All Songs +1: Mark Ronson On Making Something Old New Again

http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2015/10/02/445007469/all-songs-1-mark-ronson-on-making-something-old-new-again

Mark Ronson at NPR's New York office.

Cameron Robert/NPR

On this week's +1 Podcast, we talk with producer, DJ and musician Mark Ronson about the allure of vintage sounds and why he chose to build his career around making the old sound new again.

The roots of Mark Ronson's love for classic music run deep. This British-born musician spent time in New York City as a kid in the '80s and '90s, becoming an in-demand hip-hop club DJ by his mid-20s. He parlayed his musical education, and an encyclopedic knowledge of soul, R&B and jazz records, into production work for singers like Nikki Costa, reggae dancehall superstar Sean Paul, and, in 2005, Amy Winehouse for her breakthrough album Back To Black.

TED RADIO HOUR

Why Would More Than 500 Artists Sample The Same Song?

But Ronson's love of classic sounds isn't about hijacking nostalgia, a point he also made during a 2014 TED talk entitled "How Sampling Transformed Music." As he tells All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen and NPR Music's Piotr Orlov, "We are all children of what came before us. You're taking the things you love and recreating them for now."

All Songs Considered at the Nashville Americana Fest

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http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2015/09/15/439253392/americanafest-preview-lucette-whitey-morgan-oh-pep-and-more

AmericanaFest Preview: Lucette, Whitey Morgan, Oh Pep! And More

NPR Music is in Nashville all this week for the 16th annual AmericanaFest. So the newest episode of All Songs Considered offers a big bundle of music from some of the acts who are playing the festival that the team is most excited to see. Before leaving D.C., Bob called up NPR Music’s Ann Powers and NPR Music contributor Jewly Hight in Music City to talk about what Americana means, and who its newest and most promising voices are. The playlist they ended up with has grit, rock, folk, pop, fiddle, honky-tonk and everything in between: the perfect primer to an eclectic, evolving genre and the festival celebrating it.

All songs considered: JR JR, Thunderbitch, Chris Walla, and More

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http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2015/09/08/438595250/new-mix-jr-jr-thunderbitch-chris-walla-more

This week’s show is split much like some of our favorite records: The A-side is loud and fast. The B-side is slow and quiet.

Co-host Robin Hilton kicks things off with Thunderbitch, a raucous side project fromAlabama Shakes frontwoman Brittany Howard. We quickly follow with bursts of infectious ear candy from the Louisiana-based art pop group Givers and a re-tooled JR JR (until recently known as Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.), before slowing things down slightly with the transfixing singer Jill Andrews.

Then it’s time to take a deep breath and breathe in the light of our B-side, mixed by host Bob Boilen. We start with two projects from the Icelandic electronic artist Ólafur Arnalds, one a collaboration with experimental pianist Nils Frahm, the other a stunning new interpretation of music by Chopin. We close with a surprising ambient solo album from former Death Cab For Cutie member Chris Walla and an enchanting new album from Malian kora playerBallaké Sissoko and French cellist Vincent Ségal.

Sylvan Esso guest DJ'ing in NPR All Songs Considered

http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2015/08/04/425372923/guest-dj-sylvan-esso

This ... Is The Show: Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn, the singer and electronic artist behind the music of Sylvan Esso, join All Songs Considered hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton to play some of their favorite songs by other musicians. There's jazz from The Lounge Lizards, Icelandic experimentalists Múm, Kendrick Lamar's "Hood Politics" and much more. In fact, they brought so much great stuff to hear, we never had a chance to play any of Sylvan Esso's own music. But you can you can hear plenty in our archives, including a fantastic Tiny Desk concert.

Bob and Robin were in NPR's D.C. studios and the band was at WUNC, in its home base of Durham, N.C. The distance meant we couldn't see them and they couldn't see us. That's not unusual, but what was unusual is how technology seemed to fail us. So as our conversation unfolded — or attempted to unfold — things fell apart pretty quickly, which made for some awkward, albeit funny, moments. 

- Bob Boilen & Robin Hilton

SOAK, guest DJ on NPR's All Songs Considered

http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2015/07/14/422867822/guest-dj-soak

Before We Forgot How to Dream is one of my favorite albums of 2015. It's by an artist you may not yet know, but I'm hoping you'll fall in love with her. Her name is Bridie Monds-Watson, better known as SOAK.

Bridie is nineteen years old now, but she was fourteen when she wrote some of the music on her new record, including the standout cut "Sea Creatures." The songs on Before We Forgot How To Dream are atmospheric and delicate. It's a much more complex sound than what I expected from an Irish teenager with an acoustic guitar.

