Passion and intelligence define Roy Harper, whose ambitiously skewed takes on folk music in the 1960s and ‘70s have gained in stature  as more and more young musicians look to the period for inspiration. Many of his earlier titles, never before available in the U.S., were reissued throughout 2008, most recently “The Green Man,” “The Dream Society,” “The Unknown Soldier” and “Death or Glory.”
His first album, “The Sophisticated Beggar,” was recorded in 1966 after Harper was spotted at the Les Cousins folk club and signed to Peter Richard's Strike Records. He was among the first to record lengthy songs: the 11 minute track "Circle," the 15 minute "McGooghan's Blues." His collaborators stuck with him as they became world famous, chiefly Jimmy Page David Gilmour, until about 21 years ago, decided to walk away from the music business.
The first batch included “Stormcock,” a four-song epic from 1971 that is widely considered his best album.
In September he wrote about the album in his online diary:

“I thought, when I was writing 'Stormcock', that all we would have to do would be to address our own generation with regard to the historical cynicism and general dishonesty that surrounds the politics of organized religion. We wouldn’t have to do any more than that, I thought. Just point things out. Ask people to be honest about what they were thinking. Following generations would then pick up from where we’d left off. To expose that dishonesty, I thought, would progress a lot of younger people's thinking to a point where religion would automatically and rightly be understood to be some kind of archaic mental reflex that wasn't necessarily that pertinent any longer. Particularly in its historical context, where clearly, ‘the church’ is, and always has been, a political instrument. I thought that all we had to do was to state the obvious, whereupon belief mechanisms like this would become out-moded as society became more able to put religion under a much more rigorous public scrutiny. That people would decide, by a huge consensus, that the past should be properly left in the past and that humanity should move on. I was wrong.”

That’s how Harper addresses the world. Not by remembrances of who played on what session or through anecdotes about a tour, but through philosophies, their roots and the effects of particular ways of thinking. It makes for a fascinating interview, one that required considerable editing in the transcription. In a conversation that last more than an hour, he talked about his old pals Jimmy Page and David Gilmour, the effect of British poets and how music does not have the hold on young creative people the way it once did.

Q: Earlier this year it was a thrill to be shopping and stumble across “Folkjokeopus” and realize it was neither an import nor a dubious pirated CD. What made this the right time to get your catalog (about 16 titles) reissued in the U.S.?
A: Eventually most of the records reverted to me, but I was unable to export due to the (exchange rate). I could barely break even. Then Koch figured out it would be able to get a couple of bucks back. The credit crunch is affecting even a guy like me. I think people are working through it and there are new bases for international trade and  once all of this has blown over we’ll  have a new base for trade to resume the way it was 10 years ago.

Q: Your music actually seemed to disappear from the U.S., some of it almost as quickly as it got here. Is there a marketplace here?
A: The whole ethos in music has changed. There have been a lot of revolutions over the last 50 years and the last one really has said, more or less to young people, that music is free. The digital world has cheapened what music is, particularly among the young. Music that has slightly more quality is breaking through, but music does not have the same caliber of participants that it once did. The person who would have gone into a music career is now in software or something just as full of artistic input.
As science and art have expanded , they have offered space in other occupations. We grew up in a golden age. Lots of young people, lots of over qualified people without a broad canvas to express themselves (chose music). They spoke the truth. We occurred at a point in time in which music and art had never been use to express so much.

F Yeah Fest founder Sean Carlson chats with Variety's Abe Burns about the history of his 5 year old festival, the LA music scene and the importance of DIY venues.

Interview by Matt Kivel

Known best for his pioneering contributions to electronic music as a member of German Kosmische bands Cluster and Harmonia, Hans-Joachim Roedelius – now 73 – has completed an album of new material with composer Tim Story. “Inlandish” was released via High Wire Recordings on July 29, marking the third installment in a trilogy of collaborations between Story and Roedelius dating back to 2000’s “The Persistence of Memory.”
Though his music has mellowed considerably in recent years – often veering into easy-listening  – Roedelius hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down as a composer or performer. Cluster and Harmonia both reformed this past year for various live dates and tours. In an email interview, he covered the relationship between technology and sound quality and how the Cluster oeuvre relates to the state of modern music. And just as his mysterious compositions seem to imply, Roedelius was enigmatic and concise — carefully evading the core barbs of questions. But as he says, “Cluster is a like a clear creek that feeds the big river of music culture.”
Q: How did this new project with Tim Story come about?
A: It was self-evident that we would do another album after the release of "Persistence of Memory" and "Lunz" and all the splendid reviews we've got from audiences all over the globe for these recordings. And after touring for about five years playing with great success at festivals and concert halls.

Q: What was the recording process like and how did the experience  of working with Story differ from those with previous collaborators like Dieter Moebius, Brian Eno and Michael Rother?
A: There's not much difference in the working process since Moebius and all the other musicians/artists with whom I'm working in the very moment are collaborating out of the same vision and with the same aim.
Q: How has your approach to recording and composition changed   through the years?
A: It didn't change much at all, it got easier because of the new technologies.

Q: I saw some recent photos of a Harmonia performance and noticed that all three members were using laptop computers – a far cry from the massive analog machines your band used to use. What are the advantages and disadvantages to digital technology as a sound emitter and recording mechanism?
A: As I say above, it's much easier nowadays to record and play live, but you can't have seen three laps on that picture you're mentioning, because Moebius and I don't use laps at all. We're playing live with preprepared materials ( CD-Rs) which we play from CD-players and we both play synths. It's only Rother who uses a lap when Harmonia performs live.

