Diamond In The Rough - Albert Man

Our next LCM featured artist singer-songwriter Albert Man is releasing his new EP 'Nothing of Nothing Much' tomorrow with a great release gig at St. Pancras Old Church, London on the 8th February. Our LCM #TrackOfTheDay is his latest single 'Diamond in The Rough' .

Praised by BBC Radio Head of Music as a “brilliant singer-songwriter,” Albert Man is an “insightful artist to watch” according to Pledge Music’s managing editor Matt Conner. He has established himself as one of the more interesting songwriters on the London gig circuit with avid support from RockShot Magazine, who compared his songs to that of “Ben Folds in verse, wit and chord changes”. The award-winning, Manchester-born singer-songwriter plays both solo and with a full band, writing piano-led, melodic pop songs described by Fresh On The Net as “sweet piano led shenanigans that come over like the lovechild of Billy Joel and Adam Levine”.

He is set to release a brand new six-track EP “Nothing Of Nothing Much”, recorded at Pete Townshend's barge studio, in early 2017 and has already received airplay on BBC Introducing London for his new single “I Feel Like Dancing” twice. The same song was chosen for Tom Robinson's Fresh Faves on his Fresh On The Net blog in the same week, which is now the third time Albert has been featured – “I Feel Like Dancing, is the result of a highly professional quality of songwriting that, given the publicity, would easily scale the charts.” – Benji Tranter (Fresh On The Net). The music video for this single was premiered with Gigslutz, who commented that the EP “flows with emotion-strewn melodies and a witty lyricism”.

Albert released his eleven-track, self-produced album 'Cheap Suit' in 2016, receiving airplay on both FUBAR Radio and BBC radio. The album won the “Best Independent Album” award on the Alternative Friday blog in 2016 and was described as “a wonderful wonderful album” by BBC presenter Ady Dayman. Two songs from this album were also chosen for Tom Robinson's Fresh Faves.

Albert featured on Best Of British Unsigned as “One to watch” for 2017 saying they “love Albert's sound”. This was swiftly followed up with him being chosen as their featured artist of the day with presenter Matt Graveling saying “I think Albert Man could be in with a cheeky little shout for best unsigned male in next years Unsigned Music Awards 2017.”

He has been on London Live twice and BalconyTV, has played at The O2 Priority Lounge before Muse, The Verdi Room in The Royal Albert Hall, Sofar Sounds Liverpool, The Borderline supporting HamsandwicH, Ronnie Scott’s, Jimmy's Harvest Festival, The Half Moon Putney, The Barfly, The Garage, The Bedford, Hotel Café Royal, Servant Jazz Quarters, Night and Day in Manchester, The Grand Social in Dublin, Hard Rock Cafe's 45th birthday and was a finalist in the London Coffee Music Project.

He has recently returned from Dublin after taking part in the annual Dublin Bowie Festival where he played at multiple venues and shows including the last night of the festival, Bowie Raw, at the Grand Social as part of the line-up which included Bowie-collaborator Gerry Leonard.

Having been described as “one of the most genuine, hard working artists on the live music scene with a steely work ethic”, he demonstrates this by the frequency at which he performs so keep your eye on his upcoming gigs list to see when and where he’s playing next!

http://www.albertman.com

Stay Awhile - She & Him

We head stateside today to LA for our LCM featured duo Zooey Deschanel and Matt Ward better known as She & Him. Our LCM #TrackOfTheDay is 'Stay Awhile' is taken from their 2014 'Classics' album. A very clever video for this one as well :) 

Zooey and Matt met on the set of the film 'The Go-Getter', in which Zooey had a starring role. Martin Hynes, the director, introduced them to each other and asked them to sing a duet for the film's end credits. They performed the song "When I Get to the Border" by Richard and Linda Thompson.The two bonded over a shared interest in albums produced by George Martin and Phil Spector, as well as certain Ralph Peer groups such as the Carter Family.

Matt heard Zooey sing in the film 'Elf'. He was surprised to learn that although she wrote songs she hadn't pursued a career in music. Zooey commented in an interview with Venus Zine: "I always thought I would be able to sing and act, but at a certain point, it became difficult for me to share the music part. So I was writing a ton of music, but not really doing anything with it. I didn't really know exactly who to collaborate with until I met Matt, and everything seemed to fall into place.” Zooey had actually done years' worth of home demos, but was shy about becoming a big-name celebrity. On a whim, she sent them to Matt who called her a short time later, telling her that he would like to record her songs properly, and their band She & Him was formed.Zooey said in an interview: "I always have loved music, ever since I was really little. I just loved to sing.

http://www.sheandhim.com

Tenenbaum - The Paper Kites

For our next LCM featured band we head to Melbourne, Australia the home of The Paper Kites. The band was formed in 2010 and consists of Sam Bentley, Christina Lacy, Dave Powys, Josh Bentley and Sam Rasmussen. They have released two EPs and their debut album 'States' was released in 2013. Their second record 'twelvefour' was released on 28 August 2015. Our LCM #TrackOfTheDay is a beautiful and ethereal live version of 'Tenenbaum' taken from a recent Mahogany session in Berlin.

