love

jahresuberblick (3)

Today I’ll finish my round up of my favorite music of 2006. I’m off to Vienna tonight with my lovely girlfriend, we’ll be spending New Years Eve there and will not return before January 2nd. Of course we'll take some music with us. I'll surely be listening to Booka Shade’s Movements, Jan Jelinek’s Tierbeobachtungen, Nathan Fake’s sublime Drowning in a sea of love and the fascinating Return to cookie mountain by TV on the Radio; I know Ted loves Cookie mountain too. Phoenix’ It’s never been like that is also a popular album in the Spider James ranks; something I don’t really understand. We do agree on Beck’s latest album, The information; it's so much better than Guero. I think I’m in love is my song of the year. Perfect pop, folks. Check out Beck’s website by the way, it’s totally amazing! Of course nothing can beat The Beatles. Hearing Love for the first time almost made me cry. Hail Sir George Martin. I still haven’t listened to Joanna Newsom last album, which is supposed to be wonderful. I’ll make up for it as soon as possible. For now, I wish u all a very happy New Year!

broadcast

jahresuberblick im gluck (2)

The first time I heard The Roots’ last album Game Theory I was in Ted’s car. We were on our way to our rehearsal room. What an incredible ride it was. This album is The Roots’ best to date. Why didn’t it sell five million copies? It should. Okay, the music is at times dark, claustrophobic and political, but the songs are full of great hooks and the rhythms are incredibly strong. Best hip-hop release this year. I just recently discovered Paul St. Hilaire’s A devine state of mind. It’s by far the best dub album I’ve heard in years and years; an instant classic. Up next is the worlds most underestimated band of the last ten years: Broadcast. This years Future Crayon is filled with b-sides, outtakes and rarities. Of course it’s not as good as their sublime full-lengths, but it’s still a gorgeous collection of extraordinary dream-pop and post-rock. Stop ignoring this band, they’re brilliant!

the godfather

I was just listening to James Brown last Saturday. Sorry to hear he's gone. Papa's gotta brand new bag, The payback, Funky drummer... Classic stuff. Brown was a great innovator. The man certainly deserves a fine place up in rock 'n roll heaven, even if he was a big son of a ***.
Spider James is in debt to his music. Who isn't?

happy x-mas to all our friends

jahresuberblick im gluck (1)

As we’re moving very, very close to the end of the year, it’s hard to avoid all the round-ups and lists of best albums of 2006. One of my favorite records has definitely been James Holden’s The idiots are winning. It’s dance music for the head; a very exciting album full of dark twitching noises. Holden pushes boundaries, but in some strange way The idiots… remains warm and melodic. Than, of course, there is The Eraser by Thom Yorke. I know my Spider James associates Ted and Willem share my love for this album. Thom’s voice sounds great, lyrically the man is in great form and the songs are simply marvelous. Same goes for Grizzly Bear and their wonderful Yellow House; again a Willem-van-Veldhoven-favorite. To me Yellow House stands out ‘cause it makes very traditional music sound different from anything you’ve ever heard. Now that’s an accomplishment.

JL

it's yr birthday

Hey, today is JL's birthday. The second Spider James member to hit the big 30. Do believe we're getting older. But we don't care; so go, go shawty, it's yo birthday. We gonna party like it's yo birthday!

blues in d minor

work in progress

Hard work has been done last Saturday when we continued our work on 'Charm' with Caspar Falke at Silvox. We'll spare you the details; lots of technical stuff we won't bore you with. The optimism we displayed in an earlier post has only grown. We would have loved to finish it and let you hear the result, but we're not there yet. January the 13th is our next studio date. Hang in there, we will.

disappear

lost at sea

Ever since I was a kid, I have loved the weird sound of the electro theremin at the end of ‘Good Vibrations’. Going through some fan sites, while writing my little tribute last Sunday, I discovered the part was played by a certain Paul Tanner, the man who developed the electric version of the theremin in 1958.
Tanner was not your typical, anonymous studio musician. He already had a whole musical life behind him, when he was asked to work with the Beach Boys during the recording of Pet Sounds. Paul Tanner was a member of the legendary Glenn Miller Orchestra in the nineteen thirties and early nineteen forties. He played trombone on Millers’ signature recordings including ‘In the mood’ and ‘Moonlight Serenade’; songs that dominated the popular music charts in the late thirties.
The success story found a tragic ending. On December 15, 1944, Glenn Miller (born 1904) was scheduled to fly from the England to France, to play for the soldiers who had recently liberated Paris. His plane disappeared over the English Channel and was never to be found. Miller's disappearance remains a mystery, as neither his remains nor the wreckage of his plane were ever recovered from the water.
Paul Tanner, apparently, is alive and well, he's 89 years old.

