Explosions in the Sky

What takes us so long between albums? It's a fair question. One of us got married. One of us has had two kids since the last album. One of us has panic attacks. One of us took classical guitar lessons. One of us restored a piano from 1888. One of us had a serious illness in the family (and a recovery). One of us attempted, but did not complete, the P90X program. One of us was obsessed with this new album having 17 shorter songs. One was obsessed with the album sounding like a dream. Two of us can't get to sleep most nights. Two of us wake up early in the morning and can't get back to sleep. No joke, it's a challenge schedule-wise. We had a weekend shut-in sleepover at one of our houses, in which we wrote music and watched movies and threw around ideas. It was productive and come to think of it, we should probably do that more often. We made at least 50 demos, and that's probably a conservative estimate. And ended up with six songs. At one point during these four years we got pretty frustrated and took a hiatus from music. We called it a sabbatical. It lasted a couple months. When 2010 showed up, with the sabbatical safely behind us, we looked around at all the demos, all the instruments, and tried to see some sort of sense, or theme, or anything in it all. And slowly, we found it was already there. One part became two parts, a new guitar line made one part come alive, an added tambourine made another sing. Things started to fit together in ways we couldn't have planned. One song was finished, and less than a week or two later another song was finished. The rest followed over the next six months. All of the songs came from the demos that we had worked on in the previous three years, demos that we had gone away from, and then come back to, and then expanded. In september of 2010, we drove out to a studio called sonic ranch, 20 miles east of el paso. We spent almost two weeks out there with our friend John Congleton, who recorded the album. It is a pretty great place, with five studios and a pet raccoon on a huge pecan ranch. When that was finished, we went back home to Austin and mixed the album at a studio called public hi-fi. and finally we mastered the album in New York CIty with Greg Galbi. We are pretty ecstatic with how it turned out. The album is called "Take Care, Take Care, Take Care." And even though that title sounds like a sign-off from us, it is far from it. Explosions in the Sky.

Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros

Joe Strummer's first solo album in a decade, Rock Art and the X-Ray Style abandoned the straight-forward rock-n-roll of his 1989 effort, Earthquake Weather, to seemingly pick up where Combat Rock left off ("Ghetto Defendant," for example, could have been dropped in the middle of this album with no questions asked). Depending on how you felt about Combat Rock, this could be a welcome or a warning. On Rock Art you will hear reggae, afro-beat, hip-hop, and, of course, a little rock. But gone are the days where the rock outweighs the weird in Joe's catalog (though he came close on his final effort, Streetcore). Lyrically, Joe turns in his most cerebral and downright mysterious lyrics yet. Nine years later, I still have very little idea as to what some of these songs are about. But when I am in the dark, the obscure imagery of his lyrics cut the mustard well enough. A remastered version of the album along with Strummer's other two Hellcat released albums was released as a special 57 song digital download titled Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros, The Hellcat Years on 21 August 2012 to celebrate what would have been Strummer's 60th birthday. Hellcat will also release each remastered album individually on CD and vinyl on 25 September 2012.

Extremoduro

La ley innata es el título del noveno álbum de estudio del grupo extremeño de rock Extremoduro, producido por Iñaki “Uoho” Anton y publicado por DRO el 9 de septiembre de 2008. En la portada dice en latín. "Est enim iudices haec non scripta sed nata lex quam non didicimus accepimus legimus uerum ex natura ipsa arripuimus hausimus expressimus ad quam non docti sed facti non instituti sed imbuti sumus" frase atribuida a Cicerón. En castellano áspero diría algo así "Existe, de hecho, jueces, una ley no escrita, sino innata, la cual no hemos aprendido, heredado, leído, sino que de la misma naturaleza la hemos agarrado, exprimido, apurado, ley para la que no hemos sido educados, sino hechos; y en la que no hemos sido instruidos, sino empapados". Un disco de rock básico de la banda y uno de mis favoritos de su carrera. Cuarenta y cinco minutos increíblemente bellos, emocionantes e impactantes de buen rock. Cicerón acabaría diciendo después de escucharlo "Si nadie se sirve de nosotros, escribiremos y leeremos sobre la constitución del Estado, y si no pudiéramos en la Curia y el Foro trataremos de servir a la patria con nuestros escritos y en nuestros libros".Veleyo Patérculo Historia Romana L.II, 45.

Food

The Food team of Norwegian drummer Strønen and British saxophonist Ballamy continues to invite guests to bring something to the table. The form-and-texture conscious improvisations here are drawn from live performances in Norway, England and Germany and studio sessions at Oslo’s Rainbow. To the latter group belong tracks on which Indian slide guitarist and singer Prakash Sontakke is partnered by Eivind Aarset’s atmospheric guitar and electronics. The first half of the album finds Food augmented by Austrian guitarist Christian Fennesz, taking further the experiments with layers of sound begun on Quiet Inlet. Nils Petter Molvær joins Strønen, Ballamy and Fennesz for a track recorded at Mannheim’s Enjoy Jazz Festival.

Ketil Bjørnstad

Ketil Bjørnstad previously explored the life of Edvard Munch in his acclaimed 1993 novel Historien om Edvard Munch. When invited to compose music for choir in 2011 his thoughts turned once again to Munch and to the writings, still not widely known, of the proto-Expressionist Norwegian painter. With these as his guide, Bjørnstad shaped Soloppgang (“Sunrise”) subtitled “A cantata on texts by Edvard Munch”. In his liner notes, Bjørnstad observes that “the texts written by Munch can be compared to his paintings in their power and intensity. He wanted to be a writer as well as a painter... texts from different periods in Munch’s life have been used in Sunrise. They all portray existentialist dilemmas: surviving or being destroyed, believing or observing.” The changing moods of the writings inspire very different musical settings. Sunrise was released first in Norway in November 2013 – in connection with the 150th anniversary of Munch’s birth – and met with a most positive critical reception

Bruce Springsteen

High Hopes es el decimooctavo álbum de estudio del músico estadounidense Bruce Springsteen, publicado por la compañía discográfica Columbia Records el 14 de enero de 2014. El álbum, que contó con la producción musical de Ron Aniello y Brendan O'Brien, incluye versiones de otros músicos, como «High Hopes» y«Just Like Fire Would», descartes de sesiones de grabación de anteriores trabajos, como «The Wall» y «Harry's Place», y regrabaciones de canciones antiguas como «The Ghost of Tom Joad» y «American Skin (41 Shots)». Además, y de forma similar a Wrecking Ball, incluye colaboraciones de Clarence Clemons y Danny Federici mediante grabaciones anteriores a sus respectivos fallecimientos. High Hopes es el primer trabajo de estudio de Bruce Springsteen en incluir una mezcla de nuevas canciones, descartes de sesiones de grabación anteriores y versiones de otros artistas. Según el propio músico: «La mejor manera de describir este disco es que es un poco anormal pero no mucho. Realmente no trabajo de forma lineal como otra gente hace».Morello también inspiró a Springsteen a versionar dos canciones: «Just Like Fire Would», de la banda australiana The Saints originalmente publicada como sencillo en 1986, y «Dream Baby Dream», un tema del grupo Suicide. Una versión de «Dream Baby Dream» fue publicada en septiembre de 2013 como tributo a los seguidores de Springsteen que acudieron a conciertos de la gira Wrecking Ball Tour.