PS! I Love Stacy Barthe

If I say Stacy Barthe – does the name say you something? I guess your answer – sadly – is “No”
Unless I ask you if you know; Britney Spears, Rihanna, Kelly Rowland of Destiny’s Child, Kathy Perry, Cheryl Cole, Brandy and Miley Cyrus? I bet your answer is “Yes, I know those!”

If you know or/and love one or more of those artists, you´d probably have heard the songs of Stacy Barthe. She has written for all those and a bunch of others. To mention a few male artists she has even worked with Rick Ross, Akon and Sean “Diddy” Combs.

…This is why i love Stacy Barthe

The first time you hear the voice of Stacy Barthe, close your eyes. What you hear is a voice so smooth and soulful. Deep and lush and it sounds like she has sung all her life. A mixture of Sade, Rihanna (as when she sings on her slow jams), and Nneka maybe?
I´m tempted to call her a female Drake because she, just like Drake on his “Thank Me Later” album strips down the melodies down to drums, percussion, sometimes a piano and/or a acoustic guitar – naked and organic sounds and full of air and allowing quietness to be a part of the music. The quietness in the music is important to let her fantastic warm voice be the main ingredient in the songs. She flirts sometimes with reggae – and it´s not over-the-top – and it works! When she slows things down and do a spoken word at the end of a couple of her songs. I´m sold again!

She has under her own name released three fantastic EPs “Sincerely Yours, Stacy Barthe” in 2011. “In The Inbetween” and “PS! I Love You” in 2012. These three albums all together contains 25 tracks – and over 90 minutes of music. And before you ask; Just marvelous tracks, no fillers! That’s a huge smile and two huge thumbs up from me!

All of the Stacy Barthe EPs can be bought on iTunes
and
You can stream parts of “PS! I Love You” , the complete “Sincerely Yours, Stacy Barthe” and “In The InBetween” here through Spotify

On her first release under her own name, she even worked with one of 2012s best artists: Frank Ocean. He did vocals along with Stacy on the beautiful “Without You”, and Rick Ross joins her with a rap verse on “Hell Yeah!”. I could go into mention single songs, but with Stacy Barthe, it´s not any use to recommend some songs – because they´re all so damn good and by not mention anyone, no one is let out.

A few did-you-knows at the end:

• Did you know it was Beyonce who made Stacy Barthe decide to release her debut EP, “Sincerely Yours, Stacy Barthe”
• Did you know Stacy Barthe is working with Miley Cyrus forthcoming album, which will (mark my word) be Mileys major mature breakthrough
• Did you know she even knows and has worked with artists like Alicia Keys, Estelle, Andre 3000, Elle Warner, Brandy, Stephen Marley and T.I.

About the music of Stacy Barthe, she says it best on her own homepage: 
“You can find hurt and pain in my music while finding the light. It represents empowerment… I speak from a very truthful and sincere place…with love”

The Q&A; Little Brother Eli “A spectrum of influences!”

One of the new faces of modern blues and rock is called Little Brother Eli. A new duo with Alex Grew on lead vocals and guitarist Joshua Rigal. The band is inspired by modern rock, as well as blues, soul and hip hop – with rock as their main ingredient. The band has played together for a little over 6 months only and have their a self titled debut 3 track EP out now.

The three tracks is quite and eclectic sounding and the EP kicks off with the rock track “Animal Fair”; A raw live-in-the-studio sounding rock song with dirty guitars and a vocal intro – not to far from Elvis “Trouble” – before drums and disco´ish high-hats kick in. The guitars make me think about the dirty sound of Jimi Hendrix´ played with his six string when playing live. The sound is raw and if you draw a line from Jimi to Jack White – you´re not too far from the sound of Little Brother Elis first track.

When questioning the bands guitar player Josh Rigal about what artist they are inspired by
And by asking what are their favorite records are – you´ll get an exiting sneak peek into their eclectic rock sound.

-Both Alex and I draw a great deal of inspiration from the likes of Jack White, Led Zep and The Black Keys, but we each have our own personal musical influences which we bring to the project. For example, I know Alex learnt a great deal about melody by listening to his dad’s Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) records. Equally I’d say Stevie Wonder and Beastie Boys are two influences for me which I hold close to Little Brother Eli.

-Our favourite records? Alex: Consolers Of The Lonely – by The Raconteurs.
Josh: Blood Sugar Sex Magik – Red Hot Chili Peppers

As you can see from Josh answers, Little Brother Elis eclectic style even draws inspiration from hip hop and soul, and on the second track “Awkward Position” you can clearly hear hip hop inspired drum playing. There´s no studio flickering here, just a great slice of their soulful-blues-inspired rock. Real music, real musicians!

Do you both write the songs together? Who comes up with the ideas? And does the songs or melodies come first?

