By Paul F. Agusta | Sun, 03/22/2009 2:46 PM
Hello there my beauties! Welcome to another scintillating session with I, your purveyor of geeky musical goodness. As always, thanks for the notes - be it on Facebook or on the UH email address. Keep em coming! And, you guessed it! It's Reverb time!
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I hope when I get old I get to be like Bob Dylan. The dude is still going super strong at age 67 and shows no sign of settling down. As previously reported, he's coming out with a new studio album (his 46th), called Together Through Life.
The LP comes out April 28 via Columbia Records. The album is being produced under Dylan's "Jack Frost" alias and follows 2006's highly acclaimed Modern Times. This album was partly inspired by French director Olivier Dahan's upcoming film My Own Love Song starring Ren*e Zellweger, Forest Whitaker and Nick Nolte.
Dylan wrote the new song "Life Is Hard" for the road trip flick, and then Together Through Life "sort of took its own direction," Dylan says in an interview on his official website (www.bobdylan.com).
In the interview with rock uber-journalist Bill Flanagan, Dylan talks about the heavy influence of Chess Records on the new album, and how his recent artistic resurgence has changed his creative viewpoint.
"If there's an astrologer with a criminal record in one of my songs, it's not going to make anybody wonder if the human race is doomed. Images are taken at face value and it kind of freed me up."
Let's be honest, when it comes to eccentricity and quirks, Regina Spektor makes Bj*rk look pretty average. But another undeniable thing is that she's incredibly talented and highly original. Her accent, phrasing, pronunciation, melodies and hooks are all a tad off center.
So it makes us longtime admirers of the Russian born singer/songwriter very happy to see her success over the past few years after her 2006 album, Begin to Hope, cracked Billboard's Top 20 on the strength of bittersweet brilliant poppers like "Fidelity" and "Better". And we're even giddier to hear that her new full length album, Far, is due to be released in June via Sire Records).
For Far, Regina enlisted a quartet of hit-making producers: Begin to Hope's David Kahne, Mike Elizondo (Fiona Apple, Maroon 5), Garret "Jacknife" Lee (U2, R.E.M.) and ELO frontman/Paul McCartney and George Harrison collaborator/Traveling Wilburys member/overall rock *n *roll institution Jeff Lynne. Although her production collaborators come from a wide range of backgrounds, it's tough to mistake Spektor for anyone else. Among the songs that may be included on the record (the track list has yet to be set), there are dark narratives ("Genius Next Door"), sprightly sure-to-be hits ("The Calculation") and some trademark goofiness ("Folding Chair", which features Spektor doing an uncanny dolphin imitation). I totally can't wait!
IDM (or Braindance, whatever you electro-purists want to call it) pioneer and overall bad boy genius of all things beeps and blips Richard David James (aka Aphex Twin) has been keeping us fans waiting for a new release for a damn long while now. Apparently we're not the only ones waiting.
Warp Records Steve Beckett is also teetering on the edge of his seat.
"We're definitely going to be putting out a new album by him," he told BBC 6 Music.
"Hopefully it will be this year, if I can pry it out of his hands. It's definitely on its way," Beckett added.
"I don't know a single note or anything about it. It will be as much of a surprise to me as anyone else. Basically I find out what it sounds like when we go into the mastering room and he puts it - well how it used to be, he'll put the DAT player in and there it'll be - so that's the first time I'll hear it. Then I'll go onto my knees and thank him and then we'll put it out."
So, yeah. The eggs aren't even there yet, so don't start counting the chickens.
