Youssou N'Dour & Friends

From Petergeabriel.com :

20-Sep-2005

Youssou N'Dour & Friends

Peter will be playing at the United Nations 60th anniversary event (to benefit malaria research) which is to be held on 7th and 8th October in Geneva. He will only be performing on the night of the 7th and we do not know which songs as yet. However, Don't Give Up and Biko are possibilities...

www.unitedagainstmalaria.org

Tony Levin Band al Teatro Augusteo di Napoli

di Paolo Ansali

Il festival di Afrakà, organizzato da Lino Vairetti e giunto alla sua XI edizione, chiude alla grande con la Tony Levin Band, per il grande bassista è la prima assoluta del tour europeo.

Iniziato con Il concerto di Rachel Z Trio il 4 giugno nel giardino della Fondazione Mondragone di Napoli e Brian Auger, Sud Sound System, Bisca e Rino Zurzolo nella cornice della Villa Comunale di Afragola in Luglio, il festival di Afrakà giunto alla sua XI edizione, chiude alla grande con Tony Levin Band. Con il patrocinio della Regione Campania e del Comune di Napoli, il concerto di Tony Levin, in esclusiva per il Sud Italia e in prima assoluta del suo tour europeo, si terrà al Teatro Augusteo di Napoli martedì 11 ottobre 2005 alle ore 21.00.

Tony Levin, famoso musicista e componente dei King Crimson, oltre che della band di Peter Gabriel dal suo esordio ad oggi, e’ uno dei piu’ grandi bassisti e virtuosi dello “stick”. Le sue collaborazioni discografiche sono innumerevoli; Tony ha infatti suonato con tutti i piu’ grandi musicisti della scena internazionale come John Lennon a Laurie Anderson, Burt Bacharach, David Bowie, Chris Botti, Bill Bruford, Al Di Meola, Robert Fripp, Lou Reed, Ringo Starr, Pink Floyd, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Ravi Shankar, California Guitar Trio Rachel Z e molti altri. Ha collaborato anche con musicisti italiani, quali Ivano Fossati, Fiorella Mannoia, Claudio Baglioni, Susanna Parigi, Vasco Rossi.

Oltre la sua intensa attivita’ musicale, Tony coltiva da molto tempo la passione per la fotografia e la grafica pubblicando 2 libri fotografici e realizzato diversi lavori di artwork per le copertine di dischi propri e dei King Crimson. Ha al suo attivo 4 albums da solista l’ultimo dei quali sarà eseguito nei concerti del suo tour europeo 2005 con la sua nuova band formata da cinque musicisti che tra gli appassionati sono definiti "leggende viventi", per il loro contributo musicale profuso da trent’anni a questa parte. Averli tutti insieme in una unica occasione, fa di questa loro venuta in Europa, un evento eccezionale. La formazione della Band:
Tony Levin (basso), Larry Fast (keyboards), Jerry Marotta (Batteria), Jesse Gress (chitarra) e Pete Levin (piano)

La Band:
Larry Fast, vecchio amico e collaboratore di Robert Moog, e’ stato uno dei pionieri della musica elettronica a livello popolare. Gia’ tecnico del suono e membro effettivo della Peter Gabriel Band fin dai suoi esordi, ha al suo attivo una intensa attivita’ solista sotto il nome di Synergy. Il suo talento ai sintetizzatori e’ affiancato all’attivita’ di produttore per innumerevoli artisti con cui ha collaborato anche in studio di registrazione, Barbra Streisand, Randy Newman, Joan Armatrading, Walter Carlos (storico compositore delle colonne sonore dei film di Stanley Kubrick), tra gli altri.

Jerry Marotta,
dopo una lunghissima permanenza nel gruppo di Peter Gabriel, ha inciso e intrapreso tours con Paul Mc Cartney, Joan Armatrading, Hall & Oates , Sean Lennon, Susanne Vega, Ani Di Franco, per citarne alcuni. Oltre a collaborare con innumerevoli artisti, Marotta e’ anche un ricercatissimo produttore oltre che proprietario di uno studio di registrazione nei pressi di New York.

Jesse Gress:
suona stabilmente nella Tony Levin Band e nel gruppo di Todd Rundgren. La sua attivita’ si svolge prevalentemente negli Stati Uniti dove e’ molto conosciuto nell’ambiente anche come eccellente trascrittore di spartiti per chitarra diretti a professionisti e semplici appassionati. Tiene workshops e scrive manuali didattici per chitarristi non professionisti.

Pete Levin:
fratello di Tony, poliedrico e stimatissimo pianista negli ambienti jazz e rock, ha al suo attivo una vasta produzione discografica solista e una lunghissima lista di collaborazioni con altri artisti, quali il Brubeck Brothers Quartet, Gil Evans, Waine Shorter, Artie Traum, Michael Petrucciani, David Sanborn, Robbie Robertson, Carly Simon, Annie Lennox.


