Warm Wednesday IX

It will be such a warm wednesday that it's safe to have
 "The First Aid Kit" within reach.

The First Aid Kit is a Swedish Folk duo composed of sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg. They started writing songs in 2007, songs with close vocal harmonies and woodsy, folk/country-influenced sounds. They also remind me of the "Secret Sisters". Last Januari they released their album "The Lion's Roar" with some beautiful heartwarming songs packed with beautiful harmonies and wheeping lapguitar hooks like "Emmylou" And here you can hear the song "Wolf" with a native American feeling And to end this warm wednesday here's the title track
"The Lion's Roar" and a selection of other new & old First Aid Kit songs

Fiddles on Friday VIII

Today it's up to Wim Baeck to give us some shivers.

Wim Baeck from Belgium started playing the violin at the age of 7. Later on he went to study the art of painting at St-Lukas in Brussels, Belgium. And he became familiar with sculpting and goldsmith's art. Eventually he found a way to bring together his several passions: becoming a violin maker. He followed classes and internships in Belgium and Norway. Besides building violins he is still very active in the music scene. He teaches violin at the Muziekpublique Academy and is a part of the music group Balacordes together with Tristan Driessens. In this video where he plays the song "Joot" on a self made hardanger fiddle (Norwegian violin) with gut strings which at the end of the tune suffered from the heat of the spots :) Here he is playing with his band Sourdine. which unfortunately ceases to exist. Its a compilation of songs. Enjoy and have a nice weekend.

Misty Monday VII

Today its up to Lost in the Trees to give us a nice start up of this week.

Lost in the Trees is an American orchestral folk pop band from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Their current line up consists of: Ari Picker (writer/vocals), Emma Nadeau (french horn/vocals), Drew Anagnost (cello), Jenavieve Varga (violin), and Mark Duamen (tuba). Lead singer Ari Picker cites diverse influence such as Beethoven, Radiohead, Vivaldi, Neutral Milk Hotel, Saint-Saëns, and OutKast, among others. In march this year they released a new album called: "A Church That Fit Our Needs" In the summer of 2009 Ari Picker – writer, composer, and architect of the band – lost his mother, an artist in her own right, when she took her own life. Picker was in the midst of releasing his band’s debut album, All Alone in an Empty House, a collection of folk-inflected songs that surprised with its orchestral arrangements. Picker took the loss of his mother and set about transforming the events into a tribute, composing, writing lyrics, his mother’s picture above his writing desk: the same picture that now graces the album’s cover.

“I wanted to give her a space, in the music, to be, and to become all the things she didn’t get a chance to be when she was alive.” Here's the video of the song "Red" While this might sound on paper like a somber affair, A Church That Fits Our Needs is anything but. Picker, a classically trained composer, has Shostakovich and Stravinsky at his fingertips, but the music on this album speaks just as much to his love of Phil Spector and old film scores. The swooping strings on “Golden Eyelids” could come straight out of an old Drifters hit, while the orchestral breakdowns in the midst of “Red” recall the haunting soundtracks Bernard Herrmann composed for Alfred Hitchcock. It's a beautiful album, nice arranged songs and choirs. It has a real misty monday feeling and it wil allso be a nice christmas record due to the nice choirs. Here's a soundcloud link.