Ottawa-based non-profit Make Music Matter has launched a series of techniques to help individuals de-stress and strengthen their mental health through a new campaign: Music Reconnects Us: 6 Steps to Relieve Stress with Music. The resource guides people to become mindful of their psychological and physiological state, and ultimately to create an original piece of music.
“In this time of physical isolation, we wanted to offer something to help people strengthen their mental health through what we know best – the creation and performance of music,” explains Darcy Ataman, founder and CEO of Make Music Matter. “We have seen the quantifiable healing power of music, and now, more than ever, people are looking for ways to reduce their anxiety and find balance in their life.”
People are invited to share their creations on social media using the hashtags #MusicReconnectsUs and #MakeMusicMatter.
Legendary YES guitarist STEVE HOWE has announced he will release LOVE IS via BMG Records on July 31. LOVE IS marks HOWE’s first solo album since the all-instrumental Time in 2011 and has a balance of five instrumental tracks and five songs.
The album will be available as a CD in a gatefold digi-sleeve with a 12-page booklet, and a black vinyl 180gm LP with a gatefold sleeve, liner notes and lyrics.
STEVE HOWE sings lead vocals and plays electric, acoustic and steel guitars, keyboards, percussion and bass guitar on the instrumentals, while Yes vocalist Jon Davison provides vocal harmonies and plays bass guitar on the vocal tracks. The album also features Dylan Howe on drums.
Many years in the making, LOVE IS brings together a consistently strong and polished listening experience, forging the very best from the writing and playing throughout the album. This may well be considered the real ‘stand out’ album of Howe’s solo career. The instrumentals keep a highly progressive rock guitar style to the fore, with songs that explore stories of lives lived and lives only just begun. “Love Is A River” is the central longer song with several textural shifts, featuring a theme played on 12-string and steel guitars.
“I called the album LOVE IS because it hints at the central idea that that love is important but also love of the universe and the ecology of the world is very important,” says Steve Howe. “Alexander Humboldt went around the world and recognized we are destroying the planet but that was 200 years ago! We are still destroying the planet and, I suppose, my songs show the yearning I have for the love of nature and how beauty, art and music all stem from nature. There is a theme about those things, love, beauty, ecology, nature and wonderful people.
“‘Love Is A River’ just seemed a very important track to me, a sort of quintessential track with lots of moods, lots of interesting things going on with steel guitars and acoustic guitars. Further tracks grew from time spent writing in my studio.
“‘See Me Through’ looks at the idea that we get through life by not driving ourselves that hard but attempting to achieve things with people who help you along the way, and ‘Imagination’ is dedicated to my granddaughter Zuni. It’s about how I see some of the things she’s experienced in her short seven years.
“I invited Jon Davison to sing harmonies with me and add bass on the songs. If he was singing on the songs I thought ‘why doesn’t he play bass’ as well and it turned out nice. He’s been with Yes for seven or eight years and he’s a great guy, great performer and a great interpreter of Yes songs.
“I’ve been singing for years, mainly in harmony but I’ve sung lead on lots of my own albums before and I feel that, as I’ve got older, I’ve got a grip on that and, hopefully, it’s improved over the years.”
The album includes many distinctive STEVE HOWE signatures among the instrumental tracks from the delicate beauty of “Fulcrum,” “Beyond The Call” and “Pause For Thought” to upbeat rock, “The Headlands,” and the jazz-tinged “Sound Picture.”
“The instrumentals are like a mood, a place I went to one day, thought this is nice and then I develop that to a point where it’s a finished track. There might be key ingredients that I thought about using musically that I like, that I’m drawn to, and then developing them into something.” LOVE IS was written, engineered and produced by STEVE HOWE with further engineering and mixing by Curtis Schwartz. “I write in my own studio and then go to see Curtis in his studio,” Howe explains. “We expand the tracks and put them on Pro Tools and everything starts to be possible. At some point, probably around 2 years ago, Dylan came down to Curtis’s studio and we recorded the drums on some of the tracks. I could see a balance of five instrumental tracks and five songs and there was a feeling that it was an album, sitting there, looking at me.”
