Imagine Breakstra hanging with Cinematic Orchestra, or DJ Shadow teaming up with Elvin Jones and you're close to the sound of Nostalgia 77. A dark and stormy clash of breaks n' beats, moody bass lines, and cosmic jazz. Also includes the heavyweight cover of The White Stripes' "7 Nation Army". Hard to resist whether you're a hip-hop head, music lover, or jazz freak. For fans of Bonobo, Quantic, Cinematic Orchestra, Radio Citizen, Portishead, Polar Bear, Poets Of Rhythm, and Sleepwalker.
In today's episode of Boing Boing tv, our UK-based music correspondent Russell Porter interviews Adele, who describes her sound as "heartbroken soul." Adele's new album "19" was nominated for a Mercury Prize (think: Grammys, sort of, for the UK), and Russell caught up with her at the awards show backstage. Adele will be the musical guest on the October 18 edition of Saturday Night Live! The video for her song "Chasing Pavement" excerpted in today's BBtv was directed by Matthew Cullen.
When Led Zeppelin founder Robert Plant teamed up with Nashville mama Allison Krauss, critics compared the musical collaboration to a hookup between King Kong and Bambi. But their album "Raising Sand," produced by T-Bone Burnett, earned the odd duo widespread raves.
Boing Boing tv's London music correspondent Russell Porter caught up with Plant and Krauss backstage at the Mercury Prize, an annual award for the best album from the UK or Ireland.
In his "best albums of 2007" review, Paul Morley of Observer Music Magazine described the band's work as "tough as it is gentle, as ancient as it is modern, and as coldly desolate as it is achingly intimate. They might not end up being the best-selling British all-girl group of all time, but they're well on their way to being the most charismatic and imaginative."
BBtv's UK music correspondent Russell Porter interviews British modern "post-jazz" groupPortico Quartet about the eclectic influences behind their sound -- and how it felt to be nominated for this year's Mercury Prize. Here are previous BBtv episodes with music features from Russell. Listen to Portico Quartet at Last.fm, and you can pick up their new album Knee Deep in the North Sea (just released a few weeks ago!) on iTunes or Amazon.
"Britain is overflowing with new ideas and imagination, especially when it comes to music," says our UK-based music correspondent Russell Porter in today's BBtv episode. Russell is reporting in from the 2008 edition of the Nationwide Mercury Prize, where up-and-coming artists get a chance at instastardom, alongside established headliners like Radiohead or Coldplay. After a brief introduction to the history of this prize (about 3:00 minutes in), Russell introduces us today to the alt-folksy sounds of 19-year-old British singer-songwriterLaura Marling.
Below, a beautiful animated video for the song she performs live during our BBtv ep -- "Ghosts," directed by James Copeman. The song appears on Marling's newly released "Alas I Cannot Swim." Her album is offered in a really cool box set with original artwork.
BBtv presents a performance and interview with Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip, purveyors of cut-up street talk and fine electro-glitch-funk. Their new album, Angles, was just released in the United States, and our UK music correspondent Russell Porter digs in.
The duo consists of Dan Stephens and David Meads, both of whom are natives of Stanford-le-Hope in Essex, England. Their band's name -- "Scroobius Pip" -- is an intentional botch of the Edward Lear poem, The Scroobious Pip.
The second half of today's episode (at about 7:00 in, after the midroll ad, and the stuff about Pip's lip tat) is the music video for Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip's "A Letter from God to Man," directed by Steve Glashier of NTSH. The song is constructed around a short, sweet Radiohead sample (PlanetTelex) from the 1995 album, The Bends. The still you see in the flash embed above is from this music video.
BBtv's London-based music correspondent Russell Porter brings us a performance and interview from the Rumble Strips (website | MySpace | Wikipedia). They're currently on tour throughout the USA, and they're named after a UK-English term for the "small, continuous lines of bumps along the edge of a road." Their music is described as " Soul / Regional Mexican / Powerpop;" a fine, rockin' way to close out a short Labor Day work week. Previous BBtv music features with Russell Porter are here.
Boing Boing tv's UK-based music correspondent Russell Porter interviews singer-songwriter Candie Payne. The "atmospheric" chanteuse hails from Liverpool, and her brand of indie-pop draws fans the world over.
Boing Boing tv's UK-based music correspondent Russell Porter interviews -- and coaxes an epic street performance from -- Beardyman, the human beatbox from Brighton. This dude is a totally unassuming normal guy who can flip a switch in his brain to make crazy perfect funky human beatbox sounds come out of his mouth. The ladies dig it, as you'll see around 08:13, when he lets loose on the mic with a flock of blonde birds surrounding him.
