Three amazing female choral works

Back in the distant past (and doesn't it really feel that way?) of 2005, I reviewed a copy of the "Bitpop EP" by Bishi for the now-defunct Decode magazine. I described it as "Bouncy theatrical madpop" ... "like getting trapped in Trafalgar Square on a fairground carousel that’s going at several wrong speeds at once". A couple of years back I finally saw her live at Glastonbury doing something like ::this:: on stage, complete with Union-flag head-t0-toe smothered dancers, which rather proved my point!

When you get past the theatrics, though, what is really pinning down the hold on your attention is Bishi's obvious intelligence and her voice, and both are at the fore in the work she commissioned work she made for Brooklyn's Youth Chorus earlier this year, Dia Ti Maria. Bishi recorded all 50 voices on this recording herself, and you can read more about its themes and origins on her Soundcloud.

Bishi - Dia Ti Maria

Dia Ti Maria by Bishi_World

Hazlitt is another artist who has moved from making often-bouncy pop/rock in bands like the brilliant Tiger Force (I saw them once at Bridgwater Arts Centre! Which is badly affected by the cuts, grrr) to embrace a classical style. You can pledge for the forthcoming Hazlitt album ::here:: and raise money for good causes including riot relief funds at the same time. Here is the beautiful video for Introit.

Hazlitt - Introit

Making up a trio of women-you-might-otherwise-have-heard-on-6music, doing-stuff-you-could-hear-on-Radio-3, are the majestic Gaggle, who earlier in the year produced a reworked version of a piece commissioned by the Women's Institute in 1969 called The Brilliant and the Dark. They say "The libretto approaches history from the Middle Ages to WWII through the eyes of women, via characters including witch-hunters, embroiderers, crusaders’ wives, plague stricken women, mourners and war workers". Their version mixes the kind of chorus you'd hear soundtracking enchanted forests in early Disney films with skittery drum-and-bass percussion, and the almost-spoken-word incantations that are typical Gaggle fare. You can get a flavour of it on this Vimeo clip, and download the whole work if you subscribe to their website.

The Brilliant and The Dark from Open Music Archive on Vimeo.

Free downloads - Glastonbury Festival Competition Alumni: Liz Green, Yusuf Azak, Emily Barker

I'm so excited to see Liz Green (a) still making music, and (b) being picked up by bloggers everywhere! I remember listening to the demo she sent in for the Glastonbury emerging talent competition non-stop in the weeks leading up to the finalists' selection back in 2007, and was almost as delighted as I think she was shocked when she won a slot on the Pyramid stage that year through it. Things were quiet for a while, then last year a collection of those early recordings was put out - and now the long-awaited debut album is finally to be released next week.

'O, Devotion' is going to feature several of the same tracks I had on repeat on that demo all the way back then, but to judge from the version of opening track 'Hey Joe' she's giving away, these are going to be new and thoroughly enriched recordings.

So many early reviews have focused, understandably, on her remarkable voice; but she's also a powerful songwriter, and has never been afraid to sing about political as well as personal situations. If you haven't seen it yet, don't miss the video for Displacement Song, which plays on the shadow-puppet aesthetic Liz uses on her self-designed album covers (and even sometimes to my knowledge in her shows)!



Free download: Liz Green - Hey Joe

Yusuf Azak's was another demo we had the same year. We weren't able to secure a slot for him at the festival, but I've been following him ever since, and have had the honour of working on a track with him as well as featuring his music in an issue of Attack!!!!.

Yusuf Azak - The Key Underground by Song, by Toad

Here's Yusuf performing another standout track from Turn on the Long Wire, live:



Yusuf currently has his whole new EP up for free download - I'd grab it before he changes his mind, if I were you, and then buy the album.

Free downloads:
Yusuf Azak - Prizefighter EP
Yusuf Azak and Wes White - The Key Underground

Emily Barker and the Red Clay Halo - another 2007 finalist (god it was a good year)... will also be known to anyone who followed the crazy Storm the Charts project I did. A little while after, Emily invited me up to one of her Folk in a Box performances, which is where a performer is sat in a little shed and you go in and they perform to you as an audience of one!! Being so close to that beautiful voice was pretty intense. If Folk in a Box is ever on tour again and you get the chance, put yourself down to be an audience! The song Emily played me is one of those she is offering as a free download from her wonderful album Almanac.

It has to be said Emily does seem to particularly like performing in sheds:

Emily Barker and The Red Clay Halo - Ropes by emilybarker

Free download: Emily Barker - Ropes

Top 10 versions of Darth Vader's Star Wars theme

I'm a sucker for a good silly chart campaign. Yes, I know, you're sick of them. And to be fair, fatigue and the law of diminishing returns was making any kind of Rage-style Christmas effort look unlikely this year, until X-Factor apparently told a charity whose name they ripped off to 'get a lawyer', which could be enough to make anyone arbitrarily download Smells Like Teen Spirit again, frankly.

Meanwhile I find myself drawn to the dark side... or specifically a group with (at the time of writing) fewer than 50 members, trying to get Lord Vader to the festive top spot by means of downloading the Imperial March. Well, you can't deny it's catchy. And "I find your lack of faith disturbing" is proving a very handy phrase for silencing the inevitable tedious doubters.

