(Make Me A) TRISTE© Mixtape Episode 194: Weaving

Weaving

Brooklyn singer-songwriter Derek Weaving’s debut album as Weaving, Webs, is a vulnerable and generous work that buzzes like nature surrounding you on a summer night. The musician, known for his work with Tiny Hazard, as well as with Stephen Becker, Lip Talk and a wide collection of other inventive NYC acts, steps out here with his first collection of original songs as a guitarist and singer. Accompanying him are his former Tiny Hazard bandmates Alena Spanger (vocals, keyboards), Ryan Weiner (drums, guitar, banjo) and Ronald Stockwell (drums), plus James Woodall (pedal steel), Lip Talk’s Sarah Pedenotti (vocals, keyboards) and Little Mystery’s Ivy Meissner (vocals). Webs’ lyrics pay gentle tribute to family and friends, and celebrate the flourishing of the natural world while also mourning its degradation. These songs are both psychedelic and grounded, abstract and filled with personal details, and always look inwards and outwards at the same time. They invite listeners to turn and really see one another, as well as the natural landscapes surrounding them. Webs is a heart-warming, multi-faceted first statement, bridging the cosmic and the intimate in an effort to trace the webs of meaning and sensation that link us all.

Continua a leggere

Open To The Sea – Watering Paper Flowers And Snakes

Era il 2017 quando Enrico Coniglio e Matteo Uggeri pubblicavano un primo lavoro condiviso intitolato Open To The Sea, itinerario sonoro immaginifico creato dosando sapientemente ricerca melodica e manipolazione elettronica. Quella che avrebbe potuto essere una collaborazione unica si è poi tramutata in un progetto vero e proprio, che da quel titolo ha tratto denominazione producendo con cadenza costante tasselli ulteriori nel corso degli anni. Dal 2022 ai due si è sommato, oltre a quello di tanti musicisti chiamati in causa di volta in volta, il contributo di Saverio Rosi, innesto divenuto stabile l’anno successivo con la pubblicazione di Ten Rooms Under The Sea.

Continua a leggere

(Make Me A) TRISTE© Mixtape Episode 193: Will Stratton

Will Stratton (©Anna Victoria in Catskill, NY)

Born in Woodland, California, and having spent portions of his childhood in the Pacific Northwest and the mid-Atlantic, singer/songwriter and guitarist Will Stratton debuted with his first full-length album, What the Night Said, in 2007, at only 18. No Wonder followed in 2009 and New Vanguard Blues arrived one year later. The magnificent Post-Empire, Will Stratton’s fourth full-length record, was recorded in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and came out in 2012, released by French label Talitres Records, focussing, again, on Stratton’s insistent fingerstyle guitar playing, descended as much from British folk icons like Bert Jansch and Davy Graham as from American avant-gardists like John Fahey and Robbie Basho, but with a newfound urgency to his lyrics and his singing and an increasing dissonance in his harmonic sensibility. This was the turning point of his musical careeer, and, after another great and introspective record, Gray Lodge Wisdom,  out in 2014, again on Talitres, Stratton debuted for Bella Union label in 2017 with Rosewood Almanac. Stratton’s seventh album, The Changing Wilderness, out in 2021, saw him shift focus from inward-looking to outward-examining, an approach he stuck with for the first-person character sketches that populated 2025’s Points of Origin, released on Ruination Records (U.S.) and Bella Union (in the rest of the world) in March 2025.

Continua a leggere

My Raining Stars – The Cost Within (single and video)

My Raining Stars

My Raining Stars is the creature of French musician and songwriter Thierry Haliniak. In the early 90s, Thierry was in a band called Nothing To Be Done that performed with artists such as The Boo Radleys, Adorable, and Moose. Being raised by much of the music of those times, especially influenced by the legendary C86 era and bands from Creation Records and Sarah Records, Thierry has a knack of writing classic pop songs. In 2008, these songs would become My Raining Stars debut album From St Saviour To Quickwell. Twelve years later, in November 2020, the project re-emerged with a digital EP, Obvious Reasons, with featured song lyrics by his friend Gilles Ramey and, just after the EP release, Thierry formed a new side-project called Meyverlin with Gilles and Philippe Lavergne (ex-Freluquets). In October 2021, they released their debut album, Daily Events, with a ‘classic guitar indiepop sound‘, on the French indie label Too Good To Be True, then a second one in June 2023, Therefore, more 80s/90s electropop oriented, again on Too Good To Be True.
Back to My Raining Stars project, Thierry recorded, with the help, on drums and bass, of the talented danish multi-instrumentalist Casper Iskov, his second My Raining Stars album, 89 Memories, which was released in 2022 via Shelflife (US) and Disco De Kirlian (Spain), soon followed by an EP, The Life We Planned. Still assisted by Casper Iskov on production, recording and mixing, he re-recorded, between October 2023 and April 2024, 10 popsongs, some old, some new, for this new album entitled Momentum, which will be released jointly on Shelflife (USA) and Too Good To Be True on April 11th, 2025. The Cost Within is the third single from the new album.

Continua a leggere

Franz Ferdinand – The Human Fear

Nostalgia del Futuro, quante volte ne abbiamo sentito parlare ultimamente? Solitamente, in un modo o nell’altro, salta fuori quando ci si trova a parlare delle difficoltà socio-economiche che al momento affliggono i nati tra gli anni Ottanta e Novanta.
“Nostalgia del Futuro” sono però anche le prime tre parole che mi vengono in mente mentre se penso a questo nuovo album dei Franz Ferdinand. Proviamo a capire per quale motivo.

Continua a leggere