The Balkan Yankee

Song starts just after the one minute mark:

Big Ideas (don’t get any) from James Houston on Vimeo.

Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust
Originally uploaded by stingoo

Pretty cool, at least if you use last.fm. You can play the full album from the last.fm player for free. No downloads, but hey, it ain’t so bad. I’m listening to it right now for the first time.

radiohead in rainbows

Originally uploaded by anatoliv73

I just got the new Radiohead album. For those of you who don’t know, Radiohead is bypassing the label system this round and distributing the album exclusively from their website site…. and what’s more you get to decide how much you pay for it. With people paying between 0 (nothing) and over a thousand dollars, I believe the average so far is roughly $5. Sounds good for Radiohead considering even a generous royalty contract would give them slightly less per album after marketing and distribution costs.

So, like I said, I just got the new album. I was going to pay $4-5 for it myself but I haven’t been able to get the website to accept my order. They must be getting flooded right now. So, I’ll have to go buy later when it calms down a bit and pay for it. I definitely will, and I hope a lot of other big bands with enough clout to pull something like this off give it a try. It’s the beginnings of a 21st Century business model in the music industry, and it’s exciting to see the fans and artists both getting a better deal by exchanging directly with one another.

Great Song, cool video. It’s fun looking for the hidden meanings and messages in their music. This one isn’t new, but its still cool.

I really wish I had gone to see this band (Beirut is their name, not related to Lebanon) play when they were in Istanbul recently. This American band headed by Zach Condon is heavily inspired by the pre-eminent Serbian brass ensemble lead by Boban Markovi?. They manage a near perfect blend with their American Indie roots and the Balkan brass/Gypsy sounds that inspired them. These guys have done a fair amount of touring in the States and Europe already but if you haven’t checked them out yet, I’d recommend it.
Also, check out this video for a track with vocals.