I asked Bridie Monds-Watson to play DJ on this edition of All Songs Considered, and share some of the songs she loves by other artists who've influenced her over the years. It turns out she's a huge Pink Floyd fan, with a special fondness for R.E.M. and Bon Iver. We also play and talk about some of my favorite songs from SOAK's new record.

You can hear and download the full conversation with the link above, or scan a playlist of the songs we play in the episode, alongside personal stories from SOAK about each of them.

- Bob Boilen
July 14 2015

NPR's All Songs Considered: Nine Creative Musicians You Should Know

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2015/05/05/404430265/all-songs-nine-creative-musicians-you-should-know

“This week on All Songs Considered, we grapple with the alchemy of creation — the myriad ways a musician gets from blank page and empty studio to a full sound and lyrics that ring true. We were inspired in part by a show Bob saw recently by Magnetic Fields front man Stephin Merritt, where he performed 26 songs, each based on a letter of the alphabet. (Merritt, whose projects are often governed by external limitations, claims that his best-known project, 1999’s monumental triple album 69 Love Songs, took him only a year to write.)

The seven songs on the show (one is a collaboration between a drummer and a pair of remixers) follow on that theme: Each posits a means of making magic out of circumstance. For one group, the key was stripping away ambition and returning to a single voice. For others, sparse hometowns, the ghosts of previous albums and mysterious romantic entanglements provided the spark needed to reach forward into the dark and, as sung by Jeen on “Everywhere I Go,” burn it bright.”

NPR goes to SXSW

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2015/03/17/392859163/sxsw-2015-music-preview



"If you love music as much as we do (we really love music), there's a good chance that this is one of your favorite weeks of the year. This is when the massive South by Southwest music festival and conference bubbles up and spills over into the streets of Austin, Texas. For five days, live music pours out of every alley, doorway, club, restaurant and street corner. Whether it's sensory overload or total nirvana, March 17-21 is all about discovering some new band or sound that sets your ears on end.

NPR Music is heading to SXSW with big hopes and plans to discover and present new music we love. In preparation for our trip, we listened to thousands of songs by the bands who will be in Austin. On this week's All Songs Considered, hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton are joined by NPR Music's Stephen Thompson and NPR contributor Katie Presley to share some of the early discoveries they're most excited to see and hear, from the comical Canadian punk band Needs and English rapper Little Simz to Icelandic singer-songwriter Kaleo and the sparkling twee-pop group Kero Kero Bonito."

All Songs Considered: Björk, Torres, Boots, and more

This week on All Songs Considered, we get heavy — heavy lyrics, heavy themes — as hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton explore the meaning of life, even breaking it down to the atomic level, with existential music from English folk singer Bill Fay, Björk and more.

Bill Fay disappeared from the music scene after releasing a couple of records more than 40 years ago. He returned with the stellar Life Is People in 2012, and is back again with another gorgeous, contemplative collection of songs called Who Is The Sender?

Also on the show: We imagine the apocalypse with Beyoncé and Run The Jewels collaborator Boots, a musician and filmmaker who's turned a handful of his songs into a short movie called Motorcycle Jesus. We find darkness at the end of the tunnel with Andy Stott's twisted remix of Panda Bear's "Boys Latin." And NPR's Stephen Thompson crashes the show to tell us about this year's Austin 100, a downloadable playlist of 100 songs by the artists we're most excited to see at this year's South By Southwest festival. Stephen shares a song by Torres, one of his favorite discoveries from the list. Plus, the Brooklyn-based dystopian funk super group Lá-Bas, Björk's mind-blowing breakup album Vulnicura, and the joyful sounds of husband-wife duo Lowland Hum.

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http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2015/03/03/390444572/new-mix-bj-rk-torres-boots-more

All Songs Considered: The Year In Music 2014

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2014/12/04/368054358/all-songs-considered-the-year-in-music-2014

Top row: Weezer; Middle row: Run The Jewels, Beyonce; Bottom row: St. Vincent, FKA Twigs, Beck

All Songs Considered with guest DJ Dave Grohl

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2014/11/11/363012899/guest-dj-dave-grohl



 This week, Foo Fighters releases its latest project, Sonic Highways. Why "project" rather than album? Sonic Highways is more than just eight new songs. It's also an eight-part documentary currently running on HBO. Together, the album and film series look at the intersection of geography and music. It's what Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl calls a love letter to the history of American music. The band wrote and recorded each song in a different city. Grohl interviewed local musical icons in each place and wove the stories he heard and the history of each location into his lyrics.

 The first stop in the band's musical journey was Chicago, followed by Grohl's former hometown, Washington, D.C., then on to Nashville, Austin, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Seattle and New York.