-Our writing process started off fairly unconventionally, separated by 167 miles between London and Sheffield, we we´re emailing bits and pieces of melodies, riffs and beats back and forth. When we properly got together and wrote the material however, it tends to be a similar case. Alex might turn up with a melody, single line of lyrics or occasionally a whole song that just needs piecing together. Or I’ll sit down at the piano and feel something out and we’ll build the song section by section until the day is out or the song is finished. There’s no set formula, it just kind of comes together when we set ourselves to it.

I had to ask the band about if there will be a full album, and when is it planned to be released?
Can we expect to hear more of the same?

-As I alluded to earlier, we do have material. For us though, we’re just starting off. Our fan base is slowly growing, we’re playing more and more live shows and we’re working really hard to build a project which has some legs. So we don’t have the audience or financial capabilities to put together an album quite yet. It’ll get there though. We’d like to hope within a year? maybe? possibly?

-With regards to what can be expected…A carefully arranged selection of songs, put together to create some interesting dynamics. You’ll hear a more full spectrum of our musical preferences. Swing, funk, soul, rock, blues, hip hop – however it comes.

The last track on the EP is my favorite track and the song where the band let their musical influences really shine through. A real show off track, in a positive way; It´s called “When she sings” and is an eclectic song that mixes bluesy soul, with a bit of Jeff Buckley inspired vocals, that suddenly glides into a short raw guitar solo in front of the mix. After the short solo, the song slips into reggae then a bit of do-wop which segues into a sing-a-long la-la bridge before it ends like it starts; as a soul track, with a falsetto vocal. All this is done within 3 minutes. 6 musical genres into one short three-minute song, almost like mini-miniature rock opera. Fantastic and amazing!

I can’t believe you only have played together for a half-year, how did you meet? Have any of you played in bands or had solo earlier? When did you first start to play music ?

-Alex and I have been friends for a long time. We used to play in a band together as teenagers, as you do. We learnt a lot, built on our craft and had great fun for 5 years or so. That group disbanded, but a few years later Josh and I were hanging out and decided to jam out a song together and lay it down on the laptop. We’d always had great results writing together, but It was at this point we decided we should write a whole album’s worth of material, and the project kind of built up from there.

-My first instrument was the trumpet at age 10, but that took a back seat at about 16 yrs, when I discovered my love for bass guitar. Alex tells me that he’s been making noises and dancing about ever since he could stand. Although he’s had no musical training, he’s been performing and singing from a young age, but has really found his voice in the last few years.

Josh Rigal, thanks a lot and it was great chatting with you and I look forward to hearing more from you – and look forward to follow your career.

Do you wanna read or hear more about and from the band? 

• You can buy and download the Little Brother Eli EP here, through their Bandcamp site or  through iTunes here
• Have a preview listen here on Spotify or on SoundCloud.
• If you would like to follow the band Little Brother Eli  check their homepage here
• On social media services on facebook here and twitter
• Little Brother Eli also has a fantastic eclectic playlist of theif favourite tracks on Spotify, check it here!

If I should choose a tagline at the end, why you should love Little Brother Eli, I´d love to quote vocalist Josh Rigals own worlds:

You’ll hear a more full spectrum of Little Brother Elis musical preferences;Swing, funk, soul, rock, blues, hip hop – however it comes!

The year the music didn´t die!

It´s less than one week left of the year 2012. That means it´s time for me to do a summit of my year in music.
Here´s how 2012 has been for me, read about how this this blog came to life and my status and future plans for the blog. What music rocked my world and how I choose to listen to music – and a little bit about music I love! Read also about the blog posts you loved and the least read/worst blog posts I´ve done in 2012!
…And I would love you if you´l to share your thoughts about the Read And Hear music blog!

The Read And Hear blog comes to life…I started my first music blog back in 2011, but in the middle of this year – June 2012 – I said goodbye to my old Norwegian music blog Musique De La Vie and started this blog you´re reading now; Read And Hear. I decided to start blogging in English – and the Read And Hear music blog was born. I´ve wanted to spread my words to the whole world, and not just Norway (which was my main readers). The readers of the Read And Hear blogs top 5 readers come from the following countries; United States, Norway, United Kingdom, France and Germany. Great stats, and fun to see that my mission showed results.

The day the music died…not!

Earlier this year (and for years now) the CD and music business had been doomed and was supposed to die. But the CD still lives on, the market buys less of the silver plates, but they´re still out there. And ironically enough, people streams more music, we buy albums digitally on services like iTunes – and this was the year vinyl did come back – and “everyone” also releases their productions on LPs! Yes! It sounds weird, we buy untouchable digital files and the touchable physical music that´s 12″ of analog music – large black circles that gets scratches if you drop them or are not careful with them. It´s like we´re loving the “new” music and the new “retro” feeling of vinyl. I have to be honest, I love it all, I love CDs – Streaming, iTunes, and LPs. But the sound of vinyl – is what stay closest to my heart.

