Update April 26th, 2011: The release date of the new DVD has been mentioned to be May 23rd.
Update May 9th, 2011: The DVD and a double-CD can now be ordered from Reingold Records. Click here for more info.
A new DVD by The Flower Kings is currently in the works. The DVD has been dubbed an official bootleg and will feature the show that was recorded at De Boerderij in Zoetermeer (The Netherlands) on November 17th, 2007.
Continue reading The Flower Kings to Release New DVD This Spring
Today I found a great article about the audiophile of yesterday and today. I recognize myself when the author describes Laurie Monblatt’s listening room. One of the best ways for me to spend time on a free afternoon is to listen to music, preferably from CD or high-resolution formats as SuperAudio-CD (SACD) and DVD-A.
Can’t wait until the next weekend and drown myself into my favorite music!
As a huge Yes fan I was overjoyed when I read the announcement on YesWorld.com about the release of the Yes Union Live show on DVD. I was even more thrilled when I read that a special limited edition deluxe box set would be released containing not one, but two DVDs and a double CD containing lots of extra footage and bonus audio material. When this box set was finally available for ordering, it took an other three weeks for the package to arrive at my place. Those were a long three weeks, I can tell you that. 🙂
With so much material to watch and listen to it took me a while to come up with a review. Enough with the introduction. Let’s dive in!
Continue reading Review: Yes Union Live Deluxe Edition 2DVD/2CD Box Set
Het overkomt mij slechts een aantal keren per jaar dat ik een plaat opzet waarbij ik na een paar seconden eigenlijk al weet dat ik de hele plaat goed ga vinden. Een plaat die onmiddellijk bij de eerste luisterbeurt al op zijn plek valt en je daarna niet meer loslaat. Een plaat die vervolgens na meerdere luistersessies stukje bij beetje zijn geheimen aan je prijsgeeft en een plaatsje krijgt in het lijstje van je favoriete albums van dat betreffende jaar.
Dit overkwam mij nota bene op de allereerste dag van dit nieuwe jaar toen ik de promo-CD van KC’s komende debuutplaat in mijn brievenbus aantrof en deze plaat op de eerste middag van het jaar aanzette. Een betere muzikale start van 2011 had ik mij niet kunnen voorstellen.
Continue reading CD Review: KC levert kwaliteitsalbum met naamloos debuut
Lastify is a great way to discover new bands and new music within Spotify by using the recommendations from your Last.fm profile and turning them into playlists. As a fan of both Last.fm and Spotify I immediately liked this website.
After entering your Last.fm username on Lastify’s website, a playlist is generated for you based on the artists that Last.fm recommends to you. After the playlist has been generated, you can subscribe to it in Spotify.
The playlist will be refreshed automatically every 24 hours. When you listen to tracks from your generated playlist from time to time, Last.fm will come up with new recommendations after a while, so over time the artists in your generated playlist will change.
I hope that Spotify will implement functionality like this and put it in their software. Until that moment comes, Lastify is a great tool I will surely keep on using.
Update February 14th, 2011: I wrote an extensive review of the Deluxe Edition box set which can be found here.
Update January 12th, 2011: The Special Limited Edition with 2 DVDs and 2 CDs is now available on Gonzo Media Group’s website. Pick it up while it’s still available! 🙂
YesWorld mentions on its website that VoicePrint will release a live DVD and live album that was recorded during the Yes Union tour. Especially the DVD release is possibly the most anticipated Yes release from the past 20 years. At least for me it is.
The Yes Union tour united nearly every band member from the seventies and eighties renditions of the band on stage: Jon Anderson (vocals), Chris Squire (bass), Steve Howe and Trevor Rabin (guitars), Rick Wakeman and Tony Kaye (keyboards) and finally the two drummers: Bill Bruford and Alan White.
Continue reading Yes Union Live DVD, 2CD and Box Set Announced
The first time I got to know Joe Bonamassa‘s music was when web store Amazon.com recommended me the album “Sloe Gin”. This recommendation was based on the fact that I ordered a couple of CDs and instruction DVDs from blues guitar player Robben Ford. I remember listening to the album “Sloe Gin”, thinking it was okay but not completely my cup of tea, and lost sight of Joe Bonamassa.
(Pictures by @attilladegroot)
Continue reading Review: Joe Bonamassa Rocks the Royal Carré Theatre
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you mister Rikard Sjöblom. People who prefer listening to progressive rock may recognize this name as the 28 year-old singer, guitar player, keyboardist and writer of the band Beardfish.
Now please, ladies and gentlemen, don’t be scared and walk away because I mentioned the words “progressive rock” and “Beardfish” in one sentence. Mister Sjöblom does not deserve that. At all. Certainly not if you took the time and opportunity to listen to the album “Please Be Quiet” that he released under the name Gungfly.
Rikard Sjöblom is a musical phenomenon. He is a master on every instrument he touches. He played practically all the instruments on the album except for a few drum and bass parts on a couple of tracks. An absolute joy to listen to. Except for the standard instruments like guitars, keys, bass and drums, he even gets away with incorporating the accordion on a few tracks.
