Soundcheck

The British guitarist and singer, Joan Armatrading, has had a long and award-winning relationship with the British folk scene, has had a strong jazz influence in a lot of her early hits, topped the American charts with a new wave song in 1980, and just a few years ago became the first British woman to debut at #1 on the Billboard Blues Chart.  Joan Armatrading has just released her 21st album, called Not Too Far Away, and she’s here in the studio to play some of it for us.  Watch the full session here:    Watch the individual songs below:

Meet the Ruen Brothers, Rupert and Henry, who are actually brothers from the Northern England town of Scunthorpe. Their sound conjures Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, and music on the radio from a bygone era. They'll play some of this vintage pop with classic country twang in-studio. Watch the full session here:  Watch the individual songs below:

Meet the impressive R&B songstress Deva Mahal, who claims her parents as inspiration: blues legend Taj Mahal and dancer/artist/teacher Inshirah Mahal. Her latest record, Run Deep is collection of modern and seductive, rich and rocking tunes that make for a grand tour of soul, blues and classic rock. She and her band take us for a ride on powerhouse stompers and sumptuous ballads, in-studio.  Watch the full session here:   Watch the individual songs below:

This Is The Kit is English singer and songwriter Kate Stables (lately based in Paris or Bristol) and whoever joins her. Under that nom de plume, she's been releasing since the 00's. Her latest album, called Moonshine Freeze, has been nominated for the prestigious Ivor Novello Award in the UK. This Is the Kit plays some of these songs which range from ghost stories, clapping music, sax solos and birdsong in-studio.  Watch the full session here:   

Hear unpredictable and graceful melodic lines traded by sax and strings, as tenor sax superstar Joshua Redman and string quartet Brooklyn Rider, along with all-star rhythm section of Scott Colley (bass) and Satoshi Takeishi (percussion) take over the studio. It's chamber music with swoops, dives, groove and bite in original and newly-arranged music with one foot in the jazz world where sharps are optional. Look for these pieces to appear on a forthcoming record due in fall 2018 via Nonesuch.  Watch the full session here:

Resisting gender-specific compliments in print since 2014 (and probably before), producer, songwriter, badass, and musician Neko Case is about to unleash her latest record, Hell-On, into the world. She’s written songs that traverse a lot of ground: folk ballads, radio pop, rock anthems, a little bit of goth moodiness, honky-tonk piano, and swagger of all kinds. Her exceptional and distinct voice, “like garotting wire,” delivers wordplay of the highest order on this gorgeous, daring, won't-be-a-supplicant-ever record. Neko Case brings her touring band to play some of these new tunes in-studio. Watch the full session here:   

Hear unraveling minimalist electronica with restrained ambient feels from Rival Consoles, aka London-based producer Ryan Lee West, whose music combines warm and human analogue-heavy synthesizers, along with acoustic and electric instruments. On his latest, Persona, which might have taken inspiration from the shoegaze band, Slowdive, West strikes a delicate balance between music for home listening and larger spaces. He’ll perform this shifting palette of drones, melodies, and effects, in-studio. Watch the full session here:       Watch the individual songs below:

Part book club, part composer collective, Oracle Hysterical’s works occupy the fluid space between classically-inclined song-cycle and art-rock concept album. The group’s songs take on great literary with text sources from Grimms’ Fairy Tales to Greek tragedy, and falsely-attributed Shakespeare, all in modern settings that might be chamber rock, baroque folk or (staff favorite:) “Alt-classical.”  The chamber band’s latest is "Hecuba," a “savage story of revenge in which the disgraced queen of Troy, Hecuba, with her city razed and her children murdered, descends from nobility to primal violence.” (National Sawdust) Oracle Hysterical plays songs from it in-studio. Watch the full session here:   Watch the individual songs below:

Pianist, composer, MacArthur Fellow, and bandleader Vijay Iyer has done imaginative re-workings of pop songs, explored the connections between jazz and the music of India, and veered into the classical realm as well, with electronics. His most recent album, Far From Over, features an all-star lineup of virtuoso jazz improvisers: horn players Graham Haynes, Steve Lehman and Mark Shim alongside rhythm partners Stephan Crump and Tyshawn Sorey. And the rhythms under some these tunes have come from folk music - from West African drumming or Indian classical music – or just straight-up funk. The Vijay Iyer Sextet joins us live in the studio, in advance of their Village Vanguard residency this week.  Watch the full session here:    Watch the individual songs below:

