Schöne Arbeit, André. Viele Grüße aus Mannheim.

Avril 2020

Gold Dust Trail

Tame Thoughts

Cocaina (Fimi2024)

signs                         

The City

Massive Minds

Roll River Roll

Darren Hayman returns with the new album Home Time, due out on 22 May via Fika Recordings. An autobiographical album about break ups, the record is tender, honest and frequently funny. Darren set an 8 track, acoustic rule for the record. Everything sounds warm, close and intimate. Darren’s own love-worn, London voice is joined on every song by the sweet antipodean tones of Hannah Winter and Laura K, recording artists and songwriters themselves with Common or Garden and Fortitude Valley.

When Darren Hayman made his debut in 1997 with the acclaimed indie band Hefner his lyrical remit was the broken hearted. His early songs told the story of the lonesome and lost, and broken dreams of love on the back streets of London. After Hefner, Hayman’s palette grew to include a unique take on place and memory. In the early 2000s he wrote a trilogy of albums around the history of Essex. In 2012 he made an instrumental album describing the tranquillity of Lidos. In 2016 Darren was awarded ‘Hardest Working Musician’ by the Association of Independent Music for his epic project on Thankful Villages, the 55 villages that survived the Great War with no casualties. His most recent record, 12 Astronauts, tells the personal story of the only men to have walked on the Moon.

Darren is continually obsessed with the idea of what songs can be, and the stories they can tell. As he explains, “With projects like Thankful Villages, I became interested in what a record could be, using field recordings, interviews and songs to make sound collages. I wanted to return to the stricter art of song writing and try and make the twelve best compositions I could. I wanted to make useful songs, words that could be comfort, not just thoughts that would depress.”
The songs for Home Time were written over a three-year period but recorded quickly, and with love, in Darren’s home. Home Time is a fragile, subtle slice of prettiness. Wrap it around you.

Three digital singles will be released; ‘I Tried and I Tried and I Failed’, a song about the endless, circular nature of being human, ‘I Was Thinking About You’, a song about the uncontrollable nature of memory and how it continues to haunt us even when we consider the long buried, and ‘The Joint Account’, about how when trying to negotiate matters of the heart and mind, it is sometimes the physical objects that anchor us down in the mire.

A baby sister album I Can Travel Through Time with ten one-minute songs squeezed on a seven inch is coming out alongside it on the Formosa Punk label.

"bold and unique" The Sunday Times “Hayman has hit a creative purple patch… a treat”. Mojo “uniquely intimate and very satisfying”  - BBC

Home Time

The Joint Account

Darren Hayman - The Joint Account

Song Machine Episode 3

Aries (feat. Peter Hook and Georgia)

Video: https://youtu.be/149aU3lCR48
Buy CD/Vinyl/Merch: sparkling.bandcamp.com/merch 
Spotify: spoti.fi/2OxZo4C bandcamp: sparkling.bandcamp.com/
 iTunes: apple.co/378Fio1 
Website: www.sparklingofficial.com/

released April 3, 2020
Song by SPARKLING © 2020
© & ℗ 2020 Vitamin A Records
produced by Andy Ramsay and SPARKLING
mixed by Jimmy Robertson and Andy Ramsay
mastered by Kai Blankenberg
recorded at Press Play Studio, London and Skyline Tonfabrik, Düsseldorf

Alive

Track is taken from the self-titled debut by Gary Olson (Ex-The Ladybug Transistor)

++++++

This album is a tale of two cities, or rather, two studios; one in Hayland, Norway and the other in Flatbush, Brooklyn and two brothers who came up with the idea making a record with indie rock wizard Gary Olson which now links the two locations.  Gary Olson is the lead singer, main songwriter and plays trumpet with the band Ladybug Transistor who have released five albums on Merge Records. He is also producer and engineer at Marlborough Farms studio deep in the heart of Flatbush Brooklyn. 

On the Norwegian side Ole Johannes Åleskjær has his studio, Tune-J in the bucolic countryside outside Oslo (and works as a lumberjack when not making amazing records). He and his brother Jorn Åleskjær met Gary many years ago when their band Loch Ness Mouse crossed paths with Ladybug Transistor on tour.

At one of these chance meetings Ole put forward the idea of a writing and recording collaboration between himself, his brother Jorn and Gary with the recording done both in Norway and Brooklyn. Over a period of eight years Gary would visit the Åleskjær brother’s barn studio in its idyllic setting near the Swedish border and do basic tracks on whatever songs the three had written. Gary would then take the recordings back to cosmopolitan Brooklyn where he would add vocals, horns and strings at his studio.  The recordings would then return to Norway for producer Ole to finish the tracks. By the end of 2019 this set of eleven songs had naturally blossomed into an album.

