Browsing Tag melancholic
Munya – Hotel Delmano
Do you like French pop music like Air and Charlotte Gainsbourg? Montreal-based singer, songwriter and producer Josianne Boivin, aka Munya, certainly does. She’s classically trained in piano, jazz, and opera, and combines her extensive musical education and Francophilia into atmospheric synth-pop that simultaneously feels nostalgic and modern. Call her a romantic retro-futurist.
Her next EP (out on 5 October) is called Delmano, and it’s named after Hotel Delmano, a fancy cocktail bar in Williamsburg. The title track is about encountering a blue-skinned woman in that cocktail bar. Boivin says about it: “There is a French band named Vendredi Sur Mer and I just fell in love with their music video of ‘La Femme À La Peau Bleue.’ I watched it so many times that she entered my dreams, once we were having a drink at Hotel Delmano. The song is about that dream.”
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Werner’s Weekly (week 35)
In my Carte Blanche Music playlist I keep you up to speed with the best new music that was released this year, so far. Mind you: it doesn’t pretend to give you a full overview of all new releases. On the contrary, I only present you with great new songs. In other words: following my list saves you a lot of time browsing numerous other playlists and listening to songs you probably don’t like… #tipoftheweek 😉
Last week, I added the likes of Dubstar, Plain White T’s, Rea Garvey, Smallpools & The Aces, and Villagers to my container playlist. But if 14 additions are too much for you (no offence), below you’ll find Werner’s Weekly, your compass to the music that matters. If you’re only looking for the best of the best, here they are, alphabetically ordered and preceded by the two latest Wildcards:
- Say Lou Lou – Golden Child (Wildcard this week)
- Cookin’ On 3 Burners feat. Kaiit – Warning (Wildcard last week)
- Áine Cahill – Beauty Is A Lie
- Ed Struijlaart (feat. The Hornaments) – Guitar
- Romes – Out Of It
- Sam Fender – Dead Boys
- Yonaka – Fired Up
As usual, clicking the links provides you with extra information (both serious and fun facts), and you can listen to all seven of the songs via the Werner’s Weekly player in the sidebar. Enjoy!
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Áine Cahill – Beauty Is A Lie
After breaking through in her homeland Ireland, 23-year-old singer Áine Cahill is ready to capture Europe (for starters). Her new single Beauty Is A Lie is a haunting pop ballad, with an almost cinematic-like production. Lana Del Rey fans will love it!
In Cahill’s words, the song is about ‘all the bullshit we see day to day on social media’. She explains: “We all do it. People only show an edited version of themselves, the side they think is ‘the best’, but this is the world we are living in. I hate it, but I love it at the same time.”
Beauty Is A Lie is accompanied by a creepy video, featuring moving shadows and strobing lights.
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Werner’s Weekly (week 33)
With the addition of great new tracks by Elle King, My Baby, Ten Tonnes, You Me At Six and others, the Carte Blanche Music playlist got another quality boost last week. 2018 has proved a fine year for music so far, and it doesn’t show signs of slowing down, even in the midst of summer. On the contrary, when looking at Werner’s Weekly, your compass to the music that matters, one can only come to the conclusion that there are a lot of fantastic new acts to be discovered as well.
As always, this shortlist is made up of the latest two Wildcards, complemented by the best new releases of the last week. More info is behind the links below, and you can listen to the songs via the Werner’s Weekly player in the sidebar.
- Jade Bird – Uh Huh (Wildcard this week)
- Manic Street Preachers – People Give In (Wildcard last week)
- Danko – Hit Me Up
- Dizzy – Backstroke
- Fanclub – Leaves
- Gecko Turner – Un Limón En La Cabeza
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Jaya & Kevin Bridge – Trippin’
A decade ago, Australian Jaya McLoughlin and Dutchman Kevin Suierveld met whilst studying audio engineering in Australia. Since then, singer-songwriter McLoughlin moved to London to front her own band, JAYA, while Suierveld settled down as a musician/producer in Brisbane, Australia. They stayed mates, however, and started collaborating via the internet.
The first fruit of this collab is the track Trippin’, credited to Jaya & Kevin Bridge. Drawing on folk and electronic influences, they wrote a catchy melody and submerged it in a pool of ambient sounds. If you like the atmosphere of Life In A Northern Town by The Dream Academy or Imogen Heap’s soundscapes, Trippin’ is a real treat!
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Dizzy – Backstroke
Dizzy is a band that consists of three young brothers from suburban Ontario, Canada plus their neighbour Katie Munshaw as lead singer. They make dreamy, minimalistic pop music, combining fizzing guitar melodies with soulful vocals and often very personal lyrics.
