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Portico Quartet in the iTunes Indie Spotlight
iTunes (UK) are giving away five free tracks from some of their favourite independent artists. All you need to do is become a fan of the iTunes (UK) Facebook page to download these songs, including Portico Quartet's wonderful Line from the new album "Isla".
The full tracklisting is:
Portico Quartet "Line"
Phoenix "Lisztomania"
Tiësto "It's Not The Things You Say" (feat Kele Okereke)
Lethal Bizzle "Going Out Tonight"
Drums Of Death "Got Yr Thing"
Choose it. Click it. Share it
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New Blood - Peter Gabriel's 'Scratch My Back' Live
Peter is bringing the 'Scratch My Back' experience to select venues early in 2010. The New Blood tour is Peter Gabriel, orchestra, no drums, no guitars
We have two special offers for the London O2 show, both giving the best seats, access to the soundcheck, a tour T-shirt and an event laminate and a copy of the 'Scratch My Back' CD. £150 gets you in the first five rows, £100 rows 6-10 - full details are in our store, or you can follow this presale link to buy standard tickets.
The Creole Choir of Cuba
Be prepared to hear something completely different and 'new' from Cuba. You may have been lucky enough to hear The Creole Choir of Cuba at WOMAD Charlton Park last summer, now with a Real World Records release in the pipeline, they can also be experienced as December's featured artists at the B&W Society of Sound.
In glorious songs like Edem Chanté (Listen To Us!), The Creole Choir celebrate the history of their Haitian descendents enslaved to the Caribbean from West Africa. The Creole Choir's ten remarkable singers come from Camagüey, Cuba's third city, down towards the eastern end of the island. They grew up and studied music in this old colonial town, designated a UNESCO World heritage Site in 2008 for its colonial architecture. They have nurtured music passed down in their families since the early 19th century, gradually adding modern Haitian sounds.
What is T-shirt weather?
With the Copenhagen climate change conference - described on the radio this morning as 'perhaps the most important gathering in human history' - just around the corner, it seems global warming is being taken seriously.
Would it then be wrong to suggest that a smart move may be to stock up on T-shirts. With the weather here in Box very mild, if incredibly wet, we have had the foresight to add two new Real World shirts to our store.
Isla vinyl in-store
Give your turntable something to smile about. The Portico Quartet's fabulous - "A Second Mercury Nomination Shouldn't Be Out of the Question" BBC - album 'Isla' is now available on the beautiful medium that is vinyl.
All You Need is love
Take a look at this recording of 'All You Need is Love' by Bandaged Together - a collection of the great and the good in the music industry, radio and TV - in aid of this years BBC Children in Need appeal.
Peter Gabriel can be seen at the top and tail of the track.
Sbtrkt Portico Quartet mixes
Fresh from enthusiastic reception at BBC radio 1, Portico Quartet's glorious 'Line' with its journey from shimmering hypnotic hang to unfolding saxaphone melody has been revisited, reinvented and remixed by Sbtrkt.
Sbtrkt is the elusive London based producer making some of the freshest beats around.. He's got the airwaves in a stir with Benji B, Mary Anne Hobbs, Annie Mac, mistjam and Gilles Peterson singing his praises. Recently SBTRKT has wrapped up remixes for Basement Jaxx, Jack Penate, Frans Ferdinand and Fantastic Mr Fox. With solo releases forthcoming on the Young Turks and Ramp Recordings stables. One of the hot new producers to watch on the dubstep and underground dance scene.
Syriana talk in The Workroom at Real World Studios
Syriana, November's release at the B&W Society of Sound has three distinctive artists at its core: Abdullah Chhadeh, Syrian qanun virtuoso and musical innovator whose album Seven Gates was lauded for its beauty and originality. Irish-born double bassist Bernard O'Neill, erstwhile member of Chhadeh's ensemble Nara, a frequent Real World collaborator and a musician in constant demand. Nick 'Dubulah' Page, the half Greek, half English guitarist of Transglobal Underground and Temple of Sound fame and the visionary behind the phenomenal Real World collective Dub Colossus.
Friends for years, the trio came together in creative protest pre-President Obama. "We thought a new Cold War was being foisted upon the world," says Page wryly. "The Cold War and its iconography had divided East and West. We wanted to bridge it."
With the qanun representing Eastern classical traditions and the guitar coming in from the West, O'Neill's double bass became a sort Galatian bridge straddling two continents. Accordionists, percussionists, string players and guest vocalists from Damascus add an extra dimension.
Inspired by a find at WOMAD, 'Isla' is new on Real World Records.
At the 2004 WOMAD Rivermead festival, Duncan Bellamy and Nick Mulvey came across a Hang, a small Swiss pan drum like a flying saucer. They built a sound-world around the instrument, adding double bass, drums and saxophone with Milo Fitzpatrick and Jack Wylie to form Portico Quartet and produce a Mercury nominated album.
Their second album 'Isla' on Peter Gabriel's Real World Records builds on this sound.
"With 'Isla', produced by John Leckie, Portico have found their mojo: a thrumming, intensely textured and dynamic sound flowing between sax, bass, drums and hang. (Looks like a wok, sounds like a steel drum.) The subtle electronic shadowing and beefed-up bass recall EST, while the lead track traces a Balkan/Gypsy line and repetitious rhythmic measures reference Reichian minimalism without making you feel ill. All tracks are memorable and hang together like a suite. Brilliant."
The Independent on Sunday (UK)