Laura Marling’s stunning new album A Creature I Don’t Know is out today and to celebrate we have a deluxe album, poster, postcard set and previous albums Alas I Cannot Swim and I Speak Because I Can to give away. To enter, simply send your answer to the following question:In the liner notes of A Creature I Don’t Know, Laura thanks “poached eggs, coffee and the Saturday crossword” for helping her create the album. What three things motivate you to be creative?
The best entry will win the deluxe pack, and three runners-up will receive the new album.
If you’d like to get a little closer to knowing new album A Creature I Don’t Know, we have five double-passes to the album listening party in Melbourne tomorrow night. It’s being hosted by Frankie Magazine at an intimate venue in Collingwood, where guests’ ears will be treated with the entirety of A Creature I Don’t Know…. three days before the rest of the world gets to hear it. It’ll be an intimate little soiree, and places are extremely limited.
To enter, please email us your name and phone number with “Laura Marling listening party” in the subject line. We will contact winners tomorrow afternoon. Good luck!
Here in the UK, the nominations for the Barclaycard Mercury Prize have just been announced. This annual award has been going since 1992 and is rather coveted among many British artists due its unique remit – to recognise quality new albums regardless of any commercial success or media profile… “the music on the album is the only thing taken into account”.
What the nominations produce is a list of 12 albums released in the last year which should definitely be heard, but for many would otherwise lay undiscovered. In this respect the nomination is almost equally as important as scooping the award. The couple of months between nominations and award ceremony allows extended exposure for music fans to digest the highlighted albums, often producing significant sales spikes which needless to say are extremely important for the lesser known artists.
2010’s nominations see three EMI artist albums – Laura Marling, Corinne Bailey Rae, I Am Kloot (UK-distributed) – recognised as well as two Domino artist, the superlative Wild Beasts and the Irish folk sesnsation Villagers. The full list is below, this year I’ve got an unprecedented 7 of the albums which has produced a very smug appearance on my face. How many have you heard?
Latitude is a music and arts festival that takes place near the east coast of England in Suffolk. Now in its fifth year, Latitude presents a popular yet relatively niche collection of established artists from a very broad and respected spectrum.
I’m currently on a 100% attendance rate and it’s been a real pleasure seeing it mature into the celebration it has become. Unfortunately my veteran status didn’t stop me from taking every wrong turn on the way there, thus turning a three hour trip into a four hour slog.
Hello from the UK! A largely sunny July has seen iTunes take over the Roundhouse venue in Camden for a month of free gigs, with the likes of Laura Marling, Goldfrapp, Tinie Tempah, Mumford & Sons and The National – to name but a few.
Friday’s show featured Laura Marling and Mumford & Sons presenting a collaboration between themselves and a group of Indian folk musicians called Dharohar Project. First up was Dharohar Project, followed by Laura Marling and then Mumford & Sons – before all three groups returned to the stage to perform the EP they recorded at the end of 2009 in India.
Overall a heartfelt evening without a hint of self-indulgence or pretentions. Check out the EP (iTunes UK) now or hang on for the live version (also iTunes UK) as heard by my very ears.
Next up was The National on Saturday night, playing a mix of tracks from their three superlative albums. An energetic set was topped off when singer Matt Berninger walked into the crowd blazing through Mr November, with a seemingly endless cable following him to the back of the auditorium. I thought about taking a picture of him as he rocked past me but then I decided to spare you a dark blurry image in favour of me enjoying the moment. Hope you don’t mind! You can take a look at the official images here.
It’s back to the grind for me, I’ll be back sometime next week with a report from the sterling Latitude Festival.
If you’ve not heard today’s incredible 10th anniversary Splendour In the Grass lineup, have you not a computer / radio / phone / ears / eyes????
OK so camping tickets are $450 (ouch), but we’ve done the math & it turns that makes each set $5.55… Five and half bucks to heard the new LCD album live!? The full lineup is below, with our favourite acts on the LHS. (Full disclosure, they’re all ours!)
