Lee Jordan .org.uk

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In this show I bring you up to speed with the main events which have happend since I left work, touching on a weekend of Glam Rock madness, how early detection is currently our only good weapon against deadly skin cancer and …… three incredible tracks these being as follows.

Music :

• Soft - Droppin’
• Julia Harris - These Days
• Brandon Patton - Thirty One Hundred Miles

A write up from Dave Jewel of the Sladefest2006 weekend is to be found at this link

Stay moleaware and find out how my Siascope demonstration went: moleAware.org. If you’d like more information about how technology which can see under the skin check out: Astron Clinica

My flickr account, with first @media2006 tag added to a photo of my train tickets

I really enjoyed getting back into the podcasting, it does take sometime to put together a show so please let me know what you think. Cheers, Lee

Mainly touring the US and rarely touching her homeland, Imogen Heap defines the English Rose down to every detail, she is in a word lovely and has managed to squeeze into our iPod collections without telling us. Using technology extreamly well she really engages with her fanbase incredibly smoothly and keeps an extensive flicker photo sharing account active. The iGirl for the iAge, very creative and very innovative.

Immi, is sometimes stationed in London, perhaps-maybe, and writes and performs very cutesy, lovely, warm and friendly electronic music, however her vocals aren’t for everyone as I found out in my car once. A string of soundtrack appearences, most recently to the end credits of the fantasy film Narnia, as well as a new album, along with a very cool community focused website and iTunes sleekness has pushed Immi to almost cult status.

Immi introduced each of her instuments as the band

So last night was simply lovely. Immi waltz on stage to introduce her guest, Zoe Keating, who plays haunting music with only her chelo, making use of recording and sampling equipment to layer various sounds of the chelo into an amazingly small but big sound.

Imogen took to her set barefoot, standing upon a fluffy rug she launched into an acapella version of “Just For Now”, even without vocoda’s and computers her voice is strangely unique. If I had to plump for a genre I would have to go post modern, I dunno though it’s the kind of stuff that you wouldn’t think a 25 year old bloke would be listening to and I certainly felt a decade too old again, but what the heck she was charming and very zaney.

It was a very cute set up, stood bare foot on a fluffy rug it was mainly Imogen driving the sound almost alone. Her guest, Zoe featured on a few tracks

Oh look a closer look. This was the first time she had been back in Birmingham for 5 whole years, we loved her, she loved us, she played a Frou Frou and was very charming in between tracks, it was really great.

A Frou Frou track was sliped in there to make up for the lack of touring here, we loved her and she loved Birmingham equally. Normally the encore is something you have to wait for, but Immi told us that she didn’t want to keep us waiting. All in all a very nice night, I felt as if collectively we had made a very zaney crazy friend, you know the kind? To top it off Imogen came right out after the gig to chat with the crowd, try getting that with the X-Factor lot eh?!

What a mouthfull! Yus this gig was prosponed from last year, but it was on for Sunday in the second city, it certainly has been a long time coming and worth every second: The gate is open! It’s not often alos that you are graced with two quality support slots. Nightmare Of You from New York with loads of rythmn, and a band called Captain, with a charming male/female vocal mix.

Delays banner behind stage seting the scene after support from two quality bands. New Yorkers; A Nightmare Of You were first up followed by a band called Captain, both were very good

As the fog cleared my sister snapped this supberb shot of the guys. The light show considering the size of the venue was really bright

Greg here blasting out the hits as well as the new tracks. As you can see here the mic stands had the signature colourful wires from the album cover wrapped around. Valentine, the current single was superb as was the likes of Long Time Coming

And the new album waiting for me when I got home from work tonight … nice!

Last night was truely an awsome night. It’s kinda difficult to pin Broken Social Scene down, they are a network of artists based in Canada, at their most expansive are a massive group of collaborators and a core group of artists in their compact version. When I say compact I’m talking nine people on the tiny stage of the Academy2, it was a squish in every sense of the word.

No support band left the the crowd anxious for the set that started at 9pm and finished at 11pm. I realised that I only actually know about 10% of BSS’s discography, it was the two albums “Feel Good Lost” and “You Forget It In People” that introduced me, but that didn’t matter I was seriously impressed with how tight their sound is and how well they work as a group.

Nine in number the group would rearrange to take different roles on various tracks, most tunes were full of energy and some were really blissed out and chilled. With two drum kits, various brass instruments, bass, pleanty of guitars, a little synth, many microphones with many vocals, a violin, and the cutest female vocalist ever, their sound was extremly powerful, very melodic and so beatuiful.

Everyone knew the likes of “Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl”, simple in lyrcial content but quite an infectious track. Even if I didn’t know some of the tracks it was really accessible stuff. The set concluded with the lead male vocalist wading over the barrier into the crowd to hug people and he had said something along the lines of “this song will be pumping your heart while you are dying” .. which I though was an amazingly powerful thing to say

Just a quick post, to thank the guys over on Julia Harris’s site. Never met you and never seen Julia live (yet, play the Birmingham Barfly and elect me as head of the street team) but thank you for the quote on the gigs page. The site holds a couple of free tracks, if you can go see her!

