European Heartbreak
Amber Arcades
Born on 15 December 1988 as Annelotte de Graaf, the Dutch singer-songwriter from Utrecht holds a master’s degree in law and worked as an assistant for the war crimes tribunal at the United Nations. Her music career began when she recorded an album in New York City, funded by money she had saved since her teenage years, and attracted the attention of Heavenly Recordings, leading to her début album, Fading Lines, in June 2016. European Heartbreak is her second. About its first track, Simple Song, Amber says: «This music video forms part 2 of a trilogy which tells a modern European (love) story, touching on various thoughts and feelings that inspired my new record. Using the medium of film to tell this story ties it to one of the central ideas of the record, which is the essential nature of storytelling in understanding our lives».
Heavenly Recordings, April 2018
Elephants on Acid
Cypress Hill
The first track of the first new release of Cypress Hill after nine years, and their ninth album, was filmed in Cairo and displays an oriental touch but every track on this far out „hallucinogenic“ album is different and features unexpected visual ideas and effects performed on a great variety of instruments. «Full of sitars, guitars, organs, Nuggets-rhythms and vinyl crackle, Elephants, is a bad trip of 1967-72 imagery; a hip-hop blunt rolled on vintage rock’s gatefold vinyl sleeves. Muggs says there’s only one sample on the record – courtesy of Japanese smooth jazz group Hiroshima – and the rest was played by musicians and the producer himself». (Rolling Stone) As good and as humorous as ever.
BMG, August 2018
An American Treasure (4 CD Box Set) – Keep a Little Soul
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
After Tom Petty’s death, about a year ago, his wife and daughter and his bandmates, Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench, discovered a wealth of unreleased material in Petty’s archives, mostly from concerts. We are presented with a posthumous Best Of of the unassuming and prolific rock musician. Born in Florida in 1950, Thomas Earl Petty was a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record-producer and actor. Best known as the lead singer of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, he was also a founding member of the supergroup The Travelling Wilburys featuring himself, George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne of the Electric Light Orchestra. This track shows us a mischievous Petty, on stage in the seventies.
Reprise Records, Juli 2018
Selection
Frédéric D. Oberland
Born on 18 August 1978, the French musician, photographer, artist, multi-instrumentalist and experimenter tackles every instrument that he comes across with the same passion (fender rhodes, harmonium, banjo, found objects, toy instruments, saxophone, theremin, pantophone, computer music). As a composer and musician he has collaborated with a wide range of talent. Since 2009, much of his time has been devoted to a project entitled FareWell Poetry, a collective comprised of Parisian musicians and the poet/filmmaker Jayne Amara Ross. Attracting attention from their first live performance, this experimental film / poetry / music related project has since performed in film festivals, churches, concert halls and other experimental acoustic spaces, inviting a wide-range of musicians to join them.
VoxVox 2015
Henry Dutilleux – Symphonie No. 1
Orchestre national de Lille with Jean-Claude Casadeus
First recorded by the National Orchestra of the city of Lilly, in 1977, it was one of the first orchestrations in a series of French and other orchestras to render this wonderful modern classical composition by Henry Dutilleux, composed in 1951 for 85 instrumentalists. Dutilleux (1916-2013) came from a family that produced several artists and scientists. Mainly active in the second half of the twentieth century (between Messiaen and Boulez), he worked as Head of Music Production for Radio France from 1945 to 1963 and out of his studio on the Île St.Louis in Paris. Among his works we find sonatas, chamber and piano music, vocal compositions, music for ballet and theatre or film scores. He also arranged other people’s music. Dutilleux’ 1st symphony is about half an hour long and written in four movements: 1. Passacaglia; 2. Scherzo molto vivace; 3. Intermezzo; 4 Finale con variazioni.
Naxos Classics, 1977