black cherry

Goldfrapp moved away from the ambient sounds of their debut towards a driving synthpop strut for this sultry sophomore seduction.  Riding high on the critical success of 'Felt Mountain' the duo of Will Gregory and Alison Goldfrapp moved a bunch of synthesizers and musical equipment into a small studio in Bath, England and began working on 'Black Cherry'.  Goldfrapp reveals:    "It’s funny, because when we did that first album people would say to me ‘what are your influences’ and I’d always say Ennio Morricone and disco and they’d look at me and go ‘what’. This album isn’t a disco album but those records are my influences. What I loved about all of those old disco albums is that they were these big, opulent, fantastic string arrangements, fantasy and you could dance to them as well. When you are a musician, you take little things from lots of different things. What I find frustrating is that people are always trying to pigeonhole what Goldfrapp are about. But to me, this is only the beginning really of a whole load of things. We both have eclectic tastes, but also for me touring that album ('Felt Mountain') and singing those songs over and over again as much as I love them I found the immaculateness, the perfectness and the tempo of it in particular I found really claustrophobic after a while. I longed to express something else. I wanted to give it an energy that wasn’t on the last album...It was really great when we got back into the studio after 'Felt Mountain' and touring a lot to start jamming and playing more stuff ourselves; having fun with it, turning things up and getting a bit more physical with it...We just needed somewhere to put our gear and we had this little studio. We kept having these fantasies that we would go somewhere a lot more elaborate or somewhere with a nice view. But once we got going on the album we got scared to up root ourselves because it might stop so we ended up staying there. It wasn’t really a conscious decision...Ultimately we’re the same two people and where ever we go it’s us. You can’t run away from yourself. Obviously your environment is important but I don’t think it’s that relevant although it can be an inspiration...When I’m making music, the image, the place and where that is and what’s going on in a song runs parallel for me; there all part of the same thing. But then the image you present to the public, your self persona, is completely different which I find quite difficult. It’s not the same creative process as when your writing; making videos and photo shoots. I never look how I really want to look. I always think, ‘God I look crap in that’ or ‘shit, I wish I hadn’t done my hair like that’. You know that’s real whereas in your mind, the fantasy world in your head it all looks like the penultimate video epic film. Then the image is your perception of a personal situation so it’s really important to me but at the same time when your making videos and your doing press shots it’s kind of out of your control. It’s a bit of a weird contradiction, videos. I mean, making a video for a song is just kind of a crazy idea because the song already has a narrative and an image to it and then you make a video and your making another narrative and image and quite often the two don’t gel. You have agendas like what the record company wants, what MTV wants and all this other bullshit that goes into it, what the director wants so it’s very difficult where in your head it can all be much more exciting. But then accidents happen and you can never predict it when your compromising for other people. Sometimes you might not plan something and something fantastic happens. You can’t ever predict those things."

Gregory considers:    "I think we did more jamming on synths with this album. On 'Felt Mountain' we would tend to set up pads with a few other sounds and improvise over that. This time we'd set up a basic beat for a couple of them and improvise with the synths wildly over it, and then go back to find things we liked rather than go for a purposeful melody over a chord. There was improvisation on 'Felt Mountain', but this time it was improvising at a much more basic level — just making noises, really, or events or accidents or things that we liked the sound of that we could loop up. So there was a more fundamental approach, building from sound events. But apart from that I think we just wanted to turn everything up and get a bit more raucous and dirty — have a bit more fun...I think we followed our intuition more this time. We needed to write something that wasn't like 'Felt Mountain', so that was a mission, and we had some ideas about the vocals. Alison's very versatile and has a lot of other voices in her than we got out on 'Felt Mountain' — so we really wanted to explore how we could develop that. We wanted to do vocal harmonies, use layers and different vocal effects. For example, on 'Train' all the harmony is in the vocals, there's no harmony in the track. So we kind of slipped that round a bit."

'Black Cherry' went to number forty-five in France, thirty in Ireland, twenty-five in Germany, nineteen in the UK, and number two in Belgium.  








http://goldfrapp.com/











'Strict Machine' became the first of three consecutive number one hits on the US dance chart for Goldfrapp.  It hit number twenty in the UK.  




'Train' hit number twenty-three in the UK.







'Black Cherry' 
full album:

Black Cherry from Goldfrapp on Myspace.


https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHga8KdC9WqX6aRM--LRsTfWDMXCLLgsn
All tracks written by Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory, except where noted.

1. "Crystalline Green" 4:28
2. "Train" 4:11
3. "Black Cherry" 4:56
4. "Tiptoe" 5:10
5. "Deep Honey" 4:01
6. "Hairy Trees" 4:37
7. "Twist" 3:32
8. "Strict Machine" Goldfrapp Gregory Nick Batt 3:51
9. "Forever" 4:14
10. "Slippage" 3:57

99.9f°

Suzanne Vega made an adventurous development in her folk sound with the industrial electronic experimentation of this deep dark danceable delight. With the unexpected success of the DNA remix of 'Tom's Diner', Vega was ready to move in a new musical direction. She enlisted Mitchell Froom to produce her new album '99.9F°' and he ended up doing the next one as well: "Working with Mitchell was a lot of fun because he was bass-led. When we were working on those two records , Mitchell played a lot of the bass parts. He was influenced by soul music and Motown, so he brought a whole other side to the records I made with him. I didn’t want to let go of that."