Cheers guys

www.juliaharris.net

When I get chance I’m gonna set up an MP3 blog or something, the Podcasting didn’t work out for me, no time, worn my online time way too thin. Quick update while I’m here on gigs coming up that I’ll be at:

• 15/02/06 : Broken Social Scene (Brum)
• 19/02/06 : Magic Numbers (Wolves)
• 05/03/06 : Delays (Brum)
• 27/03/06: Imogen Heap (Brum Acadmey 3, Woooooo!)

I’ve brought so many albums I have no time to tell you, but I do want to draw your attention to Laura Veirs, singer songwriter with lush melody and unique vocals. Laura is playing the Birmingham Glee on Sunday, I’ll be seeing the Magic Numbers though.

This is backdated a little bit. I went along to the NIA with LeeK, a best friend of 10 years, to see Katie Melua. The night was brillient, although we were in the quite a way up the top block of the NIA we had a great view of the entire show. If I’m honest when she first appeared I didn’t rate Katie Melua very highly, but there was something about her first album that caught me and since then I’ve been hooked. It was her influences from Eva Cassidy’s magic that really brought me close to Katie, her band though are just as amazing as she is.

Where troubles melt like lemondrops
An encore followed, but I was holding out for “Faraway Voice”, for me personally and for personal reasons this was the highlight of the night. Katie’s first song had been writen about the woman who had inspired so many people including myself with her voice. Influence cleary rubbing off on Katie as she sang about Eva’s faraway voice and smiling in unison with the entire arena as the song finished. A really enjoyable night, and one that my signed plectrum won’t let me easily forget, even if it is a copy, get’s you through the day does nights like that.

Ooooh, check out the signed Plectrum and erm well ok it’s a bracelet, but a very nice keyring, none the less

Band formed in the musical hive that is Birmingham, Sutton Coldfield no less than 30 minutes up the road from me …. Jazzy group, please do it, please go to overplay and listen to these guys, they have only had 5 plays on overplay.co.uk. One of the best groups I’ve heard on overplay in a very long time. Winter blues, heck no chance …. bring a bit of Summer to your ears now!

Butterfly Catchers | Band Website

“Their refreshing sound is a cool blend of acoustic ballads and jazzy urban soul reminiscent of the MTV unplugged series”

Also since when has there been a Birmingham Music Awards show? Last year apprently!

I gotta say, I’m not really one for covers of classics unless they really are better than the original. Ryan Adams’ version of Wonderwall is simply amazing and much more in line with my own music tastes. There is a point to this post, because I found the track through a blog. I wanted to highlight the growth of “MP3 blogs” and how the Web really has provided the best promotional platform for music, without it we would be lost, locked to what the commerical companies would like us to hear.

• Definition on Wikipedia : MP3 Blog
• Examples of MP3 blogs : 3Hive.com | Hype Machine

There’s a big lesson here in how record companies should treat music fans, ie with a bit of respect and trust. Some very clever artists have seen the light and released tracks for free on their sites as promotion material, some from their own CD’s. If you like what you hear buy the CD direct from the artist, thus giving the artist a better deal. MP3 blogs pick up this music and advertise it, yes they actually provide one central place that you can go to to discover music that might not have made it to your ears with reviews ordered into genres so you can find music you know you will like. It’s all good stuff.

I often get comments now like “You sure listen to music I’ve never heard of before”. So be eclectic, be your own John Peel, explore your own music tastes, find the music raw and follow its development, instead of having the music come to you pre-packaged in the same perfectly formed sterile way, and tell people once you’ve struck gold.

So after getting the new PC way back towards the end of last year and having it have a surround sound card, I thought why not buy some speakers for it eh? After agonising over which set to buy I went for the Logitech X530 set at about £40 it was a bargin. Normal stereo or mono sound is transfered to all speakers, DVD’s sound top, but I guess DVD-Audio simply won’t replace the CD.

Click the title of this post to read more details …

A view of my desktop, showing the right front speaker and the centre channel speaker in the distance. With the penguins in view obviously.

Wireless audio on the go

The transmitter is smaller than my mobile and sits under one of the surround sound speakers.

It gets even more interesting when I add the wireless headphones to the mix, because now I have access to all my live internet radio stations, music, TV output, DVD sound and external MP3 players … on the go with no wires.

So I’m all set now, too much technology? Perhaps but very fun to maximse potential, and it’ll be nice in the summer to listen to Internet radio, Podcasts or DAB radio in the shade or just inside from the patio, without dragging around anything other than the headphones! I could leave a microphone on up here to keep an ear out for Taylor from downstairs. Imagine washing the car at 5pm too without blasting the neighbours with the new acoustic movement

I have an appointment coming up to discuss the results of the MRI scan I had on my left calf. I was advised to get the results sooner rather than later as a consultant had said there was something showing on the scan that needed looking at, I just checked and the scan results are ready. It certainly beats waiting until the end of March to get them!

Apart from that I have some new music to ring in the new year, I want to build a really nice singer songwriter playlist for the summer months. I should also change the strings on my acoustic guitar and dust off the chord books

• Laura Veirs : Year of Meteors | Listen
• Jeff Hanson : Son | Listen

Plus a set of surround sound speakers and Bluetooth headphones for my PC are on the way as I feel I need to upgrade my listening expereince in here, way too flat and urm conventional at the moment. I’d also like to go to Summer Sundae this year in Leicester. Yes one of my new years resoultions, to enjoy the summer once again.