James Lavelle, who together with Pablo Clements makes up Unkle, points out that the band’s new release, “End Titles…Stories For Film,” is not an album of new music but it functions as an album.
Ten of the album’s tracks were featured in the Abel Ferrara documentary “Odyssey in Rome,” “Broken” appears in “X Files: I Want to Believe” and “Trouble in Paradise” was featured in a BMW advertisement. Among their collaborators are Gavin Clark, South’s Joel Cadbury and Black Mountain. The album, already released digitally, becomes available at retail Sept. 2.
“It’s important to stay active with Unkle,” Lavelle told the Set List, partially explaining the existence of “End Titles.” “There’s no need to do a record every four years as if it’s a big statement that somehow will change the world.”
Lavelle formed the Mo' Wax label in his teens and essentially birthed trip-hop until an attempt to sell the label and still remain a recording artist turned into a giant mess. With Unkle, a band name he has used since the early ‘90s, the manner in which he works has changed considerably and he is starting to see how others function.
“We toured for a year and I want to take that energy into the studio. It’s a real way to write – about 99% of the bands do things that way – and we can make a record we can tour on. I just want to keep the momentum going. I don’t want to wait five years. We’re never going to be a hot new band. We’re self sufficient and at a creative peak. We should keep ourselves there.”
Lavelle is in the studio with his touring band, writing songs based on jams. The new way of working, last year's "War Stories" and the brilliance of Black Mountain were all subjects we discussed.

Q: On first listen I kept imagining a black screen with names scrolling by and tried to imagine what sort of film I had just seen. By using a title as suggestive as this, was there an intention to make all of the songs sound as if they were a resolution of some sort?
A: It was originally titled ‘Film Stories’ because I wanted to show a continuity with previous records. This was a collection of tracks from previous projects and for fun we added to the mix. The concern from a distribution element was that it would be seen as a B-sides record. Struggling with economic thinking, the title was geared toward the moving picture. It’s not too literal — it’s sort of a DJ mix of music for film. It’s name for a track on the ‘Blade Runner’ soundtrack. It has the sort of feel of a title of an Unkle album.

Q: The album does have a coherence to it — it all could come from one film.
A: A lot is about leaving it to the imagination. There’s an ambiguousness, creating your own picture. Right now we’re doing a version of the record that’s strings and ambient sounds and it’s much more cinematic. The record we have made is juggling two things — certain things are very specifically written for TV shows, trailers and games and people have heard them in that context. We also wanted to gather stuff we had sitting around — the soundtrack genre is pretty broad.

Producer/composer Yoav Goren is launching Imperativa with the release of “Trailerhead” by Immediate and “Epicon” by Globus. Physical copies will be available in online and physical stores beginning Aug.  26.
Among the tracks on “Trailerhead” are pieces written for the trailers of  “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” “Spiderman 2,” “The Fantastic Four” and “The Da Vinci Code.” “Onward to Freedom,” featured in NBC’s “XX Olympics: The Torino Games,” won an Emmy.
Globus, which features Goren as a member, performs music written for trailers with lyrics added.

Orchestral music featured in numerous film trailers will be released online Tuesday by a new record company Imperativa.

Keyboardist/producer George Duke will release his latest album, "Dukey Treats," on Aug. 26. Album is a throwback to the golden age of funk and soul and features bassist Christian McBride, percussionist Sheila E and trumpeter Michael “Patches” Stewart.
His label, Heads Up, issued a video interview:

Monterey Jazz Festival Records has come up with six titles for its second round of releases of concert recordings.The releases are slated for Aug. 5.
Four are year-specific recordings: Art Blakey and the Giants of Jazz/1972; Shirley Horn/1994; Tito Puente & His Orchestra/1977; and Jimmy Witherspoon featuring Robben Ford/1972. Two “best of” recordings are Dave Brubeck "50 Years of Dave Brubeck: Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival, 1958-2007" and Cal Tjader "The Best of Cal Tjader, Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival, 1958-1980."
Interesting tidbits: The  Blakey album includes Thelonious Monk on piano; among the performers with Brubeck are, of course, Paul Desmond on alto but also Gerry Mulligan on baritone saxophone; Puente performs with a 15-piece orchestra; and the Witherspoon disc includes a bonus track with Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster from 1959.
At the 51st Monterey Jazz Fest in September, the Cuban flutist and singer Orlando “Maraca” Valle is slated to record a CD with special guests David Sánchez, Miguel Zenón, Ed Simon, Murray Low, John Benitez, Giovanni Hidalgo, Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez and the Monterey Jazz Festival Chamber Orchestra.