TONY LEVIN BAND in Concerto
Martedì 11 ottobre 2005 – ore 21.00
Napoli - Teatro Augusteo – piazzetta Duca D’Aosta
Costo biglietti:
Platea €. 18,00 + 2 di prevendita
Galleria €. 14,00 + 1 di prev.
Prevendita Teatro Augusteo e abituali
Info: 081.414243 – 081.405660

Rachel Z at Nighttown in Cleveland

Streaming music : http://www.kataweb.it/community/live/rachel_z/

Contributed by Ronaldo Oregano

After two world tours as the featured pianist and keyboard player in Peter Gabriel's group, Rachel Z has a solo career that is rapidly on the rise. On Saturday, September 24th Ms. Z brings her trio to Nighttown in Cleveland.

Rachel Z has just released her seventh solo recording "Grace," which features several original compositions and is the first CD where she sings. This CD is a combination of originals and unique interpretations of modern pop writers like John Lennon, Kate Bush, and Kurt Cobain. Her previous CD "Everlasting" presented instrumental jazz versions of pop songs by artists ranging from The Beatles and The Rolling Stones to Seal, Sade, Steely Dan, and Kurt Cobain. Prior to that Rachel Z recorded a tribute to Joni Mitchell. Rachel Z is among the vanguard of musicians who are finding the jazz in modern pop music, and realizing its lasting value.

Rachel recorded and toured with saxophonist Wayne Shorter extensively in the late 90's and collaborated with him on the Grammy-winning CD "High Life."

Rachel Z has also played a prominent role in several major groups including those of Al DiMeola, Steps Ahead, Wayne Shorter, Vertu with Lenny White and Stanley Clarke, and most recently as a featured artist with Peter Gabriel's band. Rachel Z is clearly among the elite group of jazz musicians working today. This Summer and Fall, Rachel will be touring again in Europe and North America. For her appearance at Night Town, Rachel will be supported by her current New York trio consisting of drummer Bobby Rae and bassist Chris Luard.

Manhattan-born and raised Rachel Nicolazzo (aka Rachel Z) had music practically ingrained in her genetic code. Groomed to follow in her mother's operatic footsteps, she began voice lessons at two, started classical piano lessons at seven and attended the opera by age nine. "My first dollhouse was a Metropolitan Opera House complete with the stage and dolls which were the performers," she recalls. "Then I heard Miles Smiles when I was 15, started rebelling against the classical by improvising, and played with a band that covered Joni Mitchell and Steely Dan songs."

Listening to Herbie Hancock's harmonies over Wayne Shorter's compositions helped her bridge the gap from her classical training to jazz."The way my jazz chops developed was twofold. I developed acoustic straight ahead and electronic fusion playing equally over time," she says. After launching a quintet called Nardis, she studied with Joanne Brackeen and Richie Beirach.

Don't miss the dynamic sounds of pianist Rachel Z and her Trio live at Nighttown on Saturday September 24th at 9 PM. Nighttown is located at 12387 Cedar Road in Cleveland Heights. For reservations call (216) 795-0550 or fax: (216) 795-0531.

"Rachel Z is a consistently adventurous player. Rachel occasionally reveals traces of influence from McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock, but more often she is her own player, voicing her harmonies with a dark, intimate quality." -Don Heckman, The Los Angeles Times

Big Room console for sale

Real World (Peter Gabriel) Solid State Logic console for sale

SSL 4080G G Series Console fitted with 72 mono channels - Total Recall – G Plus computer – additional features - Real World Send Matrix providing four extra sends per channel & Motionworker Synchronizer. The console is in first class technical condition and can be viewed in operation. £85,000 plus VAT if applicable.

Please visit the Peter Gabriel web site http://realworldstudios.com/ the particular console for sale is the one referred to as the 'The Big Room'

Some of the biggest artists in the world have passed through the doors of Real World studios, see below list of just some of the previous clients who have used the 4080G in the Big Room.

Peter Gabriel
New Order
Dandy Warhols
Hope of the States
The Bad Plus
Gomez
Travis
Stina Nordensam
Ed Harcourt
Bonnie Rait
Ocean Colour Scene
Zucchero
Muse
Afro Celt Sound System
Loreena McKennit
Cast
Stereophonics
Beautiful South
Kylie Minogue
Super Furry Animals
Electronic
James
Placebo
Black Grape
Wet Wet Wet
The Guitar Trio
David Sylvian
Therapy?
King Crimson
Nusrat Ali Fateh Khan
Van Morrison
The Levellers
Squeeze
Seal

Some of the producers who have worked in the Big Room

Tchad Blake
Torre Johannssen
John Leckie
Ken Thomas
John Kelly
Guy Chambers
Al Stone
Bird and Bush
Stephen Hague
Vic Coppersmith
John Cale
Owen Morris
Steve Osborne
Brian Eno

Womadshop : Still Growing Up - Live and Unwrapped

Still Growing Up - Live and Unwrapped-Peter Gabriel

£14.99 including postage and packing to France

Available for pre-order, released on: Mon 31 Oct 2005

Order 'Still Growing Up - Live and Unwrapped' today and be one of the first 500 to receive a free Still Growing Up Tour T shirt of your choice.