With Vega on vocals and acoustic guitar, Jerry Marotta on drums and percussion, Bruce Thomas on bass, David Hidalgo on electric guitar, and Froom on keyboards and string arrangements; the sessions at Dreamland in Bearsville, NY, Sunset Sound Factory in Los Angeles, and the Magic Shop in New York City also included Richard Thompson, Richard Pleasance, and Tchad Blake on electric guitar; Michael Visceglia on fretless bass; Marc Shulman on bouzouki; Jerry Scheff on acoustic bass; Greg Smith on baritone sax; Sid Page and Joel Derouin on violin; Maria Newman on viola; and Larry Corbett on cello. Froom dissuaded Marotta from using standard drums and had him try anything else from kitchen utensils to indigenous instruments to produce a completely different sound.


 '99.9F°'  went to eighty-six in the US, fifty-six in Australia, thirty-eight in New Zealand, twenty-seven in Germany, twenty-four in Switzerland, and twenty in the UK. Froom was also nominated for a Grammy for Producer of the Year. Vega and Froom were married in 1995; they separated in 1998. Their daughter, Ruby Froom was born on July 8, 1994.













http://www.suzannevega.com/















'99.9F°'
"It is about internal temperature. When I refer to temperature, I mean the way you feel when you're aroused in some way, whether it's through fear, anger or love. The title stands for a slight fever. Cos the normal temperature in the Fahrenheit system is 98.6°. So it means a little sick. Enough to hear things in a strange way and enough to see things in a peculiar way. A little bit off the normal...It describes the stance of the album, which is not normal, off the norm, not wildly feverish but off the norm enough to create tension, enough to give you a straight dizzy hallucinatory feeling but not so much that you feel that you're out of your mind in listening to it. It seemed slightly hotter than maybe some of my other albums. the other albums have a much cooler tone to the whole sound of them."

'Blood Makes Noise' went to number one on the US modern rock tracks chart. Vega says: "If you have a song called 'Blood Makes Noise' you have to make noise with it, you can't sing it softly, with a guitar and have pretty voices in the back. You have to use the vocabulary of the song. When I had originally conceived it, I had no music. And in the beginning, when I was first working with Mitchell, I was very nervous, because he had worked with all of these heroes of mine, like Elvis Costello. So we were sitting in a room and I was feeling like an idiot, because in the beginning you don't know if the songs are any good. So I was looking at him and I said 'well, I have this song, it's kind of a weird song'. Then he asked 'how does it go?' and I replied 'I don't have any music for it' and he said 'well, just sing it'. So I just sang it into the air. I felt a little embarrassed but then I explained to him that I would like the song to sound like The Ramones, fast and nervous and with a lot of guitars. Mitchell listened to me but he threw that idea away. I didn't know that he had done that but he did. The next day I came in he already had the bass line and the crushing noise. For some reason it was funny to hear that bass line and that crushing noise with the music. It made me laugh and I thought that that was the right thing for that song, because it made me laugh and there was something about the way the music and the lyrics fitted together that was funny and sort of cynical but sarcastic at the same time. And I don't know why. It's one of those things that I would have to go and dissect it and analyze it. All I knew was that it made me laugh and it seemed good. So it was unintentional and I liked it. It fitted with my own sense of humor."

'In Liverpool'
"This was one I wasn't sure would fly, because it's bits and pieces, it's a mood really and a fantasy. It came about because I was on tour and I was in Liverpool and I was lying on the bed of the hotel we were staying in. And I was trying to take a nap and there was this enormous clamoring going on across the street. We were staying across the street from a cathedral. I started to think about one of my first boyfriends, who was from Liverpool. That started to put me in the mood of the books like 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame', and things that had to do with bells, and the ringing of bells. I was thinking about old loves, so there was this sort of nostalgic feeling to the whole afternoon. So I took the moments that made sense and put them altogether in the song."









'Rock in This Pocket (Song of David)' 
Vega says: "On a track like 'Rock In This Pocket', which is about King David, that's not about me and a man, necessarily. It's about a small person against an institution. I wrote this song before the riots happened in LA, but there's that sense of powerlessness and you want to get the attention from someone... and so you have a rock in your pocket and the urge is to throw it. It's not necessarily against a man, especially not a man whom I'm equal to. It's about someone in power, someone much bigger than I am."













'Fat Man and Dancing Girl'
"The way I was thinking of it was almost like a shadow puppet; the thing that is really causing the shadow is the thing that's behind the screen. Most of the show is concealed from view, meaning the real life no one sees. It's the thing that happens when I go home, or when I think about my own life or when I think about other people's lives. The thing that is the most interesting about people is the way they are when no one is looking at them or the way they are when they're in private. And to me that is the kind of show that I give. I don't give a glamorous show. I don't come on stage in costumes or outfits. In this particular song, I'm playing at being the dancing girl. But, when I say, "most of the show is concealed from view," the real heart of the whole show is the thing that I don't do on stage. It's the private part. The activity the lyrics point at is the real song."






















