The Burning North is a collaboration between songwriter Thomas Siering and drummer prodcuer, Marco Giovino. The two have worked together on multiple projects in the past, but The Burning North, both the band and the album could very well be their finest. An album anchored by the impeccable vocals of Wendy Drown, Marco’s production and Thomas‘s heartfelt lyrics. The record explores a wide swath of styles and subject matter.
Siering says of the band and the album: I met Marco (Giovino) a dozen years ago through the great Nashville singer Elizabeth Cook. Marco was playing the drums for her, but then again, Marco has played the drums for just about everyone; Robert Plant, Alison Krauss, Kris Kristofferson, and Sir Tom Jones to name a few. We worked together on four records with Rebecca De La Torre, a couple for The 81s with Tim Carroll and the After the News album with my friend Addi McDaniel.
In 2018, we also released an Elmore James tribute collection, Strange Angels ~ In Flight with Elmore James, with tracks by Jamey Johnson, Sir Tom, Warren Haynes, Billy Gibbons, Bettye LaVette, Rodney Crowell, Keb’ Mo’ and others. It garnered significant praise for its artistry, authenticity and assemble of players. Also, Marco’s mono production received particularly glowing notice.
The material for The Burning North was originally conceived as a bit of a concept album. When we brought Wendy (Drown) on board, you could hear her instant emotional attachment to the material. She really owned it. You felt like she had lived it. The record shines because of that. This album has diverse musical styles and it explores the expanse of human emotion but hopefully it ultimately feels like a coherent story, held together with gripping urgency and Marco’s impeccable production.
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| Photo - Guðmundur Óli Pálmason |
Kugger's third album with Bark At Your Owner, is a Interglacial theme album, that runs through the singles and stand alone ep. Featured artist are Svart Tulpan and Red Cell from Stockholm, Sweden. Bark At Your Owner Manifest - We want to bite the hand that feeds us, albeit gently. We bark and laugh in the face of conservatism! Bark At Your Owner (BAYO) advocates an inclusive and equal music industry where zero tolerance towards harassment and discrimination is the basis. We live in interglacial times. Interglacial times are unstable times of great change.
Change is the only constant in nature, without it, things stagnate and freeze. After a great freeze comes a thaw, but when things heat up too much, we seek colder climates. The great change is upon us, like a glacier it has been advancing slowly towards us, but now it's calving in front of us, it comes crashing down upon us, sending shockwaves not just through the muddy glacial waters of the music industry, but through every corner of human intuition and artistic creation. We're heading to an AI glacier maximum, where the machine will replace the human mind. But the machine is dead, the machine is cold, the machine is frozen. If we are to survive as artists and as humans, we'll need to learn to live side by side with the machine, carving out warm, creative valleys between the machine's frozen outlet glaciers.
This is the first time I've had to state this, but it won't be the last; no AI was used in the creation of this album. Every note was placed where it is by the human hand, guided by the human ear, dictated by the human mind. Enhancing the humanness of the album is a Swedish legend, Anders Ericsson, known from Lustans Lakejer and a former member of Ubangi. Anders now operates under the moniker Svart Tulpan, and as far as I know, he's not AI, but I've never met him, so I can't say for sure.
Anders did an amazing job, bringing warmth and emotional depth to three of the songs; There's no reason to be afraid, Doesn't mean you can't dance, and the title track. As usual, my human friend and longtime collaborator, Henry Barboza from Henryaudiouk.com mixed and mastered the album, and as per usual, he did an outstanding job.
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The latest single from UK post punk heroes The Jack Rubies is “Greedy” and is on all digital platforms worldwide. It's an energized and timely slice of noir-tinged rock that show the band continuing its 21st Century resurgence after the acclaimed 2023 comeback album Clocks Are Out Of Time… and sets the stage for their fourth full-length LP, due on Vinyl and CD from BSR in January.
