Getting Gruntled

This week, I have discovered a Norwegian band called Kintama. This four-peice band is inspired by Kurosawa films, and their album “The Silencer” tells the tale of a fictional video game filled with underground Tokyo, samurai, ninjas, and mob lords.
The song I’m featuring here, “She Likes it Vindaloo” is track seven, after the initial character development, and into the action of the story.
Kintama has a sound like American hard alternative rock, like the Foo Fighters.

A little while back, I got a comment from Zane over at AmieStreet.com which kicked off an email conversation about this whole Amie Street Music Wednesday meme. Apparently, The crew over at AmieStreet have been noticing a difference in sales and traffic from this bit of blogger activity, and wanted to show some love by sending a slick tee shirt. It is a gray American Apparel Tee with an awesome pinball table theme in pink featuring a bunch of terms used in the amie street community and on the site in general. I really dig it a lot!
Since a post like this is “nothing without pics,” I have a few shots here in my back pocket. (just ignore the pocket lint and empty gum wrapper):

They were out of my size, so this one is really huge now. I’m hoping that it shrinks up a bit when I launder it the first time.
The meme was thought up by Mark over at Mouseclone after some discussions about all the new music we were finding regularly on the AmieStreet website. After putting together the original tracker, he was able to get in touch with some of the development team, who helped in providing the embedded player with the “skinning” options, and then Mark’s work on the Wordpress plugin started to really take shape.

I’m glad to see the sites doing well, and have found amiestreet to be a great place as a music consumer to find new and interesting bands, and see it as a hot spot for independent artists to promote and sell their tracks, find new fans, and to connect with the community.

I’ve been holding the cards long enough on Simon Wilcox, and really wanted to share her tracks with you. She’s a singer and songwriter, and *yes* she has a guy name. If any of you were fans of The Kooks, the voice will sound familiar. I really like the fresh intensity of the “Eyes On You” track, and find that this is a good collection of tracks to have for driving or to listen to while indulging the right-brain, whether that be drawing, painting, photoshop work, or creative writing.

This week, I am talking about a band called “ones and zeroes”, or more exactly, 0N3S & Z3R0S. This three-peice is from Northern California, and has a unique sound, melding the sounds of electronica loops and effects with traditional instrumentation and alt-grunge vocals. After you sample “Mind Run Free”, Click on the “more by this artist” button and make sure to hit “Nothing Left” and “Rose” while you are checking out the 0N3S & Z3R0S.

This week, I found a band called Porchsleeper. They don’t have much in the way of detail on AmieStreet, but they are out of Ann Arbor, MI. The “Stinkeye” track I have in the player here really kicks, and has a pop-punk feel to it that reminds me of The Refreshments. Be sure to check out the “Bulletproof” track while you are here.

I found a lot of good female vocalists this past week on AmieStreet. One of these was Karma Lively, who has “a hundred songs of peace and war,” is from “North to the Future” Alaska. Besides having a light, fun acoustic sound, and having something to say with her lyrics, She’s donating all of her music sales for the year on AmieStreet to charity. She has a sound that is somewhere in the neighborhood of The Cranberries, Jewel, and Sia.
It looks like she’s laying down all of the instrument tracks herself, which always gains a lot of points with me.

This week, I’m making a last minute entry because I’ve been listening to this album a couple of times over, trying to decide which song to highlight. Peter Salett has an acoustic sound and the stark, yet comfortable voice that brings the coffeehouse style to mind. The sound is akin to that of Shawn Mullins. This track, “Where We Lay” is about coming to a point in a relationship where everything is natural and unrushed. How appropriate for the first week of true spring weather, right?

This week, everyone is either under the weather, getting away from work, or suffering though the adjustments that come with the time change and the continued cool weather. I’m currently cocooned in throw blankets with the dog snuggled beside me, and I’m having a hot cup of chai. So it seems a good time for an instrumental. Dan Tharp Has been playing the guitar as a hobby for almost thirty years, and says that he thought of playing professionally a lot, but has a horrible case of stage fright. I really like his style of playing. It is very comfortable, and melodic without skimping on the fine details that round out the pieces.
If you like his sound, you should tell him so that maybe he will start playing live shows.