08.16.06 (MusicPortal.com) On September 12th, Capitol Records will release "Face The Promise," BOB SEGER's first studio album in 11 years. The new offering opens a masterful new chapter in a songbook that has captured the dreams, ideals, yearnings and truths of the American experience for a remarkable forty years now. The album's lead-off single is entitled 'Wait For Me.' Universally acknowledged by fans and musicians as one of the few truly defining voices of American music, his vivid portraits of working class lives convey the hope and the heartbreak implicit in the American dream. "Face The Promise" marks Seger's return in classic form: urgent, honest, rousing, timeless -- a new and compelling testament to Rock And Roll's undying redemptive power.Bob Seger has sold nearly 50 million albums in his career. Among his eleven platinum and seven multi-platinum awards, "Against The Wind," "Night Moves" and "Stranger In Town" have each been RIAA-certified for over 5 million album sales in the U.S., as has his massively-influential 1976 breakthrough classic, "Live Bullet." The 1994 "Greatest Hits" collection has sold over 7 million copies, in an unbroken 600-week run in the upper reaches of the Billboard Pop Catalog chart. He is a Grammy winner ('Against The Wind,' Best Rock Performance By A Group Or Duo, 1980) and a 2004 Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame inductee. Observed through the eyes of the outsider and the everyman, the reveler and the romantic, the songs of Bob Seger truly exemplify the "classic" in classic Rock songs like 'Turn The Page,' 'Rock And Roll Never Forgets,' 'Night Moves,' 'Katmandu,' 'Old Time Rock And Roll" and many more. "Face The Promise" Track Listing: 1. Wreck This Heart • 2. Wait For Me • 3. Face The Promise • 4. No Matter Who You Are • 5. Are You • 6. Simplicity • 7. No More • 8. Real Mean Bottle (with Kid Rock) • 9. Won't Stop • 10. Between • 11. The Answer's In The Question (with Patty Loveless) • 12. The Long Goodbye
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08.14.06 (MusicPortal.com) Gainesville, Florida quartet SISTER HAZEL will be releasing their new album, "Absolutely," on October 10th. With national distribution via ADA, the album will be released on Adrenaline/Wandering Hazel Records. "Absolutely" contains 13 songs of the type of roots music Sister Hazel has come to be known for over the past thirteen years. The album was recorded primarily at Darkhorse Studios in Franklin, Tennessee, with additional recording completed at The Vibe Studio (Nashville), Thelma's Studio (Nashville), and Nickel And Dime Studios (Atlanta). The production responsibilities were split among three producers: Don McCollister, who has worked with Sister Hazel in the past (on their albums "Fortress," "Chasing Daylight," and "Live*LIVE"), Scott Parker (who also executive produced), and Richard Marx. McCollister and Parker each produced six tracks, while Marx produced a song he and Block co-wrote entitled 'Meet Me In The Memory.' "Scott did a really great job of trying to extract what we do in our live show in the studio," says rhythm guitarist/vocalist Drew Copeland. "He got us back to the raw nature of where we go live on stage. And working with Don was very comfortable because we've known him for so long." Drummer Mark Trojanowski called working with Marx "my favorite part of the whole experience. He's an amazingly talented individual." The first single from the album, which features guest vocals from band pal Shawn Mullins, is called 'Mandolin Moon.' The song will impact at Hot A/C and Triple A radio formats on August 21st. "Absolutely" Track Listing: 1. Shame • 2. Mandolin Moon • 3. Meet Me In The Memory • 4. Beautiful High • 5. Hey Hey • 6. Hello It's Me • 7. Tear By Tear • 8. Where Do You Go • 9. Anyway • 10. This Kind Of Love • 11. Truth Is • 12. One Time • 13. Everything Else Disappears
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08.07.06 (MusicPortal.com) PAUL McCARTNEY releases his new full-length work of Classical music, "Ecce Cor Meum," through EMI Classics on September 25th. The album is McCartney's fourth Classical release since "The Liverpool Oratorio," which was issued in 1991. "Ecce Cor Meum" ("Behold My Heart") has been more than eight years in the making, and its origins follow in the historic tradition of composers that have been commissioned to write music for the world-renowned Magdalen College Oxford. His hope was for "a choral piece which could be sung by young people the world over in the same way that Handel's 'Messiah' is." An oratorio in four movements, "Ecce Cor Meum" is scored for choir and orchestra. The text combines both English and to a lesser degree, Latin. "As Latin is known and sung by choirs all over the world, I felt it would be appropriate to use at times during the piece," he says. In November 2001, the first version of "Ecce Cor Meum" was given its first preview performance by the Magdalen College Choir, which was conducted by Bill Ives at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford - a great learning experience for McCartney. "Eventually I made it all come together through correcting a lot of misapprehensions - a lot was learned before the Sheldonian performance, but a lot of it was learned afterwards. An experienced choral composer knows that children can't be given huge sustained passages; they don't have the energy and the stamina. At the Sheldonian, there was some quite hard stuff that I didn't realize because I'd done it on the synthesizer. But during that first performance, the solo treble couldn't come on for the second half - I think I'd used him up in the first half! Those are things that people either learn because they are taught them immediately at the first lesson or you learn through the years, so it was good to go through the piece a lot of times. We took out huge choral sections and gave them to the orchestra. If it had been a Beatles song I would have known how to do it, but this was a completely different ball game."