The track listing for Steve Howe’s LOVE IS album is:
1 Fulcrum *
2 See Me Through
3 Beyond The Call *
4 Love Is A River
5 Sound Picture *
6 It Ain’t Easy
7 Pause For Thought *
8 Imagination
9 The Headlands *
10 On The Balcony
* instrumental
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Sultans of String release gorgeously evocative and powerful single “The Grand Bazaar” featuring 15-time GRAMMY Award-winning American banjo master Béla Fleck and JUNO Award-winning Canadian pianist Robi Botos.
This song has recently been awarded ‘Best Instrumental Song’ by the Independent Music Awards; the album Refuge won the World Producer Award for production work by Sultans of String bandleader Chris McKhool and John ‘Beetle’ Bailey.
“This is a project that is centred around the positive contributions of refugees and new immigrants to U.S.A. and Canada,” says McKhool, whose Lebanese grandfather stowed away on a ship bound for North America a century ago. “We are bringing in special guests that are newcomers to this land, as well as global talents that have been ambassadors for peace.
“We wish to celebrate the successes of those who make the journey here, and bring their extraordinary talents with them.”
“My family’s story involves immigration,” featured artist Béla Fleck reflects. “Of course, we came in through Ellis Island, my grandparents on my mother’s side, Jewish-Russian refugees…
“I was really fortunate they were able to get out of a dangerous part of the world, and that America took them in at that time.
“The banjo is a story of immigration,” he continues. “It’s a perfect story of immigration… Involuntary immigration. The slaves came to the Americas not of their own free will, but when they got there, they brought their culture. They built banjos and they played their music, and it got incorporated into what would become American music and became a major part of it.
“Yeah, if the banjo isn’t going to welcome people from different countries, I don’t know who would.”
“I came to Canada in 1998 as a refugee,” Robi Botos shares. “But my case was rejected and I was nearly kicked out; basically, I’ve almost faced deportation. With the amazing help of musicians, fans, and people from all kinds of places from the music industry who supported me, it all worked out. It was very, very tricky and very hard for me to manage to stay in Canada.
“I feel just like any refugees,” Botos continues. “I always look at any refugees with those eyes, thinking about my case and my situation. I’ve been very blessed and fortunate in the music industry, too, considering I’m an instrumental artist who’s raising four kids.
“We have to look at refugees through those eyes where all of us came here from somewhere else. If it’s not us, it’s our parents or grandparents. I just think it’s amazing what a lot of refugees contribute.”
British alt-folk, alt-Americana ‘Indie for Grownups’ act Wonders of the Yukon have released their newest single, “Cartoon Dreams.” They’ve also revealed Woty.
“It’s a tale of existential angst with a liberal sprinkling of surrealism and absurdism,” band co-front Andy Campbell shares. “It considers the dichotomy between religion and evolution, and pits God against Darwin.
“Faith against genetics,” counterpart Dave Langdale adds.
Set on a bouncing backdrop of squelching guitars and laser-guided melodies, “Cartoon Dreams” captures the stark sense of one’s own mortality. “But this is balanced with random meanings using the William Burrough’s ‘cut up’ technique famously employed by David Bowie,” Langdale continues of the dream-like quality the track takes on. “Afterall, what is life but a sequence of random events?”
“Life is but a dream, right…?” Campbell offers.
Most notably beyond the track’s feisty fortitude is the reveal of ‘Woty’ — the song’s mascot of sorts. “We welcome the ‘birth’ of Woty in this video,” the duo says. “It’s a character that came into existence inadvertently as the stencil left behind from a spray-painted guitar pickguard.
“Woty ‘spoke’ to us when we were considering the artwork for this single.”
