It’s that time of year again, where you look back and -well basically, make lists. So, in keeping with this wonderful tradition on the interwebz here’s my list of music related goodness of 2009.
Award shows on TV keep the best for last in order to keep their audience hostage and their advertisers happy, but the web apparently doesn’t work like that. So,lets get this show on the road! Continue reading
This weekend is the first edition of the RAW Rhythm festival, held at the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam. RAW Rhythm is the sequel of the Drum Rhythm festival, a popular festival a few years ago, that had to cease its acivities due to a new law that probibits tobacco-advertising in The Netherlands. Now it’s ‘back’, as the organisers found a new sponsor in G-star RAW jeans.
I attended two or three editions of Drum Rhythm, and saw some of the most memorable performances I have ever experienced there. I saw Lamb perform a truly magical and energetic set, I saw Leftfield give one of their last performances, I saw Austrian lounge-duo Kruder & Dorfmeister getting a crowd jumping, and many many more.
So I was very happy to discover that there will be a new edition of this festival, and even happier when I found out that my favorite band Lamb had actually reformed itself (after splitting up for solo projects a few years ago) and were going to perform there again! I created a Last.fm event for the festival, as there wasn’t one yet, added all the acts to the bandlist, and saw it grow and grow.
My brother, who is a professional concert and event photographer (he’s 3voor12 Amsterdam‘s phtography coördinator), has now arranged for two photographers wristbands for the whole festival! This means that we’ll be able to go backstage and go everywhere! So this is going to be a very memorable festival for me.
I’ll post a review and photo’s after the weekend!
Today I bought the Steinski album ‘What does it all mean? 1983-2006 retrospective‘ (itunes link). This is an album by hip-hop legend Steve Stein, on which he collected some of the mixes he and Douglas DiFranco (also known as Double Dee) made back in the early days of hip-hop. Continue reading
Róisín Murphy (by Dennis Stempher)
Yesterday we went to a concert of Róisín Murphy in Amsterdam’s Heineken Music Hall. Róisín is the former Moloko singer. We saw her before twice: once as part of Moloko, and once as part of a Groove Armada concert. Both times she brought great energy and a tight performance to the stage, so our expectations and hopes were high.
The show started a bit slow and tame, like she didn’t really feel like performing but was doing so anyway. Still, her voice is flawless, her band is incredible, and her background singers are awesome, so even then it was still a good concert. Not great tho. Continue reading