Monday, September 29, 2008
we love sigur ros...
ok, so we got this from tim. (see below) we're happy to be a very small part of the sigur ros show...
peace,
marc
"I saw Sigur Ros in Denver on Saturday night at Red Rocks. The show was amazing, of course. What I wasn't expecting to hear that caught my attention was the music being played on the loudspeakers during the time between the opening band and Sigur Ros. Who was it? Our beloved Hammock! They had "84,000 Hymns" on repeat." Tim
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Story Site Is Up, With Music Clips...
www.maybetheywillsingforustomorrow.com
this site gives you the story behind our new record... taking music written for a live situation and turning it into an actual record, etc. etc...
Hope you enjoy it.
Thank you for listening.
Peace,
Hammock
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Album Available at Darla, New Songs, New Story Site
Hi, friends. Just some quick news...
If you would like to purchase a copy of our new record, "Maybe They Will Sing for Us Tomorrow", Darla has made it available via mail order only as of (April 14) at www.darla.com (on May 6, the record will be at all the usual retail and digital outlets, like Amazon and Itunes. Amazon is far too expensive for our tastes, but that's another topic). We now have CDs ourselves and are offering them for sale at www.hammockmusic.com/store if you would like to order it there.
We've changed the look of the MySpace page and have loaded in two full songs from the new record: City in the Dust on My Window and Mono No Aware. Hope you like them.
As we've mentioned before, we're launching a brand-new hammockmusic.com page on May 6. But we're creating a story page for the new album at www.maybetheywillsingforustomorrow.com to hold us over until then. So that may set a record for the longest domain ever, but hey, there will be some stuff there that you might find interesting including a nice bit of prose from our friend Chuck Dodson telling the story of this record, some photographs, and more. So please check it out.
As always, thank you for listening. And thank you for all of the kind messages we've been getting lately.
Peace,
Hammock
Monday, March 31, 2008
Echoes, artwork, release date, etc...
Hi, everyone.
We've been invited to do a live performance for the syndicated Public Radio International program Echoes as part of their "Living Room" Concert series. The performance/interview will be taped on May 6th and then broadcast sometime after. Over 130 radio stations carry Echoes, so chances are that no matter where you live in the US, you'll be able to hear it on the night it airs. For all of our friends who don't have Echoes in their listening area and for any who miss the actual radio broadcast, you'll be able to stream the show online at www.echoes.org. We'll make sure to send you the exact details as they come. Echoes has been especially supportive of Hammock since we launched the project in 2005. Were excited to follow some artists that we really love like Album Leaf, Air, Harold Budd, Michael Hedges, Jeff Pearce, Robert Rich, Will Ackerman, and Yo-Yo Ma, who have all done Echoes Living Room performances.
We have an official "available" date for Maybe They Will Sing for Us Tomorrow: May 5, 2008, and it will most likely appear digitally a week or so before that. And if you happen to be attending our performance with Stars of the Lid in DC on May 4, we'll have CDs available at the show.
In our last newsletter we announced that Jonsi and Alex had finished the artwork, and we wanted to share some of it with you. You can see two of the six panels that make up the CD package. Go to our myspace page and look under blog. Click on the links/images at the end of the blog to download a high res copy of the artwork. Hope you like what you see!
That's it for now. Thank you for listening.
Peace,
Hammock
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
More info, live shows, new record, etc...
Hi, friends. Just wanted to share a little more information with you on the new record and tell you about some other plans.
This is really early notice on this one, but we wanted to go ahead and let you all know that Hammock will be opening for Stars of the Lid on Sunday, May 4 in Washington DC at IOTA Club.
This is the first Stars of the Lid tour of North American tour in six years, and they've been a huge inspiration to us, so we're really excited to be performing with them. We'll be playing a short set of all new music from the upcoming record, "Maybe They Will Sing for Us Tomorrow."
Also, Auburn Lull, our label mates on Darla Records, recently extended us an invitation to perform together for a few dates this year, which we look forward to doing whenever possible (check out Auburn Lull's new album if you get a chance). We're planning an album-release performance in Nashville in early summer, and there will be more news to come on this in the next few weeks.