Watch Live via Facebook: Some folks get a fast car, a tattoo, or a drum set for their mid-life crisis. However, New York singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Stephin Merritt, songwriter of The Magnetic Fields recorded 50 Song Memoir: a five-disc, two-and-a-half-hour audio autobiography, featuring one song for each year of his life from conception to teenage years; early explorations of synthesizer to when he founded The Magnetic Fields, and made 69 Love Songs; all the way up to 2015, his 50th year. There were certain rules: no more than seven instruments per song (which works well for the live band configuration), and no instrument could be used more than seven times across the album - oh and the song material came from personal life events. When the band performs the collection of songs live, it takes two full nights to perform, which they'll do on June 15 & 16 at the Apollo Theater. Stephin Merritt and Sam Davol are in the studio to play a few of these story-songs of cartoon pop, club disco, fractured love songs, and beyond, and maybe tell a few stories too. 

Bombino, aka guitarist and songwriter Omara Moctar, comes from the nomadic Tuareg people of North Africa. On his latest record, Deran, recorded close to his native Niger in the southern Sahara, he extends best wishes for peace and celebrates his desert home. Bombino’s guitar-based “desert blues” or “desert groove” tunes might have that camel gait-like loping rhythmic feel, or even Bombino’s own style of ‘Tuareggae’ - and are sung in Tamashek, the language of the Tuareg. He plays some of this powerful, hypnotic Saharan guitar music in the studio. Watch the full session here: Watch the individual songs below:

The California Honeydrops play stripped-down rootsy music that might sound like country-blues, Southern soul, New Orleans second-line, and R&B - all at once old school and really old-school. Their origin story is inspirational – Polish-born Lech Wierzynski (vocalist, guitarist and trumpeter) and drummer Ben Malament got their start busking in an Oakland subway station, and 10 years later, have added members, gotten tighter, and played all kinds of major tours, opening for Bonnie Raitt, B.B. King, Allen Toussaint, Buddy Guy and Dr. John. The Honeydrops are, as drummer Ben Malament says “a band that shines because of each other.” They’ll join us in-studio to play new tunes with soulful groove from their double album, Call It Home: Vol. 1 & 2. Watch the full session here:   

Eleanor Friedberger, best known as one half of the indie rock duo The Fiery Furnaces, has recently shifted her musical landscape, swapping out live instruments in favor of drum programming and synths for a sound that she can create mostly on her own. (Part of her desire to be more self-reliant, in the wake of the 2016 election.) On her latest record, Rebound, she channels the sound and energy of an experience at a very smoky 80’s goth disco in Athens where they do a “chicken dance.” Lyrical inspiration came to Friedberger from a biography about the poet Edna St Vincent Millay. Eleanor Friedberger brings these dark and smoky, yet groovy and poetic tunes to perform in-studio. Watch the full session here:  

The latest music from American pop band Speedy Ortiz, ‘Twerp Verse,’ speaks smartly to political and social situations of the present from a feminist perspective of truth-telling and is designed, on purpose, to make us uncomfortable lyrically and musically. With songs that airdrop aggressive, unpredictable chord progressions and disorienting rhythms behind enemy lines, this record is music for popping out from the cover of safety, armed with teeth and claws. Speedy Ortiz plays some of these tunes, in-studio. Watch the session below:  

Okkervil River excels at wistful, melancholy, intimate songs, yet there’s possibly an undercurrent of happiness to these latest creations on the forthcoming record, In The Rainbow Rain. Somehow singer/songwriter Will Sheff both reflects on this new world we live in and celebrates being alive. The new songs are inviting and soothing, with mellow Motown-style arrangements, controlled electric guitar bursts, ambient background vocals and 80’s-sounding production elements. Okkervil River’s Will Sheff joins us for a stripped-down live performance in the studio. Watch the session here: