soul – and so she thinks

Introducing – Courtney Yasmineh

admin — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 19:54:37 +0000

Ballsy and confident in demeanour, Courtney Yasmineh is charming and captivating, and her music direct and delicious, a potent cocktail of alternative rock, folk, pop and even a little gospel, all blended and blurred into a dazzling and blistering output. A complex and tough upbringing saw her flee to great north woods of Minnesota where she started working on a six song EP, including the fanciful tune Married To Bob (Bob Dylan once fled from the same woods.) Since then she has grown and developed, but still always raw and honest. Brazenly emotive, her music perches on the brink of various styles but gathers up their substance, eclectic yet distinctive. New album Wake Me Up When It’s Over has a rather misleading title. Despite tough times and adversity Courtney strikes as the kind of woman who grabs life, attacks it head on, and rides out her thrills and demons. Opening with Ballad To My Other Self, a bold statement of awareness as to personality fractures and how people change, all glitch and guitars, the album flickers through slow and fast, happy and sad, grunge and folk. Scrutiny sees soft flirty vocals, and Bury Me makes you squirm with its raw and open wounds from an unhappy marriage. The ditzy named Pretty Kitty is a highlight, howling loops and compulsive riffs under slightly husky vocals, building up to a brash and almost seismic shifts. Released on her own Indie label, Stupid Bitch Records, she will be playing songs from it when she visits Europe.
26.09 – 12 Bar Club,London
27.09 – The Troubadour, London
30.09 – Gaslight Club @ Oporto, Leeds
01.10 – The Blues Bar, Harrogate
03.10 – The Victoria, Swindon
04.10 – The Jet Lounge, Amsterdam
05.10 – Het Podium, Hilversum
06.10 – The Music Village, Brussels.
.

Komla EP

admin — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 19:57:34 +0000

Unique is a word often bandied around, often wrongly. Chameleon like Komla are more deserving than most of the adjective, their rambunctious, rocky, sexy and smooth sounds are driving and dramatic. Taking the best of bluesy sixties sounds and connecting them through the ages, picking up influences along the way, cutting and splicing them together into a musical montage. Anthemic and arty, there is a range of complex interludes and melodies in tracks 99 (Chocolate Girl), We Belong, Feeling Something and That Summer, cleverly masked into something simple and immediate. The invigorating chemistry between the three members reacts to make something more powerful than the individuals, each of whom are startlingly talented alone. Meandering guitar, deep swaggering bass, thrashing drums, music is for these guys a way to celebrate life’s delights and exorcize its demons. Produced by Paul Reeve, famous for his work with Muse, this is grand, glorious, and one to play loud.
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/78102008″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Chatting with The YuYa – and get Naked for free!

admin — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 20:36:51 +0000

Yuya was a powerful Egyptian courtier during the eighteenth dynasty of Ancient Egypt. Signed to Dayjob Records The YuYa are an inspiring and eclectic duo who’s almost reggae folk fusion and dreamy indie tunes have been making waves amongst those who like their music with a dollop of authenticity and avant garde. It’s All Happening catch up with Eliseo Soardi and Constance Dalrymple, The YuYa Super nice folks, they have offered up Naked, their debut single, as a free download for you. Lovely!
For those who don’t know The YuYa, describe the band and your sound.
The YuYa is me and her. The influences of the band are very mixed and draw on the world of music. From rumba to waltz, jazz to reggae, acoustic soul to ska..all with our touch. We think that in these days of internet and the freedom it gives, everyone has developed a taste outside their cultural roots. This is due to a diversity never seen before; music is part of the same system and needs to be as diverse as possible, reaching places and mixing things no one until recently knew existed. Our sound, if it could be a colour, would be red.
Your debut album A Boy, A Queen and A Fish was out on 24 Sept– tell us about it.
The debut album is lovely to listen to. Nice songs, and to be honest we didn’t know we could make such good music :). Jokes apart, the album was written over 6 months in a London warehouse (Arena Massive) and then recorded in a wonderful theatre in the middle of the Italian Alps, in less than a week. It was winter and bloody cold! But it came out quite summery and that’s something we still don’t understand :). Many thanks to the Council of Pieve di Ledro, which gave us the place for free and Nilo Santoni who did an amazing job mixing the album and playing percussion for us!
The title of the album is taken from an African children’s story for wannabe fishermen…. it ends with a boy capturing the biggest fresh water fish that ever existed and the Queen of Uruba sparing the fish’s life to teach the boy a lesson! The metaphor of the story is that boys don’t impress Queens with just a fish!
You were the first signing to Day Job records – what made you decide to team up with them?
They look good and when we walk down the street together people are generally very pleased with the sight of us. Eli and Greg at the moment are in a beard growing competition that started last October…. and their credo was spot on for us as poor struggling employees!
You do both have day jobs – why do music? What does music, and being an artist mean to you?
Most of all, why work full time? Music means freedom to both of us.
You have both British and Italian roots, and have played all around the world, from Europe to Africa. There’s also a very diverse range of styles in your music, and the album was of course recorded in Italy – how does the world and culture influence you?
Constance loves rice and Eliseo loves pasta: two worlds and two cultures come together. It was difficult at the beginning of our musical relationship to combine our differences but we naturally came together and that’s because it is in the nature of things to mix and develop into a new one.
I’ve heard that you met at a fancy dress wedding – sounds amazing! What were you wearing, and was it the great costumes or witter banter than drew you to each other?
Constance was Billie Holiday and Eliseo was Amy Winehouse. Have you read The Secret? It explains how these things happen……
It’s Better is beautifully whimsical and rhythmic, which fits with the video – are visuals important to you?
Yes, very and we think the It’s Better video really gives an idea of what we are. Although the day of the filming on the boat was a mission! Constance does not like water! We couldn’t pee for 6 hours, and we had to put a pigeon out of his misery for reasons we can’t really explain here. In the end we had to row one boat to push the other for the whole day… But thanks to Lara (Jacoski) for the magnificent editing it worked well. Visuals are very important but I think the story is even more important. Have you ever seen a great film without a great story? Even Avatar had to have a story, special effects can only do so much….
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mWMYInaooE]
What have your highlights of the year been, and what’s coming up next?
We run a Festival in Italy called Mand’stock Festival, not to confuse it with man’s cock…. Last year was the first edition and it went really well! We had 45 bands and djs, a skateboarding half-pipe, rock climbing walls and great Italian food and drinks! 2000 people came and we think this year is going to be even bigger! It’s great to organize a Festival so we can invite bands we love. Damian Rice was at the festival on the Friday and we had a chat about music and business, we’re now friends 🙂 DJR and The Harrison Pub (King’s Cross) are also involved in the Festival this year.
2013 is a promising year, with the album out and gigs coming up you should keep checking our website or join our mailing list for any updates! God Speed!

Olympic Tunes

admin — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 21:11:54 +0000

There’s a bandwagon in town and the record companies are jumping on board. Heartened by the upsurge in sales for bands featuring on the bill of the London 2012 Opening Ceremony, and keen to provide for anyone grinning from ear to ear during Danny Boyle’s epic opening ceremony extravaganza on Friday (i.e the whole of Britain, or at least all those with a sense of humour and warm fuzzy heart), Universal Music ’s Isles Of Wonder is the purchase for you. Not stuffy, just sublime, not ordered and boring, but open hearted and punk spirited, a dazzling and dizzying production celebrating the vibrant and alive popular culture of Britain, both the Olympic opening ceremony and its soundtrack are a grand vivid account of Britain, delivered with a huge dollop or humour and a host of self-deprecation. You could of course just listen to the Spotify playlist here.