The third in our series of Ambridge Acoustic Revues was another roaring success. Noting the date, Rob had suggested we adopt a Day of the Dead theme and decked the building out in fine style. And for a special treat Garry created a fabulous puppet to greet people on the door.

Jon and Phil, our usual house band, were off on tour with Beth Rowley, giving the evening a slightly different feel. Jez kindly stepped in on drums, and Foy Vance joined a couple of the others to lend some bass to their tunes. Hayley, Jon, Foy, and of course Iain played well, and all in all it was immensely enjoyable. We hope to have another one ready to announce in the next couple of days.

In the meantime, the rest of my photos are on flickr.

Tags: ambridge, ambridge acoustic revue, day of the dead, foy vance, garry rutter, hayley hutchinson, iain archer, jon bilbrough

I don’t think I ever got round to blogging about it, but I really enjoyed Katie Chastain’s debut album when it came out a few months back, particularly for Nathan Johnson’s production work. Nathan’s been busy working with some big names but it’s good to see that he and Katie have had time to put together a video to go with her song ‘Snowshow’. It’s a lovely example of what’s possible with some home-made props and a single-camera shoot.

Katie Chastain - ‘Snowshow’ from Nathan Johnson on Vimeo.

Tags: cinematic underground, katie chastain, Music, nathan johnson, snowshow, the brothers bloom, video

It’s taken a month, but I’ve finally sifted through my Greenbelt photos, picked out a few passable shots, and uploaded them to flickr. It was far more satisfying last year when there was time for me to do some editing and uploading as the festival unfolded, get around and capture more, and be a little more responsive to how the photos were working out. But there are still a few shots I’m pleased with, and editing them is a nice reminder that I did make it to a little of the festival.

You can find them over here.

It’s also been very satisfying to see the video content begin to come together. There were some great responses to the live streaming a group of us put together (which you can read about here, here and here) but there’s also something great about the more carefully edited (well done, Jenny) material that you can find on the GB site.

In fact, witnessing the recording of a couple of those videos were among my highlights of the festival this year. So much so that I’m going to break with my usual habits and embed them below. Enjoy!

Foreign Slippers featuring Beth Rowley at Greenbelt 2008 from Greenbelt Festival on Vimeo.

Iain Archer and family at Greenbelt 2008 from Greenbelt Festival on Vimeo.

The first of our little musical get-togethers at St. Luke’s went so well that we’re planning to make them a regular fixture under the name “Ambridge Acoustic Revue.”

The next one will be on August 30th and if all goes according to plan will feature Julie Lee, Lobelia Sabo and Aaron Roche. And of course it will once again be ably hosted by Iain Archer.

For those of you who are planning to attend Greenbelt you can think of it as a little afterglow from the festival, and for those who aren’t… well, we suspect it’ll be a highly enjoyable evening of music.

If you’re so inclined you can let us know you plan to attend on facebook or last.fm.

On Friday 13th June it’d be great to see those of you within reach of North London at a little get together Iain Archer and I are putting on as part of the Breathing Space series. From 8pm at St. Luke’s Church, West Holloway, Iain and his band will be hosting an evening of music featuring Julie McKee, Burning Codes and Foreign Slippers. Each artist will perform a selection of their songs, and then they’ll all gather to chat about their music and perform a few “in the round.”

We’re quite excited about it, so I hope some reading this will be too. You can find more details on the Breathing Space website or at the event pages on last.fm, facebook or upcoming.

Tuesday night saw us heading to Water Rats to see Anathallo, friends from the US on their first UK tour. They’d been in the country for a while, opening for Manchester Orchestra, but this was their sole headline show of the trip. We were pleasantly surprised to see the small venue packed with people and, like the band, a little taken aback to hear quite so many people singing along.

Anathallo’s on-stage identity revolves around their high energy performances, so it was worrying to hear that several of them were suffering from strep throat. Obviously the enthusiasm of the crowd worked its magic as their energy levels were as high as I’d ever seen them. Whether it was growing maturity or a matter of venues, the melodies and percussion seemed in better balance than last time we’d seen them.

The band are hoping to be back in the UK later in the year and are well worth seeing. Either way, I highly recommend taking a listen on their last.fm page.

London is Free is a great source not only of ways to save a little cash, but also to find out about a number of events that could easily be overlooked. That’s where I stumbled across the news that Billy Bragg and KT Tunstall would be performing together in HMV on Monday lunchtime.

Steve’s written it up in much more detail than I will, but it’s fair to say that initial disappointment that they wouldn’t be playing any of Billy’s own songs gave way to considerable entertainment as the pair botched their way through covers of songs from the past five decades of British rock and pop.

