With a debut single out now, Chris Hornsby is a UK based singer songwriter who brings a folky/country style to the acoustic scene. Based in London (but originally from the North East), his debut single ‘I Was Hoping I’d Run Into You’ is a well produced, fun song that has a real cosy feel to it:
Also worth checking out are the b-sides, top quality songs both, which accompany the single.
You can buy the single now from all good online stores, including Amazon and iTunes.
Innovative Italian rocker set to become first live YouTube ‘busker’
Ambitious Italian rock musician BigDee is the unique project of an innovative songwriter, creating a rule bending blend of classic rock and roll and a new model for the music industry.
Having already worked to revolutionise the way we consume music via his innovative subscription scheme – fans, rather than buy albums or singles, pay a one off fee of €10 for a lifetime subscription to all his new music – BigDee is now focussed on changing the way artists use YouTube.
Most artists use YouTube as a way to put their recorded content out there, but BigDee is looking to reward fans all over the world with live, online streaming of acoustic gigs and rehearsals every weekday at 1pm CET (12 mid-day UK) apart from Tuesdays which will be 9pm CET (8pm UK).
Tune in on BigDee’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/bigdeerockandroll
The hour long live show will give fans a weekly glimpse into the music of BigDee, enjoying new songs as soon as they’re written and looking back on older tracks too.
Influenced by timeless rock music from the USA and the UK, BigDee produces top quality original rock and roll music made in Italy. For just a small taste of his classy, and classic, style, check out his track ‘Susan’:
Full of thumping rhythms and crunching guitars, his is the sound of a rock musician working to create truly inspiring new music that is built to be pulled apart and enjoyed time and again. Challenging himself to consistently write new songs that stand the test of time and quality, BigDee is an artist who is always pushing boundaries.
You can sign up to BigDee’s innovative subscription model – €10 for a lifetime subscription to all his new music – here:
http://www.bigdeerock.com/2/shop_559551.html?cat=3753
Finding no use for the traditional (read: old) forms of promotion, BigDee instead relies on word of mouth to bring people to his web pages, and encourages people to simply enjoy the music before subscribing forever with a one-off fee.
It’s an approach that is definitely working. With support from radio in Italy and the US, BigDee is now looking to bring his industry expanding ideas to the UK. Check out the websites below, and subscribe to BigDee now – your reward will be regular doses of traditional rock and roll.
Links:
Official site: www.bigdeerock.com
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/bigdeerockandroll?ref=hl
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/the-big-dee-1
Jet Setter, a four piece band from Dublin, are an exciting example of the brand new music coming out of the Irish capital. Harmlessnoise.ie recently described them as ‘delivering a new type of music…fresh and unlike any other brand of guitar songs that I’ve heard lately… it simulates all types of tantalizing styles from The Replacements to The Byrds, an unlikely but very smooth blend’. All four Jet Setter boys have been playing and gigging for years with various bands before they decided to form Jet Setter during a late-night party in the R.A.G.E in Dublin.
The idea was to combine their musical influences into a new, invigorating sound, and with Paddy Ormond on lead guitar, Neil Dexter on drums, Jeffrey Courtney on bass and Ross Hamer providing snapshot vocals, the result is original, refreshing and powerful. Jet Setter are getting ready to release a limited edition vinyl double single with Any Other City, who’s previous releases include the likes of James Vincent McMorrow, Villagers, Squarehead, and most recently Girl Band. Jet Setter will be touring the UK and Ireland in early summer 2014.
For more information on Jet Setter please visit www.facebook.com/thisisjetsetter and www.twitter.com/thisisjetsetter
Toronto’s Dearly Beloved has certainly learned the value of putting its collective nose to the grindstone during the two years since it unleashed the striking stoner/shoegaze/psych/prog/Goth/punk/pop opus Hawk vs. Pigeon upon the world. That’s all Dearly Beloved has been doing: working. Then working a bit more, sliding in some more work on the way home and topping all that hard work off with a little extra hard work, just for good measure.
“We just put our heads down and ‘did the do,’ as Mike Watt would say,” says bandleader, co-vocalist and virtuoso bassist Rob Higgins. “We took every show – every tour opportunity and just played as much as possible. And, to a degree, it has paid off.”
It also paid off in more work. There were invitations to further tour Canada then to travel overseas and show U.K. and European audiences the goods for the first time. All that playing, in turn, hardened Dearly Beloved into a battle-scarred, hell-raising rock ‘n’ machine non pareil and, arguably, a better band than it’s ever been. So, rather than pause for breath at the end of 18 months in the van like any sane band would do, Dearly Beloved decamped to the infamous Rancho de la Luna studio in Joshua Tree, Calif., to write and demo the follow-up to Hawk vs. Pigeon.
“It was like The Amazing Race,” says vocalist and tambourine smasher Niva Chow, who can laugh about it now. At the time, though, Higgins admits that “we didn’t even know how tired we were. We were just galvanized from all that touring.”
Dearly Beloved didn’t make it easy on itself in other regards, either. McGrath, an accomplished and respected solo artist in his own right, was spontaneously drafted as de facto Dearly Beloved guitarist and cowriter for the 15-day Joshua Tree sojourn, despite the fact that Higgins and Chow were showing up at Rancho de la Luna with little (read: nothing) in the way of actual songs prepared. But, hey, wouldn’t you know? It all worked out. The resulting album, Enduro, is a bristlingly antisocial punk-metal juggernaut with an old school rock n’ roll soul that sounds as wild-eyed and breathless and half-mad as a record made at the end of nearly two years of roadwork should.
“It’s a driving record, inspired by guard rails, the orange moon, ether binges, taxi drivers, a home invasion, food, astral light and the guile of pricks. It’s a little bit harder, a little bit faster, a little bit more relentless,” concedes Higgins. “I think that’s a result of the fact that we’d just finished touring. We were cooped up in a van for months so when we got out to the desert to write, it was like: ‘Let’s just rock the fuck out.’ We didn’t want to be too cerebral about it. We wanted to have fun.” Helping Dearly Beloved on its way to the take-no-prisoners brilliance of Enduro were Rancho de la Luna mainstays Dave Catching (Eagles Of Death Metal) and Chris Goss (Sound City Players), figures familiar to any disciple of the “desert rock” scene that gave the world Kyuss, Masters of Reality and Queens of the Stone Age who both contributed guitar to the new record. A rigid practice of pilfering old Black Sabbath, Fear and Bad Brains records from the Eagles of Death Metal’s record collection to soundtrack a weed-addled morning desert ritual of archery and axe throwing (“I wouldn’t allow myself coffee until I got 10 bullseyes,” says Chow proudly), after which Higgins would “walk around in the dirt” with a hollow-bodied bass in hand until he came up with three new parts, also no doubt played a hand in hardening Dearly Beloved’s sound up for the new record.
Dearly Beloved finished tracking in the confines of their own Phoebe St. Studios in Toronto with help from ‘Hawk vs Pigeon’ co-conspirator Brendan Canning of Broken Social Scene, and then landed famed Queens Of The Stone Age/Soundgarden/Foo Fighters/Pearl Jam collaborator, Adam Kasper, to give its recordings a final, pristine mix down.
Good things happen to good bands, it would seem, even if they appear hellbent on taking the thorniest route possible to those good things.
We Don't Want a Proper Job 