South Brooklyn band One Ring Zero know their food - and their celebrities. The orchestral pop duo emerged in 2006 after releasing "As Smart As We Are", a CD featuring original music and lyrics by top novelists including Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster, Dave Eggers and Jonathan Ames amongst others. The new album takes a similar approach, but replacing authors with top chefs in the lyrics department - isn't good food a little like poetry after all? One Ring Zero asked David Chang, Chris Cosentino, Mario Batali, Isa Chandra Moskowitz, Michael Symon, Mark Kurlansky, and many more chefs for (yummy) recipes. These were then set to music and sung WORD FOR WORD - musical styles suggested by the chef. Here's a vegan recipe/song called "Peanut Butter Brunettes" by chef Isa Chandra Moskowitz, featuring ex Throwing Muses and Belly heroine Tanya Donelly's vocals. The CD/book release party will be at the Brooklyn Kitchen on 11.03.
We've always been big fans of Luke Temple, and it's good to see that, together with the Here We Go Magic crew, the man is keeping at it with increasingly beautiful records and videos. The band's new album "A Different Ship" (stream it here) will be out on May 8, and betrays at least a partial return to Luke Temple's more intimate and melodic sound from his solo repertoire - in this regard, lend a ear to "Hard to Be Close," "Alone but Moving" and "Over the Ocean". This is welcome news for fans like us who always thought that in most HWGM material Luke's noteworthy songwriting skills seemed a little sacrificed on the altar of textural experimentation. This doesn't mean that the band's signature hypnotic, impressionistic sound is lost - it's just that these two elements work together better than they did in past records, and this is what makes this album one of the NYC highlights of the year so far. Indeed, this collection also features songs more in line with the band's past releases ("Make Up your Mind", "I Believe in Action"), which follow on the steps of brainy-pop icons like Brian Eno and The Feelies, but there's definitely a balance here, also betrayed by the almost perfect alternation of melodic songs and less traditional ones.The just released video of "How Do I Know," telling the story of a rejected dancing robot that ends up revitalizing an older man's appreciation for life, seems to reflect on this brain/heart, mechanic/organic dichotomies and somehow bring them to unity. - PDG
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