No, it is not a joke; the new Ulfuls song has Muppets, and it is a treat to watch! They had meant the name of the group to be Soulfulls, indicating the style of music they wanted to go for, but somehow it didn’t work out that way. And because one’s too many (and a hundred ain’t enough) I figured I should include a few more tunes from the band, so I just had to add 2014’s near-Beatles track, 2008’s hit Samurai Soul, and finally another 2014 song One Mind; Enjoy!
In Each Hand A Cutlass, also called IEHAC, is an Indi instrumental rock band from Singapore playing a very nice strain of fusion. They blend progressive rock, ambient, jazz, metal, and post-rock to paint sonic landscapes for us to explore and experience. They came together out of a number of other successful bands in 2011 and did an Indi release of A Universe Made Of Strings, their first album, which was recorded at Fascination Street Studios in Sweden. Their latest album, The Kraken, was recorded, engineered, mixed and produced by Brad Wood (if you don’t know him, he has done Smashing Pumpkins and Veruca Salt, among many others) at The Lodge in NYC. The first track shown here is Marauder, which is from that first album, the second tune is Satori 101 recorded live at ST Session.
One of the better artists out of Paris these days has to be Zaz, who creates such amazing music. The first track is Je Veux, the second is On Ira, and the third is called Le Long De La Route. To my mind, she seems to be somewhere between Pink and Edith Piaf. You should go hunt down the rest of her catalog, it is all excellent, and there is a lot more of it!
The first track is Positif, the next is The Ego Has Landed followed by Johnny Insano, and the last video is The Full Pledge Munkees playing some good Ska during their live set at Baybeats 2014, Singapore’s alternative music festival. The band started out as a trio in 1999 Singapore, and has added to their lineup over the years. You can now get their music from iTunes, and they were one of the bands that played this years Hoppin’ & Steppin’ Ska Festival in Japan. You can hear more of their music at Nyaring TV, which is their record companie’s YouTube Channel, but I have no clue why some of their official music videos include only still images.
Sooner or later it had to happen; a Nerdcore artist, MC Lars in this case, did a tribute to George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. The track is called Dragons Blood, and both the video and the song are fun. As someone watching the end product it is hard to tell if Editor Mike Sobo, Visual Effects master Tobias Arturi, or the
Effects Mixer Samarei was the one responsible for the excellent time/speed frame shifting during the combat choreography. It is truly well done, whoever pulled it off.
BBC Radio 4 is airing the first ever dramatization of Ursula Le Guin’s award winning and groundbreaking The Left Hand of Darkness beginning today at 15:00 UT. That’s right around 11AM EST, or 8AM Pacific, and besides airing in real time it will be available in their Listen Again mode for the next week or three. The one hour program is the first part of two, so make sure to catch them both so you can enjoy the whole story. It won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards as 1969’s best novel (one voted on by fans, one voted on by authors), and I can’t wait to hear it as a radio play. Another of her works is being aired beginning on the 27th of this month on BBC Radio 4Extra; Earthsea will be airing at 18:00 UT, and is a series of 6 episodes, 30 minutes long each. I’m not even going to try to tell you how many awards it won.