It’s the story of a gentle and naive inflatable fish, leaving its scuba diver friend and its small seaside village, to go see the big city. Getting there the fish discovers all the dangers of the streets – at its own expense.

An old theme (the unfriendly and dangerous city) treated with a funny and tender approach, which resulted in a first prize in the Genero SinCity competition.

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His upcoming effort is a record (his 11th as a solo artist) called Sonik Kicks, due out on March, 19. But exactly a week before Paul will grace his fans with a single titled “That Dangerous Age”, which will be available on CD digipack, double 7” vinyl editions and a digital EP. It’s a song that Paul explained with these words: “There was an inference that I was going through a mid-life crises. Which I found really amusing: the clichéd notion of it. And that was the impetus for (the song) even though it isn’t really about that. It’s a bit tongue in cheek, too. I guess it’s also about how society views people of a certain age. For me, does it really matter what age you are? It’s what up there in your soul that matters“.

Below you can hear the first taste of his upcoming album…

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Kramers are a five piece featuring members of well noted bands from Genoa – like En Roco and Meganoidi – and they play a kaleidoscopic mix of electro, hip hop, jazz and pop.

The song we’re offering you is called “Hamburger vs kebab” and it’s the first single off the album. The perfect manifesto of a refined but funny band.

Song to download: “Hamburger vs kebab”

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Andrew lived – and is still living – a life of constant changes, with music as the only trait d’union. He started, as a teenager in love with pop and early rock’n'roll, with small jobs as a publicist; he was in charge of promoting a bunch of unknown artists touring England: Bob Dylan and The Beatles were among them.
Then one day, as he said in an interview to Eric Olsen: “A journalist I was pitching, Peter Jones of Record Mirror, sent me off to see the Stones at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, probably to get me off his back. I saw them April 23, 1963, and then I knew what I had been training for“. He became the manager of the still unknown Rolling Stones and brought them to be the one of the most famous band in the world, in the arc of four years (1963-1967).

Andrew, since day one as manager of the Stones, felt he had to go against the common rules of the music business and decided he was going to play his own way. Most of the time he was improvising, trying to break traditions and unwritten laws without exactly knowing what he was doing, but his approach turned out to be an absolute winner. Take, for instance, the first studio recording of the rolling Stones; Andrew explained: “The 9-to-5 mentality of the record companies would not have served the Rolling Stones. What I saw in the club, which had to be brought as much as possible onto record, could not have been done with shirts and ties, so I became a record producer to protect my vision of their image: there are always opposites and I saw the Rolling Stones as the anti-Beatles. I didn’t have to be technically proficient. I didn’t play an instrument, wasn’t an engineer or a technician, but I had a vision. I had no idea what I was doing in the studio the first time. I had 40 pounds to spend at 5 or 6 pounds an hour. I was looking at the clock and it was 5:55 PM – time was nearly up. We had recorded three songs so I said ‘Right, that’s it.’ The engineer said, ‘What about mixing’ (we were working on four-track), and I said, ‘What’s that?’ He explained it to me; I said, ‘You do it and I’ll pick it up in the morning.’ A year-and-a-half later I was an ‘expert’ and wouldn’t let anybody else touch anything“.

Oldham’s greatest contribution to the group, anyway, was making them write: he practically forced Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to write songs, threatening them to keep them locked in a kitchen until they brought him their first effort as composers (the track “Tell Me (You’re Coming Back)”).
But he also had a really innovative guerilla strategy in marketing: he was convinced that the only thing that counted was that the press and people were talking about the Stones, no matter if it was for positive or negative reasons. A strategy that later became Malcolm McLaren’s trademark in the punk rock era, with the Sex Pistols and the other bands he later mentored.

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One of Oldham’s passions, then, was fashion; his outfits were among the best and he was ready to spend hundreds of Pounds to look sharp and cool, even when he had no place to sleep. A real man of taste, elegant at any cost – even if he’s the one who invented the Stones’ image of bad boys.

After his stint with the Stones he stayed in the music business and he summarizes his story like this: “It’s clear to anyone who has read either of my autobiographies, “Stoned” and “2Stoned”, especially the latter which deals with my life with the Stones from 1964 – 1967, that at 23, I went through a lot. But, you must remember I never managed another group. I just created a record company, Immediate Records – the Small Faces, Humble Pie, Rod Stewart, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, John Mayall, Fleetwood Mac and Amen Corner, and after that folded and I’d left England, I produced records when I had the opportunity. It was a great way of keeping my independence, sanity and fulfilling the fact that a fellow has to get up and go to work or at least, this one does. I worked at Motown’s white label Rare Earth; in the ’70s with Jimmy Cliff and Donovan in the mid 70s; in Italy with Francesco De Gregori and Anna Oxa at the end of the 70s; with Bobby Womack in the early 80s. Then our son Maximillion was born and I basically took five years off, except for some re-mastering I did for recordings of The Rolling Stones, Marianne Faithful, Sam Cooke and Phil Spector. At the end of the 80s, I started production again with a couple of hits in Columbia with a group called Compania LLimitada, then I headed for Argentina and had a six year run with Los Ratones Paranoicos“.

If you’re really addicted to the legend of rock’n'roll and its original madness, you definitely have to follow Andrew Loog Oldham’s online radio show hosted by Little Steven’s Underground Garage web radio:  here Andrew provides insights into and anecdotes about the early days of the British invasion. He ties it all together by showing a direct link between those glory days and what’s hot at this very moment. Don’t miss it… and look for his two autobiographical books: Stoned and 2Stoned.

