I Am One Project

London based act I Am One Project release their debut single ‘Night Time Calling – Rebel Sonix Remix’. The track will be officially release through Awal distribution on 31st May on iTunes and all other major online stores.

I Am One Project are a new and exciting talent mixing influences from Hip Hop, Grime, Folk and Soul to create a fresh new sound. The band consists of Oli Rose, a young gifted singer songwriter and Jamie Wallace an exhilarating underground MC.

I Am One Project are now touring the London circuit with a full band bringing their sound to a whole new level. They have been performing to sold out venues such as Camden Barfly, Cafe 1001 and Ronnie Scott’s. They have also supported the likes of Tinie Tempah and Bashy.

The track was remixed by London based producer Rebel Sonix who has worked with an array of top artists including: Coldplay – Kylie – Barbara Tucker – C and C music Factory’s Zelma Davis.

The tracks release also includes I Am One Project’s first music video which was directed by Phil G, an up and coming motion graphics artist and film maker who has worked on brands such as MTV, Nike and Xbox.

I Am One Project are set to have a fantastic year with the release of their debut EP this summer featuring tracks  such as ‘I Am Blessed’ and ‘Sunday Morning.’

For more information visit www.myspace.com/iamoneproject

Woodcraft Folk re-release folk electronica album Trough Of Bowland

With equal measures of simple beauty, folk, acoustic instrumentation and synthetic sounds of electronica, the Woodcraft Folk debut album, Trough Of Bowland, gets re-released.

Trough Of Bowland is a perfect blend of electronica doodling and folk inspiration.  Banjo, organ, xylophone and glockenspiel are some of the instruments that effortlessly merge with melodica, synthesizers, electric bass, field recordings and the occassional drum machine to create relaxing technicolour sounds that bring a smile to my face and a warmth to my soul.

Trough Of Bowland has spent too long in the wilderness.  A rare and perfect little gem released on Earworm Records with a limited CD release, finally gets a vinyl release on Great Pop Supplement Records.  But alas, the Trough Of Bowland vinyl release will be limited to just 250 copies, each with a hand screenprinted sleeve and individually numbered.

I recall John Peel saying how he was speechless after listening to The Beatles’ Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds for the first time.  Something so perfect, so beautiful, is the only way I can describe the track Blokflute. Trough Of Bowland has many facets but this song captures the sound of a perfect moment for me.

Listening to Woodcraft Folk I can imagine hippy-types surrounded by a river of leads, acoustic instruments, stroking whipsy beards and wearing birkenstock sandals.  But then if visionaries like Kraftwerk or Joy Division had formed in the 21st century, wouldn’t they have made folk electronica like Woodcraft Folk?

Un Día is Juana Molina’s fifth album, in a career dedicated to following a most inspired and inspirational muse. It’s twelve years on from her debut, ‘Rara’ and, if that album perhaps struggled at first to find an audience, then that audience has grown surely and strongly with the albums that have followed.

But it’s not that Juana Molina has made concessions to the marketplace, or chased a more accessible sound; as is often the case with visionary artists, instead the world has caught up with her, the pop landscape shifting to create a new context, where the joyous ‘pop’ elements of her music make immediate sense.

Juana Molina’s new album is something of a peculiar experience for its listeners, as well as, perhaps, for its creator. The album is best listened to as a whole, and as in its title, meaning ‘One Day’, there arises a great sense of joy and hope from the album. At just eight tracks, the fifty minutes of music, though not particularly varied in style or pace, transport you into Juana Molina’s world, and help you to imagine your own.

The songs move seamlessly from one to the next, the human voice being their primary instrument. At one time, Juana Molina can be heard as an accompanying drone in the background, in offbeat notes more rhythmic than tuneful, and singing both melody and harmony (Listen to ‘¿Quién? (Suite)’ and ‘Vive Solo’). This is human music, coming from a human background, offset against a digital, electronic background. But it’s not a clash of sounds; on ‘Un Día’ electronica finds its place alongside the human voice – both are inextricably and hypnotically intertwined, so much so that at times it is difficult to tell what is human and what is electronic.

Being Argentinian, I guess it would be easy for Juana Molina to be pigeon-holed into the neglected ‘world’ genre, where great music ferments in a sub-underground before being released into the underground, then possibly making it into the mainstream. However, artists such as MIA, Amadou & Mariam and Sigur Ròs, for whom this to a greater or lesser extent has been the case, have severed the barriers between Western pop music and so-called ‘world’ music, and this may allow Juana Molina’s actually quite Western music to be less indiscriminately sidelined.

Juana Molina sings in Rioplatense Spanish on all of her five albums, which even if you can speak, is fairly difficult to understand in her lyrics here, as her voice tends to get lost in the mixes.

However, not understanding appears to be the point. Take these lyrics from the subtle title track ‘Un Día’: “One day I will sing the songs with no lyrics and everyone can imagine for themselves if it’s about love, disappointment, banalities or about Plato.”

It is for the listener to take from it what he will, and the multitude of layers of electronica and voice means that you will most probably find what you want on this record. Think an earthier, more rhythmic version of Sigur Ròs.

‘Un Día’ is out now on Domino Records