Tag Archive: Soundcloud


THE PURE VOICE OF OLIVIA CHANEY

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February 3, 2013

it was a great pleasure to receive Alasdair Roberts’ fine new album, A Wonder Working Stone, for review on Whisperin’ & Hollerin’.

A happy consequence of this was to discover  Olivia Chaney  who sings backing vocals on the album.

Olivia is a new name to me but one I expect to hear much more of .

She studied piano, voice and composition at Chetham’s School of Music and The Royal Academy of Music and taught herself guitar and harmonium.

As you can hear from a selection of her songs on Soundcloud and the video link below, hers is a voice that makes an immediate impact for its purity and grace.

Her debut solo EP is out now and hopefully is just the beginning of an illustrious career.

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THE WIRE BIGS UP JAMES FERRARO

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December 20, 2011
ferraro

The Wire magazine’s album of the year is a typically perverse choice. I doubt whether James Ferraro’s Far Side Virtual on Hippos In Tanks records will top any other ‘best of 2011’ list and probably won’t even figure in most.

This will probably please the Wire team as they want to demonstrate the sharpness and originality of their ‘cutting edge’ selections.

The album is certainly topical as it taps into the year’s obsession with tablets, pads and androids.An I-Pad features prominently on the album cover and many of the samples are the sounds any internet user will recognise.

It’s a playful collection of tunes and has a certain novelty value but I suspect it will date very quickly. Ferraro describes it as an “opera for consumption civilisation” and he is, I’m sure, aware that it is a product that is as transient as computerised jingles that inspired it.

Ferraro is highly prolific, both as a solo artist and with Spencer Clark in The Skaters. As if to emphasise the trashy, disposability of his output, a a lot of his music has been released on limited edition cassettes or Cdrs. It would be ironic if The Wire’s elevation of Far Side Virtual to the number one slot means that it is viewed as a classic but frankly I don’t think there’s much danger of this happening.

A fun and clever record but ‘best of the year’?  No way.

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E-MUSIC – LEAVING A SINKING SHIP

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November 30, 2011

I signed up for e-music in April 2005 and according to my profile history, I have downloaded tracks from a grand total of 1,185 artists but today I decided to cancel my account.

In the six and a half years I have been a member the download and online streaming options have changed radically. For example, in 2005, there was no Spotify (launched in 2008), no Soundcloud (2007) and no Bandcamp (2008). Also, it was not so easy to find tracks and albums on blogs and I was not so genned up on P2P sites like e-mule or Soulseek.

I am grateful to e-music for helping me to discover artists like Jack Rose, Charalambides and Acid Mothers Temple but I have decided to leave what I regard as a sinking ship. Continue reading →

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IN MYSPACE NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM

Filed under: Music — 1 Comment
March 10, 2011

I have always hated MySpace. The website design reminds me of brash junk mail and gives me a headache when I try to figure out just what resources it offers.

When it started out in 2003, it at least provided a world wide window for unsigned or struggling bands but now this service is much better catered for by sites like Soundcloud and Bandcamp.

If you want another outlet or to see how many people are listening to your music there’s also Last.Fm.

As far as social networking goes, it may have been the most popular site in June 2006 but nowadays they haven’t a hope in hell of competing with the Facebook juggernaut.

A takeover by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporations in 2005 and more recent attempts at an ‘awesome’ makeover don’t convince me that the site is anything more a sinking ship. Since 2008, user growth has stagnated. They have laid off 30% of its workforce and in April 2009 they made the  drastic move of replacing longtime CEO and co-founder Chris DeWolfe with Owen Van Natta. He would have to be a Steve Jobs-like genius to pull things around.

Seven years is a lifetime on the Internet and MySpace is a website which has been unable to adapt to survive in the face of changing tastes and challenges. Start writing the obituaries now.

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