BBB launch "GIVE" : Live in Europe

To celebrate the release of their brilliant new album, "Give", BBB (Balkan Beat Box) play a series of concerts starting the 13th of April in Vienna!

Lonely Drifter Karen new album "Poles"

Euro popsters LONELY DRIFTER KAREN are launching their new album "Poles" with a series of concerts around the continent:

And in England, here's the word from Word Magazine (UK): "We are sincerely in love with the cosmic reveries of this Brussels-based trio, who mix Les Baxter/Esquivel-style space-age pop with the woozy grind of real guitars. Singer Tanja Frinta is quite something to hear — an intergalactic Charlotte Gainsbourg."

The new album "Poles" is now available for order !

Zita Swoon Group: album launch, exclusive shows, video

"Wait For Me", the very awaited new album by the revered Belgian band, features 2 guests from Burkina Faso.




Here's the video for the first single, "Sababu", which includes footage shot during the band's stay in Burkina Faso.

For "Wait For Me", their first song-based album in 4 years, the Antwerp collective (led by Deus co-founder Stef Kamil Carlens) has worked with burkinabe diva Awa Démé and master balafon player Mamadou Diabaté Kibié. The songs (which can be loosely described as a blend of raw, acoustic folk/blues with traditional West African music) manage to wonderfully weave African and "northern" styles styles within an almost pop-like song format with seemingly effortless ease.

The release will be celebrated by a handful of selected European shows in early March (including the AB in Brussels on March 4, the Lido in Berlin on March 5, The 104 in Paris on March 8, the Tivoli in Utrecht on March 16  -  details here).

The band will be back for dates in late Spring, a festival tour in the Summer, and a club/theatre tour in the Fall

"Wait For Me" is Zita Swoon Group's first release on Crammed, and we're extremely happy and honored to start a long-term collaboration with such an exciting band.

More info on "Wait For Me" here. 

BBB's new video is "Part of the Glory"

"Enormous, grin-inducing BalKuduro"…




… is how an early blogger described this great new track, off the upcoming BBB (Balkan Beat Box) album "Give", which comes out on Crammed on March 2nd.

"Part of the Glory" isn't only an exhilarating video and an uplifting track (in which BBB seem indeed to be musically poised between Luanda, Angola and, say, Sofia, Bulgaria)…

...it's also a meditation on the role of social media and YouTube.  The band say that the lyrics of this song describe  'how we all have something unique in us. How we have these glorious talents that we display on YouTube. But how in spite of that we live with this shadow society of migrant workers and “illegal aliens” who run the engines of our world, and how we choose to ignore them in real life’.

Remember: free download of BBB's "Political Fuck" HERE

LONELY DRIFTER KAREN share new tunes

Listen to 3 songs off their forthcoming, sensational new album "Poles" (out March 2012)
Click here to hear"Velvet Rope", "Three Colors Red" and "Comet"

 
Lonely Drifter Karen are back, stronger than ever before, with a new song cycle which shatters many preconceived notions of their music. The colours have morphed: gone is the largely acoustic, piano-led instrumentation. This time, analog electronics, Asiatic arpeggios, sliding bass-synths, sinuous guitar riffs and funky grooves abound, while Tanja Frinta's voice is wilder, more vibrant, and seems to have acquired unsuspected new dimensions.

With these new shades and brushes, the band have painted an alternate version of their own, unmistakable world: dreamy, poetic, and slightly surreal, overflowing with those lush arrangements and irresistibly seductive melodies which have become the band's trademark. 

The core duet of the group — Austrian singer/guitarist Tanja Frinta & Spanish keyboardist/arranger Marc Melià Sobrevias — are now firmly relocated in Brussels, Belgium.  Following the amicable departure of their long-time drummer, they have enlisted the help of young French guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Clément Marion, and of several percussionists (both of the human and the robotic kind) to launch into sound explorations and create these songs which take the listener on an enticing journey through sound & space. 
 
More details and track list here


  

"Poles" comes out in March 2012

An Innocent Stranger in a Toy Town

… that's the theme of La Chiva Gantiva's lovely new video, 'Pelao'




The Colombian/Belgian band have self-produced and directed this modern tale of immigration, a parable on the perils and disillusionment which often await the hopeful migrant who manages to make the move from the southern to the northern hemisphere.

The band have painstakingly constructed an elaborate set full of mechanical puppets, hand-painted buildings and piñata clouds. They've rounded up all their friends for the shooting (50 people were required for animating the whole thing…). The video was shot with the help of I-Movix, a Belgian company specializing in  the capture and creation of direct and extreme slow motion (as used in the Olympics, the football Champions' League etc.) thanks to a camera called the Sprintcam. The video was directed by Nicolas Moins & Rafael Espinel (the band's front person).

La Chiva Gantiva are currently touring to promote the release of their debut album "Pelao", and are bringing their super-powerful live show to Amsterdam's Paradiso on January 24,.

They'll be doing a live set for (Belgian national radio RTBF's show) "Le monde est un village" on January 26.

La Chiva Gantiva (who were formed in Brussels by 3 young Colombian expats and 4 Belgian & French musicians) recently made their first visit to Colombia, where they performed several shows and were welcomed as a new sensation by the audiences and the media.

More info here

...

Come see Baloji at The Barbican, London

on Monday Jan 30 at 7:30 pm, sharing the bill with Orchestra Baobab

MAIA VIDAL's "Alphabet of my Phobias" video

Written, animated & edited by herself.




"safe Under the ground, i would have to View the World as it eXpires, Y and Z"

Crammed Discs Holiday Sale !

INTRODUCING CRAMMED HOLIDAY GIFT PACKS: 3 albums for 20 euros !