A new year has begun! So this is the time for ‘best of’ year lists. I joined my fellow team members at JaME for my favorite Japanese artist and releases, but I thought my last.fm stats from the last 12 months give a better overview.

Most listened artists of 2011:

1. Birdy

I’ve been listening almost non-stop to Birdy since her album came out in November, otherwise she wouldn’t have ended up as the #1 in 12 months time. I’m totally in love with the way she covers all those indie songs, her fragile voice and the beautiful piano arrangements.

2. Mohombi

Ok this is getting a little embarrassing, lol. I had honestly not expected him to rank so high. But yeah, I like his rhythms!

3. A.R. Rahman

Rahman makes the best Bollywood soundtracks! I got interested in his music through the soundtrack of Slumdog Millionaire and also found some of his other soundtrack albums.

4. The Baseballs

After seeing The Baseballs live in concert in October, I fell even more in love with them (their music, of course XD). Looking forward to new music and new gigs from the boys this year!

5. Ed Harcourt

An excellent singer-songwriter. I guess I’ve been listening a lot to his music in the first part of the year before I went to his gig in Utrecht. His 2011 album Lustre is pretty great.

6. Usher

Haaa I seriously can’t believe the artist I listen to sometimes. Uh, I believe I had this obsession with one of his albums earlier this year but right now I don’t care much for Usher.

7. Adele

Following the rest of the world, listened a lot to Adele as well. She’s got a gorgeous voice and I’m addicted to Rolling in the Deep and Set Fire to the Rain.

8. Lil Eddie

Ok ok I admit being into cheesy R&B sometimes!

9. PUSHIM

I’ve barely listened to Japanese music this year… The only one remaining was the Queen of Reggae, whose newest album Milestone I love to pieces.

10. Belle and Sebastian

Indie music like Belle and Sebastian’s music is good for listening to when writing, makes the words flow much easier!

Favorite concerts of 2011:

1. The Baseballs on 5/10 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
2. Stamatis Spanoudakis on 9/9 at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens, Greece.
3. Ed Harcourt on 4/3 in Utrecht, the Netherlands
4. Matthew and the Atlas on 20/5 in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands
5. LUNA SEA on 22/10 at Saitama, Tokyo, Japan

This week I went to a gig of the The Baseballs in Amsterdam with my friend. For the ones that don’t know the band, it’s basically a German three-man band that cover popular hits in a rock’n'roll fashion. Their most well-known song so far is their edition of Rihanna’s Umbrella, which was also the song that got me interested in them.

I was a tiny bit sceptical before going to the concert, wondering if they could pull of those vocals live too, but there was definitely no need. The three guys sing AWESOME live, they have a great band and there was a lot of humour in the show as well. For example with one of the songs they threw bottles of bubble blowers into the audience, telling them not to put it in their pockets but to make bubbles, and said, with a horrible pun: “don’t stop blowing until I say so.” They also invited a few girls up on stage to sing one line in Katy Perry’s Hot’n'Cold. Unfortunately a large part of the audience surrounding us seemed rather dead for most of the gig. Actually I think it’s a quite a feat to stay still on their music!

Anyway, here’s some music for my friend Cynthia who has no idea who they are, maybe the US has something against German copy-cats of ‘their’ music?

First is Chasing Cars, original by Snow Patrol (original here) and the second one is a live clip from their rendition of the song Torn, it’s one of their gentlest songs. I know it mostly as a song by Natalie Imbruglia but I just discovered that her version is a cover too, so here‘s a link to the original-original.

Conclusion: next time they come near I’ll definitely go and see The Baseballs live again!

Do you know the feeling that you love one song so much that you need to listen to it ALL the time? (until eventually you get an overkill but let’s not think about that right now). Right now that’s the case for me with Gotye’s “Somebody I Used to Know” and it makes me ridiculously happy. The kind of happy that makes my toes curl :3

I don’t know, the percussion is kind of quirky and he sounds so awesomely honest and heartbroken in the chorus. Unfortunately it seems this is the only song I like from his “Making Mirrors” album.

It’s funny though, after Naotaro Moriyama and Psysalia Psysalis Psyche this is the third video I’m pimping on my blog that features a naked guy. I’m not a perv, I swear XD

I got to know the Japanese indie rock band Psysalia Psysalis Psyche through MySpace around 2007. Back then they didn’t have any CDs out yet, so I listened to the songs on their MySpace account all the time. A few years later, my awesome friend got me their first EP :D

Since then, the band has released several singles, EPs and a full album. I had actually not paid a lot of attention to them in the last few years, so I went to check out their recent songs and came across a few interesting music videos.

Titan Arum – White Version

In 2009, the band released their first album “Matin Brun,” which features the really great song “Titan Arum”. There were two editions released for “Titan Arum”‘s music video, a ‘regular’ and an additional white version. The videos feature the Butoh dancer/performer Nobuyoshi Asai who is both incredibly awesome and incredibly creepy at the same time. For me this was my first encounter with Butoh and I must say I am very impressed.

I really love how they managed to make his movements and emotions even more powerful with white on a white background. I just hope the black stuff is cacao-powder, lol.

Titan Arum – Original Version

Below is the original version, in which Nobuyoshi isn’t white, but rather a bronze shade. His dancing is breathtaking in this one as well, I love his liquid movements and how he moves in nearly impossible, uncontrolled yet so controlled ways. Though, without the close ups it’s not as bold as the white version.

Their newest music video, 2.5D has a ‘full version’ music video, which includes eight minutes of uhh, a guy having sex with his guitar (including mosaic). I’m not sure if that’s actually one of the band members, some say it’s Toru… Anyway, if you’re curious, check it out here.

More information on the band can be found on their official homepage or MySpace, and we at JaME have an artist file up with Psysalia Psysalis Psyche biography/discography and an interview from 2007.

I kind of like bachata music, although the only artist I’ve been listening to regularly is Aventura (anyone remember their Obsesion?). This week while I was listening to a reggaeton podcast, I discovered this American Spanish-language artist Prince Royce. He was featured in a song of Daddy Yankee and I went to look up his own music (see this is an example of what ‘featuring’ songs are good for). He’s one of those singers with a sweet, honeyed voice. I found out that he’s mostly doing bachata, and did a really great cover of Ben E. King’s Stand by Me. Who could’ve known Stand by Me fits bachata so well?

Below is his rendition of Stand by Me, plus another song of his I really like, Corazon sin Cara (although how is that possible, a heart with no face? Do hearts have faces anyway?). The strings give it a really classy feel.

Unfortunately the problem with bachata is that the rhythm gets so repetitive at some point that I grow sick of it… So I’m trying to keep the Prince Royce doses small, lol.

My friend asked me for some recommendations for Dutch music, with vocals in Dutch. Even though I’m from the Netherlands, I dislike most Dutch music, especially the traditional kind. However, there are a few artists I find decent. It’s funny though, the only thing we appear to be good at is metal (such as Within Temptation) and we have a few DJs that are doing quite well in the world market (Tiësto, Armin van Buuren). And it seems Caro Emerald has been gaining quite some recognition lately?

However, those are all English-language artists, and my friend asked specifically for Dutch language music. So here we go:

Read the rest of this entry »

The weather this summer has been rather shitty, with lots of rain and temperatures that rather fit with autumn. Fortunately, there’s still great music to put you in a summer mood! The song “Danza Kuduro” by Don Omar feat. Lucenzo is on the radio occasionally and even though it’s a horrible match with the weather, I think the track is awesome. (Excuse the bad acting, lol)

I did some searches around the internet and discovered that both artists have an interesting discography themselves. I’ve been listening to Don Omar’s “Meet the Orphans” album non-stop for the last few days. The album features collaborations with artists from his label, amongst them this one with Plan B.

As for the French/Portuguese Lucenzo, he hasn’t released a lot of music under his own name yet, but I discovered this great reggae track on YouTube, Emigrante Del Mundo:

This Odeon was built at the Acropolis of Athens in the year 161 by the nobleman Herodes Atticus in memory of his wife, Aspasia Annia Regilla.The theatre was used as a music venue. Nowadays it is still used for such purposes, and one of my favorite artists, Stamatis Spanoudakis, will again perform at the Odeon in September.

Because my mom and I are crazy fans (there is really no other way to call ourselves this time, lol), we bought ourselves tickets to the show on September 9th and booked a trip to Athens. I’m really excited about it, especially to think I’ll be sitting on a seat people have been sitting on nearly 2000 years ago, too.

So in case you’re curious as to why we’re making such a large trip for this artist, here are a few YouTube videos of his songs. His music is a bit of a mix between classical music, contemporary music and traditional Greek influences. He performs live rarely and the previous time was a show in Beijing for the Olympics in 2008.

The following two tracks are from his album Alexandros (The myth of the East, the dream of the West), which was the first one I listened to. The album was once described as a “soundtrack of a movie that was never made,” but it’s not hard for me to imagine scenes from Alexander the Great when I’m listening to these songs. The first song, Hephaestion, is a music video, but the second one is a live recording of his performance at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in 1998.

A soundtrack he did compose though, was the soundtrack for the movie Nyfes (Brides) which came out in 2004. It’s a gorgeous, very emotional and touching piece of music. The second one, Klemena filia, also comes from the Nyfes soundtrack and features (female) vocals.

“Why?!” you wonder, “why would I spend my precious time on listening to these four Korean artists?”
Because I say so, that’s all. But if it helps any, none of these are K-pop artists.

On a more serious note though, what inspired me to make this post is the Korean music website KoME, which I work for once in a while. Basically the Korean music scene puzzles me but amuses me at the same time. For the last few years a lot of Japanese music fans turned to Korean music, but also the Japanese charts get attacked by countless cute K-pop artists that are the product of idol-manufactures that Hello!Project or Johnny’s Entertainment can’t live up to. I actually wonder why Japan loves Korean music so much lately, I think it was even banned a few years ago if I remember correctly? Seems an interesting topic to make an article about actually. But anyway, while I’ve been working on KoME and being curious about Korean music in general, I went to check out various artists and here are four artists (that was actually supposed to be five but I couldn’t find a good fifth one, lol) that are my favorites.

So without further ado, here we go:

Nell (넬)

I think for most K-rock lovers, Nell is pretty well known already and obviously they got me in their clutches as well. This quartet is named after the movie Nell featuring Jodie Foster, and they’re mostly known for their mellow rock sound.
For me they were one of the first K-rock acts I encountered. Unfortunately they currently appear to be on a break and they haven’t released anything since 2008.

Also, this is an awesome cover of Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares to You” by Nell.

Find out more about Nell at their official homepage.

The Black Skirts (검정치마)

The Black Skirts is an indie rock/pop band around vocalist Jo Hyu il (he’s the guy with the nerdy John Lennon-esque glasses on the picture. It seems the cuter the K-pop acts, the nerdier the rock ones…). He is from the states, which explains his perfect English. Their music is quite varied as you can find styles such as rock, pop, punk, electro, funk, reggae and ska in their songs.

Here are my favourite songs of them, the slow, brooding rock song “Tangled” and the more hyper and electronic “Antifreeze,” both from their 201 album, which I actually reviewed a few years ago. Recently they released their second (?) album, entitled “Don’t You Worry Baby (I’m Only Swimming).”

Check out the band’s MySpace page.

TOLL (톨)

I don’t know TOLL very well to be honest; it seems there’s very little English information available on them. Their name is pretty much un-google-able, even when you use their Korean name.

Anyway, these are two live videos from the band, the one on the left, “Stand by Me” from their release “The Toll” is my favorite song of them. The one on the right is the title-track from the single “Dot.”

For more info, attempt to check out their official homepage.

Zitten (짙은)

If I were to write a review for Zitten’s first album, I would probably use a corny metaphor such as “melt away in Zitten’s sweet embrace.” Way too cheesy, but still what pops up in my mind when listening to them, as a large part of their repertoire consists of gorgeous, acoustic ballads. Song Yong Guk is definitely one of my favourite vocalists as his voice is incredibly touching (even when I have no idea what he’s singing about). Zitten is officially a duo, but I believe one of them had to serve in the army for a few years, hence on half of their videos only one member is seen.

The song on the left is one of their characteristic acoustic ballads, the one on the right is a more upbeat, bluesy song.

More information on Zitten can be found at their official homepage, MySpace and the interview KoME held with the band.

Earlier this month I went to see Bruno Mars live in Amsterdam. I don’t usually go to pop concerts, so this was an interesting experience, to say the least. The opening act was the English singer-songwriter Natalia Kills.

Personally I don’t really get the concept of opening acts, some people say “it gives you something to do while you wait” but they just delay the main show and you have to wait even longer. In my experience it’s a horrible artist half of the time, but this time it was a pretty decent show.

According to Wikipedia, Natalia Kills is from the UK and released her debut-album “Perfectionist” in April. She wears shiny outfits and creates electro-pop music. Both the outfits and music are slightly reminiscent of Lady Gaga, but hey, it’s easy to call someone a Gaga-copycat these days.

Below is the song “Mirrors”, which she also performed in Amsterdam. Unlike many upcoming pop acts, Natalia Kills has actually a great voice and is able to sing on-key live.