With Ole producing and playing guitar and Gary doing vocals and trumpet the album personnel was rounded out by Håvard Krogedal - bass, cello; Emil Nikolaisen  drums (both from Serena-Maneesh ); Joe McGinty (The Psychedelic Furs, Ryan Adams) string arrangements, piano and organ and Suzanne Nienaber  (Pale Lights) backing vocals. 

Although the initial idea was to do simple recordings Ladybug Transistor fans will no doubt be pleased to find Gary’s signature exultant trumpet sound, the luscious strings and gorgeous pop hooks so favored by that band present in plenty on this album.  The melodies are at once both delicate and strongly memorable and the lustrous production gives a sheen reminiscent of the best ‘70s commercial radio and ‘80s indie pop.

Fittingly the album cover photo depicts Gary on a decommissioned airfield in New York that is now a national park. There's a dreamy, overwhelming vastness on the old runway that was built in the 1920s. A lot of the original buildings still remain. You can feel the ghosts of the old pilots everywhere. Pioneer aviator Thor Solberg began the first successful flight from the U.S. to Norway from there in 1935. This album continues that tradition.

Gary Olson was asked how he’s like the album to be listened to. He reply went like this: “I’d suggest listening in a moving train facing the window. Close your eyes and feel the sunlight pass between the trees. Open your eyes slowly and realize you've missed your stop, repeat. “

More info: https://www.tapeterecords.de/artists/gary-olson/

Gary Olson

Some Advice

Buy CD, Vinyl, digital

Gary Olson - Some Advice

Sitting Alone

G / Em / D / C

Sitting alone at the edge of my means
I’m thinking about my lost dreams
sitting alone

Watching the news and feel all my fears
crawling around my soul and appear
when I’m sitting alone

Em / G / Am Am
Sitting alone, nobody here

Em / G / Am C
sitting alone with all my fears

G / G / C / Am
Tell me…will it be over one day
…will it be soon
G / G / C / Am
…will we all be the same
…will my dreams still come true
G / Am / C / C
…will my fears disappear 
Em / D / C / C
…is it a fiction or is it real


G / Em / D / C
Walking alone through the heart of my town,
the streets are empty, let my head hang down

Walking alone

come by the pub where we used to have a booze.
feel the sadness and know we might lose…

Walking alone

Em / G / Am Am
Walking alone, nobody here

Em / G / Am C
Walking alone with all my fears

G / G / C / Am
Tell me…will it be over one day
…will it be soon
G / G / C / Am
…will we all be the same
…will my dreams still come true
G / Am / C / C
…will my fears disappear 
Em / D / C / C
…is it a fiction or is it real

G / Am / C / C
…will my fears disappear 
Em / D / C / C
…is it a fiction or is it real

Em / G / Am Am
Sitting alone, nobody here

Em / G / Am C
sitting alone with all my fears

Sitting Alone 

This is a happy, passionate, energetic & melodic song with hopeful lyrics!

Sunstroke Rain Interview Radio Sangam April 8, 2020

This is our first German single from the upcoming album "Amerika". Please listen and enjoy.

Here are the lyrics in English and German:

America
 
I wish you were America
then it wouldn't be so hard.
Transatlantic, overseas
I would be with you.

But you, you stand here beside me
and more than a sea lies between you and me.

I wish you were America
that is only seemingly far away.

But sooner or later
I could see the coast.
On these narrow sides I liked to snuggle up.
And I let my boat drift, and put it in the harbour.

But you, you stand here beside me and more than a sea lies between you and me.

Understand, America is almost here, the continent is getting closer,
than I have ever been to you.

Because you, you stand here beside me and more than one sea lies between you and me.


Amerika
 
Ich wollt du wärst Amerika,
dann wär es nicht so schwer.
Transatlantisch, Übersee
schon wär ich bei dir.
 
Doch du, du stehst hier neben mir
und mehr als ein Meer liegt zwischen dir und mir.
 
Ich wollt du wärst Amerika,
das ist nur scheinbar fern.
Doch früher oder später
könnte ich die Küste sehen.
An diesen schmalen Seiten schmiegt ich mich gerne an
und ließ ich mein Boot treiben, legt es im Hafen an.
 
Doch du, du stehst hier neben mir
und mehr als ein Meer liegt zwischen dir und mir.
 
Verstehe doch,
Amerika ist schon beinah da.
Der Kontinent rückt näher,
als ich dir jemals war.
 
Denn du, du stehst hier neben mir
und mehr als ein Meer liegt zwischen dir und mir.

Amerika

Dein Gesicht

Xiufang

Xiufang and the 桃樹

Song Written by Liam Wade
Performed by FURS
Produced by Liam Wade & Olly Betts
Recorded by Olly Betts at The Crows Nest Studio , London
Mixed by Claudius Mittendorfer, NYC
Art by Hannah Clayton


Sitting Alone

Royal Target

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