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Our current Press Releases are displayed below.
Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit: 'Live At Twist & Shout'
Robin Trower & Jack Bruce: 'Seven Moons'
Ute Lemper: 'Between Yesterday And Tomorrow'
Nik Kershaw: 'You've Got To Laugh'
John Henry Lambert: 'Gone Away'
Nazareth: 'The Newz'
Eveline: 'Waking Up Before Dawn'
Tony Palmer: 'All You Need Is Love' 5 DVD Boxset
Martin Stephenson & The Daintees: 'Western Eagle'
Archive Press Releases ~ March 2007 - February 2008
JASON ISBELL & THE 400 UNIT:'LIVE AT TWIST & SHOUT'
NEW WEST: NW6139
RELEASE DATE: MONDAY 31st MARCH 2008
Jason Isbell, former member of The Drive By Truckers, follows up the release of his acclaimed solo album of last year, Sirens of the Ditch, with a brand new, six-track EP recorded live at the Twist & Shout record store in Denver, Colorado on November 16th 2007.
It’s a vivid snapshot of the JI in-concert experience, and reprises only two songs from the ‘Sirens’ album, and includes a dazzling and heartfelt rendition of the Van Morrison classic, Into The Mystic.
The Live EP is released on the New West Records label, distributed in the UK by Essential, on Monday, March 31st.
Even better news is the fact that Jason will be bringing himself and his ace band The 400 Unit to the UK in April to play a bunch of shows. The UK tour dates are as follows:
APRIL
THURSDAY 3rd: GLASGOW KING TUT’S
FRIDAY 4th: NEWCASTLE, THE CLUNY
SATURDAY 5th: NOTTINGHAM, RESCUE ROOMS
SUNDAY 6th: BEDFORD, THE SHED
MONDAY 7th: LONDON, THE BORDERLINE
TUESDAY 8th: BRISTOL, ST. BONAVENTURE
Jason Isbell is available for press and radio interviews, sessions etc in promotion of the live EP, Sirens of the Ditch, and, indeed, the UK tour itself.
For more information, please contact Alan and Lesley at Indiscreet PR on
07813 290 474 or via this site for further details.
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ROBIN TROWER & JACK BRUCE: 'SEVEN MOONS'
EVANGELINE RECORDS: GEL 4116
RELEASE DATE: MONDAY 31st MARCH 2008
Always a good thing to report that rock’s elder statesmen can still deliver the musical goods when they’re well into the fifth decade of their careers. So, therefore, Indiscreet PR proudly announces the Monday March 31st release of Seven Moons (on the Evangeline Records label) a brand new collaborative effort from two of Brit Rock’s true legends:
Jack Bruce and Robin Trower. Both need little introduction to long time music fans; Bruce being one third of Cream, of course, but throughout his lengthy career, a fearless, endlessly creative / innovative explorer of many musical forms. Robin Trower has his antecedents in Southend R&B groovers The Paramounts, before joining Procol Harum in time to play their deathless classic A Whiter Shade of Pale on Top Of The Pops. Since pursuing a solo career in the early 1970s, Trower has blazed a unique trail with his sulphurous, soulful guitar work, and made telling contributions to several of Bryan Ferry’s solo albums of the 1990s.
Seven Moons is a refreshing restatement of classic Rock values, the simple verities of the time-honoured bass / drums / guitar eternal rock triangle vividly reprised; exquisite, lyrical guitar work, ruminative, thoughtful lyricism, sung and played with an understated grace and élan that is a delight to experience. Tracks such as Seven Moons and Distant Places of the Heart show that time has not dimmed the potency of Bruce’s vocal skills, whilst Trower’s guitar work is a model of Bluesy, soulful economy throughout; his uncanny knack of finding the right note, matched to incandescent tone, make Seven Moons a triumphant return to the fray for both of the main protagonists. I’m Home, the album’s closer, rounds things off with a Bruce vocal of typically wracked emotive power whilst Trower adds drama and tension with a mellow, understated guitar line. This is quality gear, in other words, and the kind of record that deserves to be held in high esteem by all fans of guitar-based rock music.
Robin Trower will be touring the UK in support of the release of Seven Moons. Unfortunately, owing to other commitments, Jack Bruce will not be joining him. Robin is available for interview in support of the superb Seven Moons, and his lengthy career.