The Paper Kites' sound was originally loosely based around folk music. Sam Bentley's fingerstyle guitar sound is a frequent characteristic, along with Lacy's and his voices together, and the band's harmonies. The progression of this sound, along with the band's many musical inspirations, has pushed them into a range of different genres. When asked about their style of music, Bentley has mentioned, "We are whatever we released on the last record". The band is known for switching instruments live and for their ethereal, moody sound.

http://thepaperkites.com.au/

Night Hours - Jimmy Aldridge and Sid Goldsmith

Our next LCM featured artists are the highly acclaimed duo of Jimmy Aldridge and Sid Goldsmith who play traditional and original music of the British Isles. They have recently released their new second album called 'Night Hours' and our LCM #TrackOfTheDay is the very good title song. 

Jimmy and Sid are next playing in London on 28th April, where they are headlining at The Foundling Museum.

Over the last three years they have built a reputation on the UK folk scene for arresting and moving performances. The songs themselves are always given centre stage but they are brought to life with sensitive musical arrangements and stunning vocals. There is an integrity that shines through their performances and a common thread of political struggle, resistance, and justice.

They have been heavily influenced by the songs and singers of East Anglia, where they both grew up, but their music also reflects the diversity of voices within the folk world. Their debut album on Fellside Records was described as 'utterly absorbing’ with ‘excellent musicianship and sympathetic instrumentation twinned with fine harmony singing.'

Their second album 'Night Hours' was released in December 2016 to great reviews across the board and has fast cemented their place of longevity within the folk scene.

http://www.jimmyandsidduo.com

Sounds of Earth - Jim Moray

'Upcetera' was one of our favourite UK folk albums of 2016 and a marvellous watershed moment for our next LCM featured artist the multi-award winning singer-songwriter Jim Moray. Our LCM #TrackOfTheDay is the very special and wonderful 'Sounds Of Earth'. The song centres on the quest to find new alien life and the gold record curated by Carl Sagan with the many sounds and music of the earth. It was placed inside The Voyager spacecraft, which is now the furthest man-made object from earth. We really love the underpinning double bass and pedal steel which adds richness and atmosphere to the song and gives it an Americana flavour. 

Jim is currently on a full band tour of the UK and will be coming to London on the 3rd February at The Courtyard Theatre, Hoxton. If you are free, it's a definite date for you diaries.

13 years ago Jim Moray released an album that changed the way people perceived, played and presented English folk music. 'Sweet England' arrived at a time when, with just a few notable exceptions, traditional music was performed much as it had been in the 1970s to an audience of insiders and aficionados. The album was received with open arms by those who understood that the music of the people has survived for centuries by being just that – an expression of the times. Absent were the familiar affectations of those who sought to preserve an invented historical aesthetic, Jim Moray was a Bowie and Blur fan singing ballads with all of his influences unfurled.

The records that followed ('Jim Moray', 'Low Culture', 'In Modern History', 'Skulk') embraced everything from electronica to Johnny Marr-esque guitar rock via symphonic pop, an award winning XTC cover and grime. But at their heart has always been Jim’s unmistakable soulful and yearning voice; singing old songs in a new way.

As awards and rave reviews stacked up, much was made of Jim's fearlessness in pushing the boundaries of traditional music. But it’s an accolade he’s always refuted. “I don’t see any boundaries,” being his oft-repeated response. “This is popular music and I love popular music.”

Festival and folk club crowds clearly felt the same way, never more so than in 2014 when Jim joined up with the ardently admired songwriter and guitarist Sam Carter to form the band False Lights. On a mission to make a glorious folk rock ruckus that owed more to Radiohead and Queens Of The Stone Age than Steeleye Span, False Lights quickly became one of the most in demand groups on the circuit. They also picked up a Best Album nomination in the 2016 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards for their debut LP 'Salvor'.

