Tag Archives: Punk

Nehedar, The Warming House | Music News

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Band/Artist: Nehedar
Location: New York City
Styles: Folk, Rock, Americana, Pop, Punk, Electropop
Similar to/RIYL: Patti Smith, St Vincent, Regina Spektor, Fiona Apple, PJ Harvey
CD: The Warming House
Release date: Aug 13, 2014Accolades:  Mother Jones Reader Choice Picks for 2011, My Roommate Is An @$$clown Video Screened at Libelula Animation Festival in Spain, Performing Finalist at We R Indie Songwriting Competition 2011Members/Instruments: Emilia Cataldo: Vocals and Guitar, Craig Levy: Bass, Drums, Synth, Craig Judelman: Violin, Jennifer Harder: Trumpet, Michael Hitchcock: Guest Vocals

Production: Craig Levy at Little Pioneer Cider House in Brooklyn NY

Nehedar

Bio:

Nehedar is the project of NYC-based singer/songwriter Emilia Cataldo, who is releasing her 7th independent album “The Warming House” on Aug 13.

On the new record, Nehedar continues to blend her antifolk-rock style with other unexpected sounds and genres, only this time with a deeper Americana influence. The result, is mesmerizing.

The Warming House – which is the artist’s first crowd funded album and was recorded in Brooklyn with producer Little Pioneer (Craig Levy) – takes listeners on a journey spanning down-home fiddling to majestic horn parts to electronic beats, from angry punk to upbeat pop to sad folk to playful country tunes to feminist anthems.

While blending and shifting between genres has always been part of the music of Nehedar, The Warming House represents a true crystallization of her all-embracing, diverse musical style. It is the artist at her most mature and fully developed stage.

Cataldo began performing her original music in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and NYC’s Lower East Side in 2003, and the anti-folk influences from those early years still shows.

She released her first album “Pick Your Battles” in 2007, and has released one album per year, every year since.

To gain a deeper understanding of Nehedar, one needs to understand her eclectic background.

The child of free-spirited, nomadic musicians, Cataldo grew up exposed to a wide variety of cultural and musical influences – treasures she has drawn from to create her richly layered recordings that have always been best described as original.

Her father is a saxophone playing Nuyorican (Puerto Rican New Yorker) jazzman. Her mother was a classically trained piano teacher who liked folk music. Together, they would shut themselves up in their room every night to practice while their six young children ran wild.

The music of Nehedar reflects Cataldo’s fascinating journey through life From the Latin influenced environment where she helped her father run his liquor store as a girl in Miami, to a troubling adolescence in the fascinating midwestern town of Zion, Illinois (which she draws from in The Warming House’s nostalgic title track).

Cataldo left Zion at 17, and traveled with the Rainbow Family of Living Light, where she began learning about her mystical Jewish heritage. That led to her taking on the name Nehedar (which means “wondrous” in hebrew) for her and her band, and Jewish mysticism continues to infuse her work.

The Talks Release Radio | Music News

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Their new single on All Our Own Records

Radio

 

Release Date: 30th June

Format: Digital Download

 

“There aren’t many bands that are good enough to catch the attention of members of The Specials, but then there aren’t many bands like The Talks. Proving that hard work, persistence and a pocket full of irresistibly catchy tunes can pay dividends” – Music radar

 

thetalks

L-R: Jody Moore, Pat Pretorius, Iain Allen, Richard “Titch” Lovelock

 It’s an exciting time for The Talks and the release of new single ‘Radio’ is only going to add to the buzz that surrounds this four piece from Hull.  The band have built up a reputation across Europe for bouncing, blistering live shows supporting the likes of The Specials, Rancid, Madness, The Beat, King Blues and The Toasters.

 

Their 2012 single ‘Can Stand The Rain’ featured the legendary Neville Staple of The Specials and had over 55,000 views in its first week on YouTube. 2013 saw the release of their ‘West Sinister’ EP, which received fantastic reviews and airplay on both Ska and mainstream stations across Europe, leading to The Talks being invited to appear at a large number of festivals across the continent, including the famous Mighty Sounds Festival (CZ), Rebellion (UK), Galtres (UK) and This is Ska (DE).

 

The success of The Talks last single ‘Don’t look behind you’ has brought the band to an even bigger audience and with sellout shows and invites to play across more European festivals including Boomtown (UK), Sapi Festival (FR), Camden Rocks and Fusion Festival (DE) amongst many others.

 

Lead vocalist Pat says “it is amazing to see so many people showing up to the gigs and seeing such great reviews from the likes of Team Rock, Punk Archives and Louder than War to name a few. Truly makes us happy to know that driving miles and miles in the tour bus is worthwhile when we know people out there are digging it.”