For more information, please contact Alan and Lesley at Indiscreet PR on
07813 290 474 or via this site for further details.
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UTE LEMPER: 'BETWEEN YESTERDAY AND TOMORROW'
EDEL: 0186982CTT
RELEASE DATE: MONDAY 31st MARCH 2008
“The songs of Kurt Weill, the French, the European repertoire of chansons, with a contemporary dimension…,” that’s how the acclaimed German chanteuse Ute Lemper describes the concept which has earned her world-wide acclaim throughout the past 30 years.
Her new releases, Between Yesterday And Tomorrow, stands out among her 23 or so album recording career. For the first time, Lemper has recorded exclusively self-penned material.
In her own characteristic style, she describes experiences, memories, impressions, which develop into moments of elation, doubt, and even violence.
The German-born New York resident of eight years reflects the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Twin Towers, the ascent of the moon between the sky and the Earth, and also of the atomic tests in Nevada between 1945 and 1962 – all feature in the subject matter of this demanding and diverse album. An ode to the strong faith of the nomads, an unmistakeable invitation to a stranger in a bar, an appeal to remember love, and even a caring motherly promise to… her children, her husband, a friendship? There is a variety of poetic excursions on this album, which consistently, deftly defies hasty interpretation.
Yet there are any number of references to the life of the multi-award-winning vocalist and dancer, mother and wife. “I could have told a hundred stories.” The fact that these eleven songs represent her “subjective vision of musical storytelling” is explained by the 44-year-old with an “attempt to condense this complex, tormented, and at the same time wonderful world into a poetic journey which combines musical elements from different genres and cultures.”
The result sounds by no means as heavy as it reads - in fact the opposite is the case. With great sensitivity, and not a little humour, Ute Lemper and her husband, Todd Turkisher, have produced an incisively arranged band album, which moves through all its thematic landscapes with apparent ease. Grooving rhythms create an urban feel, string sections provide musical grain, scratches or an accordion generate subtle shifts of tone and emphasis.
Lemper’s live and studio band moves effortlessly between world and pop music, touching on funk and jazz in their musical excursions. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, her compositions fan out these genres in her very own style, fusing harmonies that breathe the tango with jazz scales, without relying on tried-and-tested clichés. The bands’ consummate musicality is much too good to take the obvious route, anyway. Accentuated, multi-faceted, stylistically confident and with impressive dynamism, Turkisher (drums), Morris Pleasure (bass), Mark Lambert (guitar) and Werner Gierig (piano) play their way through complex mood changes. Frequently it’s only a break that separates a ballad from a pop-rock interlude. Kevin Killen manned the controls of the mixing desk, and Bob Ludwig mastered the material – so the overall sonic image is rich in contrast and leaves nothing to be desired.
With poetic intensity, she attends to the tragedy and tristesse which political events frequently bring about, faces the impenetrability of our emotional life, and finds a way out through positive thoughts. “Now is love, don’t live in the future or in the past”
A sound piece of advice from a true diva who has devoted herself to her art for some 30 years.
Ute Lemper will be available for interviews in support of this release.
For more information, please contact Alan & Lesley at Indiscreet PR, on
07813 290 474 or via this website.
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NIK KERSHAW: 'YOU'VE GOT TO LAUGH'
SHORT HOUSE RECORDS: SHORTCD001
RELEASE DATE: MONDAY 7th APRIL 2008
One of the most successful British artists of the 1980s, Nik Kershaw makes a return to the recording fray with a brand new album, entitled You’ve Got To Laugh, on his own Short House Records label (distributed by Voiceprint), released on Monday, May 26th 2008.
It contains twelve all-new Kershaw originals, with the man himself playing many of the instruments himself, aided and abetted by the likes of Nick Beggs (bass), the superb drummer Simon Phillips, and the acclaimed Imogen Heap on backing vocals. The album is Kershaw’s first since 2001’s To Be Frank, which won considerable critical plaudits; there’s no reason to think that You’ve Got To Laugh will not be similarly lauded.
You’ve Got To Laugh features many fine examples of Kershaw’s melodic song craft, and also showcases his mastery of the studio, framing his frequently sardonic, quizzical lyricism in a contrasting selection of sounds and styles.