This offer applies to Still Growing Up Tour T shirts only - Please make your choice from the shop and email your details(colour and size)to merch@womadshop.com Don't forget to include your name and order reference number.

Still Growing Up- Live and Unwrapped

November 2003 saw the release of Peter Gabriel’s ‘Growing Up Live’ DVD, chronicling his World Tour, which was celebrated for its spectacular theatrics. ‘Still Growing Up Live and Unwrapped’ brings Peter Gabriel together again with the award winning director, Hamish Hamilton, capturing

his performances in all sorts of smaller and more intimate venues around Europe for the Live film. It was an opportunity to perform songs which were not part of the original Growing Up Tour White Ashes, San Jacinto, Games Without Frontiers, Tower, Come Talk To Me, Burn You Up, Biko.

The Unwrapped film explores the world behind the songs, with Anna Gabriel taking the Director’s chair with the collaboration of Hamish Hamilton.

> DISC ONE - STILL GROWING UP LIVE
> 1. The Feeling Begins (from Passion)
> 2. Red Rain
> 3. Secret World
> 4. White Ashes
> 5. Games Without Frontiers
> 6. Burn You Up
> 7. The Tower That Ate People
> 8. San Jacinto
> 9. Digging In The Dirt
> 10. Solsbury Hill
> 11. Sledge Hammer
> 12. Come Talk To Me
> 13. Biko
>
> EXTRAS
> Bonus track from Still Growing Up Tour ‘In Your Eyes’
> ‘No Self Control’ from 'P.O.V.'
>
> DISC TWO – STILL GROWING UP UNWRAPPED
> 1. The Feeling Begins (from Passion)
> 2. Red Rain
> 3. Secret World
> 4. White Ashes
> 5. Burn You Up
> 6. San Jacinto
> 7. Digging In The Dirt
> 8. Solsbury Hill
> 9. Sledge Hammer
> 10. The Tower That Ate People
> 11. Come Talk To Me
> 12. Biko
>
> EXTRAS
> Exclusive early studio footage of Peter and the band performing
> ‘Darkness’, ' No Way Out’ and ‘Growing Up’
> Peter Gabriel performing ‘Downside Up’ and ‘Father, Son’ on the BBC
> show 'Later…with Jools Holland'

In the absence of a space elevator

17-Sep-2005

In the absence of a space elevator, we offer a tower to the moon.

Septembers lunar height is upon us and to mark it's arrival we have pulled another demo from Peter's studio archive.

Having spent most of the month working on the new DVD "Still growing Up: Peter Gabriel Live and Unwrapped" - some versions of which are now available for pre-order in WOMADShop with a free tour T-shirt thrown in - it's been amazing to see how this 1998 demo of The Tower evolved through OVO and The Millennium Dome show into the version performed on the recent tour; and now DVD, so powerful 'That Ate People' should rightly be appended to it's name.

The Tower - In The Full Moon Club Downloads section

The new DVD in WOMADshop

Africa Calling - DVD available for pre-order

The new DVD of the Live 8 featuring a host of African musicians, hosted by Peter Gabriel and WOMAD at The Eden Project in Cornwall, is now available for pre-order at WOMADShop.

Africa Calling - Live 8 DVD in WOMADShop

designer of the Peter Gabriel video "Big Time."

Re-creating the 'Buzz'

David Daniels revisits his groundbreaking '80s clay-animation video at the annual short-film festival

By Chris Garcia, american-statesman film writer
Friday, September 16, 2005

David Daniels lives in the cold, scratchy nether-zone of a grand and awful irony, and it troubles him to no end. This is how he sees it: As a young man, he was an artist whose first major work, the clay-animation video "Buzz Box," put him on the fast track to stardom in the mid-1980s. The 15-minute video — a throbbing, dazzling miasma of imagistic excess — was hailed as a savage, funny and groundbreaking blast at modern media run amok.

Daniels went on to animate four seasons of "Pee-Wee's Playhouse" and design the Peter Gabriel video "Big Time." But he decided to forfeit the sacrifice, the shmoozing and the struggle of the artist's myth for a traditional path, that of husband, father and creator of talking M&Ms.

Daniels indeed created the "M&Ms Guys," that famous pair of humanoid candy drops who wear sneakers and gloves and pitch their namesake edibles in animated M&Ms ads. He and his Portland, Ore.-based production company Bent Image Lab have also produced memorable commercials for Kellogg's, NBC, Nabisco, Pepsi and H-P...

Lock up your vegetables!

Measuring up... Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Wallace & Gromit are back - this time battling an evil rabbit beast terrorising their garden. Creator Nick Park tells Stuart Jeffries how Hollywood's millions have helped - and hindered

Friday September 16, 2005
The Guardian

There are no such things as marrows in the United States. Americans call them something else. This may seem an insignificant matter to you, but it became very vexing indeed to Nick Park when he was working on his new Wallace & Gromit film with Hollywood money. "You see, in the film, Gromit is growing his own prize marrow for a giant vegetable competition at Lady Toddington's manor house," says Park...

