Velocets – Don’t just Take Our Word For It – reviews etc
Fi from AMBY: he main reason I decided to check this gig out highly tipped Manchester band Velocets. Whilst 2013 may be promising to be a great year for music I’d been suffering from a gig drought so severe I was seriously considering classing the busker I witnessed on the high street the other week as a gig I’d attended!! Thankfully Velocets came to the rescue quickly dusting off those January blues with their explosive set.
Looking back they’ll tell you they had some major guitar mishaps on the night which I can’t say didn’t go unnoticed, but it really didn’t matter they more than delivered with this performance. As a Velocets newbie I was highly impressed for a three piece they certainly pack a punch. Kicking off with recently released track Sophie Velocets sounded even better live than on record, exactly how I like my bands. Stringing out a strong eight song set they had me wanting me more and more after each track, for a small band on a small stage they certainly made a very big impression.
Velocets may be a relatively new band, but they’ve certainly nailed their act a great mixture of music and banter, these lads already have such great stage presence a winning combination the on looking crowd certainly appreciated. Finishing up with tracks taken from their latest EP Tell It To Your Kids and Naked Velocets had definitely saved the best until last. Both heavy laden with drum beats, blistering guitar riffs and catchy vocals these tracks really got the crowd on their feet to the point where most of them joined the band on stage, I get the feeling this isn’t a rare occurrence!
posted: 220113 – HERE
Read more on Velocets HERE
New Order and how recording farts played their part in Blue Monday…….
In 1983, before computers came along, it wasn’t easy to do electronic basslines and rhythms. So [New Order vocalist] Bernard Sumner started building these gadgets called sequencers. Next, we thought it would be good to create a song that was completely electronic. Blue Monday’s distinctive intro was written on an Oberheim DMX drum machine. We’d been going to clubs in New York and wanted to recreate the fantastic bass-drum sounds we’d heard. We tried to play something like Donna Summer’s Our Love and came up with that instantly recognisable thud.
The synthesiser melody is slightly out of sync with the rhythm. This was an accident. It was my job to programme the entire song from beginning to end, which had to be done manually, by inputting every note. I had the sequence all written down on loads of A4 paper Sellotaped together the length of the recording studio, like a huge knitting pattern. But I accidentally left a note out, which skewed the melody. We’d bought ourselves an Emulator 1, an early sampler, and used it to add snatches of choir-like voices from Kraftwerk’s album Radioactivity, as well as recordings of thunder. Bernard and Stephen [Morris, drummer] had worked out how to use it by spending hours recording farts.
Blue Monday was meant to be robotic, the idea being that we could walk on stage and do it without playing the instruments ourselves. We spent days trying to get a robot voice to sing “How does it feel?”, but somebody wiped the track. Bernard ended up singing it. He says the lyric came about because he was fed up with journalists asking him how he felt. The lines about the beach and the harbour were the start of his many nautical references – he loves sailing. And Peter Hook’s bassline was nicked from an Ennio Morricone film soundtrack.
Blue Monday is a dance track with a hint of melancholy. A seven and a half minute-long single was unheard of, so we put it out on 12-inch. We couldn’t believe it when it became the biggest-selling 12-inch of all time. People have interpreted the title all sorts of ways. It actually came from a book Stephen was reading, Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions. One of its illustrations reads: “Goodbye Blue Monday.” It’s a reference to the invention of the washing machine, which improved housewives’ lives.
New Order – Blue Monday video – Full version
David Bowie blocks Morrissey from using photograph on record sleeve | Music | guardian.co.uk
David Bowie blocks Morrissey from using photograph on record sleeve | Music | guardian.co.uk.
TRENT REZNOR RETURNS TO THE LABEL MODEL
US singer/songwriter and soundtrack composer Trent Reznor has explained that he recently abandoned the DIY route and returned to a major label partnership as “It wasworth slicing the pie up” and that “complete independent releasing has its great points, but also comes with shortcomings”.
Reznor set up his own label in 2008 but has signed a partnership deal with Sony’s Columbia Records for a forthcoming release by his group ‘How to Destroy Angels’.
Writing on his Facebook page, Reznor said: “We’re literally putting our records out on our own, and not using the labels and I don’t know what the cool record shop in Prague is, and I don’t know the good blog that comes out of there that I can give some attention to”.
He continued: “So far, it’s been pleasantly pleasant, actually having people that know what they’re talking about and having a team”.
Reznor finished a contract with Interscope in 2007 after releasing several albums with Nine Inch Nails and selling over 30 million albums worldwide. He became very vocal about the advantages of artists going down the DIY route, saying at the time: “I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate”.
The songwriter went on to successfully release his own music including a hugely acclaimed soundtrack to David Fincher’s film The Social Network in 2010.
Inanimate Objects hits the floor on 1st November
International producer of mystery Martyr is joined on the controls by Inanimate Objects for a resounding and full bodied piece of tough atmospheric dance to follow Martyr remix of last year DEAD by The Fevers.
The producer behind Inanimate Objects has been influenced by his nomadic roots throughout his childhood listening to the Middle Eastern sounds of his homeland Iran taking on board a range of musical elements from the Arabian continent as a whole. This music is ripe, full of spice and emotion with a production style developed in the UK. He cites early eclectic music memories of Barber Shop quartets, 50s and 60s rock ‘n’ roll right on through to the ghetto funk and disco grooves of Michael Jackson in his pomp.
As a teenage he was enrapt with the percussive edginess of hip hop, which definitely influence his drum arrangements going on to become a talented turntablist channelling his energies into his DJ performance of the freshest House and Techno sets around during weaving in standout Drum ‘n’ Bass, Ancient Ethnic, Modern Classical and Deep Disco.
His underlying theme which props up his name and conceptual approach is that his favourite artists all use inanimate objects such as samplers, decks, computers, synths to create but it is the interaction between man and machine that take the music to another level. He is a new breed of humanist producers whose work strives to emulate the synthy, slightly broken beat output of Amon Tobin, Clark, Nathan Fake, Ben Klock, Marcel Dettmann, Flying Lotus, Gold Panda, amongst others.
Futureworks Music is really excited to be his partner on this his next journey into sound………
This will be followed up with 2 more EPs and an album – watch out for a DJ mix coming up on Soundcloud….