Laura Marling Ltd Edn I Speak Because I Can CD/DVD with 5 free downloads, postcard artwork, and lyrics booklet
Jonsi blockmounted poster featuring Go album art
Operator Please signed 7″ vinyl of Logic / Logic (Dolby Anol Remix)
Ben Harper & Relentless7 signed blockmounted poster featuring White Lies… art
Gorillaz limited edition Plastic Beach CD/DVD
Hot Chip One Life Stand double gatefold vinyl
Goldfrapp Headfirst collector’s edition cassette
Just head to our sister store at theinsong.com/splendour, buy any of the singles or albums to receive competition details, and tell us in 25 words or less how you plan to warm up for Splendour.
When English lass Laura Marling came to Australia in January for an all too brief East Coast tour and a bit of sunshine, she introduced audiences to many a new song from I Speak Because I Can. Now that we’ve become all cosy and properly acquainted with the LP, it’s time to revisit the show from The Corner Hotel in Melbourne. Triple J recorded the show and will be playing it tonight on air and online at 8pm. The encore gets played on Sunday at 5pm.
Laura was one of the 10 featured ‘new look’ NME covers last week. She brought her coffee mug and ciggie and James Murphy brought his dog. But Rihanna outdid them both with her bedazzled bird!
Confession. I share my birthday with Laura Marling (b. Feb 1, 1990). But I was born in a decade that was neither the 1990s nor the 80s. This makes me feel a bit unaccomplished compared to my fellow February first-er.
Especially upon the news that Miss Marling is not releasing one album this year but TWO!
I Speak Because I Can will be released March 19th, it features the beautiful, wistful Goodbye England (Covered in Snow) and the ferocious folk number Devil’s Spoke. But it seems there are more songs to come, so following Laura’s sold out tour of Australia, she’s going back to the studio with Ethan Johns to record the companion to Speak. We shall receive that later in the year.
Brand new video for Devil’s Spoke, filmed in India.
How did it come to this? Ten short years ago I was dancing to TLC’s No Scrubs (judge ye not!) on Manly Beach for the countdown to *gasp* The Millennium.
Suddenly, we’re at the other end of the decade, and we never did work out what to call ‘00-10… “The Noughties” didn’t really cut it. We’d better come up with something quick sticks, because the tunes from the last ten years have been incredible and future generations are going to need to refer to us somehow…
NME’s Top 100 albums of the last decade has some mean contributions, not the least of which is the man of the hour Emperor Luke Steele’s early effort, Lovers from The Sleepy Jackson. The Empire defining epochs, even way back when!
Other EMI faves from the list you can regularly hear blasting around the office are below:
#4 – Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
One very notable absence however… WHERE IS THE DAFT PUNK!?!?
Whilst we greatly respect NME’s all-seeing UK hipster stylings, stay tuned for The In Sound’s very own and very wise Best Of 2009 album list – coming soon to a browser near you!
Like every sane Sydneysider, I adore Sydney in summer; the glistening harbour, the deafening yet somehow soothing crickets, the shimmer of heat rising above grass at dawn… and most of all The Sydney Festival! (Personal fave memory is sitting in a deserted Martin Place at dusk whilst The Knife’s Silent Shout was broadcast throughout the city to test the festival audio systems – a surreal kind of bliss!)
If you’ve never done the Festival First Night in the CBD, I tell you it’s a packed out, breathtaking, and FREE evening… Last year, The Cat Empire and Grace Jones performed for over 100,000 people in The Domain alone, with dozens of other stages, art installations, and markets dotted throughout the city – people, people, music, dancing, parades, food, and more people everywhere! Here are some snaps from the 2009 First Night.
Twelve artists including Al Green (!!) and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy are already confirmed for for the 2010 First Night on Jan 9, with plenty more to come. But the Sydney Festival does run for almost all of January, and there’s plenty more than just the First Night. Personal highlights include Laura Marling, Neko Case, Grizzly Bear, Patrick Watson, The Handsome Family, JOHN CALE (!!), and of course the mesmerisingly haunting The Middle East… who incidentally soundtrack the trailer for the 2010 Festival (but are *cough* from Townville *cough*). Check it!
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