...1986 The company creates a groundbreaking pop video for Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer. Park contributes the dancing chicken sequence...

"Here Comes The Flood" Pregnant Songs for BushWorld

Posted by anonyMoses on September 14, 2005 12:22 AM

Exposure Robert Fripp Music from E.G. RecordsRelease date: 31 August, 1990

Katrina, as a storm, has passed. Ophelia sits spinning off my coast. Ophelia drowned, right?

Again, Peter Gabriel's, "Here Comes the Flood" floods my mind. A pregnant song. A prescient song. A song that has warned those with ears to hear about the dire results of a ludibund and flippant attitude toward our effect on the natural world, and its harsh rebuke.

I'm too old to rehash an examination of the lyrics of a song that has been around since the 70s, and which has already been analysed quite enough thank you, which I guess either shows the innocuous ineffectiveness of such an activity, or else that the examiners are perhaps a little farther behind the scenes than they might have wished upon themselves, in more ego-laden moments of their evanescent lives.

Mister Gabriel must have been shaking his head even longer than his monkey (or was that shock? But of course!) as he watches the essobees fasten the hoodwinks ever snugly. More ugly still the nightmares unfurling.

More pregnant and prescient still is Robert Fripp's version of the song, with Gabriel on piano and voice, while Robert Frippertronicizes the sonic atmospheres enveloping it. Fripp wisely includes the words of the Gurdjieff scholar/student and mystic, JG Bennett, who talks about the coming floods in great world cities, due to what is euphomistically called "climate change".

Manu Katché au naturel

À la recherche de ses premières amours

Paris, le 13/09/2005

Musicien de jazz avant d'être batteur de rock, Manu Katché a participé à plus de 200 albums, de Francis Cabrel à Sting, en passant par Kassav, Dire Straits. Avec Neighbourhood, il retourne à sa carrière personnelle, fort d'une popularité nouvelle acquise en tant que membre du jury de l'émission hebdomadaire Nouvelle star, diffusée par une chaîne de télévision française.

C'est l'un des batteurs les plus sollicités de la planète. Son répertoire téléphonique serait un trésor pour n'importe quel mordu de musique et de chanson tombant dessus par hasard. Aujourd'hui, Manu Katché arrête ses collaborations tous azimuts. Une mise en parenthèse pour renouer avec le plaisir d'écrire et de jouer du jazz, la première musique à l'avoir fait craquer. Entouré de musiciens de haute volée (Jan Garbarek, saxophone ; Tomasz Stanko, trompette ; Marcin Wasilewski, piano ; Slawomir Kurkiewicz, contrebasse), il sort un album 100% siglé jazz, Neighbourhood.

RFI Musique : Ce disque est-il la confirmation de l'adage qui veut que l'on n'échappe jamais à ses premières amours ?

Manu Katché : On n'échappe jamais à ses origines, surtout. Quand on choisit d'être batteur, donc défini par une omniprésence rythmique, pour faire ses classes, je ne vois pas quel cursus on peut avoir à part commencer par le jazz, évoluer vers la soul music, continuer par le funk et arriver au rock. Même si je joue avec plein de gens qui ne sont pas de formation jazz, ils y passent forcément à un moment donné. J'ai l'impression que dans une expérience de vie musicale, le jazz est vraiment un passage obligé.

Votre premier contact avec lui ?

À l'époque où je fréquentais le Conservatoire national supérieur de musique de Paris, je suivais une formation en percussion classique, mais parallèlement je commençais la batterie et à toucher un petit peu au be-bop. Je n'excellais pas, loin de là. Musicalement, j'ai toujours été attiré par les solistes. J'écoutais Parker, Coltrane, Miles, Monk. Ils m'ont "choqué", dans le bon sens. Je trouvais cela génial. Mon beau-père écoutait pas mal de jazz. Avant que je commence à en jouer, c'est un peu lui qui m'a donné l'envie, par les disques qu'il écoutait quand j'étais môme. Je ne suis pas un grand technicien de jazz mais en tout cas j'ai une approche de coeur énorme et, structurellement, je suis plus proche d'un musicien de jazz que d'un musicien de rock.

Dans quel sens ?

Je suis quelqu'un de très instinctif, qui joue beaucoup en écoutant les autres. Le rock, c'est écrit, assez précis dans les structures. Dès l'instant où il y a un refrain et un couplet, on ne peut pas modifier grand chose. Ce qui a fait ma caractéristique quand je suis arrivé dans ce milieu-là, via Peter Gabriel, en 1986, c'est que j'ai vraiment changé les données d'un batteur de rock. J'ai commencé à utiliser des toms, des cymbales Splash. En fait, j'ai plutôt une approche de la musique rock comme un musicien de jazz - je ne dirais pas "batteur de jazz", car je ne me considère pas comme tel, je suis trop respectueux des batteurs de jazz pour ça. Donc, oui, le jazz, ce sont mes premières amours et, pour moi, c'est une musique dans laquelle les solistes peuvent s'exprimer pleinement.