In honour of the valiance of the attempt (and the fact I've been constantly distracted by YouTube for the last 36 hours since the page went up and I want to get it out of my system), here are 10 variously curious interpretations of the splendid John Williams theme.


Disclaimer: Yes, I know there's a dubstep version. And I know No Doubt and Daft Punk and someone-who-isn't-Metallica have done them. These are more fun:

1. Kuricorder Quartet



For anyone who thought the Imperial March could never possibly sound cute...

2. Ukulele Duet



Use the force, Uke.

3. Floppy Disk Drive Duet



4. 8bit



5. On a Grand Piano



Lord Vader specifically ordered the piano be shiny and black.

6. Presbytarian Handbell Choir



From 1:41...

7. A Better Dubstep Version



So don't say I don't wub you.

8. Funked Up

The Death Star is a discoball.

9. A Cockatiel.



10. And finally, played on what I can only assume must be actual Sith technology.




If you want to help the campaign to get the original to number one this Christmas (because, come on, it would sound wonderful on Radio 1, would it not?) - join the Facebook group, spread the word, and most importantly download from 18th December!

Glastonbury ETC longlist 2011 - Spotify playlist

Glastonbury Festival's annual Emerging Talent Competition longlist was announced last night.

They've gone for a completely different format than in recent years, asking 41 music bloggers to pick 3 bands each from a given batch.

I'm very pleased to see Hysterical Injury have made the list, kudos to Jon Sidwell of Music Liberation for picking them out. The whole list of 123 has to be whittled down to 8 before the finalists are known. It's great that they've published the whole longlist.

More on all this later, but for anyone who'd like to hear them, I've made a Spotify playlist of all the bands on the longlist I could find - the link is http://bit.ly/GlastoETC2011

If you know of any mistakes here - bands I've missed or mixed up, or if you're in one of them and would like a different track featured, email me at dotdashdash.dashdash@gmail.com or leave a comment and let me know.

*with apologies to the many bands on the longlist who aren't on Spotify.

Science collabo-ganza

Attack!!!! readers will know the work of Gethan Dick, who's contributed to every issue to date.

On Wednesday I'm going to be in London at Brixton Jamm for the launch of Trying and Trying and Trying, which is Gethan in collaboration with 6 musicians, creatively interpreting the work of 6 scientists.

These musicians include the genius of creepy folk that is Birdengine; dancepop dyna-duo The 9000; and Reeps One, UK beatbox champion for the last 2 years running.

All of the artists are performing at the event on Wednesday, and I'm introducing them.

For more information about the project, come along on the night or get exploring the Reverbnation page. Below's the player.

Trying and Trying and Trying Twitter

Trying and Trying and Trying Facebook page

Trying and Trying and Trying Facebook event (invite your friends)

This evening I took some tracks from the CD stock at Glastonbury Library down to Glastonbury FM, to play on Steve Bilsborough's 'Thursday live' show. The idea is to play an interesting variety of music together - which the library's stock provides a perfect opportunity to do - and to promote the stock itself a bit through it! Hopefully this is something that we're going to do on an ongoing basis.

This is a YouTube playlist of the tracks I played on Steve's show tonight.

All these tracks are available on albums in the library, it's £1 per album for a two week loan.

The next selection should feature in two weeks' time, on 4th March 2011

First update

It's taken me this long to post the first 'proper' Heartbeat of a Rabbit update (ie, something that isn't just a post saying it's going to happen) - largely because the #savelibraries situation has been occupying a great deal of my thought and spare-time these last few weeks, but also because I've been being a bit of a coward, dreaming of some kind of impossibly perfect first post which would make it abundantly clear just how much of a finger-on-the-pulse type of music fan I really am, by, I don't know, maybe declaring here that some guy recording demos in his bedroom that only I know about is the must-hear man of the moment and then seeing him take his self-made album to number one next week, or something. Ahuh, yeah, right.

Then I had a look around a few other music blogs and realised half of them are all going on about household names anyway, so forget that, I'm just going to talk about what I've been listening to and trust that the global awakening to my listening genius will inevitably come to pass in time... of course...

Today I came across two Pogo tracks that were new to me. The first Pogo track I ever heard was 'Wishery', via Jon Hillcock's New Noise podcast in November. I'm very proud to say this podcast also featured 'The Key Underground', a song I wrote with Yusuf Azak:

Yusuf Azak - The Key Underground by Song, by Toad

If you haven't seen Yusuf play live, you can be one of the first 20 people in the world to watch this YouTube clip, if you're quick:

Anyway, yes, Pogo. This is 'Wishery', god it's gorgeous -

Pogo has at least a dozen of these trippy film remixes up on his channel now, the newest one of which to me is 'Whisperlude'; from 'A Little Princess', which he says has by a long way the most vocal clips he's used in a single track -

- and the newest of all is 'Joburg Jam', in which Pogo has remixed a whole lot of recorded 'real-life' video from a trip to Johannesburg -

Pogo is intending this to be the start of a series of tracks built around travel to different destinations, funded by fans - if you want to help him out, check his kickstarter site. The good news is he's already got the money for the next trip.

These remixes remind me of Kutiman's 'Thru-You' Youtube remix project a couple of years back. If you don't know what that was, I insist you click here.