Q: Do you prefer the sound quality of your old recordings to the new?
A: I'm not sure I do?

Q: Did the German musical environment in the ’70s feel like a “scene” in which bands were aware of one another or was the whole “Krautrock” thing a media concoction – a convenient way of lumping a group of artists together?
A: It was a scene and we were part of it, we knew each other, but especially Cluster wasn't a Krautrock group at all even so (Julian) Cope put us into that category. Kluster/Cluster worked ( and Cluster still does ) rather different on the field of experimental electronic music than its contemporaries. Cluster is Cluster, Cluster is special.

No matter how much the “Juno” soundtrack raises her profile, Kimya Dawson is determined to keep her life simple and grounded.
The anti-folk progenitor is a road warrior, a woman who loves to be on tour and avidly chronicles her journeys on the web. She’s a one-woman operation, selling crafts and art pieces on line, CDs and T-shirts at shows; she keeps her recordings simple and sparse and is beginning a write songs and a book for children. At home, where her baby is now 18 months old, she’s been spending a lot of time painting, less time writing music.
Her bio notes: “she is on a mission to embrace the whole world” and she seems more than happy to play to just about any crowd. Mixed among her current collection of in-stores and club gigs on the East Coast is a show at a hippie commune in rural Virginia. Dawson’s payment? A hammock to sleep in.
“And I hope they'll take me on a tour of their tofu-making operation,” she adds, pointing up her interest in self-sustaining environments and the people who live in them.
Her own home environment is in Olympia, Wash., where she lives with her musician husband Angelo Spencer and daughter Panda. It’s where she created Moldy Peaches with Adam Green and sparked a groundswell of interest in primitive, confessional folk songs and remains committed to the people who have been supporting her all along.
“It's a matter of figuring out how to maintain a sense of community,” she says, appearing uncomfortable forecasting any sort of change now that her music is reaching a far larger audience thanks to “Juno.” The soundtrack was No. 3 in the U.S. last week, selling 68,000 copies and is expected to vie for the top of the chart next week.
It’s a distant commercial cry from the response her fifth album, the acclaimed “Remember That I Love You” (K Records), received when it was released in May 2006 on K Records.

Leslie Feist’s impressive year hit another high note Thursday when she was nominated for four Grammy Awards, including new artist and pop vocal album.
The night before, she had delivered a gig in London, Ontario, the last of a 25-concert fall tour. She has only two gigs left on this year’s calendar — KROQ’s Almost Acoustic Christmas Show on Sunday and homecoming gig in Toronto on the 18th.
After that, she says, it’s “stringing popcorn and cranberries with my nieces” for most of December, which will also find her shooting a video for “I Feel It All” with director of her “1234” video, Patrick Daughters. He also received a Grammy nom for what is probably 2007’s most seen vid clip.
“We came together with the same spirit - the video was a compete joy to make because I was with people who I felt were at the same point in their lives as I was in mine,” Feist says of the “1234” shoot. “We went into it playdate style, making  two videos in three days. I thought ‘My Moon My Man’ was the winner but then Apple wanted (‘1234’). TV wasn’t playing it and I felt like here’s this other station called Apple and they want to air one video and it’s mine. I had no idea what could happen – I knew none of the logistics other than it was (to be aired) for three months maximum.”
Apple picked up the “1234” video, used it in the iTunes ad and breathed new life into her album “Reminder,” which has now sold nearly 400,000 copies. Since the ad broke, she has shared a co-headliner concert tour with Spoon, received expanded airplay and started to appear on year-end critical lists; her calendar for 2008 is fast filling up with tours that will take her to Australia, Japan, Canada and the U.S.
“I live in a bubble,” she says, trying to clarify how the past year has affected her. “(I see life) in the context of gigs , the size of venues and the quality of the mood in a room. My awareness (of success) is statistical; my day to day is on the frontlines.”

A dozen journos attended a 45-minute Q&A Monday with the Beastie Boys at the Capitol Tower (which frustratingly worked out to one question to a customer) and were told not to ask the three Beasties (Adam “Ad Rock” Horovitz, Adam “MCA” Yauch, and Michael “Mike D” Diamond) why “The Mix Up,” their just released album, is instrumental.
More importantly, we were told don’t ask if they feel they still have to “fight for their right to party” (they’re tired of answering that, the Capitol press rep said, adding that at the NYC session, someone asked if after playing Brooklyn’s McCarran Pool, the band now felt they could sleep).
None of those questions were put to the often bored looking trio (Mike D spent much of his time text messaging), but they were asked to respond to some truly inane questions, including the name of their favorite album (Elvis Costello’s “My Aim Is True,” Ad Rock deadpanned, demurring when told the questioner meant which is his favorite Beastie Boys album), if they would rather be turned into action figures or teddy bears (Ad Rock: “I’m not a plushie, if that’s what you’re asking”) and if they liked traveling (the answer to that was, unsurprisingly, yes).
On a more serious note, MCA expanded on the endorsement he gave “The Eleventh Hour,” the Leonardo DiCaprio toplined eco-doc from the stage Monday night. “It’s an important movie,” he said, adding that it “explains our current situation, including the structure of our government, better than I ever could.”
They also dispensed fashion advice (there’s no reason you can’t wear Wallabees with a suit), insisted that 40-something musicians can still be a legit hip hop act (“well, the kids do like the rappin’,” Ad Rock said, with Mike D adding that there’s “no reason innovation can’t come from someone with decades in the game”). Significantly, they suggested that a layered, sample-heavy album like 1989’s landmark “Paul’s Boutique” would be a daunting, expensive proposition, and could not be made today. (Steve Mirkin)