Tag: "Pop"

“Thinking of You,” the final track on Air Traffic Controller’s new album NORDO begins just like any other folky love song. Bandleader Dave Munro quietly strums his acoustic guitar, languidly composing a simple song “for a lovely lady” while spending a rainy day inside. Then the orchestra comes in. Trumpets blare a regal fanfare, cymbals crash, and glockenspiels chime brightly while Munro’s falsetto climbs high above the sudden explosion of chamber pop. It’s an unexpected transition, but it works, and it’s a moment that explains what NORDO is all about.

Munro began writing songs while working as an actual Navy air traffic controller overseas, and it’s not hard to imagine him dreaming up pop tunes during the intermittent breaks in his stressful work day. Becoming the bandleader of his own imaginary pop orchestra was a way to cope with the everyday struggles that came from being miles away from home. On Air Traffic Controller’s latest album, Munro reproduces that experience for listeners, scoring the daydreams of a normal guy with a grandiose soundtrack that elevates the mundane to the sublime. He sings about rushing out for work in the morning, trying to remember the origins of a specific movie quotation, and needing to take a paid vacation just to keep himself sane. All along, he’s accompanied by handclaps, church bells, strings, and horns in addition to the standard rock band set–up.  There’s even a forty-piece orchestra featured on the standout track “Blame.”  These extravagant arrangements don’t so much transform his quotidian musings as embrace the beauty of their averageness. Munro knows that when you’re facing down a personal challenge, sometimes it really does feel like you need a forty-piece orchestra to back you up.  Continue reading ‘Air Traffic Controller Takes Off With ‘NORDO’’

Music documentaries abound this year, with works in progress by The Rolling Stones, Beyoncé, and Björk.

According to Rolling Stone, HBO will be airing a documentary this fall about The Rolling Stones, ”as part of the band’s 50th anniversary.” Each of the four current band members will be involved, as will former band members, all of whom are being interviewed extensively for the film. Directed by documentary filmmaker Brett Morgan (director of The Kid Stays in the Picture), the feature will trace the band’s career from their inception to present.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, Beyoncé is also working on a documentary. The pop/R&B diva will be producing, directing, and starring in a biographical/concert film chronicling her life and music career, similar to the recent Katy Perry and Justin Bieber films. For more updates, possible sneak peak photos, and film clips, visit her personal Tumblr page.

The most unique documentary news, however, might be that regarding Icelandic experimental singer Björk, who has decided to team up with famed nature filmmaker and broadcaster David Attenborough for a music documentary. According to NME.com, “Attenborough and Bjork: The Nature of Music looks at the evolution of music, our relationship with music and how technology could impact this relationship in the future.” This is very much in-line with the theme of Björk’s newest album, Biophilia, and its accompanying iPhone app, which explore the connections between nature and music, including the many ways in which music is created naturally throughout the world and universe.

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Yup, you read that correctly. Australian pop-star Kimbra (Known primarily across America as “the girl in that Gotye song”) has revealed in a recent interview that she will be collaborating with quite a few big names on her next album, the most obscure and intriguing being Ben Weinman, guitarist for math-core metal band The Dillinger Escape Plan.

The young and talented singer admits that DEP was ”one of [her] favorite bands in high school. He was stoked, so yeah, it’s kind of awesome to be hitting up Benjamin Weinman and be like ‘put some guitars down on my new song.’” While surprising, the genre crossover here may not be as farfetched as one would initially think, seeing as both artists have very jazzy influences, and Dillinger has been known to dabble in pop music from time to time (i.e. a cover of Justin Timberlake’s “Like I Love You”).

Regardless, whether you’re a fan of Kimbra’s golden pipes and candy-coated pop songs or DEP’s blood-curdling screams and ruthless math-core carnage, this collaboration is sure to turn some heads. I’m sure with their “Good Intent,” and a “Two Way Street” of mutual musical appreciation, Kimbra and Weinman’s “Sugar Coated Sour” results just might be “The Perfect Design.” See what we did there?

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Though many current synth pop artists attempt to recapture the vintage electronic sounds of the ’80s, OurStage act Go Periscope aims straight for the future and never looks back. With their new album Wasted Youth, Go Periscope’s Florin Merano and Joshua Frazier have released a dark and pulsating collection of songs that sound like the 21st century. While Go Periscope’s music does contain clear references to the ’80s synth sounds that inspired its members, the songs are more than just conduits for indulgent electro-nostalgia. In fact, Wasted Youth is unabashedly contemporary, with its obvious debts to EDM and dubstep on tracks like “Black Light Masquerade” and “Break Free.” The synth tones are expansive and thick, layering on top of each other to create rippling waves of sound that undergird Merano and Frazier’s heavily filtered vocals.