Pourtant, quand on écoute Neighbourhood, on n'a pas immédiatement l'impression d'écouter l'album d'un batteur. Vous y restez assez en retrait. Je prendrai cette remarque comme un compliment. Cela me rappelle une très belle phrase de Steve Gadd, à qui on demandait au cours d'une interview après un enregistrement avec Paul Simon, quel était l'album sur lequel il avait préféré jouer. Il avait répondu : "Justement, celui-ci, car c'est celui où on m'entend le moins."

Effectivement, un batteur, ça peut être vite envahissant, car la batterie est un instrument qui a tendance à être très démonstratif dans son volume sonore. J'aime favoriser la mélodie des harmonies, néanmoins, dans Neighbourhood, il y a une vraie tension rythmique en dessous, même si elle est jouée avec des nuances. Ce n'est pas quelque chose de complètement free, ouvert et "atempo" de A à Z. Je ne suis pas a priori un batteur démonstratif et, a fortiori en écrivant un album pour moi, je n'avais pas envie tout à coup de le devenir. Comme d'ailleurs pour celui que j'avais fait en 1991 (It's About Time, ndr), qui était un album chanté, dans lequel j'avais voulu volontairement appuyer sur les mélodies, les textes et les arrangements plutôt que de faire une démonstration de batterie. La démonstration peut avoir sa raison d'être dès l'instant où l'on est sur scène, parce que là on a une interactivité directe avec le public, et puis il y a un plaisir du moment.

Vous avez de fait une approche très mélodique de la batterie.

Mon premier instrument était le piano (commencé à l'âge de sept ans, ndr), donc j'ai une vraie sensibilité mélodique, de climats, d'ambiances. Je considère la batterie plus souvent comme un instrument mélodique que rythmique. Si l'on écoute tous les disques sur lesquels j'ai joué - pas loin de 300 je crois -, on va rarement pouvoir repérer un truc particulier que j'aurais fait à la batterie. Ce n'est pas ma carte de visite, j'ai plutôt tendance à construire quelque chose de sous-tendu par rapport à une rythmique, à une mélodie, qui fait que tout à coup ça crée quelque chose d'original.

Manu Katché Neighbourhood (ECM/Universal) 2005

Concerts : le 4 octobre à Paris à La Cigale : avec Jan Garbarek, Tomasz Stanko, Marcin Wasilewski, Slawomir Kurkiewicz.

En tournée avec Franck Avitabile (piano), Alex Tassel (trompette), Gildas Boclé (contrebasse).

Manu Katché "Neighbourhood"

Manu Katché chez ECM. On le connaissait déjà en sideman (chez Jan Garbarek par exemple, avec qui il enregistre depuis l'album "I took up the runes" en 1990), mais en leader, voilà qui a de quoi surprendre. Surtout que ces derniers temps, Manu, qu'on a vu derrière les fûts chez Peter Gabriel, Sting ou Stephan Eicher et même sur la bande originale d'"Un indien dans la ville" (dans trio qui comportait aussi Geoffrey Oryema et Tonton David), s'est fait connaître comme juré dans l'émission de télévision "A la recherche de la nouvelle star"....

Jean-Marc Grosdemouge, M-la-Musique

ELBOW Leaders of the Free World (V2)

ELBOW Leaders of the Free World

You'll need the help of Job when listening to Elbow's new album for the first time. Leaders of the Free World, the group's third record, is the slowest of slow-burners - with maybe half a dozen plays required before it eventually hits the spot. But it is well worth persisting.

An initial reaction of Athlete-like blandness makes way for little nuggets of quirky charm and an adventure story-book excitement - as the songs unfold one by one revealing a cluster of warm textured sounds and lush, on the whole, understated arrangements.

The material, which in the group's own words is "prog rock without the solos", is perfectly suited to Guy Garvey's haunting Peter Gabriel-esque vocals. Like Gabriel, Garvey can carry a tune even when the music is stripped down - sparse even.

Songs over four minutes long won't be everyone's cup of tea - particularly when there's a pervading sense of doom and gloom in around half of them. But Leaders of The Free World does pack a punch among all the poignancy and depths of despair. Mexican Standoff and the stirring opener Station Approach are two of the more boisterous numbers - and also the best on show.

---------
BBC Collective* :

Coldplay by candlelight.

While Coldplay translated a similarly expansive sound into mega-sales, Elbow can take consolation in critical kudos. Fixed on the pop ley-line that links XTC’s pastoral epic Skylarking to Robert Wyatt’s serene Rock Bottom, their third album nails Guy Garvey’s blend of poignancy and pathos perfectly. Opener Station Approach sets a lusciously understated tone as Leaders Of The Free World unfurls as a bombast-free alternative to stadium rock. A big noise perhaps, but a pleasantly cuddly one, too.

watch video : forget myself ; listen to FULL track: forget myself

Peter Gabriel à l'ONU

Manu Katché :

"Je jouerai aussi pour une manifestation de l'ONU à Genève, le 7 et 8 octobre, avec P. Gabriel, Youssou N'Dour, Gilberto Gil, Neneh Cherry, Axelle Red, Angun et Cheb Mami, c'est un concert caritatif pour le paludisme, pour pouvoir acheter des moustiquaires."

