In 2009’s the series line up included the wonderful Grace Jones, The Ting Tings, Pendulum and Athlete.  This year two all time great soul acts will join contemporary pop music favourites for another one of a kind series of London concerts.

Between Thursday 8th and Sunday 18th July performances by contemporary artists like Florence & the Machine, The Temper Trap and N-Dubz will sit alongside one-off shows from soul legends Soul II Soul and Gil Scott Heron.

Soul II Soul were formed in the late 1980’s by Jazzie B and are best remembered for their UK chart hit Back to Life (However Do You Want Me).  Before their chart success as a soul group they were know in London as a ‘sound system’ playing records at parties.

Gil Scott Heron has been recording records since the early 1970’s.  His music has been described as soul, jazz, funk and proto-rap; and he has been called “the godfather of rap” and the “black Bob Dylan”.  His political views often drive his songs including classic tracks like The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, The Bottle, Winter In America and Johannesburg.  The most bizarre fact relating to Gil Scott-Heron that I know is that in November 2009 BBC tv’s current affairs programme, Newsnight interviewed Gil Scott-Heron for a feature titled ‘The Legendary Godfather of Rap Returns‘.

The Summer Series concert tickets for Soul II Soul and Gil Scott Heron have already sold out though tickets are still available for other nights.

Summer Series Concerts @ Somerset House

Thursday 8th July
Mystery Jets

Friday 9th July
Air

Saturday 10th July
Noah & the Whale

Sunday 11th July
N-Dubz

Monday 12th July
The Temper Trap

Tuesday 13th July
The XX

Wednesday 14th July
Gil Scott-Heron

Thursday 15th July
Florence & the Machine

Friday 16th July
Corinne Bailey Rae

Saturday 17th July
The Divine Comedy (solo show)

Sunday 18th July
Soul II Soul

Summer Series at Somerset House Tickets

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sophie delila

Sophie Delila is a name that I have only just heard of but it is a name that many including myself will be very familiar with over the coming months of 2010.

Delila comes with plenty of pedigree, the multi talented Parisian bred singer was born into a family of musical aficionados. Her father, himself an accomplished piano player, once had Ray Charles and Marvin Gaye round for dinner while Sophie was still a baby.

With blues, jazz and classical music filling the family home in her childhood days, Sophie also discovered The Beatles and Stevie Wonder and was soon writing music and lyrics of her own.

At 18 she won a scholarship to the revered Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts and after graduating she hit the New York City soul scene for a couple of years before moving to London in 2005 to take her career to the next level. Lured by London’s explosive music scene, Delila wrote, gigged and produced and in 2008 she landed a record deal with Universal.

While writing material for her first album Delila also worked on collaborations with other artists. In 2009 she recorded and toured Europe with the band Nouvelle Vague and in the same year she opened the show for one of her childhood heroes, Lionel Ritchie at the Bercy Stadium.

Most recently she has been singing live with Plan B on Radio 1Xtra’s Live Lounge and the Shepherd’s Bush Empire.

Now Delila is ready to unleash herself on the UK with the release of her highly anticipated album Hooked, which is released on 31st May.

The album was co-written and co-produced with Sophie by Steve Booker, the man behind much of Duffy’s multi million selling album. In addition, an array of leading musicians and producers have collaborated on the record.

Here is a video taster of what to expect from Sophie Delila:

Sophie will be performing on the Liberty Music Stage at the Carnaby Street Festival on June 5th, which will be followed by UK festival appearances through the summer, including Rockness.

For further information visit Sophie Delila on My Space.

(Stones Throw)

Mayer Hawthorne - A Strange Arrangement

Mayer Hawthorne grew up in Michigan, near Detroit, a city he describes as rich in music tradition and high on the list of influences in his choice of a musical career.

A Strange Arrangement is his debut album released last year without ever really making the commercial splash it should have.  Certainly it is only recently that I was turned on to him after a quick look on YouTube at the video for the fantastic single from A Strange Arrangement, ‘Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out’, a piece of jazzy soul, to which Mayer Hawthorne adds a spoken introduction something in the vein of The Chi-Lites, and to the rest, a falsetto to rival Cry Me A River in its ability to tangle the heart strings with ambiguous gender imitation.

In fact, a lot of Mayer Hawthorne sounds like The Chi-Lites, and with such a consciously retro sound, it almost sounds like a pastiche, but, as is often the case with these things, it is clearly an indisputable love of the music that is being mimicked and that is driving these songs, and it is therefore really quite hard to tell the line between irony and reality.

At other times, you find Mayer Hawthorne using other genres – r&b, Motown, pop – in the way you always imagined them ideally, but had never quite heard. He does it with such simplicity, honesty and an ear for a well-produced song that it is near impossible not to love what he is doing in a manner much deeply than irony alone would allow.

These, then, are absolutely brilliant contemporary tunes that would be compared with the Winehouses of the world if his subjects didn’t require singing plainly and truthfully about the sort of candidly simple subjects soul singers used to sing about – beautiful girls, pathetically fallacious rain, or plain simple positive thinking.

