Monday, February 28, 2011

Vinyl Record News & Music Notes

CYNTHESIS - New Album Details Released; Cover Art Unveiled


CYNTHESIS has announced their upcoming full length album, DeEvolution, is set for worldwide release on April 19th via Sensory Records.

According to a press release: “DeEvolution tells the story of an elite group of leaders from a heavily industrialized city who find, brainwash and then exploit an indigenous tribes' shaman, believing he would be the perfect supreme leader. By propping him up as possessing all the answers to society's ills, the elites use him in order to gain and keep more control over the masses in order to influence the masses via religion, media, consumerism and government.”

DeEvolution cover artwork was created by Dennis "Damn Engine" Sibeijn (EXODUS, DRAGONFORCE, LAMB OF GOD, HIM)



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Lovely cover art, eh?

HAEMORRHAGE: Unveil Album Details For ‘Hospital Carnage’

HAEMORRHAGE has completed work on their new full-length album and follow-up to 2006’s Apology For Pathology. The new album, titled Hospital Carnage, is set for a May 24th North American release date (May 30th internationally) and is available for pre-order at this location. Hospital Carnage will be available on CD, LP and digitally. The album art, as designed by the band’s guitarist / vocalist Luisma, can be viewed here.

HAEMORRHAGE recorded Hospital Carnage at VRS Studios with Samuel Ruiz. The album was mastered by Scott Hull at Visceral Sound. Advance song titled include “Traumaggedon”, “Fomite Fetish”, “Hospital Thieves”, “Hypochondriac”, Necronatology”, and “Tumour Doner”. HAEMORRHAGE recently shot a video for “Traumaggedon”, video stills and a premiere date will be announced shortly.

Spanish splatter stalwarts HAEMORRHAGE emerge as leaders from the nefarious goregrind ranks with their newest slab Hospital Carnage. Hospital Carnage features fifteen ferocious new tracks of murderous death metal, replete with guttural vocals, meaty riffs, and powerful blast beats that convey the primordial spirit of the genre's early days.





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THE RECORD: CONTEMPORARY ART AND VINYL OPENS APRIL 15 AT ICA/BOSTON

FIRST MUSEUM EXHIBITION TO EXPLORE INFLUENCE OF VINYL RECORD ON VISUAL ART

Boston, Mass.—This spring, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston opens The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl, the first museum exhibition to explore the culture of vinyl records within the history of contemporary art. Bringing together artists from around the world who have worked with records as their subject or medium, this groundbreaking exhibition examines the record’s transformative power from the 1960s to the present. Through sculpture, installation, drawing, painting, photography, sound work, video and performance, The Record combines contemporary art with outsider art, audio with visual, and fine art with popular culture. On view at the ICA from April 15 through Sept. 5, the exhibition features 99 works by 41 artists, including Jasper Johns, Ed Ruscha, Laurie Anderson, Christian Marclay and Carrie Mae Weems. The Record was organized by the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University and is accompanied by a 240-page color catalogue.

“In today’s era of digital, downloadable music, the vinyl record—powerfully marked with history and nostalgia—has become a meaningful vehicle of expression for visual artists,” says Jill Medvedow, director of the ICA. “The Record presents some of the best, rarest and most unexpected examples of artists whose work has been influenced by music and vinyl. We are thrilled to present this exhibition in Boston, giving art and music lovers alike the opportunity to discover, or re-discover, the tremendous artistic response the record has inspired.”

“For many contemporary artists, the vinyl record looms large, taking on a significance that moves well beyond the medium’s traditional use, and thoroughly into a space of innovative artistic production,” says Senior Curator Jenelle Porter, who coordinated the exhibition for the ICA. “In the hands of visual artists, the vinyl record is used as a metaphor, archive, artifact, icon, or portrait. The exhibition explores the impact of the record on both art and popular culture and the ways in which vinyl has been manipulated, preserved and transformed through art.”

The exhibition includes a broad range of works, such as a hybrid violin and record player, Viophonograph, a seminal work by Laurie Anderson; David Byrne's original life-sized Polaroid photomontage used for the cover of the 1978 Talking Heads album More Songs About Buildings and Food; a monumental column of vinyl records by William Cordova; and an important early work by Dario Robleto, who transformed Billie Holiday records in an alchemic process to create hand-painted buttons. Works by Christian Marclay, who has made art with records for 30 years, include his early and rarely seen Recycled Records as well as his most recent record video, Looking for Love.

Accompanying the exhibition is Cover to Cover—an installation of ten listening stations located in the Poss Family Mediatheque. For the installation, 10 artists and musicians were commissioned to create a new visual narrative based on the cover art of 20 albums of their choosing. Each artist’s theme and “story’ can be discovered by thumbing through bins containing original albums, examining the covers and playing the records.