Selon une source anonyme : on annonce un duo Peter Gabriel-Angunn au concert du 8 octobre. Le 7 octobre Peter participerait à un concert privé.

We're All Hip-Hoppers Now

Posted by Ed Driscoll on September 08, 2005 07:17 PM

Filed under: Music,
Books: Nonfiction,
Music: Home Recording

Making Music with Samples : Tips, Techniques, and 600+ Ready-to-Use Samples
Daniel Duffell

Book from Backbeat Books
Release date: 09 January, 2005

In the late 1970s, Brian Eno once said:

'Til about the late '40s, recording was simply regarded as a device for transmitting a performance to an unknown audience, and the whole accent of recording technique was on making what was called a "more faithful" transmission of that experience. It began very simply, because the only control over the relative levels of sounds that went onto the machine was how far they were from the microphone - like device. The accent was on the performance, and the recording was a more or less perfect transmitter of that, through the cylinder and wax disc recording stages, until tape became the medium by which people were recording things.

The move to tape was very important, because as soon as something's on tape, it becomes a substance which is malleable and mutable and cuttable and reversible in ways that discs aren't. It's hard to do anything very interesting with a disc - all you can do is play it at a different speed, probably; you can't actually cut a groove out and make a little loop of it. The effect of tape was that it really put music in a spatial dimension, making it possible to squeeze the music, or expand it.

In the mid-1980s, sampling was thought to be largely the realm of hip-hoppers, who took snippets of previously recorded songs, and integrated them into new recordings. For a while, it seemed like every drum riff on the radio was either from James Brown's drummers, or John Bonham's intro to Led Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks".

But these days, digital recording (especially when done via a hard disk-based recorder) is nothing but samples, as individual tracks of vocals and instruments are typically sliced up, moved around, speeded up, slowed down, and turned into loops. When William S. Burroughs and his fellow Beat artists invented the "cut-up" method of writing, surely they had no idea that, taken to its logical extreme with digital audio, it would become the basis of hard-disk recording.

This wouldn't haven't happened without the pioneering efforts of both musicians willing to experiment, and hardware and software designers inventing the tools that allow them to do.

Early Sampling Experiments

As Daniel Duffell explains in his surprisingly thorough 2005 book, Making Music With Samples, the first sampling instrument was the Mellotron of the 1960s, which allowed prerecorded audio tapes of strings, flutes, voices, and other instruments to be triggered by a musician playing an otherwise standard-looking musical keyboard.

For many years, the Mellotron was a bit of a one-off design, as Dr. Moog's analog synthesizer and its digital successors ruled the recording world. But in the 1980s though, sampling technology really took off.

In Peter Gabriel's 2004 DVD collection collection of music videos, there's a behind-the-scenes clip of Gabriel in an automobile junkyard with a tape recorder, smashing car windshields to create sounds to input into his then brand new (and fabulously expensive) Fairlight CMI synthesizer. Once sampled, such a sound could then be triggered via its musical keyboard, just like any other musical instrument. Kate Bush, who has credited Gabriel with her own exploration of sampling instruments, featured several songs (such as "Babushka" and "Mother Stands For Comfort") in the mid-1980s with samples of smashing glass as percussion. And of course, lots of real instruments were sampled, such as the Fairlight's pan flute samples, which Jan Hammer used to great effect in his Miami Vice TV soundtrack work....

New playlist for Still Growing Up: Live And Unwrapped

Peter Gabriel - Still Growing Up: Live And Unwrapped (2 Discs)

Will only play on European Region 2 or multi-region DVD players.

Disc 1:

1. Passion: The Feeling Begins
2. Red Rain
3. Secret World
4. White Ashes
5. Games Without Frontiers
6. Burn You Up
7. The Tower That Ate People
8. San Jacinto
9. Digging In The Dirt
10. Solesbury Hill
11. Sledge Hammer
12. Come Talk To Me
13. Biko
14. In Your Eyes

Disc 2:

-Still Growing Up Unwrapped' documentary film (83 mins). Peter's daughter Anna Gabriel takes over the director's chair with the collaboration of Hamish Hamilton to create a film which explores the world behind the music.

-Exclusive early studio footage of Peter and the band performing tracks 'More Than This', 'Darkness', 'Sledgehammer', 'No Way Out' and 'Growing Up'.

-Live concert footage of 'No Self Control' from the 'This Way Up' 1988 World Tour.

-Peter Gabriel performing 'Downside Up' and 'Father, Son' on the BBC's Jools Holland show.

Technical Details

Actors : Peter Gabriel

Certificate : Exempt from Classification

Languages English - Dolby Digital (5.1) Surround Sound ; DTS ; Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo

Honte à vous !