Opening with Can’t Get Arrested, from which the album gets its title, Kershaw resurrects an old Latinate, bossa nova rhythm, so beloved of the band from the hallowed BBC Come Dancing, in the days before ‘Celebrities’ became involved. However, Kershaw was always a performer who could match his lyrical wit with a suitably insidious, arresting tune, and there’s tunes a-plenty liberally spread throughout You’ve Got To Laugh. Oh You Beautiful Thing is but another fine example of this talent.
Old House has an appropriately wracked and tempestuous musical atmosphere to match the tortured lyric. Loud, Confident and Strong doesn’t name names, but the subject of the song is fairly obvious from the lyric; the Leader of The Free World, no less, and where there may have been many songs numbering the soon-to-be-gone Dubya, few have managed to combine their vituperation with such a strong melody. The closing You Don’t Have To Be The Sun is a subtle and gently shifting closer that drifts off into a vapour trail of echo-saturated glory, closing proceedings on a fine, exquisitely crafted album.
For more information,
please contact Alan and Lesley at Indiscreet PR on
07813 290 474 or via this site for further details.
Check out Nik Kershaw’s website – a very witty read:
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JOHN HENRY LAMBERT: 'GONE AWAY'
JOHN HENRY LAMBRT: 63447929409
RELEASE DATE: MONDAY 7th APRIL 2008
Gone Away is the debut album by Devon-based singer-songwriter John Henry Lambert, which will be released on his own label on Monday April 7th 2008.
Gone Away is a collection of songs, tone poems and discursive elements that is utterly unlike anything else you’ll hear all year. It is an album where the mood and tone, brilliantly sustained throughout, predominates. Against simple musical frameworks, Lambert, alongside his musical cohorts Ian Ritchie (saxes, vocals) Isabel Lambert (harmonium, piano), Kathleen Willson and Natalie Williams (backing vocals), conspire to construct a spacious and uncluttered sound field, with a melancholy, crisply autumnal feel. Lambert’s producer, Richard Ashrowan, also designed the beautiful sleeve that tastefully reflects the albums’ musical and lyrical themes.
Ashrowan explains in the album sleeve the rationale behind the recording and the nature of the album:
“We recorded Gone Away slowly, over a two year period, on location at John Lambert’s farm on Dartmoor. From the ouset, we decided the process was more important than the outcome. Nothing was rushed, atmosphere was everything. We applied quite arbitrary rules to the production from the beginning – we would neither use percussion nor electronic instruments, we would not overdub anything. Every thing would be recorded live in single takes; we would play and record it all in the house, we would aim for a consistency of mood, and we would enjoy being with each other…but most of all, we arrived to create and capture those subtle moments in which the musicians entered into a shared psychological or spiritual space, a space inhabited by the atmosphere of the song rather than the individuals playing it. Not everything is perfect in these recordings – we made many decisions that favoured atmosphere over technical perfection. But this is how we like it, this is how it was. When it came to mixing the record, we also resisted the temptation to edit, to add or to take away. We hope the process of minimal intervention has presented a sense of being true to the players, true to the heart of each song and true to the moment.”
The end result is more akin to the subtle soundscapes of recent Scott Walker recordings, or even the darker singer-songwriter creations of solo Nico, or an acoustic John Cale circa Music For A New Society. It’s a challenging work, but a rewarding one.
For more information,
please contact Alan and Lesley at Indiscreet PR on
07813 290 474 or via this site for further details.
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NAZARETH: 'THE NEWZ'
EDEL: EDEL 0188272ERE
RELEASE DATE: MONDAY 14th APRIL 2008
Seasoned Scots Rock heroes Nazareth are to release their first studio album in nearly ten years in the shape of The Newz, out on the Edel Records label on Monday, April 14th 2008.
Lining up with original members Dan McCafferty (vocals), Pete Agnew (bass) and Agnew’s son Lee Agnew on drums (who replaced original drummer Darrell Sweet, who died on tour in 1999) and terrific guitarist Jimmy Murrison, it’s a pleasure to report that The Newz is a splendid restatement of Naz hard rock values, with all concerned acquitting themselves with a panache and aplomb that is a joy to behold.
