Camille the French rock queen and an Unearthed.com special delivery!

I have been VERY busy digging up songs from Unearthed.com lately – the podcast has helped a great deal, but a lot of it I’ve done on my own. It is one of the best feelings to listen to all this crap music, then one random person you click on has a great voice, and good instruments. Example: Melbourne’s Becc Watts! She has an amazing voice – one I would compare with the Waifs’ lead singer   -Vikki Simpson - the Waifs are another great band I suggest you check out – Sundirtwater is a GREAT song!!!!

Back to Becc… I find the whole sparce piano, light drum beat GREAT! One of my favourite songs at the moment is Just For Me – which is the only one she has on Unearthed.

Now to Camille! She was born and raised in Paris, trained as a ballet dancer during her childhood and she was intrigued by the whole American ‘musical’ (play) thing. Camille released her debut album Las Sac Des Filles as recently as 2004. She has only released 1 other album (Les Fil)  but her next album Music Hole is being released on April 7 (hey, that’s only one week away!) 
Camille has a really avant-garde sound, with most of the percussion and backing vocals consisting of er, interesting sounds from the mouth. Which I find quite cool.

Making the Triple J’s Hottest 100 last year with Ta Douleur is how I really discovered her. It went from the whole ’she’s a bit weird, so I’ll just not listen to it at the moment’ to ‘yeah, I really like the avant-garde sounds, and the french bits!’ Which has pretty much been my attitude to any music not completely normal – which is most of the music I like nowadays…. anyway!

Something More Than Ordinary is a band I discovered partly via Unearthed, and partly via Myspace. I love the keys in it, although I personally think the vocals could maybe do with a better voice (just my opinion, don’t harrass me about it!)
Probably my favourite song of theirs is Something More Than Ordinary.

Boogie Warehouse is an unsigned band, also from Unearthed – oh the joys of it! A dance/pop 5-piece from Sydney who I just like to groove to, despite the fact that  I only discovered them on Saturday!

Oh, and keep a lookout for me under the alias ‘Lamplit Shadows’! After much thought and desperation I have come across that name and intend to start my booming musical career using the name! Just you watch out, I’ll be the next big thing – not! (It’s not even my goal)

I leave you with this picture from Bibomedia:

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Laura Marling

My new favourite artist at the moment is Laura Marling.

I discovered her thanks to the ever influencial Triple J! Yay for nationwide radio!

Laura is from Eversly, in the UK, only 18, and her her debut LP was released only like, a month ago, but she has  2 EPs, which were released in 2007, I think.

A reason which I think draws me to her music is that it is really quite sparce, frequently it is just the vocals and guitar or piano, but it also (if I remember correctly) builds up with strings etc. She only has 2 songs on her myspace, which, with the amount most artists have nowadays is very little.

Anyway… now lets see if I can conjure up an Unearthed person… I’m sure there was one, I wrote it down the other day…. erm…. Okay, so this isn’t the one I’m thinking of (I wrote that one down on my schoolwork or something, so I haven’t the foggiest idea where the name is), but I quite like Illzilla. They’re hiphop, and Live Enough is my favourite song of theirs – I love the keys on that, just the syncopation/beats and all. The Score is also quite a good song!

Thankfully though, when it was featured on Triple J a few weeks ago, I got to hear the WHOLE album (Alas I Cannot Swim).

Once…

…Upon a time is NOT the theme of this movie. My sister introduced me to it, and I really, really love it!

The basic storyline is guy, girl, he busks, she meets him, they end up playing music together, they get a band, record an album, and then all go their seperate ways. Kind of thing.

One thing I really liked about it was that it had the Napoleon Dynamite style hand-held cameras, and the fact that the only music was played by the actors, and most of the time it showed you them playing it.

If you are into that kind of thing, and even if you are not, I highly recommend it as a great, quiet watch…. although, not really ‘quiet’ quiet with the way the guy sings.

Some other really cool things which I liked about the movie were that neither of the main two actors had acted before, the guy (Glen Hansard) is from The Frames, and he wrote all the music himself… I don’t know if she (Marketa Irglova) helped. AND another randomly weird thing about the movie is that they never say anyone’s name!!!! Not once does it let you know their names….. Only I have a slight inkling that her name was Sarah. But I’m pretty sure I made that up

The amphibious whale

If you actually do check out the Discards’ blog you may notice that they have a competition for drawing a cd design. This is my lovely work. Which under NO circumstances will I be showing them…. unless they land here of course.

Albums… Artists… Me.

I was reading the Discards blog and saw that they had their ten favourite albums. So I thought I’d be a dag, and copy. Their goal is to right reviews on them, but I think I have already done that. Instead, I will, I dunno, link to the reviewing blog/add things. I might make it up as I go too.

Top Ten AlbumsBegin To Hope – Regina Spektor
Book Like This – Angus & Julia
Stand Up – Blue King Brown
Bring It On – Gomez
Like Drawing Blood – Gotye
Stand Out/Fit In – The Basics
Fire Is On The Bird - Jackson Jackson
Because of the Times – Kings Of Leon
White Moth – Xavier Rudd
If The Ocean Gets Rough – Willy Mason

This is only a present list – what I mean is that in 6 months it is likely that none of those albums’ll be on the list cos I’ll  have discovered a HEAP of more stuff. Yeah. And spent a heap of money on it too! An unearthed person which I discovered while I was getting around to listening to the Unearthed podcast from some months ago was Jennifer Boyce. I REALLY like her style. Nice and Ben Folds-y…. has a bit of bounce to it.

Artwork #2

The Discards

They are ‘unearthed’ (as such = not signed), but I believe they are working on releasing their debut album. They’re actually some of my ‘friends’ which means I hang around with them (for two reasons – reason a: they have the same friends I do reason b: they’re cool)

My absolute favourite song of theirs is WAY up in my favourites it’s called Girl In The Yellow Dress. Following that Coldest Day (not technically the Discards, but their part of Something Not Taken, and Something Not Taken is non-existent now, as far as I know), then The Waiting, then You Know Why I Came.

I understand that one of the singers has… an interesting, untrained voice, but they’ve got some great music ideas, so I listen to it anyway. I’m kinda of used to it so, yeah.

New Subject:

Have you ever heard of Like A Version?

Well, it’s basically triple j recording people doing covers. Two of my favourites are Regina Spektor – Real Love (it made it into the Hottest 100 this year) and Ben Folds – Such Great Heights. I only have the Like A Version 3 CD. But there are three, and I suggest buying all of them, because I am fairly confident that you will find at least one song that you like on it.