As heard since their breakthrough EP Songs of Mild Peril (2018) and follow-up string of singles, “Cartoon Dreams” amplifies the band’s affinity for both toying with the darker side of American culture with their homegrown Northern England sensibility. The results are yet another addition to their library that equally finds its place in the Twin Peaks Bang Bang Bar as would in a weather-ravaged grog shop in the Yorkshire Moors.
With their sound described as having a liquor-soaked romance, replete with soothing harmony and rattling emotion, this is a band that came together by chance; their partners are childhood best friends who also lived around the corner from each other.
Previously, Andy Campbell and Dave Langdale have released records via Columbia and Jeepster Records, respectively. Years before meeting, they shared stages with the likes of Pavement, Granddaddy, Sparklehorse, Bootsy Collins, and more, before joining to create Wonders of the Yukon.
And as for that name… Here’s how that conversation came about:
Dave: “I really like the word ‘Yukon.’”
Andy: “Yeah, it’s cool. It’s a place, isn’t it?”
Dave: “It’s in Canada. It’s bleak and beautiful.”
Andy: “Hmmm. Sounds quite apt for our music.”
Dave: “I was reading about Yukon Territory… Fantastic wildlife, the Northern Lights, vast and wide open spaces, harmonious nature…”
Andy: “Yukon Territory sounds pretty good.”
From there, the pair did a quick Google search, as one does, and discovered like nearly every last (dot) com or Insta-handle or… Y’know, Territory. There was already something named it.
“I just still loved the word ‘Yukon,’” Campbell continued, not inclined to let it go so easily. “It sounded like something from a sci-fi movie, like it came straight out of Flash Gordon.
“‘Ming the Merciless approaching from the planet Yukon.’”
“Yeah, it sounded otherworldly,” Langdale agreed.
Soon, an image came to Campbell: “I just saw ‘Wonders of the Yukon…’ Like a heading or chapter in a novel or newspaper.”
Or… The name of a really great band from Wakefield, England.
With over 700,000+ streams across Spotify and YouTube, award-winning Canadian pop artist Christee Palace steps into “Danger” with her newest single — available now.
“‘Danger,’ for me, is a song about conscious self-defiance,” the Windsor-born, Toronto-based singer/songwriter says, offering context surrounding the track. “It’s about understanding full well what you are doing, and knowing it has the potential to have serious emotional consequences.
“In this specific situation, I knew what the end result was going to be, but I felt like I was persuaded into staying in that position.”
The video — sitting at 40,000+ views and rising — is a stunningly intimate cinematic peek into Palace’s mindset. “I think the video really takes you on an emotional journey,” she says. “It gets the audience into my headspace and takes you through each phase of emotions I went through.
“Since we live together, we were able to pull this off,” Palace adds of the video’s technical accomplishment. Directed and shot by her photographer/videographer boyfriend Jaden D., the pair created the song’s visuals during some of the earlier isolation days. “I knew my initial plans for the video would have to be altered given the restrictions in place, but we made the most of it and it turned out better than I could have imagined.”
Christee Palace’s debut EP Alive Today — and follow-up singles “Out of Time” and “Light It Up” — kicked off her career, climbing the charts within their first few weeks at radio. From there, sophomore EP Harden My Heart and singles “Harden My Heart” and “Love Me In the Dark” amplified the call, adding to the more than 400,000+ streams (and upwards of 34,000+ monthly listeners) across Spotify, and well over 300,000+ views on YouTube; single “Wrong to Say Goodbye” was featured on influential playlists New Music Friday, New Music Now, and It’s a Bop.
She’s been featured on GlobalTV’s morning show, and opened for the likes of Sean Kingston and Walk Off The Earth. Additionally, she opened for — and received a — 2019 Indie Award(s) after taking top prize in the Jim Beam National Talent Search.
