Four years. Over 1,200 posts. Two or three or four (or five?) thousand songs shared. A few dozen concerts recapped. I highly doubt that there is anyone out there who's been along for the entire ride, but that's OK. A few people get on board and jam along with me, a few others move on and disappear into internet anonymity. Sometimes I wonder what's happened to readers who use to comment in the past. Have they let their connection to music move in to the background of life, to be replaced by children, a job, significant others? Have [...]
There's been lots of music going on around the house the past few days: We've been family air-guitaring around the living room to Foxboro Hot Tubs . The kids are preparing for their Christmas concerts. My wife is sitting in bed next to me telling me about Esperanza Spaulding (who is a Portland native and apparently dropped out of high school but ended up teaching at Berklee at age 20). The band is practicing (and getting marginally above complete suckiness). If we could only get all three [...]
The Dark Romantics : Heartbreaker Learn More And Buy Team Genius : Take Me Home Learn More And Buy Nicole Willis And The Soul Investigators : If This Aint Love.. Learn More And Buy
If you don't know, Mike Slott . I knew the name sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it right away. Although, when I checked the MySpace and I saw Hud Mo & HOC, I remembered my brother, Salva , dropped them on me while on hiatus in San Fran. This is my kind of shit right here; forward-thinking, yet not too far out there to alienate the average listener. Big kicks, rhodsey flavor, and a little tinge of Detroit for that synthy edge. Love it. It's like the IDM scene of the late 90's finally got [...]
New Everybody Mid's in Tweed from Alife - look for 'em this fall. Also - since something about brown and tan says soul music to me (let alone brown and tan tweed), peep new throwback soul from Nicole Willis below. If you're like yowhodafuggizdat then join the club. I went out on a limb and copped her album from Turntable Lab the other day and it def has a few joints. I'm more biased towards the first half but that's generally the story with me these days and my album ADD havin' self. Anyway, as a bonus, while [...]
You know another favorite genre around here that got criminally neglected during Blog-achella? The Broken Beat goodness... ... and today we right that with a three-nation collabo, featuring Nicole Willis & The Soul Investigators (she's from Brooklyn, they're from Finland, where funk bands are a dime a dozen) remixed by London's Afronaught , one of the members of the mighty Bugz In The Attic crew. Now this Nicole Willis is flying under the radar a bit, but she should be in the same conversations as Sharon Jones, [...]
Lonnie Donegan - House of the Rising Sun Yellowman - Zungguzungguguzungguzeng Nicole Willis and the Soul Investigators - If This Ain't Love (Don't Know What Is)
This year I got ambitious and decided to jot some thoughts on every one of my 50 favorite songs (though about half of these blurbettes are quotes from earlier posts). Each song is so different and delightful in its own way that I couldn't rank them. You'll find the list in alpha order by song title. I'd love to host an mp3 for every one, I really would, but given bandwidth constraints, that's out of the question. So I tried to put up the songs that may be harder to find via Hype [...]
Growing up I spent my summers working alongside many kids who called Finland home. Some of them I've formed lifelong friendships with and I still shake my head at their unmatched ability to drink vodka. All the summer good times spent together it was never revealed that the Fins had a funky side to them, honestly I thought all they listened to was Lordi and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It came as very welcomed surprise that an album I'd been digging for the better part of the summer claims the same [...]
Dear friends, The guitar tiptoes down a darkened street. Shadows scurry along: a man, his new flame and their drunken laughter. Minutes later, another woman comes into view. She's been following them. She can't help it. Same old story, love gone wrong and the need to know exactly why. The woman in pursuit is this song. This song is tailing you. Accusing you of the worst kind of treachery;
Despite the heat, it feels more like Spring these days, as a lot of bands and projects are breathing with new life. Here are a few: Strangely, Scarlett Johansson 's forthcoming album of Tom Waits covers is starting to sound interesting. What seemed to be a misguided vanity project - she couldn't have chosen a more diametrically opposed subject, physically, vocally, and, well, idealistically - has turned into an NYC hipster magnet. Pitchfork reports that TV on the Radio 's Dave Sitek has signed on to produce and has brought with him members of [...]
Aug 2, 2007, 11:47am
if:mv
Track: Just Got To Be Artist/Band: The Black Keys Label: V2 Duration: 3:16 Description: Video for The Black Keys' new single "Just Got To Be", on 7' vinyl through V2 Records on August 13th. Directed by Peter Zavadil. Formats available: Flash (.flv)| Audio (.mp3) 25 FREE Downloads from eMusic . No Restrictions - Own Your Music!
For quite some time Nicole Willis And The Soul Investigators have been looping in and out of the iPod but the words just weren't quite there to describe the sensible soul that flowed from the speakers. Idolator recently called the group's Keep Reachin' Up "a sure-fire year-end-list contender...except for the fact that Reachin' was actually released overseas last year;" but who is to say that Jarvis won't be on many 2007 year end lists just as Thunder, Lightning, Strike was back in 2005. That being said [...]
Nicole Willis & The Soul Investigators - If This Ain't Love (Don't Know What Is) (Light in the Attic 2007) Nicole Willis & The Soul Investigators – Keep Reachin' Up / Light in the Attic Though you have to put up with all the rowdy immaturities of her pop divaness, you got to give a few props to Amy Winehouse for helping re-popularize classic funk-backed soul music to a young audience. She is obviously not the singular reason for the stylistic shift from the over-produced dance-heavy digital [...]
Just in case you missed it Friday, in the rush to cover an inane police chase around Phoenix, two TV helicopters collided in mid air. Two pilots & two reporters were killed, and a park in Suburban Phoenix was turned into a messy charred memorial. Another fine example of the benefits of mainstream television news, racing to tell viewers a typically sensationalized, yet inconsequential story that likely ended the same as every other lame police pursuit: flat tires, crushed metal & deferred dumb ass dreams. The Ethiopians - Everything Crash [...]
"I looked around me, saw my life could be full of the finer things." Nicole Willis ~ If This Ain't Love (Don't Know What Is) from Keep Reachin' Up by Nicole Willis & The Soul Investigators photo: Aria ~ Tie Me Up
Third album from Willis is her first to fall under the banner of the retro soul movement spearheaded by the likes of Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Amy Winehouse, and the Quantic Soul Orchestra.
One listen to Nicole Willis, and there's no question that this woman has soul. One look at the liner notes to Keep Reachin' Up with all those Finns playing in the Soul Investigators and you may be asking yourself, do Finns have soul? I know a Finn. He doesn't have much soul. He does an all right job of "Mustang Sally" on Karaoke night, but I would never, ever confuse his tipsy delivery with soul. Yet, when you hear Nicole Willis and The Soul Investigators on "If This Ain't Love (I Don't Know What Is)" [...]
According to Wikipedia, "Nicole Willis was born in 1963 in Brooklyn, NY. She started out in London in the mid-80's where she teamed up with members of The Brand New Heavies. Later, having returned to NYC she was part of the earliest line-up of Deee-Lite. She then toured with The The, and in the early 90's she was in the band Repercussions. Records were released on Mo' Wax and together with the legendary Curtis Mayfield, the band recorded a version of Mayfield's "Lets Do It Again". She has also collaborated with Leftfield and Raw Stylus. In [...]
Vendredi soir, d*i*r*t*y soundsystem au ParisParis avec Pilooski ... _ nicole willis & the soul investigators - if this ain't love (don't know what it is) J'ai [...]
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