A recording of the Buena Vista Social Club's Carnegie Hall concert 10 years ago will be released by World Circuit/Nonesuch this fall.
The concert was a key part of Wim Wenders' 1999 documentary on the Cuban musicians brought together by Ry Cooder in Havana.
Included on the two-CD set are performances by Ibrahim Ferrer, Compay Segundo, Ruben González, Eliades Ochoa, Omara Portuondo, Cachaíto López and Guajiro Mirabal, musicians who were able to parlay the BVSC exposure into solo careers.
The Carnegie Hall recording of “Chan Chan” is being previewed at iTunes.

Story by Matt Kivel

There's been a lot of buzz going around about Franz Ferdinand's new material. The Scottish quartet has posted some samples online and announced that their first single will debut on EA sports' forthcoming mega-hit Madden '09. For the media, it's been an endless game of speculation with outlets offering various predictions as to what "new sound" Franz is likely to employ.

The new issue of Rolling Stone poses "afro pop" as a possibility, but it seems that publication is still suffering from a severe case of Vampire Weekend fever (glancing through the reviews page I spotted a suspiciously large helping of references to afro-pop and world beat) ... so the legitimacy is suspect.

In this situation, it's best to let the music do the talking ... so here's a video (with some iffy sound quality) of the soon-to-be Madden soundtracking "Katherine Kiss Me." It employs the same sort of tense-funk riffage that was Franz's bread and butter for their first two albums and sort of makes all the "new direction" talk seem silly ... though a few demos from the band's site surfaced recently, and those do mark some significant sonic changes in the group's sound ... I guess we'll just have to wait for the finished product.   

"Katherine Kiss Me" June 9, 2008 - London

Eddie Floyd is headed back to the future.
The soul legend known for "Knock on Wood" has recorded songs he wrote for other artists in the 1950s and '60s for his return to the Stax label.
Some date back to his years with the Falcons (“You’re So Fine,” “Since You’ve Been Gone”) and his earliest solo days (“Never Get Enough of Your Love”). Among the songs he wrote for other Stax artists but never recorded until now: “’Til My Back Ain’t Got No Bone” (William Bell); “I Will Always Have Faith In You” (Carla Thomas) and “You Don’t Know What You Mean To Me” (Sam & Dave). Also on the the disc is “I Don’t Want to Be With Nobody But You,” which Dorothy Moore recorded on her 1976 "Misty Blue" album.he also has a couple of new tunes.
Album, titled "Eddie Loves You So," will be released on July 29 on Stax Records.
Cool as that is, the powers that be should know the world will be a better place if they afford the same opportunity to fellow Stax vet William Bell, a man who still sings with the power and passion of a young man getting his heart broken.   

The Hal Willner-supervised soundtrack to Abel Ferrara’s “Chelsea on the Rocks” will be released by Atlantic Records.
The documentary will receive its world premiere Friday in a special screening at Cannes.
Film's score is by G.E. Smith, Tony Garnier, Robert Burger and Jim White with additional music by Sonic Youth, Love and Rockets and Ferrara.
Vintage music and archival footage of the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and Sid Vicious appear in the documentary along with actors Bijou Phillips, Jamie Burke, Adam Goldberg, Giancarlo Esposito and Grace Jones re-enacting events from the Chelsea Hotel’s past.
Soundtrack will include music featured in the film as well as songs inspired by it. Variety's reviewer enjoyed the film more than I did.