Although Nazareth are not necessarily as highly regarded in their native UK as they should be, across the world they are held in high esteem – Guns N Roses covered their classic Hair of The Dog on their Spaghetti Incident album, and other hard rock acts have acknowledged the bands’ no-frills, direct approach, with strong choral hooks, crunching guitar and rhythm, and McCafferty’s granite-hard vocals. On The Newz, the band belie their near decade-long break from the studio with Goin’ Loco, a slab of gutsy hard rock with a funky marbling that kicks proceedings off in some style. Elsewhere, there’s the anthemic Day At The Beach, the explosive Liar, See Me and the menacing Warning. It’s great stuff, utterly triumphant, and for a band with a career dating back over forty years, is a fantastic celebration of their longevity.
Nazareth broke through to the higher echelons of the Brit Rock arena with hits in the early 70s such as Broken Down Angel and Bad Bad Boy. They consolidate their success by way of cracking albums such as Rampant and Hair Of The Dog, and, although Punk sidelined them from the UK British music press to some extent, their international reputation expanded, scoring multi-million sales in Canada, the USA and even making inroads into South America.
Nazareth are available for interview in support of this release.
For more information,
please contact Alan and Lesley at Indiscreet PR on
07813 290 474 or via this site for further details.
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EVELINE: 'WAKING UP BEFORE DAWN'
SONIC VISTA: SVRCD004
RELEASE DATE: MONDAY 21st APRIL 2008
From Bologna, Italy, Eveline come to the UK to proffer a bunch of fragrant pastoral musical nosegays, with their second album, Waking Up Before Dawn, to be released on Monday, April 21st on the UK indie label, Sonic Vista.
Their music evokes the kind of layered, subtle and allusive musical colourings of hallowed ‘Canterbury Scene’ acts such as Caravan, and the mordant musings of Robert Wyatt and early Soft Machine. In fact, Robert Wyatt has said that Eveline are his favourite band!
Eveline formed in 2000 in Bologna, Italy, a collective of talented musicians from all over the country, and with antecedents in other Italian underground bands such as the Orange, Trabant, Ensemble Ivan Illich and more recently, Surfing Machos and the Terje Nordgarden Trio. Eveline is a new and groundbreaking project presenting alternative pop music and cool jazz, indie rock and electronics.
They recorded their first EP in 2001, entitled "Oh My Friend Please Call Me 'Cause My World Is Full Of Joy" and the second EP, titled "The Jeffy J. Jeff's EP." between 2002 and2003. The band chose parts of this second important EP for its first official album, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY, EVELINE!!!" which was released by the independent Venetian label Shyrec in 2005, and enjoyed great critical success in Italy.
In October 2007, the German indie label Sopot Records Ltd. released “HAPPY BIRTHDAY EVELINE!!!” and distributed it across Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The German critical milieu welcomed the album as one of the most interesting independent releases of 2007 and the band started a tour which reached several important German clubs in Berlin, Hannover, Bremen, Frankfurt and other important European cities.
2008 sees the release of Waking Up Before Dawn, with the avowed intent of spreading the Eveline virus to a UK audience.
Resource magazine described Eveline as “an elegant, eclectic, experimental band moving through calm and damp classical fields”; Die Zeit magazine said: “Eveline plays with different identities, a strange and cool diagonal humour, in the tradition of the novel figures of Pirandello and Flann O’Brien.” The UK publication Strummer opined "that Eveline may have brdged the gap between 70’s indulgence and noughties post-rock - a rare and precious album, a beautiful Steinbeckian pearl of a record.”
For more information,
please contact Alan and Lesley at Indiscreet PR on
07813 290 474 or via this website for further details.
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TONY PALMER: 'ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE' (5 X DVD BOXSET)
VOICEPRINT: TPDVDBOX 1
RELEASE DATE: MONDAY 21st APRIL 2008
FOR THE FIRST TIME ON DVD:
TONY PALMER’S CLASSIC SERIES 'ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE'
THE STORY OF POPULAR MUSIC:
Undoubtedly one of the music DVD releases of 2007 was the Tony Palmer directed 1968 documentary, All My Loving.
Roundly acclaimed in the Global music press, it brilliantly revived an era when Rock music carried a genuine meaning, and sought to place Rock music and the counter-culture in a context that had not been considered until then. All My Loving was hugely controversial in its time, and nearly forty years after its original broadcast, was still a vibrant and colourful document of its time, carrying a powerful resonance in the here and now.
