Monolake were Berlin-based duo Gerhard Behles and Robert Henke. Between 1996 and 1997 they released 3 singles and 1 album on Basic Channel’s Chain Reaction imprint. Then in `99 pair produced one final long-player together, before Behles moved on to concentrate on developing music software for Ableton, the company that they both founded. Leaving Henke to continue as Monolake alone. Titled “Interstate”, as its pedigree suggests, the album is a dub techno-derived adventure. An exploration of the…

Music With 58 Musicians may be the ultimate ECM compilation because it reveals the hidden principle that gave the label’s catalogue coherence from the very beginning. Released in 1980 and curated by Robert Hurwitz and Steve Lake, it arrived just after ECM entered its second decade, when its identity was recognizable yet fluid enough to resist canonization. Lake’s introductory note rebukes “less-informed critics” who interpreted ECM’s unusual personnel combinations as arbitrary whimsy, when in…

It has been another long, hot day and I don't feel up to a full-fledged post today. I plan to eulogize Freddy "Boom Boom" Cannon tomorrow. He died on July 17, 2026 at the age of 89 after a brief fight with cancer. I've enjoyed his songs since childhood, when I would hear them on oldies programs and oldies radio stations. More recently, I enjoyed his appearances on Svengoolie, for which he wrote the songs "Hey Svengoolie" and "The Svengoolie Stomp." What was so wonderful about Freddy Cannon's…

St Vincent’s music doesn’t always hit with me, but when it does, it hits hard. Actor is one of my top 10 favorite albums, even though I don’t particularly like half of the tracks on it. A huge part of that comes from Annie Clark treating it like a concept album, a bunch of songs loosely related around the idea of a fairy tale gone wrong. It’s more explicit on some tracks than others, but there’s a consistent theme of darkness roiling beneath the peaceful, idyllic surface. And more interesting…

Drinkin Spo-Dee-O-Dee(McGhee)Vocal by Les GuthrieWestern MagicHit Parades Tunes1949A cover of the Sticks McGhee song. Not listed in Second Hand Songs A subsidiary of the Swing Records Manufacturing Company, from Paris, Texas, operated by Jimmy Mercer.. In all likehood the Western Magic was a short-lived budget label.At least two other records were issued by this label. See 45cat Les and His Western Playboys are not related (Ohio family group led by Les Haven)Interesting information about Jimmy…

2026-07-11Hello!I resisted music streaming for a long while. The appeal of listening to music in the background never sat right with me. But it has its uses.When I signed up for a Spotify account, I configured my algorithm and listened to several jazz tracks. Some classy track came up, and it gave me the tasty colors, but I was doing my homework at the time; I didn't bother to check the name of it.The next day, I replayed that same playlist. It seemed to work out okay, and I didn't bother…

DIY Festivals, Coast to Coast :: Ghost Canyon, Fly Around Fest & Open MelodyWhen we think of music festivals these days, it’s often the big ones that come to mind — your Coachellas, Lollapaloozas or Bonnaroos. Sweltering heat, fields full of fans, lineups that feel increasingly algorithmic and boring. Such events can be fun, of course, but hardly anyone would argue that they’re really about music.But for those of us in search of a more sonically fulfilling experience, a number of homegrown…

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. Emmalea Russo’s novel The Moon Papers is one of the year’s most thought-provoking novels. Foreword Reviews wrote of the book: “A surprising science fiction novel . . . beguiling.” In her own…

Picked this up last month on vinyl at a local record store for about $10, and it was worth every penny. All 1000 of them. This jam session differs from Pablo's other recordings in that it includes the great English tenor Ronnie Scott along with the regular all-star personnel (vibraphonist Milt Jackson, flugehornist Clark Terry, guitarist Joe Pass, pianist Oscar Peterson, bassist Niels Pedersen and drummer Bobby Durham). Source: AllMusic 💿 Stream

On Sunday, I published Side One of my album on Bandcamp. The name of the album is also “Side One.” It is instrumental music with roots in Soundtrack, hip-hop, funk, jazz, 19th Century Romantic classical, ambient, electronic, and art rock. You might wonder if those divergent genres belong together, but the proof is in the listening.For complicated reasons, I haven’t composed, produced, and released music since the late 1980s, back in the multi-track reel-to-reel and early MIDI days! A few months…

What’s going on, Internet? Olly wants a physical-digital music experience: browse the racks at your local record store, chat to the staff, listen to stuff, but instead of bagging the vinyl, pay them for a FLAC download and have the store clip the ticket. I think I’m into it… While I still buy records physically, I often don’t have the time to get into the local record store weekly to dig through the crates. I purchase my records through a few stores online, often lining up with sales as vinyl…

On Sunday, a HUGE free festival in Twickenham.I'll be in the Eel Pie pub at 1 p.m. with an unusual band line-up that includes the fabulous, unique Lester Square on guitar, Ruth Tidmarsh on bass and vocals, and Karina Townsend (sax, melodica and vocals). Please come! We'd love you to hear us

This evening I listened to Peter Gabriel’s New Blood, after seeing the album mentioned on Thomas’ blog. As I listened, I kept thinking “this is my favourite song so far!” There were so many tracks that I liked. Downside-Up, Wallflower, and Mercy Street were all terrific.Toward the end of the album there is a track called “A Quiet Moment,” which is mostly silent unless the volume is turned up, in which case the sound of a flowing river and birds singing emerges. The song creates a moment of…

This is my entry into this month's Bear Blog Carnival, which I am hosting! Go check out the main post to read submissions from others. When I had just turned 19, I moved to Tokyo to begin my year of study abroad. Not two months before then, I had just become a parent. My life was fundamentally changed in a way that I now realise I was not at all equipped to handle. In the midst of a long mental health crisis that had begun earlier that year, I had concluded that the best thing for my baby's…

Here’s the playlist for my radio show this week: Amilie Lens – Our Frequency Snooper – Recess Water From Your Eyes – Playing Classics Icona Pop – Dance to This Monobloc – City Boy Harsher – Jeans Til Tuesday –...

"Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" by Shania Twain Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. Post one of your favorite country songs. I think this song is a classic. It's got a good hook and the classic "oh, you think you're all that" line. View Mandaris's Crucial Tracks profile Listen to my Apple Music playlist

Even now, when things on my latest list of the good things in life suddenly seem to connect together naturally, it is such a glorious feeling. Plus, there’s the added bonus of a sense of having joined the dots without any help. Perhaps, to counter this, one should sometimes question why it took so long to do so, but then life’s not perfect. Far from it sometimes. With this particular adventure the link turned out to be the Efficient Space label of Melbourne whose activities tied together a…

Members of the Grapes of Wrath group play music worthy of putting on a record. The SPHS students are (left to right) Brian Magnan, Bill Lichty, Ralph Sias, Danny Morrow and William Doheny., San Pedro News-Pilot, May 17, 1967. The Grapes of Wrath cut one 45, “For Every Year” / “Cause it Was Her”, both written by Ralph Sias. The group came from San Pedro, California, in the South Bay of Los Angeles. Members were: Brian Magnan – lead vocals Bill Lichty – drums Ralph Sias – guitar Danny Morrow –…

“Dub Souljah” is the first 12 on Sotofett’s new label, Resonance Of Dub. Those of us in Japan were lucky enough to pick up promos of the inaugural 7 last November, when the Norwegian DJ / producer was handing them out while on tour. Here, the sleeve bears the legend “Dub blew my mind the first time I heard it, and that explosion is still ringing in my ears”, and his passion, understanding and talent for the technique / genre really shows. The release consists of 3 songs, collaborations between…

Meant to be televised in 1969 but withheld for decades because the Stones were afraid of The Who – and for good reason, the latter’s version of “A Quick One” is the greatest performance in any rock doc I’ve seen lately. Staged inside a circus tent with acrobats and stuff in between music acts, passing through a wild Lennon/Ono act and culminating in a decently good Stones set. Of the bands I didn’t already know, Taj Mahal’s amped-up bar band > Jethro Tull’s flutey rock > Marianne Faithfull’s…

Scribed by Sandre the Giant Released: 26th May 1986 There are times when I’m writing about music, and metal, when I wonder just how I got to this point of writing about the fortieth anniversary of one of rock music’s most infamous songs and the album it came from, but this is a lesson of self discovery and of not pre-judging anything. Because despite the mega-hit nature of ‘The Final Countdown’ (number one song in 25 countries, including the UK), I had never listened to Europe at all other than…

The Contaminazioni Contemporanee, or Contemporary Contaminations, series emerged in Bergamo, Italy, as a multi-year festival devoted to ECM Records’ eclectic sound world. Its title treats contamination as a creative principle: one tradition entering another and subtly rearranging its inner architecture. Its scope embraces sacred music alongside Mediterranean traditions, with Eastern and Western vocabularies meeting throughout. It is also a rare New Series-dominant ECM sampler. Appropriately, it…

July 17 was Vince Guaraldi’s 98th birthday, and — since his first publicized gig was an April 1951 booking at San Francisco’s Cable Car Village, as a member of tenor saxman Chuck Travis’ quartet — this year marks the 75th anniversary of Vince’s professional career.That was two excellent excuses for the sensational all-Guaraldi set presented Sunday evening, July 19, by pianist Jim Martinez’s Quartet, accompanied by his son, James Martinez, on guitar; Kerry Kashiwagi, on bass; and Scott Gordon,…

Billionaires don’t control this, you do. If you want independent media that listens to survivors instead of protecting predators, subscribe. You’re my boss!! Support this newsletter and help us keep truth alive.Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan were arrested by U.S. Marshals in Miami on Saturday, after U.K. prosecutors filed a wave of new charges against them. Andrew is facing 42 in total, including rape, sex trafficking, assault, and offenses relating to indecent images of a child. Tristan…

This is the soundtrack that turned me on to Panarama, who I played yesterday. This soundtrack was composed by Hermann Weindorf, one of the two members of Panarama, and it's a mix of songs by the band itself and other 80s pop in a very similar vein. I've never seen the movie, but if you asked me what an 80s ski movie soundtrack should sound like it would absolutely be something like this. Unfortunately the full soundtrack isn't available online anywhere, but at least a few of the highlights are…

Toronto’s own shoegaze festival Loveless Fest dials up this weekend and while the lineup impresses with a balance of higher profile international (read: American) acts to spice up the locals from the GTA and southern Ontario, there’s some domestic acts from a little further afield who bring an extra element of discovery to the schedule. […] The post Shallow – “Blow It All Away” appeared first on Space Echo.

Women Of Music volume 13 Note : previously issued at the Groovy Grooves blog, now with a new coverClaudine Clark - Walkin' Through a Cemetery.mp3 Dorothy Donegan, - Kilroy Was Here.mp3 Dot Hester- My Boyfriend's Back.mp3 Elizabeth Montgomery (as Serena) - I'll Blow You a Kiss in the Wind.mp3 Emmylou Harris - c'est la Vie, you never can tell, .mp3 Frances Day (aka Gale Warning) - Heartbreak Hotel.mp3 Jenny Aguirre - Satellite.mp3 LaVern Baker - Voodoo Voodoo.mp3 Linda Leigh - The Scent.mp3 Patti…

2026/07/20 Sunday Tonight I made spinach and ricotta panqueca. I posted panqueca before, it should not be confused with American pancakes, these are thin rolled crêpes. Sala Espacial playing Imediato Contato (2016) I had already beaten the eggs when I decided to take a picture... for this recipe I used 4 eggs, 500ml of milk, 2 tablespoons of canola oil, 50g of melted butter, 300g of flour - and of course, salt, to taste. I let it rest for about 4h. Roberta Sá playing Lua (2011) I bought frozen…

Bulayo - Guitar Songs From Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia and DR CongoDuring a very brief visit to Portland, OR, a few weeks back, I finally made it to Mississippi Records. As expected, it was a delight — I could’ve spent several hours just browsing the Sun Ra section. One thing I grabbed was Mississippi’s recent Bulayo compilation, and I’ve been spinning it daily since then. These field recordings made by John Low in 1979 and 1980 throughout Kenya, Tanzania, Congo, and Zambia give us an…

If you were in London and fancied a joyful escape from the men’s football world cup final, chances are you hot-footed it down to the New Wimbledon Theatre to experience Strictly Come Dancing star Nikita Kuzmin’s new touring show, Supernova. Presented by long-running dance hit Burn the Floor, it sees Kuzmin in collaboration with choreographer Jason Gilkison, exploding onto the stage with the energy, charisma and enthusiasm Strictly viewers have come to expect. Along with his cast of seven fellow…