'Song of Sand'
"It was intended to be about the Gulf War. It was probably as close to a political song as I'll ever get."

























'Letter From New York' documentary


part 1






part 2















full album:

All songs written and composed by Suzanne Vega, except where noted. 

1. "Rock in This Pocket (Song of David)"   3:20

2. "Blood Makes Noise"   2:28

3. "In Liverpool"   4:40

4. "99.9F°"   3:16

5. "Blood Sings"   3:17

6. "Fat Man and Dancing Girl" (Vega, Mitchell Froom) 2:19

7. "(If You Were) In My Movie"   3:05

8. "As a Child"   2:55

9. "Bad Wisdom"   3:23

10. "When Heroes Go Down"   1:54

11. "As Girls Go"   3:27

12. "Song of Sand"   3:28

13. "Private Goes Public" (bonus) 1:57

gorillaz

Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett created a virtual group with cartoon characters, sunshine in a bag, and a genre blending mix of electronic, hip hop, reggae, acid, punk, latin, and rock. The fictional cartoon band consists of 2D (lead vocalist, keyboard), Murdoc Niccals (bass guitar), Noodle (guitar, keyboard, and occasional vocals) and Russel Hobbs (drums and percussion). In reality Blur's Damon Albarn brought in Dan "The Automator" Nakamura, Kid Koala, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Afro-Cuban singer Ibrahim Ferrer, Cibo Matto's Miho Hatori, and Tom Tom Club's Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz to provide the musical background to Hewlett's animated videos. The album sold ten million copies worldwide, reaching number three on the UK chart and number fourteen in the US.

Albarn considers the concept to be an alternative to a celebrity obsessed culture: "Amongst kids and teenagers which comprise the bulk of its success, it’s because it’s something that’s an alternative but I don’t know if they initially make connections between its sort of being the sort of antithesis of everything else that seems to be out there, I don’t know. I mean for us it was – and a will continue to be – such a liberating exercise really because you can go either way. Jamie and I work together in a very kind of isolated parallel with each other. We’re very good friends but we don’t invade each others space at all. We’ve basically got a given where everything I do he likes and everything he does I like – doesn’t matter what that is."







http://gorillaz.com/

The music for 'Clint Eastwood' was inpired by Ennio Morricone's theme from 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'. The song features raps by Del tha Funkee Homosapien. It reached number one in Italy, Norway, and Spain and was a top five hit on charts all over the world.

"Picture you getting down in a picture tube,

Like you lit the fuse.

You think it's fictional? Mystical, maybe.

Spiritual hero who appears in you to clear your view when you're too crazy.

Lifeless, to those the definition for what life is."

'19-2000' features Miho Hatori and Tina Weymouth. The single topped the charts in New Zealand and made it to number six in the UK.

"There's a monkey in the jungle

Watching a vapor trail

Caught up in the conflict

Between his brain and his tail

And if time's elimination

Then we got nothing to lose

Please repeat the message

It's the music that we choose"

'Rock the House' also features Del tha Funkee Homosapien.

"I wanna get down lower than Atlantis

Going toe to toe with an enchantress

Get funkier than funkadelic wearin' pampers

While you eggheads is on the wall preparin' answers

Sharing transcripts while we over here

Dipping and dancin'

Rhythm romancin'"

'Tomorrow Comes Today'

"Don't think I'm not all in this world

The camera won't let me go

And the verdict doesn't love our soul

The digital won't let me go"

Gorillaz  
full album:



All songs by Damon Albarn except where noted

1. "Re-Hash" 3:37
2. "5/4"  2:39
3. "Tomorrow Comes Today" 3:12
4. "New Genious (Brother)" Albarn, Odetta Gordon 3:57
5. "Clint Eastwood" (featuring Del the Funky Homosapien) Albarn, Teren Jones 5:39
6. "Man Research (Clapper)"  4:32
7. "Punk" Albarn 1:36
8. "Sound Check (Gravity)" 4:40
9. "Double Bass" 4:44
10. "Rock the House" (featuring Del the Funky Homosapien) Albarn, Jones, Dan Nakamura, John Dankworth 4:08
11. "19-2000" 3:27
12. "Latin Simone (¿Qué Pasa Contigo?)" (featuring Ibrahim Ferrer) Albarn, Ibrahim Ferrer, Lázaro Villa 3:36
13. "Starshine" 3:31
14. "Slow Country" 3:35
15. "M1 A1" Albarn, John Harrison 3:54
bonus tracks
16. "Clint Eastwood" (Ed Case and Sweetie Irie refix edit) Albarn, Jones Dan the Automator, Damon Albarn 3:42
17. "19-2000" (Soulchild remix) Albarn   3:33