German-born, Seattle-based, Award winning singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Hans York has quickly made himself a name as an extraordinary DADGAD player and strong, engaging performer with a distinctive style and an irrepressibly delightful and approachable manner.
His intimate and distinctive voice draws comparisons to Sting, Paul Simon, Kenny Rankin or Michael Franks and captures the audience instantly with its honesty and clearness.
Hans accompanied Robert Palmer on German TV, toured as bassist with the New York Broadway Ensemble, played throughout Europe with master harp player Rüdiger Oppermann, and performed a Concerto as Soloist on fretless bass with the "Ars Quittilinga" Chamber Orchestra (Concerto written by contemporary East German composer Thomas König). Hans York co- founded the German Worldmusic cult band Moka Efti and recorded three CDs with them. The third album, “Fata Morgana” features US saxophonist Charlie Mariano and producer/saxophonist Heinrich von Kalnein (Vienna Art Orchestra).
Hans spent six months in Rio de Janeiro where he studied Samba, Bossa Nova and popular Brazilian music, an experience that upon his return to Germany, inspired his first solo album Hazzazar.
With his first American album “Inside Out” York breaks down the walls between world, pop, folk, jazz and acoustic music, by blending these styles with elegance and grace, resulting in a refreshingly original and intriguing work that shines with imagery and a joyful celebration of life and love.
Hans York is a world musician in the true sense of the term, drawing most of his present day inspiration from his vast eclectic background.
Holiday & The Adventure Pop Collective
Performing regularly throughout the west, Holiday and the Adventure Pop Collective (HATAPCO) is co-fronted by two vocal front men, Derric Oliver and Louis Caverly, accompanying themselves on fiddle, guitar, tuba, trumpet and piano, featuring Michael Taylor Hahn on drums; genre-swingin country, rock, pop, R&B, experimental jazz, jam; originals & covers.
The colorfully-monikered, California-based ensemble has already won enthusiastic acclaim for its "Adventure Pop" sound, displayed on indie releases and in their notoriously crazed live performances.
On their latest release, ‘Songs for Feeling Strong’, they recorded on 24-track analog tape in front of a live audience at Al Jardine's (Beach Boys) Red Barn Studios in Big Sur, CA. "We knew we wanted our next album to reflect the spirit of the band's past two years on the road," explains Derric Oliver, the band's primary singer/songwriter, "so we decided to throw a party for some of our closest friends and record the basic tracks."
The 13-song album features 11 original songs and two covers including the Beach Boys' hit, "Surfer Girl", featuring guest vocals by Beach Boys co-founder, Al Jardine.
HATAPCO's prior musical excursions have already won considerable praise from critics and fans around the country. They are truly, as Damon Orion from the Santa Cruz Good Times puts it, "a true band for the new millennium."
Hayward Williams
Hayward Williams’ “Another Sailor’s Dream” is a freewheeling, shotgun wedding of folk, blues and rootsy country rock, all filled with a gorgeous blend of ache, gristle and whiskey-toned gruffness.
The album is comprised of songs that walk a perfect line between the sweet and bitter, and the sentimental and cynical, and is perfectly bookended by the opening track, “The Ballad of Benson Creek,” and the finale, Williams’ own earnest version of Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road.”
The eleven performances are carried out by an impressive trio of multi-instrumentalists, including accomplished singer/songwriter and co-producer Peter Mulvey (Signature Sounds Recording), Dan McMahon (Wandering Sons), along with Williams on vocals, harmonica, acoustic guitar and piano.
www.myspace.com/haywardwilliams
Heavy Water Experiments
LA-based Heavy Water Experiments passionately resists the tendency of modern bands to revive sounds of bygone eras. While admittedly taking influence from 60’s and 70’s genres such as psychedelic and progressive rock, this is a group who strives to break new ground according to an avant-garde or art rock sensibility. One of the ways HWE achieves this is through unique instrumentation, such as the use of an 8-string bass along with a regular 4-string bass, keyboards, and drums. However, the band never relies on this approach as a marketing gimmick since it also incorporates electric and acoustic guitars in the usual way.
