Speak/Easy: The Moonshine Mixes ['Joe Sent Me' Revisited] featured as one of Traxsource's "What's Hot This Week"

 Endorsed: “Lovely to hear Vanessa Daou back in action. New remix album coming out. If you’re digging this, keep an eye out for @dusk, a new lounge night at Chicago’s Downtown Bar starting in December. ” — Endorse, Not Endorse

Vanessa Daou ‘Speak/Easy: The Moonshine Mixes ['Joe Sent Me' Revisited] is featured as one of Traxsource’s “What’s Hot This Week” in Lounge/Chill Out releases and has several selections in their Essential 20 Lounge tracks and is #3 in their Essential 20 Lounge tracks for the week!

Congrats to all the great producers involved!

XOV

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ABOUT THE MOONSHINE MIXES:

VANESSA DAOU closes the chapter on her sixth studio album, JOE SENT ME, with the release of the remix companion SPEAK/EASY: THE MOONSHINE MIXES [‘JOE SENT ME’ REVISITED]. The 16 track set assembles a cherry-picked collection of new and previously released mixes culled largely from her string of successful remix single releases – “Consequences”, “Black & White”, “Once And A While” and “Heart Of Wax” – that bring into focus Daou’s intrinsic love of sonic experimentation and diverse musical genres.

Featuring an all-star cast of international, dance and electronic music, innovators including BLANK & JONES, MARK REEDER, CHARLES WEBSTER, TERRY LEE BROWN JR., ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ, JORI HULKKONEN, GANGA, SLEEPTHIEF, RALPH MYERZ and DJ HEN BOOGIE, the release effortlessly flows from smoky nocturnal jazz and pastoral chilled-out grooves to deep, dark and sultry house and radiant synth-pop with a seamless fluidity.

It’s a satisfying soundtrack ideal for clubs, lounges, late-night drives or intimate “back to mine” sessions that will undoubtedly please DJs, as well as, Daou’s legion of loyal fans while introducing a new generation of mature music lovers to the artist’s sophisticated and eclectic pedigree.

'Frankenstorm' Sandy & Climate Change| History Does Not 'Write' Itself

Wondering if 'Frankenstorm' Sandy will generate more than hashtags and RTs, but a substantive & well informed conversation about Climate Change.

Proof, it seems, is in the numbers, and the stark truth is the previously unimaginable is now becoming the norm.A bit of graphing shows it's quite possible discussion will be limited to the billions in damage, Tumblr pics, NY Stock Exchange, Tunnels & Subways closing, and so forth.... 

 

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History does not 'write' itself, it is up to us - We must be guided by those twin forces, Science and common sense. Getting that message across is the challenge and the imperative in times like these.

Light Sweet Crude | Deep Linking: Artist's Statement

Music, poetry, song; the secret regions of the voice. The far edges of consciousness and memory,: those liminal, sublime realms reached by the Poet's phrasings and timbres, a lover's inchoate whispers. Words and melodies are all tools and instruments, salves or salvos, and, like weapons, they can be directed, aimed and launched, as a direct response or spontaneous reaction; as an invitation or instigation, through subtext or subterfuge.
 The focus of 'Light Sweet Crude' is language and the many ways it can be explored, layered, presented, subverted and delivered.

The springboard for the conceptual framework of the album was an article I read in the New York Times in 2009 which speculated on the origin of flowers. The original working title for the album was 'The First Flower'. Throughout the album, I use the manifold layers of reference for the idea of 'flower’, in part, as a metaphor for the loss of information as a consequence of the passing of time, human interference, as well as the loss of innocence.

I’ve been long-fascinated with the history of words, and explore their origins as the subtext for many of the songs. Before I write, it is often one word that drives me: this idea might then become a drawing or a painting or a poem before it becomes a song. This mixing of media says something to me about the clash or meeting between fields or layers of thought, creating alliances between things, or making them repel and pull apart. I look to language, sound, symbols - to words and their hidden and layered histories - for clues as to how ideas are changed,how messages are coded, intercepted, interpreted, and corrupted, when and which things go from trash to artifact.

The ultimate symbol of a substance intrinsically steeped in our collective history is crude oil, a substance which is both a symbol of the layering of time as well as man's corruption of its essential chemistry through a process of ‘refinement’. The term ‘Light Sweet Crude’ is an example of the power of language to fire the imagination, index time, convey nuance, dimension, hybridity, and complexity, putting emphasis on the fact that the role of Art is to capture the essence as well as the substance, the singularity of experience, to tell that part of the story that History leaves out.

LIGHT SWEET CRUDE is an exploration of the raw material of life, through the recording of all aspects of my experience, in forms that are aural, virtual, physical, metaphorical and textual: expressed through note-taking, sketches, Javascript, HTML and various computer codes: a distillation of my research and experience into the many ways the physical world is becoming less about our connection with nature and more about how we're linked through technology.  