The music industry is calling for a “Black Out Tuesday” in response to the death of George Floyd. The blackout is set for Tuesday, June 2. The industry has officially called for “a day to disconnect from work and reconnect with our community” and “an urgent step of action to provoke accountability and change.”
As gatekeepers of the culture, it’s our responsibility to not only come together to celebrate the wins, but also hold each other up during a time of loss. There have already been hundreds of messages about Blackout Tuesday posted on IG and Twitter and Facebook from all aspects of the industry, which is being circulated under the hashtag #TheShowMustBePaused.
I am proud to join this initiative, and I invite you, if you haven’t already, to do the same.
FIFA is the world’s most famous soccer simulator, and hip-hop has grown to be the dominant force in the music industry. As a result, it’s not surprising that the soundtrack for FIFA 20 featured way more hip-hop than previous instalments of the E.A. Sports game.
The FIFA soundtrack is a hugely important part of the game’s appeal. Previous FIFA soundtracks have made massive hits out of songs like Kids by MGMT and Jerk It Out by Caesars. But it looks like the latest version of the game was set to make certain hip-hop songs much more accessible.
Similarly, the use of hip-hop in this soccer simulator has helped the game become much more accepted among a demographic which has traditionally been marginalized by video games developers. So now we can see the likes of Anderson Paak, Birdman, Juvenile and even GoldLink are making an appearance on this hugely popular soccer simulator.
Sustaining The Popularity Of Soccer
We all know that the U.S. is not a soccer-crazed country like the rest of the world. As other sports like American football, baseball and basketball are the most followed sports. But it seems like the tide is turning, as many countries where soccer is not the most popular sport, are also joining the action. For example, in countries like Australia, where cricket and Australian football are kings, soccer is not only gathering momentum among the Aussies, but lots of brands, businesses, as well as bookmakers are catching up on its trend. And sites like aussiebet.com are providing reliable information regarding events, tournaments specials and bookie offers to any Australian soccer fan.
And thanks to the incredible popularity of E.A.’s video game, the interest in professional soccer throughout the world is growing even further, even in countries like the U.S. and Australia. Players of the game begin to recognize the stars and identify the teams, which they later seek on TV and the Internet, which is something that got noticed by the sport’s governing bodies and the developers of FIFA. And they have understood that incorporating trending sounds such as hip-hop will be one of the best ways to ensure that soccer remains popular within broader demographics.
FIFA’s Greatest Hip-hop Hits
The FIFA 19 soundtrack was a breakthrough year for hip-hop in the game. We saw industry heavyweights like Childish Gambino and Logic get featured on the OST. However, as soccer is still a relative niche sport in some countries., it seems that EA Sports have tried incorporating hip-hop stars from a lot of different countries in order to attract a wider audience.
So, the recent FIFA 20 soundtrack not only features the English rapper/singer Little Simz, but we also get to witness some Dutch and Australian hip-hop artists joining the soundtrack of this globally popular video game. Such moves not only do wonders for the global hip-hop scene, but it also helps rising hip-hop stars like Sampa the Great, Ivan Ooze and JB Scofield make some decent nobility through video game soundtrack royalties.
Of course, hip-hop has long been a feature in the FIFA franchise. Anyone who played FIFA 13 will remember Flo Rida featuring Lil Wayne and their Let It Roll Part 2 track. But it seems that hip-hop is starting to occupy a more significant share of the FIFA soundtracks, and that can only be a good thing.
Hip-hop In Demand Across The Video Gaming Industry
For a long time, the only place you could hear hip-hop music in a video game was in the Grand Theft Auto soundtracks. Such was the success of the crossover that even led to a Grand Theft Auto-inspired hip-hop album, and other gaming franchises were quick to cash in on the appeal of this world-beating music.
From Parappa the Rapper to the sight of Drake playing Fortnite, it seems as though these entertainment forms are growing closer all the time. All of which means that FIFA 21 could be the most hip-hop heavy soundtrack for the soccer simulator yet.