A l'attention des artistes africains et de Bush

mercredi 7 septembre 2005, par Falila Gbadamassi

Car les artistes musiciens américains n'ont pas mis plus de quelques jours à passer à l'action. Alors qu'on attend encore les chanteurs africains, exception faite de ceux qui ont tenté, en août dernier, à Niamey, sous la houlette de la Première Dame nigérienne, Laraba Tandja et sous la pluie d'apporter leur modeste contribution à la lutte contre la famine au Niger.

Paroles, paroles et paroles

Ceux-là même qui s'étaient dit exclus de l'initiative 'Live 8'. Une initiative pour les Africains sans les Africains. Youssou N'Dour (Youssou, si tu nous lis...) avait même trouvé dommage d'avoir été, de prime abord, le seul artiste africain invité à se produire durant le concert caritatif de juillet dernier. Pour parer à la critique, Peter Gabriel avait du organiser son 'Africa Calling' comme pour venir au secours de Bob Geldof, à qui l'on doit cette louable initiative contre la pauvreté. La presse anglaise avait même parlé de Ghetto.

Soit ! Mais il n'en demeure pas moins que les artistes africains sont aujourd'hui aux abonnés absents face au drame que connaît le Niger. C'est d'autant plus regrettable que le Programme Alimentaire Mondial (PAM) vient encore de faire un appel de fonds pour aider les 12 millions de personnes victimes de la famine au Niger.

Qu'attendez-vous ? Bob Geldof ? Pour encore le critiquer. Alors qu'il est possible, par exemple, à l'initiative de notre actuelle vedette internationale, Youssou N'Dour (encore lui, n'y voyez là aucun acharnement) de faire quelque chose ! En d'autres termes, au lieu de critiquer, vous feriez mieux de vous bouger et d'éviter de parler pour ne rien dire. Surtout quand vous n'êtes pas en mesure de faire. Le Niger est 'l'occasion rêvée' - façon de parler - de passer des critiques aux actes. Et de devenir véritablement des 'artistes engagés'. Car l'engagement est ici -au Niger- et maintenant !

S'il s'agit d'une question de moyens, je pense que la chose peut se faire assez facilement. Un stade, celui de Dakar ou celui d'une grande ville dans chaque région de l'Afrique conviendrait. Au nord, Casablanca ou Tripoli (le Guide éclairé de la révolution libyenne pourrait être un mécène
enthousiaste), à l'Ouest, Dakar, Addis Abeba (l'Union africaine pourrait apporter son soutien logistique) ou Nairobi pour l'Est, Brazzaville, qui bénéficie de l'expérience du Fespam, pour le centre.

Et enfin Johannesbourg, qui a accueilli plusieurs grands concerts, pour le Sud. D'autant plus que Nelson Mandela n'est pas loin et son aura suffirait à donner une envergure internationale à cette de série de concerts en Afrique. Pour ce qui est du transport, toutes ses grandes villes sont très bien desservies et toutes les compagnies aériennes, notamment africaines, seraient heureuses d'associer leur image à une cause. Enfin tous les grands médias audio-visuels du continent ainsi que TV5, RFI, la BBC auraient été heureux de coopérer, devenant ainsi des porte-voix très efficaces.

Non-assisstance à personne en danger

Quant à l'argent, le nerf de la guerre, on le trouve facilement quand on le veut pour la bonne cause. Côté donation, même si la majorité des Africains n'en n'ont pas beaucoup, ils sont prêts à aider. Le succès du mobile et du sms dans nos pays peut permettre de collecter des fonds avec une surtaxe. L'occasion de faire contribuer la planète aussi. Les réseaux mobiles africains seraient évidemment partants.

Ce qui est certain, c'est que les Chefs d'Etats africains mettront au moins la main à la poche au nom de leurs populations. Ils l'ont bien fait pour le tsunami, ils sont donc en mesure de le refaire pour un tsunami encore plus proche. Enfin pour collecter tout cet argent, on pourrait faire appel à l'une des agences des Nations Unies. Par exemple, le Programme des Nations Unies pour le développement (Pnud), lOrganisation des Nations Unis pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture (Fao) ou, pourquoi pas, la Banque Africaine de Développement (Bad). Tout ceci pour dire que la chose est humainement possible.

Tout comme d'éviter à des milliers de personnes de mourir de faim en Louisiane. Car pour le coup, on se croirait vraiment dans un pays africain et pas dans l'un des 51 Etats de la première puissance mondiale. Au moins sur le continent, on peut avancer qu'on est vraiment trop pauvres pour prévenir les catastrophes de ce type. Mais chez l'Uncle Sam... Même moi de Paris, je savais qu'il fallait évacuer.

Et puis je ne comprends pas que l'armée n'ait pas évacué de force les récalcitrants, les nécessiteux et les plus démunis - ce qu'elle est prête à faire aujourd'hui - puisqu'il y avait urgence. Au lieu de les envoyer après coup pour tuer des pillards qui ont sûrement raison de chercher de la nourriture. Passe encore que cela n'ait pas été fait, une cellule d'urgence aurait pu se tenir prête pour intervenir juste après le passage de Katrina pour éviter à des gens de mourir de faim dans un pays où l'on brûle les surplus d'une agriculture subventionnée au détriment de la libre concurrence internationale et surtout du continent africain.