As our lives become more virtual, the traditional tools of the artist are put on trial; does the physical object still matter? A newspaper? A book? Does the writer still feel the need to put pen to paper? Are we losing touch with our raw, tactile selves, or are we experiencing the dawn of a new paradigm of not only deep linking through technology, but deep thinking through the cross pollination of our hybrid experiences?

Unbecoming Levity | Driving Miss Vanessa

Never had a car named in my honor, but there's always a first :-)

Part of what I love about being an artist in these predominately virtual days is reading about how my music intersects with the lives of listeners and comes into play ...

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Driving Miss Vanessa

  In yesterday's “Springtime in New England” post I mentioned that my car had a name. Not “The Purple Rocket”–that's just a nickname. No, my car's name is “Vanessa”. Vanessa is a 2003 Chrysler PT Cruiser GT 2.4L Turbo in a metallic burgundy-purple shade that Chrysler calls Deep Cranberry Pearl. She's my very first new car (since 1983 I've owned/operated many used vehicles, some junky, some not so junky–topic for another day). I love this car.
I'm not really a car nut. At least I thought I wasn't. I've always liked the look of the more shapely vehicles (Corvettes, Miatas, Porsches, both versions of the Beetle, the Neon, etc.) but I've never gone bonkers over an automobile. My wife got her first new car (a forest green 2003 Subaru Outback) a year ago, and I think it is a very full-featured vehicle, but I certainly didn't go nuts over it. Vanessa is a different story. 

I purchased Vanessa from Robert's Chrysler of Fitchburg, sight unseen. I walked in there with a grocery list of features that I wanted...

[...]

The car has a 6-disc CD player mounted in the dash, and the night before picking it up at the dealer I burned six CDs with my favorite tunes. I like a lot of different stuff, but I am partial to sultry female singers, and as a result sprinkled in many places on the discs were various such artists. In fact disc 3 was entirely devoted to such talents as Suzanne Vega, Dido, Madonna, Enya, Fiona Apple, Kirsty MacColl, Merril Bainbridge, and Vanessa Daou. 

If you've never heard of Vanessa Daou, and you like sultry femme vocalists, I heartily recommend her, but you may find her somewhat shocking. She's definitely not something to listen to when the kids are around. One of her early albums “Zipless” was basically a collection of Erica Jong poetry set to music. That one was a little too shocking for me, but her later CDs, swimming with bisexual lovesongs, are amazing IMHO. Her voice is low and beautiful, her lyrics are poetic, and she sings in a haunting half-whispering way. Great stuff to listen to when you are alone with someone you love. It was after Miss Daou that Vanessa was named, because she too was sleek, graceful, beautiful, and had a whispery song of her own. 

Within a week “it” became “she”, and “the car” became “Vanessa”. I say hello to it in the morning. I thank it for a nice ride when I get out. I love taking it to the carwash. I even washed it by hand in 40 degree weather, using special cleaners on the rims, and a rubber-polish on the tirewalls to make them shiny. Am I crazy? 




Read more @ Unbecoming Levity

BLACK & WHITE EP & VIDEO ***OUT NOW***

Featuring a hard-hitting blend of Finnish nu-disco/electronic house innovator Jori Hulkkonen, German electronic pop conceptualist Mark Reeder, Compost Records’ Shahrokh Dini, and co-writer/co-producer, Blake Robin (aka Baron Von Luxxury).

Watch for Speak.Easy: The Moonshine Mixes (Joe Sent Me Revisited) out late September, featuring a cherry-picked collection of remixed works from Joe Sent Me.

Download on iTunes

Reposted: Interview with SNAPSHOTS FOUNDATION — on prince.org mssg board

Vanessa Daou opines on the state of the music industry

Long read, but good points raised...

Vanessa Daou: Future States of Music

Bio: Gifted with a unique combination of poetic lyricism and a sensuous voice, singer and songwriter Vanessa Daou has defined the sound of New York's progressive jazz infused electronica and downtempo music since the early 1990's. Today Vanessa is releasing her 7th solo recording, is Music Editor at aRUDE magazine, and writes about music and the arts on her blog and website.
Q: Vanessa, you came from a period of success in music of the 1990's. How would you describe the fallout from 2000 on, and how could we have ended up in a healthier state today?

V: I think in many ways, the Music Business has lost sight of its core values. Discovering great talent used to be about the development of a noble idea: to leave a legacy of great and meaningful music, to put something out into the world that would truly resonate. Although there has always been greed as a motivation, the impetus was always to make lasting, timeless music. Where there used to be a cluster of truly visionary A&R executives who drove things creatively, the top tier music executives of today are governed by a kind of ‘herd instinct’, a ROI mentality whereby they move en masse with one purpose, toward the money.

Entire article here.
[Edited 9/7/11 9:37am]

The nobler a man, the harder it is
for him to suspect inferiority in others.

- Cicero

 

http://prince.org/msg/8/366581