James Vincent McMorrow - St. Pancras Old Church (2011)

Heads up – I may come across as a bit of a James Vincent McMorrow groupie in this post…I don’t really mind though, every time I hear something new from him I rave for a while.

I last posted about him in January of this year before the release of his debut album and before I saw him at live St. Pancras Old Church in Feb. I’m not writing this to gush about the gig (beautifully stripped back performance in a breathtaking venue) or remind you about the album – just to post up a few bits and pieces I’ve heard since then; some covers and an unexpected feature. In order of discovery:

Whip My Hair (Willow Smith Cover) – entirely unrecognisable version of the  pop single from Will Smith’s just-turned-eleven year old daughter.

Higher Love (Steve Winwood Cover) – recently used on a LOVEFiLM ad JVMcM strips this 80s Grammy Record of the Year down to piano-backed vocal.

Wicked Game (Chris Isaak Cover) – I posted an Exlovers version of this and also recently heard one by Widowspeak, both are great but JVMcM’s is my favourite, second only to the original (check out that music video!)

and…most recently:

Shells of Silver (The Japanese Popstars ft. JVMcM) – could’ve sworn it was him when I heard it on Gossip Girl (s5e7) last week but when I Shazam’d it I got a track by The Japanese Popstars. Turns out he features on this synthy atmospheric track from the Northern Irish act – great to hear what he can do outside of his singer-songwriter realm.

Everything he touches is gold for me right now. Can’t wait to see what comes next year…

I found this girl through a tweet posted by the lovely First Aid Kit this Thursday just gone.

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Jesse Boykins III - The Beauty Created (2008)

I’m a little bit in awe of the 90s revival that seems to be taking place right now. No, I’m not talking 2 Unlimited and Real 2 Real – I mean the genres I lived and loved in high school, at university and edging into the early 2000s the first time around. I’ve already posted about Miguel Jontel (R&B) and Gyptian (Reggae/Dancehall)…and now it’s the turn of some neo-soul.

Admittedly this song is a few years old – part of the 2008 album “The Beauty Created” released on NomaDic MuSic, a label Jesse Boykins III co-owns with New York Giant Sinorice Moss  - but there’s more to come in the third studio album, “Love Apparatus”, due out later this year.

Jesse Boykins III – Amorous

I wouldn’t bat an eyelid if someone told me this was released around the time of early Maxwell or D’Angelo – his voice is beautiful and the understated, effortless smooth is similarly soulful.

He’s from Chicago but is currently based in New York and will be playing at SXSW this week.

There’s quite a lot of music up on his site, including some covers of Aaliyah, Kanye and Corinne Bailey Rae:

And, in a similar but different vein to James Blake – Limit To Your Love (Feist).

Orly EP - Orly (2009)

A bit of jazzful soul from Manhattan – google can’t even find this girl’s MySpace right now but her June 2009 self-titled EP is available to stream in full from her bandcamp page.

Orly – Why

This is my favourite of the 6 tracks – with the laid back, neo-soul style – but also check out “Sit Back” for a lazy Sunday afternoon lie-in (yes, “afternoon”…) and “Love” for a bit more attitude. “Be With You” is available to download for free for an e-mail address.

Where it was Andreya Triana‘s raw acoustic soul that made for an enrapturing live performance, I think Orly would just ooze easy and natural.

Would love to hear news of any future live dates in the UK – hear John Legend’s doing a show at the Jazz Cafe. Any support slots going?

With the ability to silence the chatterings of a crowded bar, to command the undivided attention of her audience and to convey perfectly a complimentary power and vulnerability in one breath, Andreya’s music is raw soul personified.

Andreya Triana – Daydreamers (reverbnation player Track 1)

Andreya Triana

As yet unreleased, this is the song that stood out for me in an otherwise also jaw-dropping performance at Vibe Bar, where she played barefoot with a single acoustic guitar accomplice as part of a line-up that also introduced me to the music of recent Mercury Music Prize-winner Speech Debelle.

I’m excited to hear what her debut album brings, particularly as it’s also going to feature the skills of “superproducer supremo extraordinaire Bonobo” and some “song writes courtesy of the singer/songwriter with the crazy skills and talents Fink”. It’s dropping later this year.

In the meantime, check out her MySpace and an exclusive live show recorded for Red Bull Music Academy at Cargo, London.

I was at a gig at The Old Blue Last last night – some great bands (Thee Vicars especially – 60s The Kinks-style retro rock) – when one of the folks I was with said in response to a comment from the Tiny Tigers lead singer that she couldn’t hear such & such and wanted the sound adjusted,

“They sound great! I wish I could tell them they sound great”

Oddly enough…this is precisely why The Twitgigs Experiment is happening.

As my co-organiser @raxlakhani put it in a recent conversation with @MegFitz & @Alice_Roberts (the @Spoonfed team):

“Have you ever been to see a band and wished that you could tell them (and the rest of the world for that matter) exactly how freakin’ awesome they are!? Well, that was the initial driver behind putting on The Twitgigs Experiment. Twitter is the perfect medium to bring together musicians and music lovers.”

- Twitgigs: A Night of Live Music on Twitter, 20 July

We’re lucky enough to have the support of the Smirnoff Night Vision initiative to enable us to put together a fantastic line up of bands – they’ll be battling it out for the votes of Twitter-active music fans both live at The Vibe Bar, and online through our dedicated USTREAM channel on 6 August.

The Line Up

@EssayLikeNephew – an indie guitar-pop four-piece from London who’ve been making music together since their schooldays. Really varied…but ‘Barnyard Burrows Grave’ has a sniff of Snow Patrol about it…

@theSCCC – indie-rock but not in a conventional sense. Think electronics, synths…and books. The Liverpool-based quintet will be unleashing some new material especially for the show. When I first heard them, I thought “Sigur Rós with a kick”.

