For Folk's Sake » Efterklang

Brian’s Mixtape #35: Leave the Animals Out of It

Brian — Tue, 25 May 2010 10:35:10 +0000

Following a delectable week of Joni Mitchell, Brian’s allowed his hippy side out of the oak tree for a pad around the forest floor. Now, don’t get Brian wrong: he’s not about to give up his beloved dormouse suppers. He has been thinking a lot about lentil-munching, Haribo-avoiding vegetarians a lot over the weekend, and for that reason he began to notice some interesting messages in many of his favourite songs.

Some are rather subtle, others (Morrissey, we’re looking at you) not so subtle, but all the songs in his playlist this week are in some way related to taking care of the animals, and not eating them. No need to follow the moral imperative though – Brian certainly isn’t – just enjoy the fact that, on top of sharing a theme, they’re all pucker songs.

1. Herman Dune – Pet Rabbit
2. God Help the Girl – Musician, Please Take Heed
3. The Smiths – Meat is Murder
4. Jeffrey Lewis – Life
5. The Beach Boys – Vegetables
6. Anton Barbeau – Quorn Fingers
7. Belle and Sebastian – Meat & Potatoes
8. Of Montreal – Vegan in Furs
9. The Pernice Brothers – Cruelty to Animals
10. Butcher Boy – React or Die
11. Willy Mason – Where the Humans Eat
12. Efterklang – Prey and Predator

Click the link for the Spotify playlist: Brian’s Mixtape #35: Leave the Animals Out of it

Spotify has finally heard Brian’s pleas for a free service and launched Spotify Open, which is rather lucky as the kind folk who’ve been donating their Spotify invites to you readers seem to be running out a bit now. Download Spotify Open.

Brian’s been making these playlists for as long as he can remember. If you’d like to catch up on his previous efforts, take a look at our mixtape section.

The Folk Artist Twitter Directory

Stephen W Thomas — Thu, 06 May 2010 08:30:09 +0000

Below is our attempt at a comprehensive directory of folk artists currently on Twitter – of course, we aren’t Twitter deities and as such will almost certainly have missed out on certain artists. Let us know if you can think of any tweeting folk musicians in the comments below.

Akron/Family

Angus and Julia Stone

Asthmatic Kitty (Label)

Brian: FFS’s Mixtape-Making Owl

Broadcast 2000

Caitlin Rose

Cherbourg

Colin Meloy (Decemberists)

Damien Rice (PR Account)

Dev Hynes (Lightspeed Champion)

Divine Comedy (PR account)

Efterklang

Emmy the Great

Fanfarlo

FFS (Official Account)

Kurran & the Wolfnotes

Laura Marling (PR account)

Lisa Hannigan (PR account)

Lisa Mitchell

Lissie

The Living Sisters (PR account)

Local Natives

The Low Anthem

Midlake

Monsters of Folk (PR account)

The New Pornographers

Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy)

Peggy Sue

Rebecca Taylor (Slow Club)

Rufus Wainwright (PR account)

She & Him (PR account)

St. Vincent

Sweet Billy Pilgrim

The Swell Season (PR account)

The Swell Season (Glen Hansard)

Live: Efterklang @ The Black Box, Dublin

FFS writers — Mon, 03 May 2010 18:23:06 +0000

As far as concert venues in Belfast go, The Black Box is definitely one of the nicer ones. Gracefully skimming the line between rowdy, leery pub and wanker-infested bohemian dive, it’s a blessed haven where you won’t be immediately saturated with drink upon arrival, or be greeted with an onslaught of diabolical ironic moustaches – a rare occurrence.

Tonight’s line-up is, in a word, unpronounceable. Enigmatic Danes Efterklang are headlining the bill tonight, but first up are fellow Danes Slaraffenland (Slara-wha?) who bound onto the stage with puppyish enthusiasm, each wearing a matching pastel-coloured t-shirt adorned with the felt outline of a ribcage – making them more akin to children’s television presenters than a poe-faced gaggle of post-rockers. Their set is a strange one – each of the individual musicians display extraordinary skill (their set boasts an extraordinary saxophonist), but the material itself is weak – a gawkily formulaic cross between Arcade Fire pomposity and Sigur Rós’s Baltic shimmer.

And so onto the main act. Efterklang look exactly as you’d imagine them –a handful of blonde, disturbingly tall Scandanavians with a bassist who looks like he just sauntered out of an American Apparel advert. Dubious facial hair and endearingly awkward stage presence taken into consideration, you’d be forgiven for assuming Efterklang were a band of painfully hip indie knob-twiddlers rather than the pastoral purveyors of ethereal soundscapes they are extolled as; there’s simply an inexcusable absence of woolly hats.

However, by the time their set reaches the gossamer piano chords and clicking, whirring music-box electronics which usher in ‘Mirador’; any doubts about Efterklang’s position as Copenhagen’s reigning kings of indie majesty are soon dispelled; ‘Mirador’ is as sumptuous as Vespertine-era Björk and an undeniable set highlight. This soon melts into the diaphanous ‘Step Aside’, which finds Efterklang performing some admirable lighting wizardry over the track’s brackish, shifting time signatures and wafting horns, and new track ‘Modern Drift’ is as close to pop as Efterklang are ever going to get, frontman Casper’s soaring vocal hook lushly bookended by reams of melting horn and ghostly choral snippets.