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Dum Dum Girls blend grit, grace, and garage

From left: Sandy, Jules, Dee Dee, and Bambi make up Dum Dum Girls, a group that rode a wave of garage-rock revival to prominence last year. (Tyson Wirtzfield)

By James Reed
Globe Staff / February 27, 2011

In the same breath that she mentions the Mamas & the Papas, the woman who started Dum Dum Girls also professes her love for Patti Smith, Motown, and the Jesus and Mary Chain. Dee Dee Penny — she of the cherry-red lips and Ronnie Spector’s love of eyeliner — is the lead singer and songwriter of Dum Dum Girls, an all-female rock quartet that distills the essence of those artists into a sound both tough and tender.

Read the rest at Boston.com

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a very sad story from the NYTimes Blog

Joe Long, the owner of Birdel’s Records, is retiring, and closing the store that opened in 1944. Though he has CDs, his inventory is dominated by vinyl 45s and LPs

The Last Days for a Music Store Where Vinyl Has Respect

By TIM STELLOH

Joe Long has tried closing his legendary Brooklyn music shop, Birdel’s Records, before.

Two years ago, Mr. Long posted a going-out-of-business sign in the windows of his Bedford-Stuyvesant storefront, which opened in 1944. With the decline of the music industry and of his profits, and the fact that no family member wanted to take over, he’d had enough.

Read the rest at cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com

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This from our friends in Michigan, where vinyl gets a boost with a new record store:


Plymouth Rocks Again at Cousins Vinyl

Replay your past with classic LPs, EPs and 45’s.

By Chip Karnish

As a kid, my older cousin John used to take me to local music stores like Sam’s Jams, Off the Record, Peaches and that one next to the Penn Theater (before Repeat the Beat moved in). We’d spend hours flipping through rows of albums searching racks of the latest U.S. bootlegs, U.K. new wave and European import records. Though the music of that era still lives on, those places to shop unfortunately do not.

But now I find Plymouth is bringing that nostalgic soundtrack back with, appropriately enough, Cousins Vinyl.

Read the rest at plymouth-mi.patch.com

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The LATimesblog is promoting our beloved vinyl with a feel good vinyl story!

Fingerprints record store: Thriving despite music industry woes

In a sun-filled 7,200-square-foot space in the arts district east of downtown Long Beach, something extraordinary is unfolding: The record business is growing. Boxes long confined to dark storage see the light again. Bins brim with new and used CDs. Jazz swings in its own room. So does vinyl. Books too.

Someone apparently forgot to tell store owner Rand Foster that people pluck their music from the clouds now, rather than exchange cash for it in bricks-and-mortar emporiums such as Fingerprints. Not only has Foster's indie venture survived 18 years of a drastically changing retail environment, but the soft-spoken entrepreneur also just doubled Fingerprints' footprint, moving to this space two times bigger than its longtime Belmont Shores home. His key? Making the store a destination for a devoted clientele.

"It's not memorable where you buy the record on top of the charts," Foster says. "When you buy something you've never heard of that becomes a favorite record, or you buy a record you've been looking for 10 years, you remember that store."

Read the rest of this interesting article at latimesblogs.latimes.com

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Vinyl in Virginia:

Vinyl records are a hit again, even with people in their 20s and younger

By Stephanie M. Mangino
The Winchester Star

Maybe it's just Tracee Wink's particular quirk or wish - but when she turns on her record player, she hears music that doesn't come through an iPod.

"Maybe it's not," she said. "Maybe it's me."

It's not just Wink. She is part of a wave of people who listen to vinyl records, some old and some new.

Read more at winchesterstar.com

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Sundazed Announces A Hollies “Ten Singles Box Set”

The Hollies – Lost Recordings And Beat Rarities!

According to Sundazed, this new boxset will collect 20 long-buried Hollies’ recordings across TEN seven inch vinyl singles, each with a gorgeous period-label and picture sleeve! The tracks range from hard-to-find U.S. and British singles and EP’s to songs previously unissued on vinyl. Follow the group from their first single (released May of 1963), the savage “(Ain’t That) Just Like Me” b/w “Hey What’s Wrong With Me,” through their discotheque dance-floor raves: “Come On Back,” “What Kind of Love” and “She Said Yeah.” Swoon to their swingin’ ballad “Yes I Will,” groove with their jazzy “Honey And Wine” and float to outer space with “All the World Is Love.” Discover an impossible-to-find, spy-styled double-sider the Hollies did for a 1967 Italian movie, and groove to unreleased tracks cut while on tour in New York City in 1965, then marvel at an extremely scarce cover of the Beatles’ “If I Needed Someone,” tracked at Abbey Road, revered recording home to both groups.

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NPR.org is set to stream R.E.M.’s ‘Collapse Into Now’ on March 1

At 2 p.m. ET on March 1, NPR.org will be the host of the U.S. online premiere of R.E.M.’s new studio album, “Collapse Into Now,” which is due in stores March 8 on the Warner Bros. label.

On March 2, the album will be featured as part of NPR’s “First Listen” series.

In other R.E.M. news, look for singer Michael Stipe to appear on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” on March 3. That same day, Stipe is scheduled to perform as part of the Tibet House Benefit Concert taking place at Carnegie Hall in Manhattan.