The sound of the band is eclectic and can range from a dark, heavy quality to a mellower, acoustic-oriented vibe. Certain tracks might seem to fit well in the stoner rock category, for example, while others could be deemed indie rock or some other current genre. In the past, the band has used marriage characterizations such as “Pink Sabbath,“ “Doorphine,” and “Radio Queens of the Stone Head.” These are intended to underscore the notion that HWE neither sounds like one particular band nor like any specific combination of bands. Accordingly, HWE has been compared to a vast number of past-to-present artists, and yet there has never been a tendency toward one or even a few in particular.
So far, HWE has enjoyed a laudable degree of progress while still remaining independent. To date, the band has toured the US and the UK (twice) as well as performing a handful of shows in Holland and Belgium. Locally, the band has played a wide range of venues from Spaceland, The House of Blues, and The Viper Room to more acoustic-oriented venues like The Hotel Café, which culminated in being chosen as one of Amoeba Records’ local picks. The band’s newly released debut album has received enthusiastic reviews internationally, and the album has been accumulating steady international momentum through underground radio airplay and live interviews from DJ’s in the US, UK, Europe, and Australia. Tracks from the album have also appeared on popular American TV shows such as 'Friday Night Lights', and the band’s promo poster appeared on various sets for an entire season of 'The O.C.'. The band has also self-organized two underground music festivals in the neighboring Mojave Desert with many notable LA bands performing.
The band is fronted by singer, songwriter, guitarist, keyboardist, bassist, and producer David Melbye — an LA native whose past bands/projects include Ludivine. Fuzz Beloved, and Zanzibar. His creative/artistic partner Roberto Salguero, originally from El Salvador, plays drums and percussion. Also joining the live ensemble are Rebecca Black on keyboards/vocals and Rick Staggs on bass.
www.heavywaterexperiments.com
www.myspace.com/heavywaterexperiments
Henrik Af Ugglas
Background
“The music was always there, even from the very beginning..... First impression: The Beatles’ ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’..... Over and over again..... The love for popular music was born..... Songwriting started at nights, just to keep the fear of dark away….. Came home 11 years old..... First gig as a drummer, 12 years old.....
Youth was spent playing in bands….. With people from Weeping Willows, Bob Manning, Maryland Cookies, etc.... Away from the music scene for a couple of years….. Some session work / gigging with Thåström, Micke Herrström, Eve, and so on.....
Work with the first album has been going on for as long as I can remember..... On and on and on and on..... It hasn’t been easy all of the time..... But it’s been neccessary….. Telling my story..... Tony Thorén is producing….. It’s mostly me playing, but I’ve had some help from a couple of important friends…..
I hope you’ll enjoy the ride.....”
www.myspace.com/henrikafugglas
Hey Negrita
Inspired by the success of their series of acoustic performances for various BBC shows (including Bob Harris on Radio 2), Hey Negrita took time out from their tour schedule in support of their 2008 album ‘You Can Kick’ and shifted into Miloko Studios in south London for a spur-of-the-moment session.
“The idea was to cut as many tracks as we could in five hours without any overdubs or edits. So we put down our electric guitars, turned off the amps and stripped down the drums. We just sat in a circle and put some microphones up. We didn’t even bother with headphones. We wanted to capture the raw energy of one of our live performances whilst preserving the intimacy of how we sound when we’re jamming in the kitchen.”
The results may in some ways be a surprise to anyone who has caught the band in recent years on their tours with Alabama 3, The Beach Boys
and Tony Joe White or at festivals such as SXSW, Glastonbury, Latitude and The End Of The Road Festival. Despite being renowned for the kind
of raucous live performances that Mojo, in its review of the band's recent Austin show, call “a joyful sour-mash sodden affair", this album of acoustic tracks sees them shifting down several gears and in many ways this gentler, acoustic approach allows Hey Negrita’s deft way with a melody and lyric to shine through like never before.
Backed up by a series of 3 animated videos and a viral game from animation studio PEW 36 and 4 'live in the studio' videos from award winning director Alex Walker (We Dreamed America), Fat Fox Records will be releasing 2 singles around the launch of the album on October 5th.
Hilary York
In a way, we have David Bowie to thank for Hilary York’s delightful sophomore album 'In the Dark', soon to be released on Hey Miau Records.
York came from a musical family; her parents had owned a record store before she joined them. She’s always been talented, singing for her family, taking piano lessons, writing poems from a very young age. As a young girl, she lived in America, Germany, Bolivia, and Australia, so there wasn’t much opportunity to see live music, just the occasional artist on live television and many music videos. But when Bowie appeared on local television, performing an oldie, his first hit “Space Oddity,” the young girl was hooked. She knew then and there that she wanted to write and sing, and her ambition to be the next Richard Pryor got tabled.
York spent time in Europe and practiced her songwriting, graduated college, and eventually settled in Austin, Texas, where her musical career took root. After years of songwriting, her debut album 'The Moon' was released in 2006, and garnered her a lot of local attention, along with showcases at SXSW and regular weekly club residencies.
With the release of 'In The Dark', Hilary York’s songwriting and singing have reached new heights. The record was produced by York with her musical foil Kullen Fuchs, a classically trained multi-instrumentalist. Featured on the record are an all-star group of local musicians. Among them are: Scrappy Jud Newcomb, one of the best guitarists in a town full of guitar players; Ian Moore, a former Austinite, and an outstanding guitarist and singer; Gene Kurtz, bassist with Dale Watson’s first-rate country band; Joey Shuffield, drummer of Austin hitmakers Fastball; and Julie Lowery, York’s long-time singing partner.
But it’s her songwriting and singing which have taken a significant leap. Listen to the warm confessional sound of album opener “Jaded,” which turns into a horn-driven rocker. “I Look For You” is an instant grabber, a catchy heartfelt country shuffle. “Carnival” is a jazzy blues, perfectly suited for a smokey late-night club. “Cover Me Up” is a seductive, radio-ready hook-filled hit to be. York also includes her first-ever recorded cover, Randy Newman’s “Baltimore,” which she first heard and fell in love with on a 1987 Nina Simone album (a big influence, not to mention which York’s father has lived in the city for a long time, so there’s personal relevance too). Intimate, confessional, warm, sexy and sassy, that’s Hilary York’s 'In The Dark'. We hope it’s going to be a new favorite of yours, too, like it has for us.
www.hilaryyork.com
www.myspace.com/hilaryyork
www.cdbaby.com/cd/hilaryyork
www.sonicbids.com/epk/epk.aspx?epk_id=15582
Holmes
“I’ve always enjoyed records that reveal a bit of versatility – ones that draw from a number of different moods and styles” says Holmes a.k.a. singer/songwriter/producer Roy Shakked, “My influences vary; my moods vary, and so I like to keep things moving in an attempt try to get a more complete picture”. Enlisting a group of friends that would make any record producer's mouth water - Guitarists Lyle Workman (Beck, Sting, Frank Black), Chris Bruce (Seal, Wendy & Lisa) and Joel Shearer (Alanis Morissette, Ben Taylor); Drummer Ramy Antoun (Seal, Alexi Murdoch), Cellist Sarah O'Brien (ELO, LA Philharmonic), Bassist Brett Simons (Alexi Murdoch, Liz Phair), and other close pals Holmes spent the winter of '06-'07 locked up in his home studio, bringing to fruition a long overdue project. ’Stop Go’ is brimming with influences from 70's era rock & roll with a nod towards The Beatles, but is produced with personal touches and an ear to the future. Effortlessly moving from power pop to hard-hitting rock to tender singer-songwriter ballads, the album stays true to a melodic core with Holmes' intimate voice as the anchor. An un-promoted EP with 5 early mixes from the album has already received spins from nearly 100 U.S. radio stations promising greater things to come.
Holmes’ music career started out in Boston where he worked as a bar pianist and do-it-all keyboardist while studying at Berklee College of Music. He then moved to NYC, working as a composer, and now resides in LA spending his time producing records, taking care of his aging dog, staying up late, occasionally composing for television and running his own record label. His music has been featured on television shows OC, Sex and The City, Independent Lens, Without a Trace and Nip/Tuck; a Nissan Motors commercial; movies Poseidon and The Devil Wears Prada, as well as recent album compilations for Pepsi Cola, Tommy Bahama and The Sharper Image to name a few.