After Stars And Moons, Swim, Pretty Thing and Joshua, Backstroke is the fifth single to precede the band’s debut album Baby Teeth, due this month. Backstroke is a wonderful song, produced by Damian Taylor, who worked with artists as diverse as The Prodigy, Björk, Arcade Fire, The Killers, UNKLE, and Evanescence.
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Lead Pony – Soul Sucker
Lead Pony are a San Diego based ‘dirty blues rock band’, that only formed in early 2017. The quartet, featuring Jesse Hofstee, Dylan Stallard, Hillary Laughery and R. Fillmore, brings you songs of love, death, and every social statement in-between, that are rooted in the past, with colourful fuzz, dangerous piano, and feverish drumming.
Their new, double A-sided release Two Love Songs does indeed contain two songs (how appropriate):
- Breaker (Don’t Touch Me) is a hard driving tune that questions the meaning of the trials of partnership
- Soul Sucker, my favourite, explores the darker paths our minds tend to conjure, perhaps more than we care to admit
Both tracks come ahead of the band’s first full length, to be released by the end of summer. A second album has already been announced for early 2019.
For more great new music follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Werner’s Weekly (week 19)
Biffy Clyro, Black Honey, DMA’s, Frank Turner, Guns N’ Roses, Kailee Morgue and Liam Gallagher… They all came out with great new (or newish) music last week. Missed it? Then check my 2018 container playlist Carte Blanche Music, that is constantly updated with the best new tunes. All of the above – and 393 more – are there. Nearly a full day of highly recommended stuff for your listening pleasure.
Seven of the featured songs are below. The best of the best new music, compiled in Werner’s Weekly, your compass to the music that matters:
- Hooverphonic – Romantic (Wildcard this week)
- Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson – Bad Dreams (Wildcard last week)
- Blossoms – Cool Like You
- Foé – Qu’est-Ce Que T’as Là?
- Meg Myers – Numb
- Parcels – Tieduprightnow
- The Nectars – We Will Run
Follow the links for more info and hear the tracks in full via the Werner’s Weekly player in the sidebar!
For more great new music follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Wildcard (week 18):
Hooverphonic – Romantic
Belgian band Hooverphonic started in 1995 as trip hop act Hoover, but they needed to change that name to avoid legal issues with the vacuum cleaner company of that name. Since then, the name of that company collected more dust than the devices that once made them famous.
Ever since the beginning, Hooverphonic has two constants: bassist/programmer Alex Callier and guitarist Raymond Geerts. Their choices for vocalists have always been outstanding, although most of them didn’t last long. After five female singers – Esther Lybeert (1995-1996), Liesje Sadonius (1996-1997), Kyoko Baertsoen (1997), Geike Arnaert (1997-2008) and Noémie Wolfs (2010-2015) – they tried some male vocalists for the first time on their 2016 album In Wonderland. But now, they’re back with their success formula, presenting their sixth front woman. One that the Belgians among you may already know…
17-year-old Luka Cruysberghs won The Voice Van Vlaanderen in 2017, where she was part of team Alex Callier, who happened to be one of the show’s coaches. She even sang the band’s Mad About You during the competition.
Romantic is the first Hooverphonic song with their new leading lady. A typically melancholic, orchestral pop song with ‘James Bond’ written all over it. Cruysberghs’s voice blends beautifully with Callier and Geerts’s symphonic backdrop. It once more underlines the duo’s great talent to find the right singer, time and time again. Let’s hope this trio will last for many years.
Hooverphonic is one of my favourite bands of all time. Listen to their Best Of album to hear why. Their new single Romantic is this week’s Carte Blanche Music Wildcard, all of which you can find in the Wildcards 2018 playlist.
For more great new music follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Ronald Maas – Lines In The Darkness
Ronald Maas has always been a sideman, so you may not have heard his name before. But don’t be mistaken, over the last two decades he has played over 1000 gigs with a huge variety of bands and projects, recorded some 40 albums, EP’s and singles and toured all over Europe.
His best-known projects are probably Dutch bands Number Nine and Audio Adam. In the summer of 2015 Maas moved to London, where he joined the band Jaya, whose single Love Is A Bird I wrote about earlier. Although Jaya is his musical priority, he managed to self-produce the concept EP Aries, ahead of an album that’s scheduled for release somewhere in 2019.
The four-track EP is available now. It features Jaya drummer Stefano Magini, but Maas can be heard on vocals, grand piano, Hohner Pianet, Roland F-20, guitars, bass guitars, and percussion. He is also responsible for all compositions, lyrics, production and engineering.
Lines In The Darkness is the single and this very well executed live version is the official video.
For more great new music follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