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08.03.06 (MusicPortal.com) THE LONDON APARTMENTS' "Logistics & Navigation" EP will be released later this month on Beggars Banquet Records throughout the world in CD, vinyl and digital download formats and includes the songs 'Streetlights Are Soldiers,' 'Circuit,' 'Summer Takes All Of My Time' and 'Stories Of Big Cities & Bigger Hearts.' The London Apartments began as a bedroom-recording project for then 19-year-old Justin Langlois. It was 2003, and Langlois had just entered his first year at the University Of Windsor in Ontario, Canada. A fifteen-minute walk away from main campus there sits a four-story apartment complex in Windsor, and at the top of its shambled brick exterior is a cement plaque that reads "The London Apartments." In this early 20th-century building, Langlois lived in a small apartment with thin walls, no insulation and cold floors. Against a wall in the room that doubled as a bedroom and living room, there was a desk at which Langlois sat with headphones and recorded the sounds that he wanted to hear. It began as noise manipulation, mostly creating layers with his acoustic guitar and static from the television. To avoid disturbing his neighbors, Langlois began to sing ever so quietly, and in between classes he began to toy with freeware drum machines and random sequencing software, eventually layering it all together. Borrowing a mini disc player from his roommate, Langlois listened to the songs on cold winter walks to his classes, and upon returning home would try to learn more about why certain sounds happened. Langlois uploaded the experimental tracks to the CBC-run site, New Music Canada, which has since become an integral part of The London Apartments' story. Sound Of Pop Records founder J.C. Smith was browsing the site and came across the splash page with Langlois as a featured artist. Smith's find resulted in the first of many trips to Sound Of Pop in Toronto for Langlois, where initial conversations of a single-song licensing deal flourished into a recording contract and publishing agreement with the Toronto-based label.
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08.02.06 (MusicPortal.com) TORI AMOS classics, rarities, remixes and previously unreleased music are set to finally come together in one release via "A Piano: The Collection" this Fall. Presented in deluxe packaging that resembles Amos' beloved Boesendorfer piano keyboard, the five-disc boxed set will be available September 26th at regular retail outlets. Produced by Amos, the career-spanning collection highlights selections from her studio albums as well as B-sides and numerous unreleased songs, combining well-known studio versions with rare alternate mixes, including several songs Amos recently remixed for this project. Tracks included will also feature material from her Sony years, with music from "Scarlet's Walk" as well as "The Beekeeper." "A Piano: The Collection" also offers a revealing and extensive track-by-track commentary penned by Amos, who discusses the inspiration behind the songs and albums, and explains why they were chosen for the new boxed set. For what could be the most intriguing addition to the collection, Amos invites listeners into her artistic process with a medley of demos for the songs 'Fire-Eater's Wife/Beauty Queen,' 'Playboy Mommy' and 'A Sorta Fairytale.' Amos explains in the liner notes: "I'm usually pretty reticent to expose the musical development process... The demo medley was a choice I made so that other songwriters can feel an affinity with the idea that songwriters have to push themselves and not just accept the first incarnation that you are presented with. Each of these three songs are presented here in their completed form somewhere within the box set, so you can see them through from conception to development." In other Tori Amos news, she is publicly thanking all supporters of RAINN (the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), to which she has dedicated time and energy to raise awareness about sexual assault for almost 12 years now.
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08.01.06 (MusicPortal.com) DEVASTATIONS' second full-length album, "Coal," will be released via Beggars Banquet Records in Europe and Brassland Records in the U.S. and Canada on September 28th, preceded by the single 'Take You Home' on August 25th. It has been a little over two years since the release of the Devastations' acclaimed self-titled debut - an album described by Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs in Mojo magazine as "the best thing I've heard all year," and named "Best Debut Of 2004" by Rolling Stone Germany. The greater part of that time has been spent in Europe, using Berlin as a home base, touring the continent and rubbing shoulders with the likes of Einsturzende Neubauten and Tindersticks. And now Devastations - vocalist/bassist Conrad Standish, guitarist/vocalist Tom Carlyon, drummer Hugo Cran and keyboardist Kiernan Box - return with "Coal," delivering on the promise of their debut - displaying assurance, subtlety and a widened scope. Recorded in three locations -- a Prague concert hall, the former East German headquarters for radio and television in Berlin, and a Melbourne studio -- "Coal"'s gentle ballads, such as 'I Don't Want to Lose You Tonight' and 'Dance With Me', sit alongside the sharp, rapid fire assault of 'Take You Home' or 'What's A Place Like That Doing In A Girl Like You.' Strings and piano alternate with stinging electric guitars, and throughout the songwriting is deft and heartfelt. The album's beauty is also enhanced by the contributions of a number of special guests. New Zealand songbird Bic Runga lends her gorgeous voice to 'A Man Of Fortune,' Padma Newsome of highly-regarded New York instrumental quartet Clogs plays violin and viola on 'I Don't Want To Lose You Tonight' and 'A Man Of Fortune,' and Genevieve McGuckin (ex-These Immortal Souls) plays a woozy optigan on 'Dance With Me.' It's a testimonial to Devastations' craft that "Coal" is as cool, cohesive and compelling a record as you could hope to hear this year.
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[Folk News: July 2006]
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