BeatPick Blog on music licensing, creative commons music, gigs

The 17^th Annual Los Angeles Music Award ceremony is almost here! The Los Angeles Music Awards is one of the largest and coolest Hollywood red carpet events and will be held this year on November 29^th. This ceremony is a yearly event to acknowledge those independent artists from around the world whom deserve recognition for their creative additions to the world of music. This year, our very own BeatPick artist, Demetrios Katis has two official nominations in the Film Score Orchestral category for his tracks, “The Gathering of the Tribe” and “Hymn and Duty”. Demetrios is an established Greek composer of epic scores and is already well acclaimed in Greece for his talents. BeatPick wishes him the best of luck in winning, although I doubt that he needs any!

Remember the good old times in the eighties? All those bad haircuts? Billy Idol, Donna Summer and Samantha Fox?

Ah, yes…Those were the days. OK, so while you’re at it, now try remembering one of the most epic moments of your life back then. This is the picture: you’ve just tried loading a videogame on your Commodore 64 cassette recorder. Although you’re incredibly proud of this brilliant new machine, your first two attempts to load your latest game have failed tragically, leaving you waiting well over twenty minutes for a blank screen. Unimpressed, you’ve inserted the cassette and digited the magic words “Load” and “Run” in the incredibly technological DOS interface, for the third time. After quarter of an hour, you’re just about to give up, when suddenly….. A stream of light and colors appears on the screen, and a bizarre, electronic music has caught your attention. It’s the 1988 version of ecstasy, nirvana and heaven all in one. And, most of all it’s a moment that will stick that weird, unheard, minimalist music in your head forever.

And that’s exactly why at Beatpick.com we’re so proud to introduce 8-bit music whizkid Mooty, who was probably too young for Commodore or Amiga glory days, yet has an incredible capacity for recreating exactly the sounds and moods of that decade.

All five tracks from his debut EP “Unlike Clockwork” are worthy of mention, but we’ll take “Mushi Mushi” as an example of what he’s able to create out of retro research, and most of all out of taste.

Combining modern day glitch beeps and buzzes of all sorts, Aphex Twin-influenced stop-and-go rhythm motions and faithful eighties keyboards and sound effects, what emerges is a masterful upgrade of all melodies composed by uncredited and undiscovered geniuses behind eighties videogames. And what’s more, this is a track with feeling: the keyboard melody doesn’t just sound cute, it sounds ROMANTIC. As romantic as Mario sliding down the platform of his wonderful world looking for mushrooms, or Donkey Kong finally saving his dad and earning a well-deserved hug….

To download “Mushi Mushi” for free, click here.

Our Glitch to IDM section is growing steadily and we’re proud of all our latest signings: check out wolf-masked experimenter JFrank, or Latin American soundscape constructors nustyrecords to hear what we’re listening to in the office!

Is it really possible to transcend the Beatles‘ legacy in modern Rock music? Such an argument is forever present in music literature and in everyday discussions: while some may indicate Electronic music, or pre-Beatles Folk as examples of traditions untouched by the Fab Four, many others are convinced their impact on the musical world is quite simply omnipresent.

What’s a simple fact is that the amount of bands who have attempted tributes or mere imitations of the Liverpool lads’ work is outstandingly long, and goes from levels of pure brilliance (as with bands such as XTC or the Electric Light Orchestra, or single artists as the unfortunate Daniel Johnston) to the downright mediocre.

What’s quite unusual is to find a band that has the courage to tribute the Beatles’ more complex, orchestral, Sgt.Pepper-phase works within an indie-produced debut album. And that is what makes WhiteRoom’s “Barcelona” such a surprising and ambitious piece of work.

The Montreal band - headed by Alex Dray and Eddy Silva - is attracting much attention thanks to a well-orchestrated series of tracks that swing between many moods, with an undeniable fascination for the sulky laments of Thom Yorke & co.

Yet at Beatpick.com the track that caught most attention was one that is more of an excursus than a trademark for the band: with its’ roots placed firmly in Lennon’s “When I’m 64“, “Barcelona” proceeds to capture exactly the atmosphere of the song it tributes, even transforming Montreal into somewhat of an English cottage location (”We talk for hours, but don’t use words, then you get up and feed the birds“), and including a magnificent horns section (there’s even a trumpet solo and a trombone!).

And then, after a tale of love (”If you want these things, they’re more than dreams, just ring my doorbell“) and peace, when only a few seconds are missing to the end of the track, the tongue rolls straight into cheek, as Lennon’s ghost emerges to state “I’ll call you when you’re 110, and we’ll walk through the sunshine again“. I guess with life expectancy growing by the day, and 64 not being such a grand age anymore, it needed some upgrading….

The band have recently been playing various clubs in their home area, but are surely preparing to network a long way around the globe: if there’s any divine justice, sounds this exciting should by far make them the Next Big Thing to emerge from Canada.

To download “Barcelona” for FREE, click here.

To visit the band’s Beatpick profile and hear the rest of their fantastic eponymous debut record, click here.

At Beatpick.com we’re proud of the ever-growing variety of music in our roster. And, of course, we’re even prouder of the high quality standard of the new bands we are signing.

One of such bands is the Art-Rock duo from Nashville You Are A Hologram, whose eponymous debut album is a passionate demonstration of an evolving alternative Rock scene under the surface of what is better known as the eternal hometown of traditional Country music.

E ddie Mangrum and Matt Michiels’ style has its’ roots somewhere between such American tradition, a more British, moody side, and an almost EMO theme basis. If you add to that an interesting, almost experimental approach to processed drums and beats, the mixture could be seen as an actual marriage between modernity and classic rock.

Opening track “Under the Water” is probably the finest example of the duo’s songwriting skills: an emotional and inspiring semi-ballad based on a more traditionally Nashville tempo, in which the structure leads to a gradual, subtle growth of intensity the further the track goes along. Ideally such a progression is the perfect accompaniment to the “main character”’s personal evolution: the track starts with a fragile and almost doubtful voice/guitar verse describing the disillusion about man’s limits (”I can breath, I can breathe under the water….I can fly, I can try harder and harder“), yet grows steadily towards an ending that is slowly more and more full of hope and optimism (”I still believe in the things that brought us together“); in particular this can be observed in the magnificent guitar-work, where the taste for delicate chord progression drives the project into more psychedelic, almost shoegazing territories (the My Bloody Valentine influence appears quite evident also in other tracks on the album - in particular “Fast Ones“).

If you want to download the track for free, click here.

To visit YAAH’s Beatpick profile, click here.