Yet, for all of its shine and polish, Wasted Youth speaks to the dark and increasingly unstable world around it. For a work that so heavily revolves around artificially engineered sounds, the album contains a significant number of lyrical references to nature. Fire, water, gold, and horses all appear as damaged or endangered elements in the wake of technology, which electronically manipulates the natural world described in the lyrics. Vocal lines are often sliced, rearranged, and panned until they sound like the inhuman sputterings of a dying computer. Clean vocals intertwine with computerized, bit-crunched harmonies that suggest the integration of human and machine to the point of indistinguishability. In the face of the mechanized depletion of the natural world around them, humans can only choose to “live in fantasy,” as the track “Make Believers” sadly emphasizes through the repeated line: “It was only a dream / But it was just like Heaven.” Ultimately, technology doesn’t just enable these escapist fantasies; it makes them necessary in the first place. At a time when people can’t let go of their smartphones and the world is becoming unyieldingly digitized, Go Periscope is making pop music for an uncertain future. Until then, the dance anthems on Wasted Youth implore listeners to party like it’s the end of the world.

You can buy Wasted Youth now at Go Periscope’s Bandcamp page!

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Reading Jesse Terry’s list of tour dates from the past few years is a lot like looking at an actual calendar. Almost every single day corresponds with yet another gig, often in an area hundreds of miles away from the previous night’s show. A self-described “road warrior,” Terry has played his way across the contiguous United States multiple times by now, and the wanderlust evident in his musical travels plays a major role on his new LP Empty Seat on a Plane. Whether he’s describing Montana’s Bitterroot Valley or the dusty back roads of Tennessee, it’s clear that Terry isn’t merely going through the lyrical motions. He’s been to each place, soaked up its essence, and reproduced it in the form of gorgeously sung folk songs. Even if he isn’t doing the traveling himself, Terry is busy imagining the voyages of others to far-away locales like Portugal, Spain, or France. He envisions cars, trains, and planes carrying people off to the bright new lives they want, or at least think they want.

That is not to say that Terry doesn’t maintain a strong sense of groundedness amidst his travels. Woven throughout the various narratives on Empty Seat on a Plane is an enduring sense of Americana. In Terry’s lyrics, home is less a single place than a group of ideas and images (ballparks, carnival rides, and wide-open roads) that conjure the unified feeling of America as one expansive home. Specific nods to gospel, funk, and blues instrumentally achieve a similar effect, compressing America’s vast musical history into portable tuneful mementos that give listeners a coherent sense of place no matter where they might be. Never crowded or ostentatious, Terry’s arrangements give each instrument just enough space to make these musical influences clear, and his soothing vocal delivery is calming without being sleep–inducing, which is a rare feat.  While Terry has been accurately compared to the likes of Ryan Adams and James Taylor, Empty Seat on a Plane shows that now he may be well on the way to becoming a reference point for other up-and-coming singer-songwriters himself.

Intel is seeking the first ever batch of Canadian superstars and they need your help!

Starting today, you can judge in the Intel® “Canadian Superstars” Competition to decide which up-and-coming talent rises to the top across seven music channels, including electronic, singer-songwriter, urban, pop, rock,
country and Francophone (for tracks sung in French).

In addition to the opportunity to discover great new music, judging in this competition also enters you for a chance to win a fantastic prize pack that includes:

• (1) Fender® Modern PlayerTelecaster® Plus
• (1) Fender® Mustang II 40 Watt Guitar Combo Amp

Why wait any longer? Click here and start listening now!

A month of fierce competition has passed and California’s Get Back Loretta have risen through the ranks to be crowned the Grand Prize Winner of the “Ernie Ball Pop” Competition with their track “Gotta Believe.” Founded in 2004 by five friends out to create a sound that could not be easily defined, Get Back Loretta have spent the past eight years making their goal a reality. “Gotta Believe” embodies this idea, blending contemporary alternative rock with lyrical prowess of a Top 40 pop single into one catchy and rhythmic tune. If you like The Fray or Jack’s Mannequin, give Get Back Loretta a spin. Congratulations to Get Back Loretta—enjoy a year of touring and writing without worrying about costly string purchases.

Philly-based R&B / soul / pop songstress Suzann Christine is officially on her way to Miami. Christine was hand selected by the judges as the Grand Prize Winner of the Citi Trends “The Big Break Talent Search” Competition with her song “Closed Casket“, which ranked third out of over 1400 entries! She’ll be joining the official One Fest lineup in Miami on July 7, 2012 alongside T.I., Wale, Fat Joe, Waka Flocka Flame and Kirko Bangz. Check back to the OurStage Magazine for our recap of Suzann Christine’s performance at One Fest.

Participants must be thirteen (13) years of age or older at time of entry and must reside within the forty-eight (48) contiguous United States. Only submission materials that are determined, at the sole discretion of the Sponsors, to be classified as Pop as defined on the OurStage FAQ’s will be deemed valid entries.