Neil Young's 10-CD set of never released recordings has a new lease on life.
Long rumored and long delayed, Reprise will release the collection of recordings from 1963-1972 on Blu-ray in the fall.   
Young, an audio fanatic who released his greatest hits on PCM 24/96 and recently assisted in an acoustic revamp of Red Rocks in Colorado, says “It is important for me that the user experience the high resolution music along with the archival visual material."
Through Blu-ray and Java technology, viewers will be able to navigate through Young's music, movies, videos, personal archives, memorabilia, photographs, letters, handwritten manuscripts and more while the high resolution 192/24 audio is playing. Announcement was made at the JavaOne conference in Northern California Tuesday.
"Previously, there was no way to browse archival material on a disc and listen to a song in high resolution at the same time" Young said in a statement. “Previous technology required unacceptable quality compromises. I am glad we waited and got it right.
"And here is something really new, we will be able to add content to already released Blu-ray Disc archive volumes by downloading it, whether it is music, film or vintage recording sessions, recently found photographs, or other archival materials that were located after the release of that volume. Users will be able to download any of these archival materials and they will automatically be assigned to their place in the chronology timeline.”
Java.com will be featuring the work with Neil Young and the archive project in a special Java + Neil Young segment. Java + Neil Young will include links to Young's appearance at JavaOne, as well as links to more information about the upcoming Blu-ray Disc package.

Neil Young, a longtime technology fanatic, will do a special demo of a new multi-media, interactive music project being introduced at the JavaOne confab next week.
Young will join Sun Microsystems executives during the opening keynote session of JavaOne at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.The JavaOne conference, which runs May 6-9, is mostly attended by software developers.

Bagging on Billy Joel used to be a fun sport and I practiced it as much as the next guy in the 1970s. All these years later I still don't understand the appeal of the music or the persona.
Legacy, the catalog division of Sony, differs in their opinion, believing you can never have enough of "The Stranger," the album that instantly put "Just the Way You Are" into the wedding band canon 30 years ago and made us jokesters wonder if "she" is not "always a woman," what gender is she. Album sold more than 10 million copies, but only reached No. 2 on the album chart.
There will be two packages of "The Stranger - 30th Anniversary" released on July 8. One is two CDs; the also includes a DVD of Joel's appearances on the U.K.'s "Old Grey Whistle Test" and a 48-page booklet.
Both editions will include a CD of a previously unreleased concert featuring Joel and his band at Carnegie Hall on June 3, 1977. Bonus package includes a DVD with two live promotional videos from "The Stranger" and his 60 minute 1978 appearance on the BBC2's "Old Grey Whistle Test."
Set list from the Carnegie Hall show:
Intro /  Miami 2017 (Seen The Lights Go Out On Broadway)
/ Prelude>Angry Young Man / New York State Of Mind / Just The Way You Are / She's Got A Way / The Entertainer / Scenes From An Italian Restaurant / Captain Jack / I've Loved These Days / Say Goodbye To Hollywood / Souvenir
A decade later, Joel was the first American allowed to perform in Russia. At Olympic Stadium in Moscow on July 27, 1987, he performed:
Prelude>Angry Young Man / Honesty / The Ballad Of Billy The Kid / She's Always A Woman /  Scenes From An Italian Restaurant / Allentown / Goodnight Saigon / Stiletto / Big Man On Mulberry Street / Baby Grand / An Innocent Man / The Longest Time

Gilberto Gil is taking a cue from the jam bands and embracing the tapers. Actually, he intends to tell audience members they may record and film whatever they want however they want when he goes on an 11-city tour of North America beginning June 18 in Ann Arbor, Mich.
Rather than greatest hits, he will be emphasizing material from his new CD “Banda Larga Cordel,” which Warner Music Latina will release in June.It will be his largest North American tour in nine years.
A long-time proponent of the Internet - he first posted a tune in 1996 and as Brazil's minister of culture has heavily promoted technology - he intends to track life in the road through a new blog. His PR materials even emphasize his longtime interest in technology, pointing listeners toward Tropicalia masterpieces such as “Cérebro Electrônica” and “Futurivel” from 1969, in addition to “Cibernética” (1974), “Parabolicamará” (1991) and “Quanta” (1997).
Gil's BroadBand Band features Arthur Maia on bass, Alex Fonseca on drums, Bem Gil on guitars, Claudio Andrade on keyboards, Gustavo di Dalva on percussion, and Sergio Chiavazzolli, also on guitars.
Tour dates after the jump. He's a pretty good performer in the kitchen, too

Nurse With Wound, which has recorded nearly every musical style known to man, is turning to space age bachelor pad music for their summertime release, "Huffin' Rag Blues."   
Steven Stapleton and Andrew Liles form the core of the band; singers Lynn Jackson and Freida Abtan channel Peggy Lee. The June release follows a string of reissues.