A croire qu'être Noir est une malédiction !

Si j'étais paranoïaque, je dirais que c'est parce que ce sont des Noirs pauvres - double tare - que le gouvernement fédéral ne s'est pas rapidement mobilisé pour soutenir un Etat incapable de gérer cette situation de crise (d'autres comme la Floride ont prouvé qu'ils pouvait faire face à ce type d'évènement). A noter qu'il est de notoriété publique que la Louisiane est pauvre et que la Nouvelle-Orleans très sinistrée est peuplée à majorité de Noirs.

Il est clair que tout ceci n'est pas signe de grande clairvoyance, cher George W. Bush. Je doutais déjà du fait que tu en ais une once, aujourd'hui, j'en ai la confirmation. Quand c'est pour aller embêter les Irakiens pour un pétrole pour lequel les Etats-Unis ne seront jamais autosuffisants, Bush fils et ta clique vous êtes les premiers à vouloir guerroyer. Histoire de démontrer que vous êtes les policiers du monde ! Mais la police n'est-elle pas censée protéger les gens chez eux ?

Les Etats-Unis ont donc largement manqué à leur devoir en Louisiane. C'est un sacré revers pour la grande Amérique et plus particulièrement pour celui qui lui fait office de Président. Que tous les chrétiens conservateurs qui ont voté pour le réélire n'oublient pas de lui dire que la compassion fait partie de la vie d'un vrai chrétien ! Il n'en a pas beaucoup manifesté en ne
rendant pas visite, la première fois, à la majorité des habitants de la Nouvelle-Orleans qui se trouvaient dans les principaux lieux de rassemblement prévus à cet effet.

Mille visites supplémentaires n'y changeront rien ! Le mal est déjà fait. 'Shame on you' George Junior ! Et j'ajoute, cela vaut tout aussi bien pour toi que pour les artistes musiciens africains. Arrêtez de faire beaucoup de bruit pour rien et apprenez 'à balayer devant votre porte'. L'orgueil quittera alors votre coeur pour faire place à plus l'humilité.

Jammin' for human rights

Music Notes

IT HAPPENED TODAY . . . 08 septembre

1988 Some 81,000 people jammed a stadium in Budapest for an Amnesty International concert featuring Bruce Springsteen, Peter Gabriel and Sting.

Gabriel spoke to the crowd in Hungarian, urging then-Communist Romania to respect the rights of ethnic Hungarians.

see : http://www.sting.hu/doc/sajto/human-popcorn.htm (Hungarian)

Q&A: Ryan Adams

On the cysts in his head and writing under the influence

By Austin Scaggs

...

You're working on a soundtrack. What songs work perfectly in movies?

I love that Peter Gabriel song ["In Your Eyes"] in Say Anything. Paul Westerberg had that song "Dyslexic Heart" in Singles. I read somewhere that the producers needed him to give them a song and he said, "Cool. Gimme a guitar and a hotel room," and he wrote it in twenty minutes. Maybe we should get him more guitars and more hotel rooms...

Basse : un modèle OLP signature Tony Levin

La marque OLP a conçu sous licence Music Man une basse cinq cordes signée Tony Levin

Bassiste aux multiples facettes, présent sur d’innombrables galettes réalisées avec les plus grands (King Crimson, Peter Gabriel, David Bowie, California Guitar Trio, Alice Cooper et bien d’autres), le talentueux Tony Levin s’est associé à OLP pour un modèle basse à son nom.

Il s’agit d’un modèle Stingray, conçu sous marque OLP en reprenant les licences Ernie Ball Music Man. Equipée de cinq cordes (pas de version 4 cordes, allons, vous marchez sur les pas de Tony Levin !), l’instrument est équipé d’un micro humbucker actif. Le travail sur le son s’effectue avec quatre potentiomètres : volume, graves, médiums, aigus.

La basse existe en coloris pêche et naturel vieilli. Le prix public recommandé : environ 650 euros TTC. Le site de Tony Levin : http://www.tonylevin.com/ Le site du distributeur HTD : http://www.htd.fr

Leaders Of the Free World

Elbow

Leaders Of the Free World

Released: 12/09/2005

New single Forget Myself - with its Peter Gabriel-esque jolly video and marching beats - might have fooled you into thinking we're getting a more upbeat Elbow.

But you're never going to get an easy emotional ride with these Mancunian boys. The heartbroken-o-meter is in danger of self-combustion as Guy Garvey wraps his gravely tones round a fine selection of slices of torment on Leaders Of The Free World.

While many musicians addicted to writing about their own pain and confusion can produce the musical equivalent of nails down a blackboard, this bagful of anguish is a delight. If that's the right way to put it.

Tracks like The Stops and Station Approaching are bound to become tunes that get stuck on the stereo late in the evening when you need to listen to someone who's had as crap day as you. Cathartic ain't the word.

Jools Long