http://www.hotelofthelaughingtree.com

http://www.myspace.com/hotelofthelaughingtree

Origine du Groupe : North America
Style : Alternative Rock , Indie
Sortie : 2011

By Paul Bogdan from http://www.carillonregina.com

The debut release from Long Island sextet Hotel of the Laughing Tree, Terror and Everything After, can be summarized into two words: “nailed it”. The high-energy, electric pop-rock has an edgy and upfront feel to it for the majority of the album. Despite boasting fourteen tracks, listener interest is easily maintained throughout the entirety of the record; it’s very dynamic, encompassing a mixture of rocking electric guitar riffs, hypnotic vocal harmonies, and singing piano arpeggios. Songs feel more linear than cyclical, starting in one place and ending up in another rather than repeating a verse/chorus/verse template. Nevertheless, Hotel of the Laughing Tree know how to write and place a hook that keeps the audience engaged in the music, as Terror and Everything After is full of them. That’s probably the biggest strength of this fantastic debut album – the ability to mix a motivated song structure that’s anything but stagnant with catchy hooks that draw the listener in.

Tracklist :
1. Barnaby Bison’s Blind
2. Another Harvard Renaissance
3. Gods Great Gumball Machine
4. Noah
5. Winchester Devil Grass
6. Weather Maps for Nikolai
7. Sanctuary
8. Gunpowder Falls
9. Bad Canterbury
10. Forging the Family Name
11. Mont St. Michel
12. Ghosts in the Basement
13. Terror and Everything After
14. Lazarus

http://www.myspace.com/dirtmusicband

Origine du Groupe : North America , Australia , Mali
Style : Alternative Rock Blues , Mali Blues , World Music
Sortie : 2010

Pour http://www.amazon.fr

DIRTMUSIC est la rencontre de trois grands chamans du rock, trois prophètes de l'ouverture aussi bien spirituelle que musicale : CHRIS ECKMAN, fondateur et membre des WALKABOUTS, CHRIS & CARLA, THE STRANGE, HOST, MIDNIGHT CHOIR, TOSCA et WILLARD GRANT CONSPIRACY ; CHRIS BROKAW, collaborateur de LEMONHEADS, LIZ PHAIR, COME, THALIA ZEDEK, CODEINE ; HUGO RACE, fondateur de THE BAD SEEDS, SEPIATONE, ROGALL'S ELECTRIC CIRCUS, TRANSFARGO, MEROLA. En 2008, ils rencontrent les Touaregs TAMIKREST, la jeune garde de TINARIWEN, et débute alors une aventure musicale commune, un échange intense reflété par ce nouvelalbum intitulé BKO (pour Bamako International Airport) au blues aride et poétique.

Tracklist :
01 - Black Gravity (6:07)
02 - All Tomorrows Parties (5:39)
03 - Ready For The Sign (4:16)
04 - Desert Wind (4:34)
05 - Lives We Did Not Live (4:41)
06 - Unknowable (4:15)
07 - Smokin Bowl (5:14)
08 - Collisions (5:41)
09 - Niger Sundown (4:20)
10 - Bring It Home (4:46)
11 - If We Run (4:46)
12 - Ain't No Grave (4:27)
13 - Bogolon Blue (2:06)
14 - The Angel's Message To Me (4:36)

http://latentrecordings.com/cowboyjunkies

http://www.myspace.com/cowboyjunkies

Origine du Groupe : Canada
Style : Alternative Rock , Pop Rock
Sortie : 2011

From http://marselip.blogspot.com

As the second of four releases in their current "Nomad Series", Cowboy Junkies' new January 18 Demons follows up this past year's excellent Remnin Park with this tribute to their late friend, tour mate and musical compatriot Vic Chestnutt. Originally the plan was for the band to back up Chestnutt on a new project, says Junkies founder Michael Timmins, a strategy that was first discussed when Chestnutt guested on the band's 20th anniversary reworking of their classic Trinity album in 2008. Following the death of the the Athens, GA songwriter in 2009, Timmins and the Junkies sketched out the plans for a special commemorative collection of Chestnutt songs and the seeds of the new album were planted.

"We tried to approach Demons with the same sense of adventure that Vic undertook in all of his projects (or at least that is the way his recordings sound)," observes Timmins. "We let happy accidents happen; we tried to invest his songs with the same spirit and the adventure with which they were written, at the same time investing them with our own Northern spin. Exploring his songs and delving deeper and deeper into them has been an intense, moving and joyous experience." From the Crazy Horse-styled distortion of album opener "Wrong Piano" to the wistful desolation of "Square Room" to "West of Rome" -- a song originally pegged as a Junkies cover fifteen years ago but never completed -- Demons brings the Cowboy Junkies trademarked ethereal understatement to Chestnutt's song with love, respect and restraint. A remarkable, inspired collection.

Tracklist :
1. Stay Inside
2. Old Hotel
3. Withering
4. Marathon
5. Forthright
6. Sad Peter Pan
7. Guilty By Association

http://www.helixed.net

http://www.myspace.com/hugorace

Origine du Groupe : Australia
Style : Alternative Rock , Indie , Psychedelic
Sortie : 2010

From http://www.interbangrecords.com

Australian songwriter and producer Hugo Race is a prolific and visionary performer, musician, writer and producer. Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Hugo’s creative journey has given him ‘world citizen’ status, having lived over the course of the last 25 years in Sicily, France, Germany, the UK and the USA. Hugo’s songwriting draws on pop culture from rock n roll to soul to delta blues to avantguard electronic soundscapes.