The year I started to love buying music again

Music for me had to be a thing I can touch. I´be had to have a cover to open, a sleeve to read the liner notes and text, a coverphoto to look at and to put the music into the slot of my stereo. Then I downloaded music and streamed. Felt I´ve had discovered a lot of music through blogs and webpages, but it was dead it was nothing just files. I still had to own the thing, I had to have the music in my hand and on the stereo. I´ve heard thousands of records through Spotify. First free, then I bought the premium edition to get more music and fewer commercials and adds. It was great, but something was missing. The words, the pictures, lyrics, liner notes and a cover.
I dropped Spotify – and bought my new discoveries in iTunes.
Almost at the same time I´ve started this blog I´ve started buying music again, digitally. At the start of the year (and end of 2011) I´ve picked up my record player again, and the made frequently visits to my favourite Råkk´n´Rålls (sic) second-hand record shop in Oslo, where I picked up classic albums I´ve always wished I owned on vinyl. Almost always second-hand for really cheap money like Nkr 25,- (4,5 USD or 3.38 Euros) or less, and a few full price.  Always classics, like most of Elvis 70s recordings, Gram Parsons, Simon & Garfunkel, Supertramp, James Taylor, KLF, Inner City, The Blue Nile, Talk Talk, Nirvana. My vinyl collection grew from about 250 pieces of delicious vinyl – and counts now 500+ pieces and still growing!

It´s quite fun to think back – and discover that the last record I was considering buying on LP was Nirvanas “Nevermind” back in 1991 but I picked the CD because of the secret (and to be honest crappy) bonus track “Endless Nameless” was not on the LP edit. Then there was no way back, Everything from 1991 to 2011 was CDs and Digital. And now 20 years later – in 2011 – I´m starting to buy LPs again. The circle is completed.

The best things in life is free…

Mixtapes. Mix tapes. Actually they´re not tapes anymore, but still it´s called mixtapes – even if they´re now released for free on in webpages, and blogs. 2012 was the year I´ve found amazing music for free on the internet for real, mix tapes and DJ sets. On pages like DatPiff and SoulGuru and on homepages and blogs. DatPiff is an amazing mix tape page – full of almost all the mix tapes you´d like to check out. Great quality – and lots of free stuff by the biggest names. SoulGuru is my favourite music blog – they release DJ sets and tunes every-single-day that I have to check out – daily. The page is in German, and I can´t speak a word in German, but still a website full of great stuff worth checking out! Bandcamp is another web page I love. Lots free albums – take time to check out – all genres covered!
Mixtapes I´ve discovered; First a classic Frank Oceans, classic “Nostalgia-Ultra“. Daniel DeBourgs 3 fab albums, K Michelle has released four amazing mixtapes. To be honest the great K Michelle is this years latest music crush (a blog post is coming up early 2013 i hope)  – she´s one the big voices to look out for in 2013. Leon Timbo has probably released the best soul album you still haven´t heard. Angel Haze – one of the most talked about new names in female hip-hip and not to forget the fantastic Azaelia Banks – when is the album coming? Fuze the MCs  great full album release “One Black Man” for free through his homepage and many more I would like to mention, much more that I would like to blog about. It´s a whole world out there – so check out and keep on rocking in the free world!

Club and disco music came into my life…again!

10 years ago i loved club music, disco, french house, Stardust, Daft Punk, Danny Tenaglia, and, and, and…I should make a blogpost about the disco-club-songs-I-love one day. But this year I started do discover disco again, Azari & Ill, Kraak & Smaak, Maya Wik, Jessie Ware, Charlotte Thorstvedt, Solange. Club with soul, great voices, retro 80´s-feeling, great productions. It´s all less club-trance – more feelings. Looking forward to checking out more in the coming year!

My 12 favourite albums of 2012

Here´s my favourite albums of the year that was. The album I listened to most is without doubt the Drake album – an album I just didn´t get the first time I heard it, then after a couple listens – it hit me – and it hit hard. “Take Care” is the best soul, hip hop, soul, chill out album of the year, it should be up there with Frank Ocean on everyone’s Best Of 2012 lists.