 

Further proof that The Talks are on the receiving end of a huge amount of attention from all corners comes in the form of tweets praising the band from big hitters ‘Less Than Jake’, ‘Sonic Boom Six’ and Itch from King Blues; glowing reviews, front cover features and appearances on various UK TV networks.

 

The Talks highly anticipated debut album ‘Commoners, Piers, Drunks and Thieves’ is released later in the year.

 

 

Russia: Disclose Whereabouts of Missing Pussy Riot Member. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova Still Missing

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Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Pussy Riots, Russia, missingConcern grows for missing Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova.

Amnesty International has condemned the continuing refusal to disclose the whereabouts of a member of the Russian punk group Pussy Riot, who is rumoured to be in transfer to a prison colony in Siberia, saying it is clearly yet another attempt to silence her.

Denis Krivosheev Europe and Central Asia Deputy Director at Amnesty International said:
“Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has publicly complained of threats she received from prison officials. We are concerned that she now may be being punished for this and for speaking out about deplorable prison conditions.

“The Russian authorities must immediately tell her family where she is and allow her access to a lawyer. She is a prisoner of conscience who should have never been taken to jail in the first place. Refusing to say where she is simply fuels rumours of the worst case scenario.
“If reports are true, transferring her to a prison colony thousands of kilometres from Moscow would make it almost impossible for her relatives and lawyers to see her. This would be a violation of her human rights and of Russia’s own laws.”

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s whereabouts have been unknown since 22 October when she was reportedly taken from the penal colony where she was serving a two-year prison sentence. It is believed she is being transferred to another place, but the destination has not been revealed.
Her husband has now said a penitentiary administration source informed him of the possible move to a prison colony in Siberia.

Amnesty has made Nadezhda Tolokonnikova the subject of an urgent action campaign, calling on the authorities in Russia to disclose her location immediately.

A Tale of two Cities

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Good Vibrations and Spike Island at the London Film Festival

I had great plans for the London film festival, with many press screenings marked out on my diary.  Unfortunately timing was against me, as it turned out to be a very busy period in my other two jobs (acting and teaching), and apart from “A Liar’s Autobiography,” which got cancelled (read the article here), I actually only ended up at two screenings.  But they were good ones.

Good Vibrations

My regular readers (if there are such people) will be aware that I enjoy a bit of music from the 1980s, so I was in a positive frame of mind when I turned up to see Good Vibrations – The Story of Terri Hooley.

For every Richard Branson, there are probably hundreds of Terri Hooleys.  Known as the Godfather of Ulster Punk, Terri was the owner of Good Vibrations record shop and label, was responsible for discovering the Undertones, and encouraged punk and alternative music to flourish during a dark time in Northern Ireland’s history.  I imagine that there were people like him in towns and cities all over the UK and Ireland during the 70s and 80s; running record shops, managing and/or playing in bands organising events.  Do these people ever make a profit in the long run or do their charming mix of naivety and idealism work against them in the end?  Good Vibrations never released a top 40 record, and Terri sold the rights to “Teenage Kicks” for £500 and a signed photo of The Shangri Las (which he never got.)  But that isn’t the point, as this film shows: Terri Hooley made a lot of people very happy, which was in itself no mean feat in Belfast at the height of the troubles.

This was a highly enjoyable film from start to finish.  Richard Dormer made an excellent Terri, and I particularly enjoyed Jodie Whittaker’s performance as his wife.  It’s hard to pick out anyone else as cast lists are not given out at press screening, but everyone performed very well.  It would have been nice to have a few more female characters – maybe some girls who hung around the record shop for instance – but apart from that I completely loved it.  One particularly memorable scene is when an RUC officer is hassling a girl in a bar for suspected underage drinking and Terri comes over and tells him he’d like to report a civil war.  Scenes like these show the bravery of the character as well as the naivety and idealism.

Of course, being a film about music, the soundtrack is a major part of the experience.  Set in a fertile time for Northern Irish music, the tracks chosen add to the energy and exuberance of the story, as obviously does the setting with its air of menace just under the surface.

Go and see this if you’re interested in music, Belfast, or just plain enjoy a good film.

Spike Island

Good Vibrations is a true story about a real man, with a real record shop/label, and the punk scene in Belfast, whereas Spike Island, my second choice of film, is a coming of age drama set in Manchester in the 1990s with the music of the Stone Roses providing more of a secondary theme.  As such it worked well, and the soundtrack (a mix of the Roses and the characters own band, Shadow Caster) added greatly to the ambience and power of the film.  The characters did seem to blend into each other a bit at points, and some of what could have been more potent moments could have been better explained (I was never sure why one boy joined the army for instance).  Having more female characters would have added more variety, and this film does not have the excuse of being a true story as a reason for not doing so.  Teenagers since the 1960s or 1970s onwards generally tend to hang around in groups of both sexes (I did) and the whole male bonding theme seemed to me a little old-fashioned.