@mikedignammusic – heartfelt and soulful pop-rock from an 18 year old singer-songwriter who’s cited Jason Mraz and John Mayer as his influences.

There are mp3s of their music (feel free to tweet them about!) available to stream from the twitgigs twt.fm page, and follow the bands on twitter for their take on events as they unfold on the night…

The Event

Our aim is for the event to be a truly interactive night so we’ll be looking for lots of Tweets, TwitPics, Twitter dedications and honest reviews of the individual performances – there’s going to be a live Twitterfall projected at the venue on the night, both from the live audience and viewers on the web.

Although the focus, as with any live gig, is the music, we’ll be kitting out The Vibe Bar with lots of Twitpic-friendly props to capture your attention, so keep your eyes peeled  and you may win yourself a prize or two – folks at home included.

Music fans – help us spread the word & follow @twitgigs!

(oh…and buy your tickets for the live show here :))

Tagged: artist, gig, indie, rock ]]> http://nishajl.com/2009/07/29/the-twitgigs-experiment-twitgigs/feed/ 0 nishajl TWITGIGS FLYER http://nishajl.com/2009/07/02/st-vincent/ http://nishajl.com/2009/07/02/st-vincent/#comments Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:13:34 +0000 nishajl http://nishajl.com/?p=836 Read more]]>

St. Vincent - Actor

Brooklyn-based indie/zouk (I’m having to admit I’m not entirely sure what ‘zouk’ means but that’s how she describes herself on the MySpace…hold on…ok…it looks like it’s kind of a fusion of musical styles resulting in “modern and polished” carnival music) singer-songwriter, St. Vincent, has a floaty, airy but also electronic sound that incorporates some pretty unexpected sound-effects at times.

Thinking about it, “Jesus Saves, I Spend” (up on the MySpace) does have quite a waltzy, carnival beat – and an eerie ‘la la la’-ing baby noise in the background – but the other tracks are quite varied so it’s difficult to say that this is representative. My favourite is “Marry Me”, which is much sweeter…

Also loving the track “Paris is Burning”…(nothing to do with Ladyhawke).

Annie Clark, a.k.a. St. Vincent, will be performing at the Wireless Festival this weekend and if you miss her there, again at the ICA on 8 July. Details on the London Gigs page.

Michael Jackson (1958 - 2009)

Instead of posting links to Michael Jackson’s songs, I’m going to share some of my own personal MJ-related memories as a tribute to an undeniably talented musician who will be missed by many.

- Michael Jackson’s 1987 release. ‘Bad’ was the first LP my brother ever owned. I’m supremely jealous of that credibility-enhancing fact because my own was ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ by Rick Astley. Even at five years old, he was cooler than me.

- We used to sing along to ‘Librarian Girl’ for years as children…until we realised it was actually ‘LibERian Girl’.

- My poor brother was known from an early age for his ‘Michael Jackson dance’ and was brought out whenever any of my parents’ friends or our extended family came round to perform in front of everyone. Man, I wish we had that on video.

- It wasn’t just me and my brother, the extended family also got involved, translating MJ lyrics into Gujarati and singing ‘Ghandhari Diana…No!’ before collapsing in hysterics. (‘Ghadhari’ is the guju word for ‘dirty’).

- MJ’s ‘Dangerous’ tour in 1992 saw my first ever live concert – I was lucky enough to go to Wembley Stadium with my Dad and little brother. We were so tiny we had to stand on our seats to see anything because the lady in front of us and her daughter were side-step-clap dancing throughout the entire show. I also have vague memories of them both wearing lycra cycling shorts and an MJ t-shirt.

- At the same concert, being newbies to the mayhem of stadium gigs (Note to Wembley: you could learn a thing or two from Disney World), we didn’t remember to note down where we had parked our car so had to wait for two hours at the end until almost everyone had left and we could find it. Must’ve been fun for my dad with an 11 year-old and a 9 year-old screaming “I’m tired!” and “I’m hungry!”.

- So excited when ‘Moonwalker’ was released but wasn’t allowed to go to the cinema with my friends on Sarah Dalling’s birthday to see it so dragged my dad along. He fell asleep and was actually snoring in the cinema (a feat repeated many years later at of one of my favourite films of all time ‘the Matrix’).

- At 11 years old and trying to appear cool in front of two older girls I met on a school trip I pretended to know who the Inspiral Carpets and the Manic Street Preachers were whilst wearing a black Dangerous tour t-shirt and green jeans. For some reason I haven’t heard from Jackie or Emily for a long while…

- That same MJ t-shirt allowed me to bond with my Indian “cousins” when we went over to Gujarat in the early nineties for a religious occasion organised in memory of my late Grandfather and even led one of them to make me a keyring as a gift, which I still have.

Although no MJ links, here are a few of my favourite rock covers:

Alien Ant Farm – Smooth Criminal
Chris Cornell – Billie Jean
Fallout Boy – Beat It
Ben Gibbard – Thriller (link from the RSL blog)

…and a hilarious Bollywood-style video for ‘Thriller’ (youtube).

As a friend of mine noted:

“Legends don’t die. They live in our hearts forever. R.I.P MJ – May your soul finally rest in peace.”

Ruby Blue – First heard it on the Grey’s Anatomy soundtrack. The electro riff on this track is side-to-side-head-bob inducing so listen on the tube at your own peril (I learnt the hard way)

Ramalama (Bang Bang) – Preview clip only. Another memorable TV moment – this song was used in Season 2 of ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ as the backing track to a zombie-style dance performed by the dancers remaining at that stage. And also in Grey’s Anatomy.