Drake – Take Care (Spotify)
Frank Ocean – Channel Orange (Spotify)
Leon Timbo – …And Everything Else (Free mixtape)
K. Michelle – Zero F..ks Given (Free mixtape)
Jem Warren – Heart Knows How (Spotify)
Fuze The MC – One Black Man (Free mixtape)
Azelia Banks – Fantasea (Free mix tape)
Jessie Ware – Devotion (Spotify)
John Mayer –  Born and Raised (Spotify)
Daniel De Bourgh – The Bridge The DDB Mixtape pt 2 (Free mixtape)
Mirel Wagner – Mirel Wagner (Spotify)
Rebekka Karijord – We Become Ourselves (Spotify)

Whats goin´on… The future of the Read And Hear musicblog

Okay, so this blog has now lived for half-a-year – and it´s still like a little kid to me – it´s still growing – and definitely not moved  from home. And it feels great. This is my blog – and this is my thoughts about the future of my music blog.
Status 2012: In 2012 I´ve written 18 blog posts from June ´til December, that´s about one blog posts every two weeks. I happen to write long blog posts, maybe they´re too long? I´ve done some Q&As, which I like to do, a great way to get to know musicians and artists better – and great to share with you, my readers. The blogs Read And Hear facebookpage has not gotten too much traffic and attention from me this year, and the twitter page has not been updated too often.
I did an update on the blog design a few months back – and really feel I have found a page layout that is both stylish and represent the blog as i´d like it! More easy on the eye then it was when i started it.
Status 2013; I think I should update my blog more often, maybe at least once a week or maybe two. The blog posts should get shorter, and making the updates easier to read on-the-go. More focused – keeping it tighter and sharper. I´d love to do more Q&As and recommend new stuff. Love to to blogposts about my all time favourite albums. Check out even more music – both old and new. For some weird reason I often blog about soul music. I would like to show and write more about my love and passion for music – it´ll be hard rock, jazz, rock, pop or that guilty pleasure I´ve never told any one else about. My big project I think is to make a series of blogposts about the songs I love – to make my ultimate-favourite-best-of-greatest-song-ever-collection (which is also off course getting av Spotify compagnion (and maybe YouTube?) The Facebookpage should be updated more often – as well as the twitter page. Keeping it fresh and new and up-to-date. I want my blog to be – this is a cliché – the magazine or blog you would love to read

Stop me if you´d read this one before

I like to frequently check the stats of the blog, just to see if you´d like the blog posts. What are you reading and what blog posts are you loving – and not loving:

The 2012 best of Read And Hear music blog;  There’s is one winner and the blog post you love the most was called The Ballad(s) of Jimi Hendrix” – my writings about guitar rock legend Jimi Hendrix´best ballads and the lack of a Hendrix best ballads album so I had to make one myself in Spotify (have a listen here!). I´ve heard that Prince would work with another funk legend, Larry Graham – and made a short blog post about how much I looked forward to that release. New name Franky Manzo released her solo-single “M.J´s Coursing” and I fell instantly in love with what I heard. She´s also doing a movie-project and has some cool plans for that project, there’s more to come on the blog as soon as I know more about she and her projects. Soulsinger-songwriter Kendra Morris released her debut “Banshee“, and that became a real great album – and she had this cover-project, read more on my blog post. How To Dress Well is a singer-songwriter for the ones who likes Bon Iver – his latest album “Total Loss”  should be checked out! Soul songer Daniel De Bourgh released three free mixtapes full of his remakes and covers of some of the latest years biggest names and some of his own stuff. A great voice with a future! Rebekka Karijord – the singer-songwriter to follow. Norwegian – living in Sweden – now slowly but surely conquering the world with her latest release! Keep an large eye up for her!

The 2012 worst of Read And Hear music blog: Some of my blog posts had almost none readers and here’s my worst 5 2012. Yes, you can dance to this – my disco/not disco playlist. You can hear it if you use Spotify. Actually a repost from another one of my earlier blog-projects. R. Kelly is back: With write me back check his “Share My Love” – I love the way his music turning into this Barry White´ish inspired disco-soul. Give it a try if you´d like! You should also check out  my love letter to  the wonderful yet dark music of Mirel Wagner. Sometimes a voice and acoustic guitar can make magic. Kanye West – New album sleeve – was my presentation of the rumored new Kanye West album, I understand why that wasn´t much read. Another Quickie was my  Borgore feat Miley Cyrus video another quick blog update. Finally! Frank Ocean “Channel Orange”  I wrote about Frank Oceans debut album, one of the albums I was really looking forward to in 2012. The album lived up to the rumors. It was one of the must have albums of 2012. Get your hands on it – and if you dare, read my review!

…And at last, my little list of this-is-I-proud-of´s; My blog has been mentioned on Franky Manzos– and Jem Warrens Homepage. click the links to chect it out! And remember you can follow the blog on Facebook and twitter, see more here; Facebook/readandhear and Twitter/readnhear

It´s the end of 2012 as we know it, and it feels good!

That was it: My best of 2012 – I promised that my blog posts was supposed to be shorter in 2012. I end this year by doing…another long blog post.

Now it´s time for you to give me feedback – if you feel like! I´d love to hear your feedback. What do you think about my thoughts about the year thats behind us. What about my blog, should I change the way I write? Post more often, and shorter. What about my best of 2012?
Tell me what you´d like what you’d didn´t like. Anything.

Thank you for 2012 – welcome to 2013