Monkey Love Records News

Monday, 27 August 2007

sonofsam's brand-spanking-new EP entitled 'special days' is now available. It comprises of 7 tracks that were inspired by birthdays.

Apparently, these tracks were written as gifts as he is "too cheap" to buy actual birthday presents. We don't think this is anything to be ashamed of, in fact we would much prefer a lovely song rather than the useless tat we usually get.

This release has a little bit of everything and shows sonofsam's eclectic lo-fi organic mentality, tracks include a variety of instrumentals and vocal based songs, smashing genres from ambient to hip-hop to lullabies.

You can download a copy for free from his artists page or by clicking on the image below.

Killer,

Monkey Love x

Monday, 13 August 2007

Joy Tourette has appeared in this month's The Fly magazine, buzzing headlong into the Norwich section as a featured artist. It reads;

"Electro-swamp-folk artist Joy Tourette (no relation to that twat from Towers of London) is a one-woman project quite different from the majority of stuff floating around Norwich and beyond. Tourette's music couples harmonic layered vocals with caustic rhythms, plucking snippets from PJ Harvey, Missy Elliot and Tom Waits and mixing it all up to bringing something new and fresh to the arena."

Monkey says, "I agree!" Thanks to Karen D'Ache for her intuitive views on our wonderful songstress. You can find more about Joy Tourette here.

Believe,

Monkey Love x

Wednesday, 08 August 2007

One day, while foraging around the cybernet-world-web of underground music, Jellica found a posting from the ingenius people @ Tone Wars requesting tracks for a compilation they were putting together.

The rules were simple;

"Create a song using the Casio VL Tone as the only source material. Sample it, multi-track, what-ever. The only catch was you can't use outside sounds (i.e. drum machines, synthesizers, acoustic instruments, etc). You can use external sequencers or DAW's to organize the song. Audio FX (distortion, chorus, reverb, pitch shift, etc etc) can also be used to manipulate the VL-Tone, and Vocals could be used as well to allow for some added creativity from the artist."

When Jellica read this he knew exactly what he had to do! He picked up the Monkey Love Hotline and we sent sonofsam swinging over, armed with his VL-Tone, to start working on the latest collaboration from these two super-dudes.

After toying with sounds, melodies, bass lines and enough ADSR to kill a cat, they had a brainwave! Why not use the allowance of vocals to full effect? So an onslaught of beatbox, bom boms, la las and an interesting take on using vocals as drums ensued mixed up in a big pot with lyrics collected from error messages given to them by their computers.

The outcome of this meeting of musically unbalanced minds is titled 'Shared Memory Realm Does Not Exist' and appears along with 19 other tracks from artists all over the globe. You can download the compilation by clicking the image below or by going here.



And it's FREE! That's right, FREE NEW MUSIC! Go get it.

Proxy server!

Monkey Love x

Wednesday, 08 August 2007

To coincide with the new sampler 'Thrifty, Brave and Clean Vol 1', from Boy Scout Recordings, the Betsy Trotwood hosted three of the artists who appeared on this great release.

Belkis, Red Cassette and Sargasso Trio showed how alternative acoustic folk (with a touch of electro) should be done. Look at Red Cassette go! A night of quality music indeed.



If you fancy getting your paws on this sampler, its really good, really cheap, there are loads of artists on it and you can buy it here.

Top banana!,

Monkey Love x

Saturday, 04 August 2007

So it's taken over a week to recover, but the first Monkey Love Records Label Showcase went off without a hitch!

Big thanks to all who came along, Lavar for sorting out the sound, Beat Brew for hosting our troop of artists, Maria and Pete for taking photos and Gumbo's Mum for making some awesome foam versions of Monkey, he was very pleased.

The evening began with Red Cassette showing what a seasoned pro he has become with a barrage of fantastic tracks and sideways humour. His skillful improvisation was clear to see, it's like he has some kind of crazy internal metronome that allows him to change seamlessly between a variety of styles within tracks and not drop a beat. What a guy!



Joy Tourette then made her live debut with four songs that rocked the crowd. Her powerfully emotive voice was intoxicating and her electro beats were perfectly accompanied by Ben from the Sargasso Trio on drums. She sounded fantastic, even grabbing the attention of those noisy people at the back!



sonofsam's unconventional minimal-pop-punk-electronica style took most people by surprise, even himself when he realised he had to sing into a microphone for the first time. He just managed to keep it together with the help of partner in electro, Jellica.



Robberriff, also making his live debut, showed what happens when man and machine merge together in perfect harmony. He ripped out a set with no less that 26 tracks that were so pumping even the break-dancer got tired! Down-tempo, electronic, acid, bass lines, melodies, harmonies, this set HAD IT ALL!



Finally, Jellica took the evening bpm to another level with an 8-bit extravaganza of tunes made on Commodore Amigas and synchronised Game Boys, finishing up with a microcore mega-mix that got all the hardcore ravers dancing! He also did a little bit of singing too.



What a night! We WILL be doing this again, so if you missed out keep an eye on the site or sign up to our mailing list to keep one banana ahead of the bunch,

Monkey Love x