That said, the music really lifts everything up, and the festival atmosphere of Spike Island and young love is captured perfectly (leaving aside the dubious morality of deserting your father on his deathbed to go to a Stone Roses concert that you don’t even have tickets for!)

Once again, I am hampered by a lack of a cast list, however everyone concerned gave a very competent performance, with Emilia Clarke standing out in particular.

Go and see this film if you enjoy a good coming of age drama with an excellent soundtrack, or want to recapture your youth!

 

A Hard STrainGE Gonna Call

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Well folks, here’s a duo which just about sums up everything I’ve mentioned up to now while writing for this delightful magazine. Great songs, great playing and just about every style of rock and roll music on one album.

STrainGE (Strange Rain) are in fact two drummers from London who are both deeply absorbed in musicality from doo-wop, rock, pop, soul, garage, punk, progressive, freakbeat, psychedelic etc. etc.

All the tunes are recorded in lo-fi, which makes the songs stand up even more as there’s no room for overdubbing or production tricks. It’s just plain and simple soul-shattering music – written, played and sung by two musicians. Enjoy!

http://www.beggarsharvest.co.uk/page3.htm

Spring & Summer 2011 – Part One – Fashion Looks – Wear It Like You Know It! {Fashion}

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So here it is – the start of a fresh new year, with the fashion world upon us. For all you keen fashion lovers out there, prepare to be geared up for a wonderful selection of bright, uniformed, geometrics and an array of textures and bedazzling patterns. 2011 is indeed the year for dynamic fashion.

We see a variety of emerging and reinvented trends, year by year. This year makes a stand for some interesting themes.

Here’s a look into the Spring/Summer Key themes – Military meets Biker. Yes, the military style has been on the fashion scene for quite some time now, and even though this look is great; screaming versatility and can be worn on both a formal and casual basis, this year will highlight room for change.

Introducing the Biker/Motorcycle theme, I remember spying a biker jacket last year whilst strutting down the streets of Soho myself. This is a look that has been in the shadows of fashion since forever, and this year will be a crystal replacement to the military mode we are so used to. Quilted and zipped sleeves will also be a big look, with the added accessory of belts and shimmering bags to accompany. Alexander Wang and Balmain (a personal favourite) have a great range – for the more affordable take – be prepared to hoist River Island‘s asymmetric zip jacket – striking and edgy.

Punk Fashion – Again, this look has been in the mix of a la Rock meets Boy George, largely appealing through 2010. However and somewhat measured by the ‘crowd’ it is most suited to, probably because this look is one that is pretty hard to master, but continuously influential in the fashion world.

2011 will make an iconic stand in Punk Wear – more so in the way it will be experimented with, within other genres. Renowned brand Balmain are at the top of their league when it comes to this look – a real one to look out for – if you can configure the art of Punk to your wardrobe collection, you are doing pretty well! Think Chuck Taylor’s and Motorcycle boots! Treat yourself and take a trip down to Camden Lock and Soho, and be dazzled by the sheer range of punk enthused clothing – at a much more affordable price!

The 70’s Look – 70’s style is all about glamour, so it’s no wonder the striking geometrics and elegance of the bohemian look, are making such a comeback. Flowing dresses, silks and satins being prominent, creating a look of sophistication and feminine, earthy glamour. Faye Dunaway, Angelica Huston and Bianca Jagger are just a few examples of the range to this unique glamour.

The key to winning this style is confidence and boldness. Being experimental is a must. By day – sophisticated block patterns, deep colours. High waisted Wide Leg trousers, accompanied by cute, silk/satin blouses in lighter colours, rolled up sweaters and turtle necks – indeed a Farrah Fawcett look by day. For the evening – silks, satins and metallic patterns. Beautiful dresses with low neck cuts and sexy slits.

The 60’s Fashion Spot – 2011 makes a gateway for one of the most illustrated and sought after looks of all time. Be prepared for bright colours, fresh looking pastels, an array of florals and pinks. Check out Louis Vuitton and Jayson Brunsdon for inspiration. High waisted floral and checked skirts – pinstripe dresses in calming colours, high waisted belts in a multitude of reds, yellows and greens. Bold accessories which make for completion of this look will include heavy beads, 60’s cat-like glasses and sunglasses. Think Jacqueline Kennedy, Twiggy and Edie Sedgewick.