It is with great pleasure, therefore that Indiscreet PR announce the DVD release of Palmer’s documentary series All You Need Is Love - all 14 hours and forty-five minutes of it – on a five–disc set.
All You Need Is Love was originally broadcast on prime-time TV in the mid-seventies, and its brief was nothing less than the detailing of the history of popular music up until that point.
Therefore, there are episodes dedicated to Ragtime, Blues, Jazz, Vaudeville, Swing, Tin Pan Alley, The Musical, Country Music, and contemporary rock music, including interviews with many of the leading luminaries of the various genres including John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimi Hendrix, Stephen Sondheim, Benny Goodman, Bing Crosby, Mike Oldfield, The Beach Boys, Tina Turner, Sam Phillips, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie, Richard Rodgers, Roy Rogers, Benny Goodman, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Phil Spector, Bill Monroe, Bill Graham, Bill Wyman, Frank Zappa, Eric Clapton and many many more.
As such, given its scope and reach, it is unlikely that, in this day and age, such as series would ever be commissioned; certainly not on mainstream television, and equally certainly without the series’ high-quality production values, just another unique facet to this revealing TV series.
All You Need Is Love will be shown in its entirety at the NFT on London’s South Bank across the May Day Bank Holiday weekend. Tony Palmer, the director of All You Need Is Love, is available for interview in support of this historic release. His acclaimed documentary on the composer Ralph Vaughan-Williams was show on channel 5 on New Year’s Day this year.
For more information,
please contact Alan and Lesley at Indiscreet PR on
07813 290 474 or via this website for further details.
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MARTIN STEPHENSON & THE DAINTEES: 'WESTERN EAGLE'
BARBARAVILLE: BVCD14
RELEASE DATE: MONDAY 28th APRIL 2008
Twenty years ago, when the world was a bit younger, Martin Stephenson & The Daintees illuminated the British music scene parlaying a deceptively light and breezy semi-acoustic rootsy pop music that was a strong and viable antidote to the arid mainstream.
Their live shows were delightfully loose-limbed, discursive affairs, with the irrepressible Martin and his cohorts tearing up the set list, one song morphing into another. The sets could last for over two hours, but it never felt like it; they had charm in abundance, and a certain North East England wit – songs were played with a smile and a knowing wink. Sadly, despite building up a diverse and dedicated following, the band never made the big time break that was surely their due. Besides which, Stephenson himself had a predilection for playing more intimate venues, and would frequently perform at small Folk clubs and pub back rooms to tiny audiences to keep that intimacy going.
The band sundered after their final album, The Boy’s Heart, in the early 1990s. Since then, Martin Stephenson has pursued a wildly variant solo career, regularly releasing albums and ploughing a peripatetic path through club venues throughout the UK and abroad, and is now located in Northern Scotland.
Anyway, after too, too long, Martin Stephenson & The Daintees have reconvened in recent years, and returned to the recording studios with a brand new album, Western Eagle, released on Monday, April 28th 2008, on their own Barbaraville label, distributed by Voiceprint.
Like all of The Daintees recorded works, it inveigles its way into your consciousness by stealth. There is no grand-standing, foot-on-the-monitors type hectoring; just subtle playing, strong melodies that insinuate their way into your heart, but repeated plays deliver and reveal an immensely satisfying, ruminative selection of songs which show that the inspirational strand that was left hanging on their The Boy’s Heart album back in the early 90s has been picked up and added to with Western Eagle.
In conjunction with his fellow Daintees - brothers Anthony and Gary Dunn (guitars and vocals), drummer Paul Smith, and several guest musicians, including Ken McCluskey, Kevin MacDermott and Blair Cowan, Martin Stephenson has crafted a bunch of melodic gems in his customary Folkie / Country Rock stylings – there’s understated, but high quality musicianship, and a reprise of their early song Indian Summer, a reggae-tinged lilt, that like the rest of the album gently finds its way into your pleasure centres. Unassuming it may be, but it is music of soul, heart, and of lasting value, and one of the more welcome returns to the fray from a band with a modicum of unfinished business to attend to.
Martin Stephenson is only too happy to talk about this excellent new album.
For more information,
please contact Alan and Lesley at Indiscreet PR on
07813 290 474 or via this website for further details.
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