The Unfairground
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The Unfairground
''The Unfairground'' is a 2007 album by Kevin Ayers, recorded with members of Ladybug Transistor, Teenage Fanclub, Neutral Milk Hotel, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci and Roxy Music. It was his sixteenth studio LP and his first new set of recordings in fifteen years, as well as the last album released before his death in 2013. It was recorded in New York City, Tucson, Arizona, London and Glasgow. It debuted at #14 in the UK Indie Chart, UK Indie Album chart. ''The Unfairground'' deals with themes of love, loss and the passing of time, and it has received strong critical endorsements for its author's ruminations on his tumultuous life. Ayers stated in a 2007 ''Sunday Times'' interview that it is “very much a reflective album: lost love, lost feelings, lost sensibilities. I had to include some of my blood, sweat and tears – if you are going to be honest, it can’t be avoided.” Track listing Personnel Musicians * Kevin Ayers Kevin Ayers (16 August 1944 – 18 February 2013) was ...
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Kevin Ayers
Kevin Ayers (16 August 1944 – 18 February 2013) was an English singer-songwriter who was active in the English psychedelic music movement. Ayers was a founding member of the psychedelic band Soft Machine in the mid-1960s, and was closely associated with the Canterbury scene. He recorded a series of albums as a solo artist and over the years worked with Brian Eno, Syd Barrett, Bridget St John, John Cale, Elton John, Robert Wyatt, Andy Summers, Mike Oldfield, Nico and Ollie Halsall, among others. After living for many years in Deià, Mallorca, he returned to the United Kingdom in the mid-1990s before moving to the south of France. His last album, '' The Unfairground'', was released in 2007. The British rock journalist Nick Kent wrote: "Kevin Ayers and Syd Barrett were the two most important people in British pop music. Everything that came after came from them." Biography Early life Ayers was born in Herne Bay, Kent, the son of BBC producer Rowan Ayers. Following his parents ...
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Neutral Milk Hotel
Neutral Milk Hotel was an American band formed in Ruston, Louisiana, by musician Jeff Mangum. They were active from 1989 to 1998, and again from 2013 to 2015. The band's music featured a deliberately low-quality sound, influenced by indie rock and psychedelic folk. Mangum wrote surreal and opaque lyrics that covered a wide range of topics, including love, spirituality, nostalgia, sex, and loneliness. He and the other band members played a variety of instruments, including non-traditional rock instruments like the singing saw, uilleann pipes, and Digital Horn. Neutral Milk Hotel began as one of Mangum's home recording projects. In 1994, he released the song " Everything Is" on Cher Doll Records. The song's exposure convinced him to record more music under this name. In 1996, he worked with childhood friend Robert Schneider to record the album ''On Avery Island'', which received modest reviews and sold around 5,000 copies. Mangum recruited musicians Julian Koster, Jeremy Barnes, ...
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Julian Koster
Julian Koster (born July 26, 1972) is an American multidisciplinary artist. As a musician he is a member of the Elephant 6 Collective, the leader of The Music Tapes, and a member of Neutral Milk Hotel. He is known for writing, directing, and acting in audio fiction '' The Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air)'', and for performing with the theatrical troupe of the same name. He is also known for his heavy use of the musical saw in recordings, even releasing ''The Singing Saw at Christmastime'', his only solo album released under his own name, in 2008. Early career: Chocolate USA In 1989, Koster formed Miss America with Liza Wakeman, Alan Edwards, Paul Wells and Keith Block. After legal threats from Miss America, they became Chocolate USA. Chocolate USA released two albums on Bar/None before disbanding to follow other projects. Neutral Milk Hotel Koster joined Jeff Mangum, Scott Spillane and Jeremy Barnes to record the second Neutral Milk Hotel album, ''In the Aeroplane over ...
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Francis MacDonald
Francis Macdonald (born 11 September 1970) drums with Teenage Fanclub. He makes music for filmmakers and TV and manages Camera Obscura and The Vaselines. On 30 March 2015, he released ''Music For String Quartet, Piano And Celeste'', described by Classic FM as "sublime, minimalist classical music". It debuted at Number 12 in the Official Classical Artists Album Chart and ad Number 3 in the Official Specialist Classical Chart. The album was recorded at Mogwai's Castle Of Doom Studios in Glasgow and features a quartet from the Scottish Ensemble. Career Macdonald recorded a solo album called ''Sauchiehall & Hope - A Pop Opera'' under the pseudonym "Nice Man" and ''The Art of Hanging Out'' as "Nice Man and the Bad Boys". In 2011, he recorded two digital albums of instrumental music - ''Maculate Conceptions'' and ''Maculate Conceptions Volume 2'' on Garageband on his Mac computer during a Teenage Fanclub tour of Europe. All of these albums are available online. He runs Shoeshine Re ...
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Backing Vocals
A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are used in a broad range of popular music, traditional music, and world music styles. Solo artists may employ professional backing vocalists in studio recording sessions as well as during concerts. In many rock and metal bands (e.g., the power trio), the musicians doing backing vocals also play instruments, such as guitar, electric bass, drums or keyboards. In Latin or Afro-Cuban groups, backing singers may play percussion instruments or shakers while singing. In some pop and hip hop groups and in musical theater, they may be required to perform dance routines while singing through headset microphones. Styles of background vocals vary according to the type of song and genre of music. In pop and country songs, backing vocalists may sing harmo ...