A man of many aliases Holmes' is known to many for his notable Los Angeles record label Groove Gravy Records. Borrowing from a plethora of music genres and a variety of world flavors Holmes' production career reached a turning point as he recorded “Fresh Goods” - 2002's ultra-eclectic release under the pseudonym The Tao of Groove. As Jazzelicious he has remixed classic tracks by Sarah Vaughan, Jimmy McGriff, McCoy Tyner and Carmen McRae among others, produced tracks for Shihan and Ursula Rucker and, in the process, has developed quite a distinctive musical style.
‘Stop Go’ represents a brand new direction - more introspective and largely reliant on Holmes' lyrics and vocals. From the existential to social commentary; relationship matters to just good old party songs Holmes delivers.
Holy Sons
"Decline of the West" represents a vital intersection of style and method in Emil Amos' songwriting and production. The record combines his genre-hopping tendencies and no-rules mixing methods with the more hook-driven, straight-to-the-jugular phrasing that he has been honing over the last several albums. This makes "Decline.." his most stylistically varied effort to date while balancing a perfect mix of his more challenging sentiments with bigger hooks.
HolySons has existed in obscurity for 15 years now. Listeners have only heard of the project through word of mouth. Any and all attempts to make HolySons a more palatable, commodifiable 'music act' for a larger audience have been foiled by one hurtling asteroid or another. Most of the asteroids have been thrown by it's creator. The project remains to be a wormhole into the inner world of E.Amos who produces and plays all holysons music. Each HolySons album has a different sonic identity; experimenting with mutiple genres and recording formats. Each record meditates on a different aspect of a mind immersed in the attempt to appreciate life and the obsession with the failure to do so. E.Amos began home recording at the end of the 80's with his high-school hardcore band. Hardcore's commitment to it's own language of individualism, freedom, inner-strength, rebellion and radical no-rules expressionism formed the basis of HolySons' artistic template.
"Decline of the West" is named after and conceptually began with Oswald Spengler's pessimistic assessment that the Western culture is revealing the classic signs of a societies' decay and end. The record was recorded at Amos' home studio in late-night recording sessions that stretched over 3 years where he played every instrument and then mixed and re-mixed each track. Influenced by the avant German bands of the 70's he used nature recordings, radio transmissions and old Halloween tapes as source material to create slabs of musique concrete-style texture to surround and inhabit the songs. The basic message is an apocalyptic one, with the songs investigating the tensions between 'human nature', capitalistic culture, conformism, the inner self and the inevitable destiny of a society that has values such as ours. The record's production takes Holy Sons' minimalist avant-folk sound and journeys through formats as varied as dub, church-hymn, slow-jam, tape-collage and paranoid beats over-run by obtuse banjo-sitar runs... all performed with an inspired punk spirit.
The Honeydogs
The story of the Honeydogs begins in Minneapolis in the early 1990’s with two combative yet musically harmonious brothers, songwriter/guitarist Adam and drummer Noah Levy who wanted a band in which their favorite music--soul, American roots music, British pop, and punk--could coexist.
The band name has it’s origins in the Levy brothers’ Dickensian childhood. Mrs. Levy grew tired of caring for the demanding, precocious younger brother, Noah. He spent much of his lonely toddler-hood being babysat by the bee farm in their backyard and watching elder brother Adam play cardboard guitar to KISS records. Noah's earliest friends were bees—and what was the bee hive rack called in which those buzzing surrogate nannies made their home?...A honeydog.
The Levy brothers found a kindred spirit in bassist Trent Norton who had recently returned from a couple years touring the former Soviet Union and Western Europe in various bands. Together with John Fields and a few guests, Trent, Adam and Noah made the exuberant, eponymous debut, The Honeydogs (1995).
The band toured extensively in those early years, with the brothers Levy beating the fraternal crap out of each other across the Lower 48.
Guitarist Tommy Borscheid’s union with the band in 1995 helped fashion the band’s rough-and-tumble early signature sound on Everything, I Bet You (1996) for which Billboard magazine hailed them as “Alt Country’s Next Big Thing” in the mid 1990’s. “But Country was only one facet of what we are doing or interested in,” Adam says. “We liked Bowie and Jobim as much as the Flying Burrito Brothers and Merle Haggard.”