Out on the label, Stones Throw, A Strange Arrangement joins an output of some great contemporary soul. Apparently, label chief Peanut Butter Wolf needed just a cursory listen to two songs to realise he had to sign Mayer Hawthorne up.

Here’s the video for ‘Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out’. See what I mean about the ambiguity between irony and passion for the music?

Here is the MySpace link for Mayer Hawthorne.

plan b aka ben drew

The excellent new single form Plan B, aka as Londoner Ben Drew, will be released on January 11th 2010 and has already featured as Record Of The Week for Radio One’s Zane Lowe and is currently Fearne Cotton’s Record Of The Week on the same radio station.

Coming on the back of the 26 year olds fantastic top ten hit with Chase & Status -End Credits, and his appearance in the acclaimed British thriller Harry Brown, Drew is about to take the music industry by storm.

Stay Too Long is a ferocious collision of retro soul, funk, rock and rap, that surprisingly works on every level, erupting into a massive cacophony of wonderful noise.

Produced by Paul Epworth, the studio genius behind Florence and the Machine, The Big Pink and Friendly Fires the single serves as a spectacular taster of what to expect from Plan B’s monster new album The Defamation of Strickland Banks.

To further add weight to its sheer monstrous potential, Stay Too Long has been put through the mill by bass troublers Pendulum – their first remix in three years – resulting in one of the biggest sounding tracks you’re likely to encounter for some time.

Plan B – Stay Too Long

Check out the incredible Pendulum remix here.

Stay Too Long by Plan B is released on January 11th 2010 on 679/Atlantic Records as a CD, 12″ or digital download.

For more information visit the Plan B MySpace page.

Wildbirds & Peacedrums....& a horse (Image by Jonathan Leijonhufvud)

Wildbirds & Peacedrums’ first album Heartcore was received with unanimous critical acclaim last year for its extraordinary naturalness and stripped-back instrumentation. The Swedish duo mixed a “heady brew of pagan blues, spiritual pop and ecstatic soul music” (Observer Music Monthly) to astounding results, creating a masterpiece in uninhibited expression.

This was music that came straight from somewhere in the depths of the human subconscious, and it expressed something that was somehow inexpressible by other means. Wildbirds & Peacedrums’ second album The Snake continues this affecting mix of genres to sublime results.

As The Snake progresses, the idea arises that the title may well come from the numerous skins that vocalist Mariam Wallentin and her percussionist husband Andreas Werliin shed in the form of spectacularly raw tracks throughout the course of the album.

These tracks, just like the skin of a snake, are markers of moments in time. Each one is ephemeral and each is unique. As Wallentin explains, “We only work from intuition, on instinct. We’re not looking for perfection in music, rather for life and feeling. We like to be more explosive.”

The Snake opens with ‘Islands’, on which a sort of monastic humming, recurring later on ‘Great Lines’, backs Wallentin’s Kate Bush melodies. The sparseness mixed with the raw, uninhibited nature of the vocals – they are other-worldly in their freedom – is reflected in following song ‘There Is No Light’. On this track it is Andreas Werliin’s breathtaking drumming that supports the vocals, which sound like PJ Harvey in their stripped-back aggression.

There is something spiritual about Wildbirds & Peacedrums. It could just be their dabbling in typically spiritual genres such as soul (‘My Heart’ and ‘Places’), oriental music (‘Chain Of Steel’ and ‘So Soft So Pink’), blues (‘Today/Tomorrow’) and even those incantatory pagan chants, but more likely it is the incredible way they channel expression so plainly into music. On ‘My Heart’ Wallentin sings “I’m lost without your rhythm”. An affecting and direct lyric referring to her own heart and craving for life rather than her percussive husband…

Something special happens on The Snake. It may not always be an immediately striking song like ‘My Heart’ to warm you, but there is a violence of emotion in Wildbirds & Peacedrums that is irrepressible and demands to be heard.

Wildbirds & Peacedrums are on tour at the moment. See them at the following venues:

April 1st – The Albert, Brighton
April 2nd – Arts Centre, Norwich
April 3rd – Arnolfini, Bristol
April 4th – Leadmill, Sheffield
April 5th – Captain’s Rest, Glasgow
April 6th – Dulcimer, Manchester
April 7th – The Luminaire, London

Winehouse will sing some of the songs that have influenced her own style as well as having a DJ battle  with DJ Bioux throughout the evening.

Winehouse’s husband Blake Fielder-Civil is due to be sentenced today, so there is no telling what mood or condition the singer will be in by tonight.

Yet another British star, living in the USA feels that they have been rejected by fans in their own country. This time it is Joss Stone, the incredible British soul singer, who is whinging about being outcast after moving to America.

She says that she feels kind of sad about it, as the only country that hasn’t liked her third album, is her own country. After two number one albums, the third has peaked at number 12 in the album charts.

Stone says that the whole country is mad at her for being in the US, and adds “Maybe it’s because I dye my hair, maybe it’s because my accent is messed up. But I’ve got to let it go and get on with my music.”

Sorry Joss, but maybe three very similar albums is one too many. While you have an incredible voice, there is only so much retro soul music that we can listen to. Music needs to evolve, so move on, and knock our socks off with your next album.