhadeh & Syriana, Nathan Flutebox Lee and others.

It is to these two days that we have a pair of tickets to give away, worth £65 each.  But how do I win these tickets, i hear you ask.  Well, i reply, you must be 18 or over to enter the competition and resident in the UK.  You must also be able to attend the event and will need to provide your address, should you be lucky enough to win the tickets.  You also need to answer this question correctly:

Which of these is a person who was executed at The Tower of London?

a) Anne Boleyn

b) Anne Joggeyn

c) Anne Skieyn

Send your answer to competition@properonline.co.uk with the subject header as “Decapitation’s what you need” and make sure you include your name and daytime telephone number.  The competition closes at 5pm BST on Fri 24th July 2009.

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This competition is now closed

The correct answer was, of course, a) Anne Boleyn.  Her marriage to King Henry VIII, prompting the king to get divorced from his previous wife Catherine of Aragon and subsequently excommunicated, splitting the UK state from the Catholic Church.  This led to the English Reformation, a fascinating subject too involved for me to go into detail about here.

You can look up some of the other competitions we’ve got currently running by clicking here.

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Like competitions? You’ll find more on our website.

 

New Releases! Monday 18/05/09!

A magnificent array of recorded music wants to get into your ears today, i’d recommend these:

Mamer - Eagle

Songs of the grasslands from one of China’s most innovative and influential artists. Lyrical, troubador folk – infused with an alt-country sensibility.

Mamer is one of China’s most innovative and influential artists, drawing inspiration from the songs and poetry of the grasslands where he grew up. Eagle features a repertoire of grassland songs, normally sung solo and accompanied by the simple two-stringed dombra, adapted and updated for the 21st century, whilst at the same time preserving their unaffected lyricism.

Joan Baez - Gone From Danger

The ability to serve as a lightning rod for artists whose talent complements – that is, completes or amplifies – your own unique abilities, is a rare quality that came to Joan Baez early in her career and continues to this day.

Gone From Danger is a reminder of the complex musical roads that Joan Baez has travelled these past 2 decades or so, and the marvellously talented artists that she has mentored along the way, who have travelled on her ‘bus’ and then driven off to find their own pathways.

Uiscedwr - Fish Cat Door

Uiscedwr is all about Big Power/Small Package, clearly demonstrated on E.S.P which challenges the role of the musicians as they explore Indian and Latin inspired styles with only fiddle & bodhran. Quirky songs such as Prescription Junkie and Tip Tap Baby follow Anna Esslemont from her recent bone marrow transplant through to the tale of a dancer who can’t groove, with all the lyrical prowess of a young Kirsty MacColl.

Underpinned by special guests James Hickman on guitar and Karen Tweed on accordion, the extra sounds allow for awesome textures and variety in tracks such as The Dirty Nine Steps and Sunshine. Uiscedwr are the folk musicians of the future, drawing on traditions from all over the world and bringing them home with unmistakable skill, panache and relevance.

Plus loads more…

Click here to read up on all of today’s releases.

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Properganda 12 – Online Version!

As promised, we have now finished making the online version of the new issue of Properganda.

Properganda 12 - May/June '09

Click on it and read it!  There’s cool stuff in there!  You’ll love it!

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Properganda! Issue 12! May/June ‘09!

Gadzooks!  The new issue of Properganda, after months of sweat and turmoil, will be available very shortly.  We just have a delivery to our warehouse of the edition which looks like this:

Properganda 12 - May/June '09

As you can see, this issue’s cover artist is Nick Lowe but fear not, for there are also features on Mawkin:Causley, Uiscedwr, Sara Tavares, Justin Adams & Juldeh Camara and loads more.

The mag will be available in shops and ready to go into your hands (with the words ready to go into your eyes) within the next week, as soon as yours truly has spent a couple of days in the warehouse with a tape gun boxing them up.  The online edition will also be available next week, once said truly has compiled all the relevant links.

Don’t forget, of course, as always we have our competition to win EVERY CD reviewed in the magazine.  Usually that’s at least 50 CDs, i was just about to count the number of CDs reviewed but the boss is looking and if i keep typing i’ll look more busy.  You can enter the competition by clicking on these three words.

If you’re not quite finished with the previous issue, or would like to see our back issues, you can do so by visiting the Properganda branch of this very blog, where this edition will soon appear in all its digital glory.

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New Releases! Monday 20/04/09!

Once more we release an array of marvellous new releases today, suitable for marvelling upon, around or near.

Mawkin:Causley - The Awkward Recruit

The follow up to their debut EP sees Essex instru-mentalists Mawkin teaming up once more with deep-larynxed Devon lad Jim Causley to result in one of the most exciting young folk line-ups on the current folk scene.  This album was also recorded about 15 metres away from where i am currently sitting, by none other than Stu Hannah of Megson fame.  It’s very good, buy it.

Peatbog Faeries - Live

Twice “live act of the year” award winners’ long awaited live album lives up to expectations. The unique fusion of traditional Scottish folk and euphoric trance matches that of any summer rave.

Brass Monkey - Head Of Steam

Brass Monkey is THE English folk band led by Martin Carthy and John Kirkpatrick, who, between them, have played with almost every important folk and folk rock group of the last 30 years. Features an extended line up with vocals, guitar, melodeon, concertina, trumpet, trombone, percussion etc, creating a Deep English sound. Coupled with a great appeal to all music fans, from rock to classical this puts them head and shoulders above the rest.

Big Air - Big Air

A fantastic release for those of you who like their jazz to sound like the band is sticking their tongue out at you and blowing a raspberry.  When i first heard this, one of the piano solos reminded me of one of my friends’ six-year-olds who has ADHD.  Chaotic and unpredictable, a masterpiece.

Plus we have looooaaaaaads more:

Click here to read all of today’s new releases.

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New Releases! Monday 09/02/09!

A fancy array of new releases today, including:

Bellowhead - Live At Shepherd's Bush Empire

The long-awaited live DVD from Britain’s, and indeed the world’s, foremost 11-piece folkestra who play, “World music from England.”  A fantastic live show which many of the staff here at Proper went to and have fond memories of.

Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 - Goodnight Oslo

Recorded with friends and longtime cohorts The Venus 3 – Peter Buck (guitar) and R.E.M. mainstays Scott McCaughey (bass, vocals) and Bill Rieflin (drums), Goodnight Oslo is his first album in three years.

Ruthie Foster - The Truth According To

The new album springs to life with a jaunty ‘70s vibe on the Ruthie-penned Stone Love. From there, Ruthie paints with all the vivid colours on her palette: yearning desire amid a bouncy reggae beat on I Really Love You, heartbreak in the lyrics of the Patty Griffin tune When It Don’t Come Easy, funky horns on another Ruthie original Dues Paid In Full, the raw punch of Nickel and a Nail, and the deep-felt blues of Tears of Pain.

And, as always, there are a whole bunch more that I don’t have time to go in-depth about.

Click here to read our full list of new releases.