Jonsi and Alex sent along the final artwork for the record recently and it's beautiful! The setup and manufacture of this package is much more involved this time around and there are a few other factors that look to be pushing our release into mid/late April. But the music and art masters have all been delivered and things are really starting to move forward now. We're happy to announce that we'll again be working with Darla Records on this release. The song titles follow below:
1. Gold Star Mothers
2. City in the Dust on My Window
3. This Kind of Life Keeps Breaking Your Heart
4. Mono No Aware
5. Three Sisters
6. Maybe They Will Sing for Us Tomorrow
7. Elm
8. Razorback Drug Town
9. Eighty-Four Thousand Hymns
10. We Will Say Goodbye to Everyone
11. All of Your Children Are Addicts
We'll be launching a brand-new website alongside the new record. It will have a brighter look and a more user-friendly navigation and lots of exclusive content like songs from the new record, video, a blog/diary, and more.
As always, thank you for listening, and
Peace,
Hammock
Saturday, January 19, 2008
new record
Hi, friends, and happy new year!
Hammock has made a new record called "Maybe They Will Sing for Us Tomorrow". As some of you might remember, Hammock performed live for the first time ever in Hot Springs last summer for the US debut art exhibition of Riceboy Sleeps. Maybe They Will Sing for Us Tomorrow is a studio recording of the sound installation that we wrote and performed for that event. Actually, studio performance is a better way to put it (more on that below). The title of the record comes from a Riceboy Sleeps painting that we love. Theres still a lot of work going on behind the scenes, but we hope to have it out sometime in March.
Were really happy to announce that the front and back cover artwork will be created by Riceboy Sleeps (Jonsi Birgisson, lead singer/guitarist of Sigur Ros and Alex Somers of Parachutes). The six-panel, cardstock CD package will also include contributions by Chuck Dodson (words) and Thomas Petillo (photographs of the band, a first for us).
Being so connected to this music means its difficult for us to describe it, but we feel like this might be our most personal and focused record to date. Its definitely our most ambient release so far, it contains no beats. The guitar parts for these eleven new pieces were recorded live in the studio with very little use of a click track. We recorded these songs exactly as we performed them, so hopefully theres a spontaneity and vulnerability to the music that shines through. The string parts were added in later by our friend Matt Slocum. Working this way was a new experience for us, and we feel like this approach gives this record its own unique personality.
An even bigger challenge than making the recording itself was writing the music. All of these songs had to be written keeping in mind that we would be reproducing it onstage using nothing more than two guitars. The question was, Given the limitations, could we write music that was moving and interesting? Those limitations were really self-imposed, and thats the philosophy behind this record. Some of the visual artists that we admire the most will deliberately limit themselves to working within one particular medium, and we took a similar approach for this recording.
We hope you like the music, and as always, thank you for listening. We will be performing live in 2008, and there will be more news to come on that in the coming months. Hope to see some of you in person this year.
Peace,
Hammock
Thursday, November 15, 2007
News pt. 1...
The exciting news that I referred to recently is that Hammock will be releasing TWO records in 2008, the first of which will be the sound installation that we wrote and performed to celebrate the Riceboy Sleeps exhibition in Hot Springs. So for all of you who missed the show, you'll be able to hear it for yourself. We hope to release this in late February or so, and it will be titled after a Riceboy Sleeps painting that Andrew and I saw at the exhibition and loved. There are still tons of details to iron out over the next few weeks, but I wanted to let you in on the story so far. We definitely have something great developing with this particular record. We'll share this news with you shortly. More to come...
lost in space,
marc
On a few Sigur Ros-related notes, what does anyone think of their newest album? I felt it was excellent and included some breathtaking stuff (#1, #6, and #9 are my favorites), but it didn't ascend to the levels of Takk. Takk, for me, was just a pristine, cohesive work that fit together seamlessly, whereas With A Buzz In Our Heads We Play Endlessly seemed a bit disjointed to me. But make no mistake, the individual tracks were wonderful and the album was still a 9/10. I guess Takk is just way up there in the stratosphere, virtually untouchable for the rest of eternity!
Also, has anyone seen the notorious NPR interview with Sigur Ros? I had heard about it and just recently saw the footage. YIKES. Very uncomfortable to watch... I would love to know the story behind why they gave the interviewer such a cold shoulder. I mean, his questions were a little shoddy, but MAN. Anyone have any background info?
Anyone have any ambient/shoegaze/post-rock that they'd like to recommend, along the lines of the bands I mentioned earlier?
peace out,
Jeremy
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