In the early days, Levy penned tunes like “Miriam,” a tribute to his late grandmother and her life immersed in social justice work. In “John Brown” Levy imagines how the abolitionist, if still alive, would view our current state of race relations. “Freak Show at the Fair” tapped into the alienation of people with disabilities and reflects on the society which excludes them.
Courted and signed by the majors, The Honeydogs produced Seen A Ghost (1997), their largest selling record. They were strange halcyon days, recalls bassist Norton “We toured with INXS weeks before Michael Hutchence’s death. We were feted and flown around the country and promised the moon.”
But their creative wanderlust and Levy’s ever-expanding songwriting and stylistic vocabulary led them down more obscure, albeit fertile, musical paths. The follow up to Seen a Ghost was Here’s Luck (2000), recorded immediately following two tragedies in the band—the departure of guitarist Borscheid and Trent Norton’s near death seizure. With howling guitars, soaring strings, melotrons, and dark psychedelia, Here’s Luck was a paean to the music business sausage grinder and the band’s indefatigable spirit.
With the addition of the angular, modernist/minimalist guitar work of Brian Halverson and the colorful, unfettered genius of Jeff Victor’s keyboard playing, the band’s live and recorded sound began to evolve.
Their 2003 release, 10,000 Years, received widespread critical accolades as “the Sgt Pepper of the new millennium, “Levy’s masterpiece” and “a rock opera that would make Peter Townsend cry”. Its conception and creation in 1999 predated 9/11 and eerily anticipated terrorist attacks on the West. Inspired by Levy’s 17 years of work with youth offenders, welfare-to-work participants and immigrant populations, 10,000 Years created a fan in Aimee Mann who released the record on her label and brought the band out on tour.
On their newest effort, Amygdala (pronounced uh mig’ dull uh), the band again teamed up with long time friend, collaborator and producer, John Fields, recording a marathon 5 day session in Minneapolis in fall of 2005. Guitarist Brian Halverson describes the session as “more raw and organic than the last few records.”
The amygdalae are almond-shaped groups of neurons in the brain which regulate emotions, specifically fear. All of Levy’s songs on Amygdala explore fear, obsession, addiction, and the idea that emotional experience forms human memory.
Amygdala continues the Honeydogs’ expansion of their sonic and stylistic palette record-to-record and features a revitalized lineup, including keyboardist and sonic wizard Peter J Sands and Minneapolis veteran drummer Peter Anderson. Halverson, along with Sands, create an eerie Stockhausen/Eno-esque sonic backdrop for Levy’s acidic lyrics and undulating melodies. Drummer Anderson brings a combination of rock raggedness and artful cadence to Amygdala.
Among the guests on the new album are Aimee Mann and Dan Wilson (Semisonic).The journey for the Honeydogs from one-time American roots music torch bearers to contemporary art rockers has been a long and fruitful one and Amygdala is the Honeydogs’ most experimental yet accessible work to date.
Horsehead
The second release from Horsehead builds upon the sound of its predecessor “Record Of The Year” without abandoning the hooks and harmonies that made that album successful. Containing the streamlined fusion of Tom Petty & the Stones, “Welcome To Horsehead” is filled with great songwriting, something that’s as difficult to achieve as a distinctive sound. It is with this second release that the band as a whole has been able to truly blossom into a modern yet timeless level of originality.
Many of the songs have a deep melancholy undercurrent but all the songs contain a cohesive element of hope, leading the listener on a journey through the record as a whole, not a just a collection of singles. The opening track “Heartbeaking Songs" masks a painful relationship and subtly sets the table for the story to unfold; "Walk It Off" is a powerful piano driven rocker that could fit on any Springsteen record from the late 70’s, "Lost Love Line" is a scornful, blistering number that will have you hitting repeat to play it over again and again. “I Need A Good Day” is presented as an optimistic silver lining that most heavy-hearted stories neglect to contain.
It is the passion and purpose behind “Welcome To Horshead” that makes for an invigorating listen that you will keep coming back for more.
www.horseheadmusic.com
www.myspace.com/horsehead
Hans York
HATAPCO
Hayward Williams
Heavy Water Exp
Henrik Af Ugglas
Hey Negrita
Hilary York
Holmes
Holy Sons
Honeydogs
Horsehead