Not having had the chance to see KT play before I only knew her material from remarkably over-produced records, and this performance wasn’t exactly a chance to get much of an impression of what her own songs would be like outside of that Sony-inflicted sheen. But her willingness to look rather foolish up on stage, hamming her way through songs they both admitted they’d mostly learned by watching videos on youtube, certainly left a good impression.

With a scrum of photographers gathered in a roped off area in front of the stage it was hard to get close enough for clear shots, but you can see those photos that felt worth sharing over on flickr.

Every year I intend to write a “top 10 records/films/etc.” blog entry. I put it off until some time in the middle of January so I can catch up on a few releases I’d missed around the end of the year, and then either forget about it, or realise it’s too hard to reduce the list.

The easiest way round that would be to just link to my listening charts for the past 12 months over on last.fm. But right now those are rolling charts (so if you look at them six months after I write this, they’ll have changed) and they’re also skewed towards records that came out early in the year. There are certainly a few highlights in there—including Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible, Feist, Grinderman, Bjork, Radiohead and Panda Bear—but there are also several missing. So perhaps it’s easiest to just throw up a few notes, and then let go of this angst for another year?

Four of the releases that have occupied much of my listening over the past few years come from women who live just across the road from each other. Sarah Masen’s three new EPs have lived with us for most of the year, and between Kari singing with her at Greenbelt and just thinking they’re great, we’ve both listened to them a lot. Further proof that sometimes recording in a friend’s house can yield results just as satisfying as any costly production process. Julie Lee’s latest took a little longer to grow on me, and marks a bit of a change of direction since her last release, but the more I listen, the more I enjoy.

The Battles and Burial records are often mentioned together. Between their similarity in name and sharing the general territory of “electronica” it seems like there’s a fair bit in common. In reality, they’re very different records, and both very satisfying in their ways. I find it hard to dispute Burial’s place at the top of metacritic’s charts for 2007.

Of late I’ve been very taken with the Yeasayer’s “All Hour Cymbals” and am very much looking forward to seeing them at the ICA in a few weeks. At times they remind me of Anathallo (who are also going to be in the UK very soon and are well worth an evening of your time) and they’re connected with the Brooklyn scene, but there’s more texture to their sound and better use of space than you find with most of the indie bands kicking around at the moment.

And of course there’s St. Vincent, Spoon, Of Montreal, Dirty Projectors, Ry Cooder (not as wonderful as Chavez Ravine, but a real grower), Low and a whole host more than I have time or space to do justice to even without mentioning earlier releases I only just discovered.

(nb: most of the links above will take you to pages where you can hear the artists/albums in question)

I don’t talk much about my work here, saving the more in depth stuff for the other place, but every now and again it seems worth mentioning some new project that has launched.

In spare moments over the past few weeks I’ve been setting up Future Music Talk. It’s a site that pulls together blog entries from a group of people talking about the future of the music industry, music promotion, etc. There’s a lot of good discussion taking place, but it’s all so widely spread out that it seemed helpful to bring some of it together for easy discovery and maybe some more cross-fertilisation.

There are a few more features I’d like to add, but it seemed high time I got this out in the open and started gathering feedback and ideas for more blogs to include. You can find it all at http://www.futuremusictalk.com

We first stumbled across St. Vincent by accident when she opened for John Vanderslice at one of the last Calvin concerts before we moved away from Grand Rapids. While Mr. Vanderslice put on a fine show, I couldn’t help but feel that St. Vincent upstaged him with a much more striking set of songs, culminating in a near-perfect cover of Jackson Browne’s These Days.

Since then she’s been touring extensively and quite a buzz has built, as evidenced by her sold out London appearance in September and an opening slot at Shepherd’s Bush Empire in November. By the time she reached Bush Hall last week all that touring had clearly paid off with a more commanding stage presence and a band who were clearly enjoying playing off each other.

Like her fellow Sufjan-alumnus My Brightest Diamond, St. Vincent brings her classical training to bear on her pop songs but the result is generally a less dense sound than that of MBD, with the focus on creative arrangements and rhythm. She’s at her best indulging in quirky indie-pop with slightly off-kilter rhythms that regularly defy expectations. With the help of a few stage gimmicks (like a mannequin arm with embedded electronic drums, occasionally used as an over-large guitar pick) and of course a strong set of songs from her debut album Marry Me, she has the crowd in the palm of her hand.

You can hear St. Vincent on last.fm and there are some videos on her website.