In recent years Jim has collaborated with such folk music luminaries as Andy Cutting, Patsy Reid, Martin Simpson and Nancy Kerr on the hugely successful Cecil Sharp Project and similarly acclaimed 'Elizabethan Project'. He’s also been making a name for himself as a producer working with Maz O’Connor on her last album 'This Willowed Light' and her most recent release 'The Longing Kind', as well as mixing the latest record by Jamie Smith’s Mabon. And this year he presented a documentary on BBC Radio 3 about the traditional song Brigg Fair, which saw Jim use cutting-edge sound technology to recreate the apocryphal moment when farm bailiff Joseph Taylor spontaneously added his voice to the premiere of Delius’ An English Rhapsody, which was inspired by a wax cylinder recording of Taylor’s singing. A more appropriate subject for Moray to tackle is hard to imagine.

At a time when the bright new lights of traditional music include Stick In The Wheel and Lynched, who come from the distinctly un-folk worlds of drum ‘n’ bass and punk respectively, Jim Moray’s dream that more people would discover and play these songs on their own terms in their own voice is steadily becoming a reality.

As for the future, Jim believes it’s time for him to start a new chapter. He’s described the making of his latest album 'Upcetera' as being like “learning to do it all again from scratch”. Drawing influence from the systems music of composers like Nyman and Reich (another of his formative passions) 'Upcetera' features dramatically orchestrated Child ballads reimagined as torch songs or a kind of English Fado. It’s an album that places the narrative element of these songs centre stage, with Jim Moray’s supple soaring vocal leading the listener by the hand through strange old stories........making them new.

http://jimmoray.co.uk/upcetera/

Symptomatic - The Little Unsaid

We have been a massive fan of our next LCM featured artist for a few years now. He is a multi-instrumentalist, producer, master of the loop station, superb songwriter, arranger and vocalist.....and he often plays with a great string section as well. West Yorkshire born and London based John Elliott is better know by his moniker The Little Unsaid and we are thrilled that he is releasing his new album 'Imagined Hymns and Chaingang Mantras' shortly. John is one of my favourite live performers with the 'wow' factor and the wonderful news is that he is heading for an intimate show at the Green Note on 12th January. As a taster of the new album our LCM #TrackOfTheDay is the sublime 'Symptomatic'. 

For John Elliott, the beating heart behind 'The Little Unsaid', the so-called traumatic experience brought life and his music career to a standstill. After being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder at the end of a year of ongoing personal trauma, he gradually returned to songwriting as a means of recovery.

One year on, after a return to a relentless touring schedule, he was back in the studio with his band, working on songs that distilled this search for meaning in trauma in to a new album. Recorded with Jonny Greenwood’s producer and Radiohead engineer Graeme Stewart, the eleven hauntingly personal songs that make up 'Imagined Hymns & Chaingang Mantras' – funded via Pledge Music and the band’s stalwart fan base - celebrate the reawakening of love and the imagination after emerging from a psychological crisis.

Combining minimalist electronics, cinematic strings, hypnotic piano loops and Elliott’s androgynous vocals, the leading single Symptomatic sees the band refining what Dots and Dashes has called their ‘giddying conflation of folk, electronica and lavish orchestration…one of the supposed genre’s grandest successes thus far.’ Elliott’s sparsely poetic lyrics depict a person grieving the sudden return of their inner demons after convincing themselves they were ‘out of the woods.’ “It’s a melancholy tune, but as with all the songs on the album I’d like to think there’s always a flicker of hope in that darkness. In this case it’s the idea of letting someone in to accept and even love the side of yourself that still suffers from those old wounds, and the relief when that person doesn’t run away screaming.”

Having sold out their last three shows in London and played to increasingly packed venues across the UK, Elliott and the band will continue to build their reputation as a must-see live act during their upcoming winter tour, with performances described as sliding between Nick Cave-esque fury and the tender sincerity of Leonard Cohen. “For us it’s all about chasing those moments of magic that occur in a room when the music and the energy of an audience creates sparks. The search for that magic is a constant driving force in how we deliver these songs, because it’s the purest reminder that we all suffer, that everybody is dealing with their own inner struggles and so many of us are just trying to keep it together from one moment to the next. There’s unity and there’s joy in that realisation, I think - in us recognising each other’s pain and dancing together wildly in the face of it.”

http://www.thelittleunsaid.com/

With Time - Megan Dixon-Hood

We start 2017 with our next LCM featured artist a very good young singer-songwriter from Macclesfield called Megan Dixon Hood. Megan has recently graduated from her music studies in Manchester. She has also released a new single 'With Time' which is our LCM #TrackOfTheDay. We love Megan ethereal and floating vocals. 

Earlier this year Megan opened for Rag’N’Bone Man as part of his tour in Manchester. ‘Early Morning Riser’ was also played on Radio 2’s Weekend Wogan Show. This was then followed by Caffe Nero choosing two of her songs for their worldwide playlist

http://www.megandixonhood.com/