TRACK LISTING
1. Willy the Weeper
2. Groove Grease (Hot Catz)
3. The Funktion of the Hairy Egg
4. Black Teeth
5. Thrill of Romance...?
6. Livin' with the Night
7. Ketamineaphonia
8. Juice Head Crazy Lady
9. Wash the Dust from My Heart
10. Cruisin' for a Bruisin'
11. All of Me

"I, Flathead" will be the final album in Ry Cooder's California trilogy which began with 2005's "Chavez Ravine" and 2007's "My Name is Buddy." Nonesuch/Perro Verde Records will release the album and an accompanying novella on June 24.
Disc is an album of music by the fictional Kash Buk and his band the Klowns; novella tells the story of  Buk, Buk is  a salt flat racer and roadhouse musician, and his friend Shakey the alien. They venture into a  bygone era in California, taking in desert life, salt-flat racing,  seedy dance halls and amusement parks.
Native Angeleno Cooder, a musical alchemist whose travels have taken him from the Delta blues of Blind Blake and Alfred Reed to Timbuktu and Cuba and back to the Tex-Mex border, draws from country-Western music, popular mechanics magazines and science fiction films on "I, Flathead." The music includes a forbidden-race love song, a ghost drag racer tune, a circus story,  honky-tonk heart-ache ballads and an homage to steel guitar legends.
Cooder produced and wrote or co-wrote the songs. He sings and  plays mandolin, guitar, and bass. The musicians are: Joachim Cooder and Jim Keltner on drums; Rene Camacho on bass; Francisco Torres on trombone; Ron Blake and Jon Hassell on trumpet; Anthony Gil on bass sax; Flaco Jimenez on accordion, Gil Bernal on  tenor sax; Jared Smith on keyboards; Martin Pradler on electric piano and drums; and Juliette Commagere on vocals.
"I,  Flathead concerns change and disruption in a young, post-war do-it-yourself culture of outsiders. "Chavez Ravine," written about the area of town where the Brooklyn Dodgers built their stadium and displaced a Mexican-American community in the early '60s, examined loss of place and history. "Buddy," a cat, explored the loss of solidarity and unity.
Cooder won the  pop instrumental album Grammy in 2004 for "Mambo Sinuendo," a brilliant album with guitarist Manuel Galban, a member of the Cuban doo-wop act Los Zafiros from the early 1960s. He backed several members of the Buena Vista Social Club, which Cooder masterminded, when they made solo albums.

Looking at the possibility of starting fiscal year 2009 with a bang, EMI will release Coldplay's  fourth album, "Viva La Vida," in the third week of June, toward the end of the first quarter of the now private Brit conglom. Company is not likely to release year-end financials, which would reveal the costs of its massive restructuring.
Hits have been few and far between for EMI in Guy Hands' rookie season and the company's current representatives in the top 50 are a Trace Adkins hits compilation  and the B-52's first album in 16 years. The pressure will be enormous for  "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends" - that's the full title - to perform at a level equal or better than its predecessor, "X&Y," which has sold 10 million copies worldwide since its release in 2005. (The RIAA, which certifies shipments, has "X&Y" at 3 million copies in the U.S.)
"X&Y" sold 737,294 copies in its first week of release back in 2005 and Coldplay-mania was so strong then that their first two albums, "A Rush of Blood to the Head"  and "Parachutes" rose to Nos. 1 and 2 on the catalog albums chart. "XX&Y" debuted at No. 1 in more than 20 countries.
During the Eric Nicoli years, EMI often blamed stock slumps on the lack of or delays in new Coldplay and/or Radiohead material, which meant the company had  to tout  Beach Boys, Dean Martin and Beatles packages along with front line  releases for signs of good news.
With EMI streamlined, the jury is still out as to whether they will be able to break new artists on the scale of Coldplay or even Norah Jones. But its reduction in size, however, may mean that a single record from a single band may be able to jumpstart a company.   
The album's 10 tracks are:

"Life in Technicolor"
"Cemeteries of London"
"Lost!"
"42"
"Lovers in Japan/Reign of Love"
"Yes"
"Viva La Vida"
"Violet Hill"
"Strawberry Swing"
"Death and All His Friends"

A year ago, I was bemoaning the fact that fans no longer seem to be concerned or fascinated by backing musicians - Wendy and Lisa with Prince, David Grissom with Joe Ely, the guitarists in Bob Dylan's band, what duo is fronting the Allman Brothers, the guys in Steely Dan. It seems like the members of any given edition of Bright Eyes or Beck's band are hardly driving interest the way they did back when.
One of those guys was Chuck Leavell, who played the still enthralling piano solo on the Allmans' "Jessica," the keyboards on Eric Clapton's "Unplugged" and, for the last 20 years, with the Rolling Stones.
He has a solo album coming out May 13, "Live In Germany: The Green Leaves and Blue Notes Tour" on Evergreen Arts.
Leavell did the “Green Leaves & Blue Notes Tour” in Europe after the Stones' "A Bigger Bang" tour ended, recruiting some German musicians to accompany him. Performance on the album was recorded on Sept. 14 for the German radio station HR1. Classics on the album include “Jessica,” “Statesboro Blues,” “Honky Tonk Woman,” “Rip this Joint,” Les McCann and Eddie Harris’ “Compared to What,” “Georgia,” “Here Comes the Sun” and “Route 66.”

The soul-enriching "Imaginational Anthem" series of instrumental acoustic guitar albums will add a third edition on April 8 when the Tompkins Square label issues a disc containing work by young talent Cian Nugent, Ben Reynolds and Shawn David McMillen. On the same day, Tompkins Square will issue a box set of the first three compilations. "Vol. 2" hipped me to the great James Blackshaw.
Also on the disc are unsung heroes from the past,including banjo player/Federal Duck founder George Stavis, Richard Crandell and Mark Fosson, whose lost 1977 Takoma album was recently issued.

Track listing for Imaginational Anthem Vol. 3 :
1. Richard Crandell   - “Zocalo”
2. Ben Reynolds  - “Here Toucheth Blues”   
3. Greg Davis - “Sleep Architecture” 
4. Nathan Salsburg -  “Bold Ruler's Joys”   
5. Steffen Basho-Junghans   - “Blue Mountain Raga II”
6. Cian Nugent -  “When the Snow Melts And Floats Downstream”
7. Matt Baldwin -  “Sean Cycle”   
8. Mark Fosson -  “Another Fine Day”
9. George Stavis – “Goblins”
10. R. Keenan Lawler - “High Tower Bells For Loren Connors” 
11. Shawn David McMillen -  “Texarkana 1971”

  Al Green is back to singing about love on his next Blue Note album, "Lay It Dow," which is set for a May 27 release.
Green has recorded duets with John Legend, Corinne Bailey Rae and Anthony Hamilton and headed to Brooklyn instead of Memphis for his horn section, the Dap Kings. ?uestlove from the Roots produced the album.
It was ?uestlove who got the ball rolling on the album, asking Green if he would work with the soul legend. The two did a marathon session at Electric Ladyland in N.Y., which yielded eight song sketches.