First introduced to the international stage as a founding member of Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds (he appears on the debut, “From Her to Eternity”, and features on several other Bad Seed’s cds and various compilations), Hugo then founded the seminal Australian art-punk cult band The Wreckery (1985), released through the White, Rampant, Citadel and Normal labels. (A Wreckery retrospective,”Past Imperfect”, was released in  2008 through Memorandum/Fuse Records, Sydney).

In Italy, Hugo has produced albums for Cesare Basile (amongst many others), appeared live and in studio with Afterhours, and created genre-bending projects like The Merola Matrix and Sepiatone (with Marta Collica).

With his band The True Spirit and his various Helixed productions and collaborations, Hugo defies any easy label and has staked out a creative territory between rock, experimental and psychedelia.

Hugo Race’s most recent releases are with the internationally acclaimed “BKO” by Dirtmusic (recorded in Africa and released by Glitterhouse Records), the electro-acoustic instrumental “Between Hemispheres” (Gusstaff Records), and the French/USA Lilium’s new album “Felt”, (Glitterhouse).

Hugo Race’s new solo album Fatalists is raw, moody and lyrically driven. Recorded in Italy, guitarist Antonio Gramentieri (Sacri Cuori, Delavega), Arizonan violinist Vicky Brown (Desoto Caucus, Lilium), percussionist Diego Sapignoli (Sacri Cuori, Delavega), and Dutch bassist Erik Van Loo (Willard Grant Conspiracy) create an acoustic, melodic sound that casts Hugo’s songwriting and voice in a whole new light.

“We all met up in an old villa in rural Italy on a cold autumn day. I’d just finished a month on tour with the True Spirit and in the tour’s closing stages had come down with pneumonia. Because most of the songs I had for Fatalists were about death, this seemed a fitting background, and for the duration of the recording sessions I was laid-up with a fever in a room adjacent to the studio. I could hear the band tracking my songs but couldn’t participate. So the sessions were really produced by Antonio and the other Fatalists, and they gave the songs a different slant. Having self-produced my recordings for a very long time I thought that here was a chance to step back and let a whole new album materialize, if I could just trust in the process. Cal and Andy mixed the album at the Mill studio on a hill overlooking the Southern Ocean where the wind blows in off the grey water with a cold metallic edge. There are few neighbours, and like the Cosabeat studio in the Romagna, a sense of nature and desolation and human insignificance predominates. I never planned to make this record, it just kind of happened – hence the title Fatalists – because often fate has other plans for us…”

Tracklist :       
1 - Call Her Name (5:51)
2 - Too Many Zeroes (3:17)
3 - Slow Fry (4:31)
4 - Will You Wake Up (4:36)
5 - Come Over (4:32)
6 - Serpent Egg (4:02)
7 - In The Pines (3:29)
8 - Nightvision (6:07)

http://www.blackdub.net

http://www.myspace.com/blackdubmusic

Origine du Groupe : North America
Style : Alternative Rock , Indie
Sortie : 2010

From http://www.amazon.com

Los Angeles, CA Black Dub, a powerful new group led by celebrated guitarist and producer Daniel Lanois, will release their debut Jive album on November 2. Black Dub is a distinctive, rock-edged album featuring an outstanding level of musicianship and a soulful, symphonic commentary informed by Jamaican dub culture. The band features Lanois on guitar, New Orleans virtuoso Brian Blade, who has performed with such jazz titans as Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, on drums, the impassioned vocals of Belgian born Trixie Whitley, the beautiful 22-year-old daughter of the late, great Texas bluesman, Chris Whitley and rounding out the quartet is famed Louisiana bass player Daryl Johnson.

Black Dub recorded the album in Los Angeles with a focus on live sessions often done in one take. Lanois recently told Rolling Stone magazine "I had been fantasizing about putting a band together for a long time that would allow me to write music with a funkier angle." The music is accompanied by a series of live off the floor videos that Black Dub has been posting on their new website (click to watch a performance of the single I Believe In You ).

The eleven tracks on the album include the single I Believe In You, (click to listen) the bluesy, sexy Surely and the beautiful gospel-like Caanan. Two trademark Lanois instrumentals Slow Baby and Sirens round out the album.

Over the years, Lanois has carved out a reputation as a sonic iconoclast, skilled in conjuring up deep, ethereal, almost 3-D soundscapes. He makes haunting, music layered with electronic waves of unearthly guitars and eerie pedal steel playing.

Among his credits, Lanois produced Bob Dylan s Grammy winning 1997, Time Out of Mind, and U2 s anthemic 1987 breakthrough, The Joshua Tree. He has produced music for an array of genre busting artists, including Brian Eno, Neil Young, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris and the Neville Brothers.

Tracklist :       
01. Love Lives
02. I Believe In You
03. Ring The Alarm
04. Last Time
05. Surely
06. Nomad
07. Slow Baby
08. Silverado
09. Canaan
10. Sing
11. Sirens