Stand by for more news on the forthcoming album Visions In The Bowling Alley. From a declamatory intro quote that tags the mysterious power of Parmesan cheese, the band launches in with up tempo glee, peppering the riff with globs of call and response vocals before hitting the sing-along chorus, where a melodious kalimba and the guest vocal harmonies of Annabel Wright join the mix. A somewhat feral synth solo grabs the tune by the scruff of the neck before the group barrels on to the finishing line with hand claps and monkish “aah”s to the fore.
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Anja Churchill invokes the laid back elegance of Gabi Hartmann, and soft strength of Arooj Aftab, while reshaping a classic song of the French cannon into a nostalgic requiem for the past. Sung in hushed French, this version of a classic French chanson walks the line between folk intimacy and jazz minimalism, quiet, cinematic and disarming. Anja's vocals are delicate and unwavering, floating over sparse jazz-inflected piano chords, and an anchoring bass line.
Inspired by alt pop French artists of the moment, Zaho de Zagasan and November Ultra, with Swedish co producers Micke Lyander (Cardigans, The Ark) and Erik Ronström (Lena Jonson Trio), helping to bring her vision to life, Anja bends genres and creates an emotive dreamscape which transcends language.
Anja Churchill is an American-Swedish singer-songwriter who weaves raw storytelling with an ethereal, transportive voice. Shaped by a lifetime of chronic illness and multiple near-death experiences, her music carries a rare depth that's attuned to introspection and the unspoken. With a background in world music and sound healing, Churchill has spent over a decade crafting sonic landscapes that draw listeners into dreamlike spaces.
In 2022, she relocated with her family from Los Angeles to Gotland, a remote island in the Baltic Sea, where she wrote her debut EP, Children of the North. Her sound is intimate and expansive, drawing inspiration from 1960's folk, jazz, and world music. Anja splits her time between the island of Gotland and the south of France.
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In a groundbreaking musical partnership that has been decades in the making, Frank Popp Ensemble announces the release of "Right Before My Eyes," featuring the Modfather himself, Paul Weller. This historic collaboration marks Frank Popp as the first German artist to work with the legendary British musician on an original track, uniting two distinctive voices across generations and musical traditions.
The track is nothing short of sensational. Weller's unmistakable voice cuts through with raw emotion, delivering lyrics that confront the uncomfortable truths of our time, while his signature guitar work weaves through Frank Popp's lush, sophisticated production. Popp's approach here showcases his evolution as a producer – layers of vintage soul instrumentation, carefully crafted arrangements that recall the golden era of Northern Soul and Funk, yet polished with a contemporary sheen that makes every element shine. It’s an electric meeting of minds, uniting Weller’s socially charged, genre-defining artistry with Popp’s cinematic production, timeless grooves, and uncanny ear for the perfect hook that has established him as a fixture of Berlin’s music scene.
Lyrically, Weller tackles the escalating injustices unfolding across the world – people forced to flee their homes, systematic exploitation, endless wars waged in the names of governments and religious leaders who have lost all touch with reality. The song's title captures the unbearable irony: all of this horror is happening right before the eyes of the world, in plain sight, yet continues unabated. It's the kind of unflinching commentary that has defined his entire career, from The Jam's working-class anthems to his ongoing commitment to speaking truth through music, bringing the weight of fifty years of experience and conviction to every line.
For Frank Popp, this collaboration represents the fulfillment of a lifelong musical obsession. As a teenager in 1980s Germany, he discovered The Jam's explosive energy through tracks like "That's Entertainment" and "Town Called Malice." Soon after, he was dancing wildly to The Style Council's "Shout To The Top" in Hilden's small-town disco JWD, attempting to impress girls with the smooth sophistication of "My Ever Changing Moods." Weller's solo work continued to haunt his imagination, with "You Do Something To Me" serving as a direct inspiration for this collaborative masterpiece. "It is an incredible honor for me to be able to work with this icon of music history, the 'Modfather'," Popp explains.
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