Hollywood’s haven for singer-songwriters, the dimly lit and intimate Hotel Cafe, is expanding its brand from live music to recordings with the release this week of Jim Bianco’s “Sing.”
The disc, distributed by Rykodisc, hits stores just weeks after a remote edition of the venue operated during the Sundance Film Festival and just days before the third edition of the Hotel Café Tour hits the road. The 16-concert tour, which features Bianco and other Café regulars such as Ingrid Michaelson, Cary Brothers and Sara Bareilles, opens March 6 in San Diego and runs through April 12 at L.A.’s Music Box at Henry Fonda Theater.
The entourage will also perform March 9 at the Café itself and has a major showcase lined up for SXSW in Austin next week. Shows on the tours have been anything goes affairs with musicians alternating lineups, jamming together for finales and keeping the evenings wide open, much like the Hotel Café has been during its seven years of existence – and one remodeling 
“We all needed a scene, a place to go” says Bianco, who moved to L.A. from New York eight years ago and found a local club scene very set in its ways. “It was very unintentional, but great that it worked out this way.”
Bianco has been a mainstay at the Café and on the tour, appearing on all three and remaining enthused by the collaborative nature of the shows. The venue, meanwhile, has become something of a workshop for him: he has tried out theatrical ideas involving catwalks, found new musicians to work with and even written songs on the a piano tucked away in the venue’s front room.
“At least a part of every song on the album was conceived on the piano at the Hotel Café,” Bianco says, apparently surprising himself as he comes to that realization as he connects the dots between his first two discs and the new one. “The heart opens a little more on ‘Sing.’ “The last record had lots of sex. This has some loss, some love and some sex.”
Sex, or at least the libido, produces some of Bianco’s best lines. “Sing’s” “Painkiller,” for example, offers a lecherous twist: “Your skirt blew up high enough that I could see your skin/It appeared as though I was owed a favor by the wind." Love and commitment is there,too: "To hell with the devil/ I'm selling my soul to you.”
Intriguingly, Bianco is hardly a standard HC character: He’s more rambunctious and less in touch with his inner-Laurel Canyon than his peers. His songs have elements from European cabaret, South American dances, Chicago blues and wrong-side-of-the-tracks authors. And he does not possess what anyone would call a mellifluous voice.
Since everyone listening to Bianco is familiar with the raspy tone of Tom Waits, he gets that comparison. Some of that owes to the lyrical content, but his voice never even threatens to go as deep as Waits; it’s not a failed impersonation. His vocals, to my ears, are actually much closer to Fats Waller with a hint of gravel; it’s the hacking voice of a hangover, one that be tolerated. It suits the control clatter behind him just fine.
“I’ve always been a huge fan of (people) with weird voices – Tom Waits, Muddy Waters, Billie Holiday. I have yet to truly find mine but the more I do, the more comfortable with it I become.”
Bianco held his record release party Tuesday at the Hotel Café and performs today (March 5) at 7 p.m. at Amoeba Records in Hollywood.

Gnarls Barkley, the last band to create a song that took over the world, returns April 8 with "The Odd Couple." First single "Run" has been rushed to iTunes, making this the third significant April release with a single available nearly two months early. (Mariah Carey and R.E.M. are the others.)
Danger Mouse and vocalist Cee-Lo Green, the duo behind Gnarls, are saying "The Odd Couple"  " explores the forbidden underworld of popular music and human psychology, starting at the intersection of pulsating hooks and pure emotion."
"Run" has been tagged as  psychedelic soul stomper and a video is in the works. Intriguingly, work has already begun on the second video for the song "Who's Gonna Save My Soul."
Part of the strategy on the first GB album was use "Crazy" as a universal calling card and not let any other track distract radio or video programmers with a second choice. "Crazy" made it into seven or eight radio formats over the course of more than eight months before "Smiley Faces" and "Gone Daddy Gone" were put into the marketplace as singles.
Currently, the band is commissioning emerging filmmakers to produce clips.
A summer tour includes a gig at the Hollywood Bowl on July 27; they are also looking into appearing at several  American and European summer festivals. Perhaps they'll headline one of the Liberty Park gigs in New Jersey in early August.

Idolator found the news first on Portishead's website:

23 Jan 2008

We're pleased to announce that we'll be releasing our album, titled THIRD. on April 14th 2008.

The album has 11 tracks and is 49 minutes 13 seconds long.

Fed up with the assistance New Orleans has received since Hurricane Katrina, Dr. John has put his concerns in song for his next album.
Savoy Label Group’s 429 Records has penciled in a May release date for the tentatively titled “The City That Care Forgot,” which features songs Dr. John has written with Bobby Charles (“See You Later, Alligator,” “Walking to New Orleans”), Reverend Goat (who once ran for president with Joe Walsh), journalist Chris Rose and artist Mina Bellavia.
“Saddest part of this record is that it could be a continual project for the rest of my life,” Dr. John says. “It’s just the start of something.”
“The City” is a song cycle “to make people aware about the stuff,” says Dr. John, aka Mac Rebennack, concerned that after an initial wave of some assistance, the city has been cut off and abandoned and is suffering from government red tape. “It’s tragic, the lack of help, the places people are living. This has affected every area of New Orleans across the board. … This is definitely racist and definitely an ugly thing.”