Read more: NPR.org is set to stream R.E.M.’s ‘Collapse Into Now’ on March 1 | Goldmine Magazine

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R.E.M.'s Mike Mills Talks About Collapse Into Now

R.E.M.'s fifteenth studio album, Collapse Into Now, will be in stores a week from Tuesday (March 8) and bassist Mike Mills recently talked to Billboard about the album and how it differs from 2009's Accelerate.

Read more at VintageVinylNews.com


Video: R.E.M., ‘Mine Smell Like Honey’ played live at Berlin’s Hansa Tonstudios



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"Dandy" from 1967 was the hit on this iconic French EP by the Kinks.

Collecting the British Invasion, from the Beatles to the Sex Pistols: An Interview with Stephen M. H. Braitman

By Dean Schaffer

Stephen M. H. Braitman has had a lifelong love affair with music, and has more than 20,000 vinyl records to prove it. In this interview, he discusses the British Invasion from a collector’s perspective, and explores the evolution of the technology behind the tunes—from 78s to 45s to LPs, from mono to stereo to quadrophonic. Braitman, who is both a music appraiser and collector, can be reached via his website, www.MusicAppraisals.com.

I was a Hollywood kid. My father was a TV and radio editor in the San Fernando Valley, and he allowed me to do my first writing to review concerts and shows for the newspaper. By 16 I was going to the Troubadour every week and reviewing all the acts—Joni Mitchell, Poco, Neil Young, Pentangle, Tim Buckley, all of them. I had a lot of friends in high school who really appreciated my being able to take them to the clubs for free.

But as a younger kid, I really hated rock ’n’ roll music and pop music, and I disliked the Beatles and all that. I have a younger sister who was a total Beatlemaniac. She started getting into the ’60s scene, but I was more influenced at that time by my father’s interest in classical music.

Read more at collectorsweekly.com

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Vinyl Records Video



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and in music history today:

In 1966, the original Cavern Club in Liverpool, England, the home of many of the Beatles' early performances, closes its doors for the final time because of mounting debt. Police were called when over a 100 fans barricaded themselves inside the club to protest.

In 1968, 25 year-old Frankie Lymon, lead singer of The Teenagers, died of a heroin overdose in his grandmother's New York home. Lymon was on leave from a Georgia army post at the time and was scheduled to record for Roulette Records the next day. He first hit the national charts in 1956 when he was just 13 with "Why Do Fools Fall in Love".

In 1970, after the family of the late Ferdinand von Zeppelin threatened a lawsuit, Led Zeppelin performs in Copenhagen, Denmark as The Nobs.

Also in 1970, "Bridge Over Troubled Water" becomes Simon and Garfunkel's third US number one hit. The piano player on the track is Larry Knechtel, who also played for the soft-rock group, Bread.



In 1974, 28 year-old Bobby Bloom, who is best remembered for his #8, 1970 hit "Montego Bay", dies of a gunshot wound to the head. His death was originally thought to be suicide, but is now considered accidental.

In 1976, Paul Simon's "Still Crazy After All These Years" in named Best Pop Vocal Performance and Album Of The Year at the 18th annual Grammy Awards. In his acceptance speech, Simon tells the audience "I'd like to thank Stevie Wonder for not releasing an album this year."

Also in 1976, the theme from the ABC-TV program S.W.A.T. became the first television theme song to top the Billboard Hot 100. The theme from Hawaii 5-0 made it to number 4.

In 1981, Country music star Eddie Rabbitt crossed over to the Pop chart to score a US number one hit with "I Love a Rainy Night". It made #53 in the UK. He had earlier written the Elvis Presley smash "Kentucky Rain" before having a number five record with "Drivin' My Life Away". Although it sounds like he made up a stage name, his real name is Edward Thomas Rabbitt.

In 1984, John Denver hosted the Grammy Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. Michael Jackson wins 8 statues, including Best Album for "Thriller" and Best Record for "Beat It". The Police's "Every Breath You Take" wins Best Song and Culture Club wins Best New Artist.

In 1985, David Byron, vocalist and co-founder of the British Rock band Uriah Heep, suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 38.

In 2008, Mike Smith, keyboard player and lead vocalist for The Dave Clark Five died of pneumonia less than two weeks before the band was to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was 64.

Also in 2008, drummer Buddy Miles, who played with Jimi Hendrix in his last regular group, Band of Gypsys, died at age 60 at his home in Austin, Texas, after struggling with a long-term illness. Born George Allen Miles in Omaha, Nebraska, Buddy’s nickname was a tribute to his idol, jazz drummer Buddy Rich. Miles also played with The Delfonics, The Ink Spots, Wilson Pickett, Electric Flag, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, Muddy Waters and Barry White. In the 1980s, he achieved a certain amount of notoriety in the U.S. as the vocalist on the celebrated Claymation California Raisins commercials.

And in 2010, Neil Young made a surprise appearance at the closing of the Vancouver Olympic Games where he sang "Long May You Run" as the Olympic flame was extinguished.

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