Cellist and bassist Gabe Noel has a finely tuned ear, pulling together some of L.A.’s best musicians for his project Rhoda, from Vosotros Presents: Rhoda. Lush arrangements, the hiss and scratch of vintage technology and seductive vocals by Mia Doi Todd amazingly capture an entire relationship in just 3 1/2 minutes. Today’s Top Tune is called “New Farmer.”
(via KCRW)
(original release post from vosotros)
As Rhoda continues to develop, I wanted one of the tunes to serve as a companion to another. This is it.
A medley of sorts, I fused two sessions together from my time with two of vosotros’ finest- John Wood and Bobb Bruno.
Lately I have been listening to quite a bit of electronic based music, specifically grime/dubstep from London, and beatsmiths here in L.A. So with this in mind I hope you enjoy You Said There’d Be Lions (You’re Such a Lior).
gabe
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vosotros
Written by John Wood, Bobb Bruno, and Gabe Noel
Mastered by John Wood
Produced by Gabe Noel
Artwork courtesy of Allison Grant.
This is the fourth in a series of five songs – released weekly – culminating in an upcoming EP entitled vosotros presents: Rhoda.
(week three) (week two) (week one)
Learning Music Monthly is an album-a-month project by musician John Wood. Don’t worry, this isn’t like those TV infomercials where you sign up and are kicking yourself in the coming months as you receive crappy compilation after crappy compilation. Learning Music Monthly is presented completely free of charge.
Wood records a new album every month, usually with a new theme and concept, from a Bach tribute to an album about the historic three-way tie on “Jeopardy” and just about everything in between.
“The concepts come from all sorts of places, but mostly other works of art and personal events in my life. Most of the albums begin with some kind of sonic vision. Before any of the music is written, I’ll imagine how it should sound, what events may and may not happen,” Wood said.
The most recent release, The Biological Imperative, is an album that, according to the liner notes available on the website, “attempts to take the common pop music perspective on sex and expand it to include (and in fact tell a story of) the entire reproductive process” and includes some pretty sexy slow jams.
Musically, Wood describes his collection of tunes as eclectic.
“Hopefully the collection is diverse enough that most people would find at least one album they like in there. I’m very interested in addressing the presence and influence of genre in music. I want to confuse or cross-pollinate genres as a first step in breaking them down, like desegregation between musics,” Wood said.
Until recently, LMM required listeners to donate money in order to gain access to the site’s archives. It has since done away with that, allowing listeners to pay if they like what they hear.
“It’s not really meant to be kept behind closed doors. Really, it’s the best thing for the music, which is what the project is really about,” Wood said.
Fans of the music can purchase a subscription to receive physical copies of each album, with unique album artwork, directly to their mailboxes each month.
Wood and LMM currently are taking a break from the monthly grind but are looking forward to continuing the project starting May 1.
“We’re about to start season three, which will also include more videos and perhaps some interactive content. For now I really like the simple layout of the site; less is more, and there’s already plenty of music to sort through,” Wood said.
Check out learningmusicmonthly.com for more info and to search through all of Wood’s musical experiments.
(article by Matt Pusatory, via The Metropolitan)
some footage of featherbeard in the studio. after a long day of recording instrumentals for the 3rd song of the Rhoda project, featherbeard waltzes into the studio and blows our minds. this man was born to stand in front of a microphone.
download “thisis a humalong (feat. featherbeard)” by clicking HERE
A LIVE BLOODY LIVE INTERVIEW WITH MOOEY MOOBAU
(by mooey moobau)
Q: So you did what?
A: Made a live album by cutting together all of my live shows so far. Well, most of them.
Q:You mean each song is from a different venue, a different concert?
A:Yes, but within each song there are also multiple performances trading off or going simultaneously. Most of them have about 8-12 different layers.
Q: Isn’t there a Frank Zappa album like that?
A: Not really. Zappa would blend live and studio takes a lot, but his stuff is always so civilized. Crass have some albums that are kind of similar, with spoken word parts cut into live tapes. But the closest thing is this one Grateful Dead album that John Oswald put together from decades of live bootlegs. I imagine that most live albums have some degree of this kind of thing, whether it’s studio post-production, or editing out embarrass- ing banter with the audience, or…
Q: Knowing you, yours is probably trying to preserve the mistakes.
A:Yes and no. There are some perfect blunders that I kept. But I did try to cut out anything that didn’t sound good. That left less than a complete song sometimes, so it all begged for some rewriting. It’s not so much a live album but more like a rewrite of the songs from scratch, using their live recordings as source material.
Q:You aren’t really rewriting the material, though. Wouldn’t people familiar with the studio versions immediately recognize them?
A: Probably, yeah. It’s definitely a companion piece – you can appreciate it better if you’ve heard the All Murmur Of Our Mothers’ Waters versions first. It makes the seams of the songs a little more transparent. So much of my stuff appears to be totally freeform at first, but if you’ve heard a few different live versions of one song then you start to see what’s common, and how wide the variation can be.
Q:Which is what you do in your live shows already, right? You make a point of reinterpreting and chopping things up every time?
A:Yeah, I’ve gotten into playing back little bits of studio recordings during my live sets, or digitally cutting up my live voice in realtime. You can hear that all over Live Bloody Live. Most people would probably be surprised how much of this record wasn’t edited at all – a lot of it is no different from how it sounded in the room, in front of human ears.
Q: Hearing it now, this album is really… I hate to use this word, but it’s actually really psychedelic.
A: I know! Isn’t it, though? Maybe a better word than psychedelic is… impressionistic? In the past I’ve always gotten too cerebral about these cut-up things, but this time it just felt completely intuitive! And irrational!
CD • Amazon • iTunes • FINA • Waxpoetics
(double album! includes Live Bloody Live and Mooey Moobau’s studio record, which the Deli Magazine called “silly, frustrating, complex, and refreshingly innovative“.
Okay, so this one is a little different!
Martian Favela Funk, New Weird Brazilian Peanut Butter Conspiracy…or something. You Decide!
My buddy featherbeard is a man about town, and upon playing me a progression he came up with on his ukulele, I suggested we make a tune out of it…here it is. This was a truly magical day of recording. All these amazing musicians graciously dropped by the studio to lace the track…and in one day it was done.
enjoy?
haha
gabe
(released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license)
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vosotros
Vocals and Ukulele: featherbeard
Guitar: Josh Lopez and Marcel Camargo
Keys: Aaron Arntz
Vibes: Nick Mancini
Bass and Programming: Gabe Noel
Drums and Perc: Just About Everyone
Women’s Choir: Miss KK, Chloe Park, Michelle Miskovich, Anna Simpson, Azalia Snail, Rachel Bar-Gadda, and Holland Greco
Lyrics by featherbeard
Music by featherbeard and Gabe Noel
Recorded by KamranV and John Gillilan in the Bedrock Room @ Bedrock Studios
Mastered by John Wood
Produced by Gabe Noel
artwork courtesy of Allison Grant.
lyrics:
vosotros
This is the third in a series of five songs – released weekly – culminating in an upcoming EP entitled vosotros presents: Rhoda.