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Jack White: we have already talked to you about Jack White’s solo debut album. Now the video for the single “Love interruption” has been premièred online and we couldn’t resist… here’s the clip. A great song and a sober, but fascinating, video directed by Mr.White himself. Welcome back, Jack.

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Burial: William Bevan is one of the most important electronic artists in the world. Everyone remembers his eponymous debut in 2006, a fundamental episode in the evolution of dubstep music. Now the beatmaker is back with this ep titled Kindred, a new step forward for his music. Astonishing.

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Jamie N Commons: his voice reminds us something ancient, like the desert’s sand. BBC has chosen him for his “Sounds of 2012” list and there’s no doubt that this means a lot. Jamie is clearly inspired by artists such as Nick Cave and Mark Lanegan. He’s young, he grew up between Bristol, Chicago and London. He fell in love with the blues when he was a kid. You need more? Listen to the single “The preacher”.

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Niki & The Dove: they come from Stockholm, Sweden and their names are Malin Dahlström and Gustaf Karlöf. Their music is classy pop mixed with strong electronic sounds and powerful synths. This is their latest single, a touching digital elegy called “The fox”, featuring also a beautiful short animated film. The poetry of beats.

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Islands: there’s a fact: Nick Thorburn is a talented songwriter. For the Islands’ new album A sleep and a forgetting he has unveiled a new collection of intimate, arty, pop songs. There’s less electronic and experimentation compared with the past, but the quality is still very high. Another new gem from this intriguing band.

The Crystal Stilts, as Blurt Online wrote, play “garage pop under an overcast sky with its lightly layered nuances of the Pastels, Lee Hazelwood and The Damned”. Until now they released two full length albums (Alight of Night in 2008 and In Love with Oblivion in 2011), six singles and three eps, aggregating a cult following of mixed music lovers: from the hardcore fans of New Order to ardent indie rock aficionados and even garage-rock revivalists.
This is more than fair, given the wide range of influences of the band,which forged a sound with equal parts of post-punk gloom, classic Sixties bubblegum pop, raw garage rock’n'roll, buzz/twang a là Suede and Eighties jangle.

Frontman JB Townsend said: “It’s funny because a lot of times people will misinterpret where we got something from or something like that. They’ll think it’s one thing when it’s really another thing, which is actually kind of cool. But then, on the other hand, it’s like if you know what every style of song is and then you’re writing a song then you’re going to be like, ‘That sounds too much like this or that’. I think a little bit of ignorance or a little bit of naivety is good too”.

The bizarre thing about this band is their low profile: they potentially could be huge, but instead they have a cult-ish following. Someone speculated this is due to the fact they don’t concentrate on one specific genre, but again… low profile is a choice, and Townsend seems more than happy with it.

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London based artist Keira Rathbone doesn’t think so and – on the contrary – she’s deeply fascinated by typewriters. And she chose typewriters as her main tool to express her art: she travels around the world collecting different typewriters and “typing pictures” of people and places along the way.

That’s right: Keira actually draws using typewriters, she reproduces shapes, places, people and any kind of subject hitting on the alphanumeric keys and the result is stunning, even if bizarre. “Typewriter art” is the name of this discipline that probably she invented… and maybe she drew a little inspiration from old-school computer graphics which were made using ASCII characters to create shapes.

Enjoy Keira’s masterpieces…

After a demo and an intense season of gigs, LFC released their ep titled Emotional Punk (2006, Polka Dots): here they started experimenting with electronic, which became their focus on their debut album Low Frequency Club (2008).

In 2010 the band put out a single called “Johnny come home”; as the title suggests, it’s a cover of the mega-hit by Fine Young Cannibals, followed by another album called West Coast.

LFC just finished recording a new release, but below you’ll find a song from West Coast called “Disturbed Dancer”.

Enjoy…

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This news goes together with last January’s Twitter message by producer William Orbit who hinted he was working with the band. He tweeted an update that suggested Albarn and Coxon at least were laying down on new material with him: “Hi Graham! Loving the guitars you laid down! Vocal session March 3!“. However, neither Orbit nor the band commented any further.
Moreover, Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon unveiled a brand new Blur song during a short gig in London on February, 19. The song is called “Under The Westway” and they performed it to close their three-song set at War Child’s pre-Brit Awards fundraiser at O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire

Despite all this, bassist Alex James has a different opinion; talking about the band’s performance at the Brit Awards he said: “Pulling the band back together is like reassembling the A-Team for one last job. I’m a cheesemaker now. As much as we loved Blur, if you do anything day in, day out for 15 years, it becomes a job. We all needed to go our separate ways and do other things with our lives. Now when we play together, it’s for the joy of it, like in our early days”.

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I don’t love classifications. “When things are defined, things pass away”, I say. You can refer this concept to arts, too. When arts are outlined, arts themselves are over!

I’m just a creative and contemporary woman who is seeking meanings and makes use of various modes of expression to shape them. For me, arts are a faculty of the human mind and I use my mind (and my heart) to stimulate thoughts and emotions. So, I deliberately arrange poetry, photography, paintings and songs by giving them symbolic worth to affect feelings and intellects. I merge images, words and sounds to communicate emotions and ideas. It’s a means of exploring and appreciating nature and humanity for their own sake. They exist in my insight as a mimesis and become my poiesis that need to be shared with others.

Feeling at home is an art-fusion project I’m working on.
Living times and places with rich experience shows that this feeling is connected to the sense of place. Most of us think it is a feature that some places have and some not while, for me, it is mainly a perception held by people and not by the place itself. And it doesn’t simply deal with geographical areas. Many people spend their whole lives struggling to find a place to belong to, whether it is religion, nation and culture. And it is our own struggles that make us struggle. In the end, we realize the footprints on the sand that we were chasing were our own.

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