As a big fan of Porcupine Tree and Steven Wilson in particular I read the article that I amplify’d below with a lot of interest. I agree with Steven Wilson on almost every album that he discusses. Especially page 2 of the article looks great, which contains a couple of my favorite bands like Yes with ‘Close to the Edge’, Rush with ‘Moving Pictures’ and Pink Floyd with ‘Animals’.
Surround mixes of albums can be an awesome experience if done right and with good taste. I own a few dozen of these on DVD and the lesser known DVD-A and SACD formats. Especially the 5.1 mixes from Porcupine Tree and Steven Wilson are great and are highly recommended if you like to explore the world of surrond sound.
Continue reading 20 Albums That Deserve Surround Mixes According to Steven Wilson
This is an impressive article that describes the power of music on our bodies an brains. Who had ever thought that you can repair brain damage, boost your immune system or prevent seizures with music?
Read all about it, including the scientific explanations, in the following article.
7 Insane Ways Music Affects The Body (According to Science)
The world is chock full of ear hurt that some people willingly refer to as music. The Jonas Brothers, Lady Gaga, Conway Twitty; they all produce high quality records and 8-tracks for our enjoyment whether we like it or not.
But music–even terrible music–has a stunning amount of power over our bodies. For instance science says music can…
My heart skipped a beat when I read this news on Mike Portnoy’s forum. And at this moment it feels like a truck hit me on the freeway. I have been listening to and following this band for nearly 20 years and I am stunned.
But let’s look at it in a more positive way. Hopefully this frees the way to more cool projects like a new Transatlantic album. Their last album was called “The Whirlwind” blew me away and their live performance was totally out of this world. The best progressive, symphonic rock band I have ever witnessed playing in my life.
So here’s to Mike, the genius, master of drummers, the hardest working musician in the music business.
Cheers, mate! Good luck on your future endeavors!
I am about to write something I never imagined I’d ever write:
After 25 years, I have decided to leave Dream Theater….the band I founded, led and truly loved for a quarter of a century.
To many people this will come as a complete shock, and will also likely be misunderstood by some, but please believe me that it is not a hasty decision…it is something I have struggled with for the last year or so….
Op 26 augustus organiseerde FAME Megastore in Amsterdam een signeersessie met Ilse DeLange om de release van haar nieuwe album “Next To Me” te vieren; een dag voor de officiële release. Ruim drie weken geleden las ik hierover in de nieuwsbrief van FAME die ik in mijn mailbox ontving. Binnen tien minuten had ik mijn aanmelding verstuurd (leve de smartphone met mobiel Internet!) en de volgende dag kreeg ik bericht dat ik met een introducé op de gastenlijst stond. Kijk, daar wordt ik blij van!
Continue reading Ilse DeLange signeert nieuwe album “Next To Me” bij FAME
In the “Recommended Listening” series on this blog I will write about bands and albums that are not too well-known but deserve more attention. Don’t expect elaborate reviews but short and to-the-point descriptions and characteristics of the bands and their music.
The first album I would like to present to you is the album “To Infinity” by missFlag: an alternative-rock-pop band from Jerusalem, Israel. I stumbled upon this band when browsing artists on MySpace and I immediately liked their sound. I ordered their album “To Infinity” right away and it has been a keeper ever since. Their style is related to Coldplay and Keane but these guys have definitely their own sound and quality that distinguishes them easily from both bands.
Continue reading Recommended Listening: “To Infinity” by missFlag
In an earlier post I mentioned a blog post I found with tips on getting more productive and to focus better on the task you want (or have) to do. One of the tips in the article is to listen to lyric-free music so the lyrics won’t distract you. I figured that listening to some death metal qualifies as well since I don’t understand any of the lyrics these guys are singing, grunting or shouting.
So I fired up my Last.fm player and selected the genre “Brutal Death Metal” to have some background noise while banging away on the keyboard to get some work done. You can imagine my surprise when after about 30 minutes I suddenly heard the intro of “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley. What. The. F*?|<!
See the screenshot below and notice the station.
Nice one, guys! 🙂
When I picked up my mail from my mailbox last Friday I was pleasantly surprised to find a package from Voices UK, the UK based Dream Theater fanclub. Since the previous issue was sent to me more than a year ago I thought that they had stopped existing or had totally forgotten about me.
As soon as I stepped into my apartment I ripped open the envelope and I found a brand new fanclub CD inside and the new issue or the fanzine. When I checked the label of the CD I just could not believe my eyes. The CD contained the 15th anniversary performance of the Images and Words album which I attended last year in Bonn, Germany. I jumped with joy! Wow! Fantastic! What a great souvenir of this fantastic concert!
Because it was already late I decided to give the CD a spin on Saturday. I played it at concert sound level and I loved it from start to finish! The sound quality of this fanclub CD is great and the performance is very good, just as I described last year in my review of the event.
What a great way to start the weekend!
(Originally posted on my Last.fm journal)