If you're in the mood for still more of him doing his thing, below is a popular YouTube video in which Beardyman shows up at some stuffy academic conference, and poses as a lecturer before breaking out into beats.
Boing Boing tv's UK-based music correspondent Russell Porter interviews the young experimental jazz bandEMPIRICAL, from London. Today's episode includes an extended musical interlude, to ensure the mellowest possible Monday for all the peeps out there in BBtv-land. The band's "influences" roster says it the best:
Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Booker Little, Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis, Johnny Hodges, Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Steve Coleman, Branford Marsalis, Ray Brown, Jimmy Garrison, Bob Hurst, Ron Carter, Paul Chambers, Philly Joe Jones, Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, Ben Riley, Thelonious Monk, Jason Moran, Wynton Kelly, Keith Jarrat, Herbie Hancock, Ali Farka Toure, Oumou Sangare and to many others to list.
What would Japan look like through the eyes of a drifter camped in a shantytown near one of Tokyo's trendiest zones?
Today on Boing Boing tv, we debut Dowa Mondai: Assimilation Issues, an experimental short film by Bob Jaroc which attempts to provide an answer. The director explains:
In the run up to the launch of the 2006 av album Greedy Baby, Plaid (Ed Handley) and myself were on tour in Japan. On a day off in Tokyo I visited a small shantytown in Shibuya I had seen from a train the day before, tucked away in a kids playground. My translator Nick Stone and myself introduced ourselves to a friendly group of people and negotiated permission to pry into their lives and film, in exchange for some food/ cigarettes and wine.
My intentions for the piece were to stay clear of making a patronizing "cry/be angry for the homeless people" thing or a romanticized view of that life. I wanted to distill the experiences of the people who took the time to talk to me and question myself why I ended up going there in search of something to film.
This was filmed on Kodak vision2 200 super 8 stock with a Beaulieu 6008pro. The neg was cut into 1000 strips and was given away with the 1st 1000 copies of Greedy Baby. Dowa Mondai: Assimilation Issues was made from those rushes/recordings.
The short was shot, directed, and edited by Bob Jaroc, with music from Ed Handley (Plaid). Jaroc's past work includes work with other recording artists such as The Go Team and Leila. He has collaborated with artists Chris Dorley Brown, Blast Theory and Zoë Walker and Neil Bromwich. Jaroc has appeared at the Queen Elizabeth hall, the Los Angeles Natural History Musem and the London IMAX, and he is currently working with the dance company Random Dance on a piece that will be headline the main stage at the UK festival The Big Chill.
Today Boing Boing tv presents part two of our UK-based music correspondent Russell Porter's interview with the legendary Hot 8 Brass Band, from New Orleans.
Band leader Bennie "Big Peter" Pete explains the history of second line, the roots of New Orleans jazz, and what it took to survive as jazz band in the French Quarter.
Today's episode is a little longer than usual, so we can include an extended musical number live from the streets of Brighton -- the Hot 8 Brass Band performing their Louisiana-style cover of Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing." The band is currently on tour throughout the USA. Enjoy!
Transgressive was founded by two 20-year-old music fans who wanted to create a company that was "ethically sound and would release the best records in the world." Bands represented include The Young Knives (featured in previous BBtv episodes with Russell Porter, part 1, part 2), The Subways, Ladyfuzz, Jeremy Warmsley, and the Noisettes. Snip from the Transgressive manifesto:
It would be a label not linked to a style or genre, but one which would be represented by a logo that would be simply a stamp of quality on each perfect disk.
After a couple of pints in a Holborn boozer (not too far away from where Andy Gill would later record the classic debut LP from the Young Knives – although neither of the Trans twins knew it at the time) they had planned the first three releases and strove to grow the label to the stage where they could fund and make records that otherwise would not be released, and build a community of like minded people who could realise that anything is possible…
Transgressive was founded by two 20-year-old music fans who wanted to create a company that was "ethically sound and would release the best records in the world." Bands represented include The Young Knives (featured in previous BBtv episodes with Russell Porter, part 1, part 2), The Subways, Ladyfuzz, Jeremy Warmsley, and the Noisettes. Snip from the Transgressive manifesto:
It would be a label not linked to a style or genre, but one which would be represented by a logo that would be simply a stamp of quality on each perfect disk.
After a couple of pints in a Holborn boozer (not too far away from where Andy Gill would later record the classic debut LP from the Young Knives – although neither of the Trans twins knew it at the time) they had planned the first three releases and strove to grow the label to the stage where they could fund and make records that otherwise would not be released, and build a community of like minded people who could realise that anything is possible…
"Britain is overflowing with new ideas and imagination, especially when it comes to music," says our UK-based music correspondent 
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