M a r c h / a p r i l 2 0 0 8 Ae n-t Te r Rt a i An m Ie nNt WELCOME TO THE A-TRAIN NEWSLETTER! The A-Train newsletter is back in a new bimonthly format. With it comes several new releases, positive reviews and Top News exciting live performances. Enjoy! •Sam Markus opens for Spring is upon us! As we shed our raincoats and winter jackets Cat Power at the Wiltern Theater, Los Angeles, Ca and check to see if we still fit in the shorts from last year, trading in the fog for flip-flops and dark clouds for double scoop cones, we are •Bloodkin performance at SXSW is noted on R.E.M.’s reminded of what a sunny day can do to the soul. web site With warm breezes comes that feeling of nostalgia for soundtracks of the new season, rolling down your windows and •Madeline Plays 2 showcases at SXSW and letting the neighborhood take a load-off to the tunes of your gets featured in Vioila! personal jukebox. To freshen up that collection, A-Train is very •New releases from happy to announce its new releases along with amazing Tuxedomoon and Radhika announcements of awards, show stoppers and tour dates. With a Miller lineup this hot you can be sure to toss the earmuffs and mittens till •Tour dates from Chris next year! Standring, Peter White, Rick Braun, and Richard Elliot - The A-Train Staff A - T r a i n E n t e r t a i n m e n t • P . O . B o x 2 9 2 4 2 • O a k l a n d , C A 9 4 6 0 4 • 5 1 0 . 8 9 3 . 4 7 0 5 M a r c h / a p r i l 2 0 0 8 NEWS & REVIEWS All Together Now… "Totemic Flute Chants" made its Spearman, including the Double Trio with debut on the Billboard New Age Album Spearman and Ochs. Discerning editors and producers at chart last week, appearing at #23. Sales Up From Under, recorded on a Putumayo Records have included tracks increased an amazing 560% the week after European tour in 2004, is Core's (Ochs, from Crammed Disc’s Taraf de Haidouks and Kocani Orkestar Brass Band in their the awards and are holding steady this Amendola, and Robinson) second release, week while the record maintains its following The Neon Truth (Black Saint, ‘Gypsy Caravan’ collection. Another appearance on the chart at #25. 2002) and a fifth in the Out Trios Series, Eastern compilation, ‘Gypsy Groove’, released by Atavistic. The basic thrust features Balkan club legend Shantel, whose http://www.silverwave.com behind the unit, according to Ochs, is as a hit tracks and video from his latest album, vehicle for exploring the vocal tradition in ‘Disko Partizani’, have been sweeping Europe like wildfire! World Music Chris Standring ‘Love & African-American, Eastern European and Asian cultures, vis-à-vis the “cry” atop the Network has also just released ‘Think Paragraphs’ drum choir. The title track employs a Global: Native America’ containing Joanne Co-Author of the number one hit heavy, dual backbeat as Ochs digs in, Shenandoah from Silverwave Records, single ‘Better Times” from Rick Braun and along with R. Carlos Nakai, Radmilla panning his tenor voice in gutbucket honks Richard Elliott’s latest album, ‘R&R’, and pulpit-shaking shouts. Rarely does a Cody, Johnny Mike, Robert Tree Cody and which has stayed on the charts for 11 pair of drummers occupying a tight many more artists from Canyon records straight weeks, is simultaneously releasing rhythmic space behave so complementarily, http://www.crammed.be his newest album, ‘Love and Paragraphs’ in but Amendola and Robinson stir one http://www.silverwave.com both digital and physical formats on April another’s pots with rounded sashays and www.store.canyonrecords.com 22nd. His hit single, the title track from devilish accents. Ochs enters in a brief and the album, has reached number 10 in his 7 spare dialogue on sopranino with week stretch on the Radio and Records Robinson, exploring delicate patterns of Johnny Whitehorse Wins Smooth Jazz Chart, and has garnered tongue-speech before returning to raspy Grammy Award and Makes significant radio play. Watch the video for exhortation. Billboard Charts! the ‘Love and Paragraphs’ single on you But as much fire and brimstone might tube by clicking here: Silver Wave Records is pleased and come from the blues tradition, Sax & excited to announce that "Totemic Flute http://www.youtube.com Drumming Core isn’t all yawp. “Dragon Chants" by Johnny Whitehorse (aka Robert http://www.chrisstandring.com Fly” is a dusky, pastoral piece, its lilting and Mirabal) is the winner of the 2008 wispy subtones intermingling with distant Grammy Award for Best Native American Artist Feature: Larry Ochs tub patterns. The clicks and pinched phrases of the higher horn are in full view Music Album. Johnny Whitehorse is the “Up From Under” mystical character created by Robert