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Norman Blake (Scottish Musician)
Norman Blake (born 20 October 1965, Bellshill, North Lanarkshire, Scotland) is a Scottish singer, instrumentalist and songwriter in the Glasgow-based band Teenage Fanclub. Blake and Sean Dickson (The Soup Dragons) were in The Faith Healers together, which also contained various members at different times Stevie Gray, Hugh McLaughlin, Brian Carson and Colin Murray to name but a few. Blake was a member of the Glasgow group, The Pretty Flowers, with school friend Duglas T. Stewart, Frances McKee, Janice Cochrane and Sean Dickson. After the group split Blake formed the Boy Hairdressers in 1986, the original lineup being really just Blake assisted by Dickson and Stewart. Later Blake was joined by Joe McAlinden, Jim Lambie and three future members of Teenage Fanclub Raymond McGinley, Francis Macdonald and Paul Quinn (after Macdonald's departure) ( Brendan O’ Hare also in joined the group at this time) The group recorded one EP for 53rd and 3rd Records featuring three of Blake's ...
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Drums
A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair of matching Drum stick, drumsticks, one in each hand, and uses their feet to operate a foot-controlled hi-hat and bass drum pedal. A standard kit may contain: * A snare drum, mounted on a snare drum stand, stand * A bass drum, played with a percussion mallet, beater moved by a foot-operated pedal * One or more Tom drum, tom-toms, including Rack tom, rack toms and/or floor tom, floor toms * One or more Cymbal, cymbals, including a ride cymbal and crash cymbal * Hi-hat cymbals, a pair of cymbals that can be manipulated by a foot-operated pedal The drum kit is a part of the standard rhythm section and is used in many types of popular and traditional music styles, ranging from rock music, rock and pop music, pop to blues and jazz. __TOC__ ...
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Music Producer
A record producer is a recording project's creative and technical leader, commanding studio time and coaching artists, and in popular genres typically creates the song's very sound and structure.Virgil Moorefield"Introduction" ''The Producer as Composer: Shaping the Sounds of Popular Music'' (Cambridge, MA & London, UK: MIT Press, 2005).Richard James Burgess, ''The History of Music Production'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014)pp 12–13Allan Watson, ''Cultural Production in and Beyond the Recording Studio'' (New York: Routledge, 2015)pp 25–27 The record producer, or simply the producer, is likened to film director and art director. The executive producer, on the other hand, enables the recording project through entrepreneurship, and an audio engineer operates the technology. Varying by project, the producer may or may not choose all of the artists. If employing only synthesized or sampled instrumentation, the producer may be the sole artist. Conversely, some artists ...
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Trumpet
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard B or C trumpet. Trumpet-like instruments have historically been used as signaling devices in battle or hunting, with examples dating back to at least 1500 BC. They began to be used as musical instruments only in the late 14th or early 15th century. Trumpets are used in art music styles, for instance in orchestras, concert bands, and jazz ensembles, as well as in popular music. They are played by blowing air through nearly-closed lips (called the player's embouchure), producing a "buzzing" sound that starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the instrument. Since the late 15th century, trumpets have primarily been constructed of brass tubing, usually bent twice into a rounded rectangular shape. There are many distinc ...
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Vocals
Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without accompaniment by musical instruments. Singing is often done in an ensemble of musicians, such as a choir. Singers may perform as soloists or accompanied by anything from a single instrument (as in art song or some jazz styles) up to a symphony orchestra or big band. Different singing styles include art music such as opera and Chinese opera, Indian music, Japanese music, and religious music styles such as gospel, traditional music styles, world music, jazz, blues, ghazal, and popular music styles such as pop, rock, and electronic dance music. Singing can be formal or informal, arranged, or improvised. It may be done as a form of religious devotion, as a hobby, as a source of pleasure, comfort, or ritual as part of music education or ...
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Guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strings against frets with the fingers of the opposite hand. A plectrum or individual finger picks may also be used to strike the strings. The sound of the guitar is projected either acoustically, by means of a resonant chamber on the instrument, or amplified by an electronic pickup and an amplifier. The guitar is classified as a chordophone – meaning the sound is produced by a vibrating string stretched between two fixed points. Historically, a guitar was constructed from wood with its strings made of catgut. Steel guitar strings were introduced near the end of the nineteenth century in the United States; nylon strings came in the 1940s. The guitar's ancestors include the gittern, the vihuela, the four- course Renaissance guitar, and the ...
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Sunday Times
''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, which is owned by News Corp. Times Newspapers also publishes ''The Times''. The two papers were founded independently and have been under common ownership since 1966. They were bought by News International in 1981. ''The Sunday Times'' has a circulation of just over 650,000, which exceeds that of its main rivals, including ''The'' ''Sunday Telegraph'' and ''The'' ''Observer'', combined. While some other national newspapers moved to a tabloid format in the early 2000s, ''The Sunday Times'' has retained the larger broadsheet format and has said that it would continue to do so. As of December 2019, it sells 75% more copies than its sister paper, ''The Times'', which is published from Monday to Saturday. The paper publishes ''The Sunday Times ...
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