A few technical difficulties – namely with the band’s bass – are laughed off with admirable stoicism – the band are bashfully apologetic, frontman Casper beaming at the crowd with a mile-wide grin, and joking merrily in charmingly broken English. Efterklang’s stage banter proves surprisingly entertaining, despite the language barrier– they tell a sweetly mournful anecdote about female vocalist Heather’s brother, who was meant to go on tour with Efterklang as their drummer, but fell over his suitcase in the process of packing, and injured his leg. ‘But hopefully, he’ll be able to drum with us soon. And everyone else in Copenhagen who wants to play with us!’ grins Casper.

However, when Efterklang stray from their default pastoral loveliness, the results tend to be mixed – new track ‘Raincoats’ clatter-and-bang structure is a little too erratic to be absorbing, and the track eventually dithers into leaden, horn-laden cacophony.

It’s really female vocalist Heather who holds Efterklang’s set together, her mild, girlish croon rising above the male member’s baritone growl like a lark soaring gracefully above a gaggle of unruly geese. Not to say Efterklang’s male vocals are lacking in any way – there’s something oddly beautiful in the incongruities between Efterklang’s sugar-paper, gauzy electronics, as fragile as the cogs in a pocket-watch, and Casper’s brusque foghorn – it has an odd grace, like an elephant balancing, precariously, on a tricycle.

The set closes on the bucolic ‘Cutting Ice To Snow’; deceptively frail, the track blossoms from a seemingly ramshackle choral arrangement to a full-blown miniature epic, dripping with sumptuous horns and sparkling piano and everything that makes Efterklang so bloody wonderful. After their set, the band wade through the crowd, grinning fit to burst, and disappear through the back door. Ignoring the fact that the back door leads directly into the toilets, it’s a suitably dramatic exit for an extraordinary band.

Words: Katherine Rodgers

Brian’s Mixtape #25: Hello, Sunshine

Brian — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:15:39 +0000

Every discerning folk fan’s foul of choice, Brian Wilson II, is pleased to announce that spring has most definitely sprung. He’s spent most of the morning being dragged around a meadow by a fresh-born lamb in whose fleece his talons became most unfortunately entangled, and yet his pleasure in the changing of the seasons remains unassuaged.

For that reason, this week’s playlist is quite the joy-fest. If you’ve just been dumped/fired/treated rather rudely by the young man who made your afternoon coffee, this’ll perk you up. Either that or the unbounded exuberance that spring inspires in Brian’ll annoy you so much you’ll want to stick daffodil stalks in your eyes.

Let’s hope for the former. Here’s the tracklisting, with the Spotify link below. Happy spring!

Noah and the Whale – The First Days of Spring
Monsters of Folk – Dear God (Sincerely M. O. F.)
Belle and Sebastian – Another Sunny Day
Adam Green – Bathing Birds
The Lovin’ Spoonful – Daydream
Erland and the Carnival – One Morning Fair
Efterklang – Natural Tune
Air – Cherry Blossom Girl
Emmy the Great – The Easter Parade
Fairport Convention – Chelsea Morning
Giant Cloud – Rainbows
Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard – Bugs & Flowers
Eels – Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues

Link: Brian’s Mixtape #25: Hello, Sunshine.

If you’ve not got yourself registered on Spotify have a look at their website to learn more. And, if you need an invite (so you can use Spotify for free) let uncle Brian know in the comments section below and he will bestow one on you.

Have a flap around our mixtape section to find Brian’s previous efforts.

Brian’s Mixtape #20: The Big Freeze

Brian — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 13:33:11 +0000

Brr… it’s cold. Being a sensible sort of chap, Brian’s not going outside until all this horrid weather is over. You might think it’s better for owls, what with their ability to fly and all, but our poor mixtape maker faces the daily threat of having his wings frozen together and falling from the sky. Plop. Quite apart from being sore, it’d be awfully undignified, and Brian has a reputation to protect.

Instead he’s going to stay in with a delicious bowl of mouse soup and listen to the lovely tunes he’s cobbled together. Some about the cold and a couple that are just songs he’s discovered and loves.

Ella Fitzgerald – Baby It’s Cold Outside
Au Revoir Simone – Fallen Snow
Idlewild – Bronze Medal (Acoustic)
The Beach Boys – Cuddle Up
JayMay – Blue Skies
Liam Frost & Martha Wainwright – Your Hand In Mine
Pickin’ On Series – New Slang
Midlake – It Covers The Hillsides
The White Stripes – In The Cold, Cold Night
The Cranberries – The Icicle Melts
Headless Heroes – The North Wind Blew South
Efterklang – Cutting Ice to Snow

You can listen to the whole thing on Spotify. Brian’s Mixtape #20: The big freeze

Have a snoop around our mixtape section to find Brian’s previous efforts.

For Folk's Sake » Efterklang

Brian’s Mixtape #35: Leave the Animals Out of It

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Brian’s Mixtape #25: Hello, Sunshine

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