ominous sky

optimism

While recording ‘King James’ and ‘All in Between’ last year, we tried real hard to make something that could please a large audience. What we desperately wanted, was attention; good press, some airplay maybe, definitely more gigs. We thought we knew just what had to be done, to make people actually listen to us. We were dead wrong. We ended up sounding like a clean, safe and therefore kind of dull version of Spider James.
We regained our self-confidence several months later, during the recording and mixing of ‘del Kinky’, a lullaby noir that sounds anything but clean and safe. We’ll be in the studio next Saturday, resuming our work on ‘Charm’. It fuses a good pop melody with weird, abstract sounds and has a great beat you can dance to. Yes, that does sound optimistic. But make no mistake, we’re not going down that road again. We'll keep our minds focused on the music instead.
Listen to 'del Kinky' at http://www.myspace.com/spiderjamesspiderjames/

i'm in great shape

pocket symphony

Exactly forty years ago this day, december 10th 1966, ‘Good Vibrations’ hit the number one spot on the Billboards Hot 100 singles chart. Realizing this, a little phrase by Thom Yorke came to mind: ‘I wish it was the sixties'. For a moment, I wish it was. Two months after The Beach Boys hit the top of the American singles charts, The Beatles released ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. It's hard to imagine music this important being this successful. What an exciting time this must have been.
The first version of ‘Good Vibrations’ was recorded in February 1966, during the Pet Sounds sessions. Brian Wilson first enlisted the help of Pet Sounds lyricist Tony Asher for putting words to the idea. Later Brian asked his new writing partner Van Dyke Parks to write lyrics for the song, but Parks declined. Something he’d life to regret, you’d suppose. Mike Love supplied the final version of the lyrics around August. When ‘Good Vibrations’ came out it was - without question - the most technically advanced single ever recorded. It still is one of the most beautiful, most inspiring and most intriguing songs ever made.

harmony one: four tet

the friendly ghost

No studiotime for Spider James this friday. Second cancellation by our producer, the friendly ghost, in one week time. What a drag. It's about that time you start reconsidering some of the choices you have made. Time you start thinking, real seriously, about taking up a second mortgage so you can start building that homestudio you've been dreaming of so long. Should we give Brian Eno a call? 'How about producing Spider James, Mr. Eno?' What an interesting thought that is.
By the way, read somewhere Sunburned Hand of the Man have hired Kieran Hebden (a.k.a. Four Tet) to produce their new album. Kieran should do Spider James. But would he?

midimidi

Kompaktrekorder

are friends electric?

If you're from somewhere around Arnhem and you have no plans for friday the 15th, you really should go see Kompaktrekorder in Café Barok. Mark and EP share the bill with JAG. We don't know JAG, but we do know Mark and EP and they're alright. For those of you who have never heard Kompaktrekorder, they combine light-footed simplicity with the eclectic viciousness of hooklines, sampled from everything you hear. Cut, edited and recycled until new songs and beats arise. Tout ce que je vois c'est truqué. Everything is possible. Listen to some tracks on www.myspace.com/kompaktrekorder.

it's gonna rain

u-turn

Being in a band with six people means we're never short of ideas. Great ideas sometimes turn out great. Sadly, just as often they turn out a bit sour. For instance, during last saturday's rehearsal we took on 'Umbrella' in a radical new approach. Much to our own suprise, we ended up with something that doesn't sound that different from the version we recorded for our first EP in 2003.
In the process of breaking the song down and putting the pieces back together, we have made a few small adjustments and they seem to make a big difference. Just by adding a few chords and putting more emphasis on the songs melody, the mood of 'Umbrella' has definitely changed. The far out dub flavour is still there, but this (final) version seems warm and hopeful instead of dark and gloomy. Hope is good.
Listen to the EP01 version of 'Umbrella' at www.spiderjames.com, the play section.