on “X-10,” well-matched by percussive Known mostly for his work in the Mirabal to showcase his ethereal seesaws. The glossolalia Ochs employs on ROVA Saxophone Quartet, tenor and conceptual Native flute music. Totemic tenor become delicate minutiae of cadence sopranino saxophonist Larry Ochs Flute Chants features Native American and tone in between salvos of hot infinity. assembled Sax & Drumming Core in 2000, flute, keyboards, tribal drums and an array Up From Under presents a nuanced set of partnering his reeds with the drums of of world music instruments. This improvisations from the vocal-drum Scott Amendola and Donald Robinson, enchanting music interprets the spirit of tradition, a refining of the art which is as two other members of the Bay Area animals that have the power to guide us in much forward glance as homage. –Clifford improvising community. Amendola has our daily lives. Mirabal and co-producer Allen, All About Jazz recently upped his profile in Nels Cline’s Larry Mitchell were honored with the unit, while Robinson was a longtime http://freejazz.com prestigious award on Sunday, February 10 collaborator with saxophonist Glenn in Los Angeles. A - T r a i n E n t e r t a i n m e n t • P . O . B o x 2 9 2 4 2 • O a k l a n d , C A 9 4 6 0 4 • 5 1 0 . 8 9 3 . 4 7 0 5 M a r c h / a p r i l 2 0 0 8 NEW RELEASES Tuxedomoon - Vapor Trails computer programming. Knowing, witty, and politically astute global This new studio album continues a grooves for the chin-strokers as well as the hip-shakers. period of renewed artistic activity by the legendary cult band Tuxedomoon. “Throughout the CD, infections rhythms, carnival-style brass and Ever-present on Europe’s bubbling syncopated melodies conspire to get you dancing, or at least avant-garde scene, ‘Vapour Trails’ smiling. If you’re into world dance music or Brazilian electronica, was composed while being recorded DJ Dolores’ 1 Real should be right up your alley.” – Synthopia in a series of sessions between the Acropolis and the pilgrim road to the Eleusian fields in Athens. It finds the Think Of One - Camping members in top form, exploiting their mature vision and instrumental Shaabi skills to the full. They load their eclectic pallet with a wide and There's few bands anywhere quite surprising variety of styles and influences, and sing in the languages of like Antwerp's Think Of One. the many places they have lived or visited, not only in English, but in Throughout their career, they have Greek, Spanish, and languages of their own devising. The album's collaborated with artists as diverse as eight selections almost seem to be internally melting, everything from Afro-Brazilian percussionists and cool jazz brass to distant strings to bubbling rhythm boxes resulting in Inuit throat singers, but it’s to their the near equivalent of chiaroscuro, light and dark and more blended most frequent recording destination of into something new and distinct. Morocco that the troupe return for Kamping Shaabi, their eighth album. Named after a traditional form of Berber music and featuring a “The Avant-garde band still has a slightly wacky. striped-socks stellar cast of North African performers, the record blends different way about them, and they revel in their songs’ details…” - sounds and genres at a bewildering pace. Consistently inventive and REMIX – feb 2008 surprising, Kamping Shaabi retains certain elements, notably the “…art-school electro-pop and chilly chamber music flavored with vintage keyboards and Balkan-style brass section, which remain tart horns, brittle drum-machine beats… it falls apart quite present throughout, underpinning the experimentation going on all nicely”. – SPIN around. Sung in a dizzying mixture of Flemish, French, Arabic and “Tuxedomoon = Kings of making crazy-sounding pop music.” – English, the band's lyrics also intrigue, ranging from the seriously to Virginian Pilot the whimsical and absurd, and a catchy melody is never far away. You’d be well advised to stop what you’re doing and enjoy the party DJ Dolores - 1 Real should Think Of One's festival on wheels ever pull up in your town. One of the strangest records of the year so far, but also one of the best. How many Brazilian producers reference Marx, Engels, Sartre and Lou Reed in their sleeve notes? On “Camping Shaabi is not only catchy and flowing, but dynamic— his third album, the multiple talents each song is a unique and colorful episode within the band's travel of DJ Dolores come to full bloom, through the genre of shaabi.” – Riffin.com using elements of popular music from his native Brazilian Northeast, blended with dancefloor-friendly electronics, horns, and rock & dub influences.