 When Dave Grohl stopped by the NPR studios in Washington, D.C. to talk about Sonic Highways with us, he reflected on growing up in the area, on what it was like to see his favorite bands play the 9:30 Club and how the city's complicated and controversial history shaped his world view and the song "The Feast and the Famine," which was recorded at Inner Ear Studio in the D.C. area. Grohl also explained how some of the other songs for Sonic Highways came together and talked about the local musicians that inspired them.

All Songs Considered: Röyksopp, Hozier, Deerhoof, Bing & Ruth, Helado Negro, and more

Host Bob Boilen kicks off this week's show with a buzzing song from Toronto-based The Rural Alberta Advantage's new album, Mended With Gold. Inspired by the track's killer percussion, Robin Hilton shares the neurotic, upbeat "Paradise Girls" from Deerhoof's upcoming album La Isla Bonita, out Nov. 3.

Alt. Latino's Felix Contreras joins Bob and Robin in the studio to discuss Helado Negro, an artist who caught Bob's attention opening for Sinkane earlier this month. Felix and Bob share a lush, spacey cut from the singer's new album, Double Youth. Bob takes things in a different direction with Hozier's nod to R&B legend Jackie Wilson, "Jackie and Wilson," followed by English punk-duo Sleaford Mods' stark rant, "The Committee."

Next, Robin gets lost in a gripping ambient track from Bing & Ruth's provocatively titled upcoming album, Tomorrow Was The Golden Age. We close the show with a dreamy cut from Norwegian electronic-duo Röyksopp's final album, The Inevitable End.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2014/10/14/356099274/new-mix-r-yksopp-hozier-deerhoof-more

All Songs Considered: Thom Yorke, Robert Plant, Aphex Twin, Trent Reznor, and More

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2014/09/30/352733565/new-mix-
thom-yorke-robert-plant-aphex-twin-trent-reznor-more

Text from the ASC web site:

This week's All Songs Considered kicks off with a pair of anniversaries. This year marks the 30th anniversary of classic mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, which inspires Robin Hilton to reminisce about rock concerts gone comically wrong, and then to invite listeners to submit their own "Spinal Tap moments." Next, Bob Boilen shares a live recording of an inventive new song from Robert Plant, who performed over the weekend at Brooklyn Academy of Music in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Nonesuch Records.

Bob continues with a track recommended by The National's Bryce Dessner, who collaborated with French artist Mina Tindle on an upcoming album titled Parades. The gorgeous track, "Taranta," was inspired by the tarantella, a kind of traditional Southern Italian dance.

Robin changes gears with "Nose Grows Some," the edgy closing track from Thom Yorke's surprise album Tomorrow's Modern Boxes. NPR Music's Otis Hart continues in the same vein with music from Aphex Twin's excellent new album Syro, the artist's first full-length solo effort in 13 years, as well as a track from London-based dance-pop duo The 2 Bears.

Next, Robin selects an unnerving song from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' incredibly creepy soundtrack to the movie Gone Girl. Bob closes the show on a slightly more upbeat note, with a gentle, dreamy track from Jon Hopkins' upcoming EP, Asleep Versions, featuring vocals from Raphaelle Standell.

The latest NPR All Songs Considered show: Tori Amos Song Premiere, A Wes Anderson Tribute, and More

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2014/05/06/310098371/new-mix-
tori-amos-song-premiere-a-wes-anderson-tribute-more



Text from the All Songs Considered web site:

TORI AMOS has spent the past several years exploring other worlds of music. She released two albums of classical-inspired work, including a collection of her earlier pop songs retooled as orchestral tracks. Most recently she helped write a musical for the London National Theater. But this month Amos is back with Unrepentant Geraldines, a new album filled with her signature piano-driven baroque pop songs. On this week's All Songs Considered hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton premiere "16 Shades Of Blue," a new cut from the album, and talk about why it's Amos' best record in 20 years.

Ambien Dreams And Naked Desert Walks: St. Vincent On Her New Album, interview by Robert Hilton and Bob Boilen

The first posting on this blog is about an artist I never knew existed until I heard her interviewed on NPR's All Songs Considered.
El primer posteo en este blog es sobre una artista cuya existencia yo ignoraba hasta que oí esta entrevista radial.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2014/01/08/249345302/ambien-dreams-and-naked-desert-walks-st-vincent-on-her-new-album

January 08, 2014 8:00 AM

Hear Annie Clark Discuss 'St. Vincent'

32 min 18 sec

• Playlist

Renata Raksha/Courtesy of the artist

Teased late last year in a series of cryptic status updates, the forthcoming self-titled album from St. Vincent is one of the most anticipated of 2014. In a conversation withAll Songs Considered hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton, singer and guitarist Annie Clark gets into the stories behind the new record, due out Feb. 25.