Mick Hart – The Way It Is first single from forthcoming album

"Mick Hart – The Way It Is first single from forthcoming album"

Australian singer/songwriter Mick Hart has a brand new album on the way and its first offering is called The Way It Is.

You can check it out on the new SLC Playlist for March.

 A “you done me wrong” break-up song with a catchy blues groove, The Way It Is grabs the listener with its addictive chorus that features some blistering guitar and Hart’s determined lyrical growl, “I don’t owe you nothing, that’s the way it is.”

It’s the first taste of his upcoming album, Awake, which is due for release this April 26th on MGM.

Mick will tour in support of the Album starting in Europe in April and following through to Australian dates from May.

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 ARIA nominated for “Best Blues and Roots” in 2002 for his sophomore album Upside Down In The Full Face of Optimism, Mick Hart occupies a sonic space that’s influenced by Jeff Buckley and Ben Harper, from sparse acoustic songs to wild dirty blues rock and some brilliant lap-slide guitar.

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Listen to The Way It Is now:

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The Sheyana Band – Soul Sister

"The Sheyana Band – Soul Sister"

Tasmanian blues act The Sheyana Band have a new single called Soul Sister and it’s one to listen out for on the upcoming Sounds Like Cafe playlist.

The single has just scored a top 10 spot on the Amrap Regional Charts!

First week number 9 and now march 20 the single has hit the number 2 spot.

Check it out on the new playlist

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Soul Sister is a remix of a track from last year’s Big Love album, for which they  won the Melbourne Blues Appreciation Society’s Victorian & Tasmanian Blues Music Award for Best Emerging Act/Artist of the Year.

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Led by captivating frontwoman Sheyana Wijesingha, the band has recently performed at major music events in Tasmania including  Party in the Paddock 2019 and they will also be appearing at the Fruit of the Roots Festival in Turners Beach, Tasmania this April.

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The Sheyana Band has also received national & international recognition and airplay, supporting some of Australia’s most respected musicians including Hoodoo Gurus, Neil Finn, Meg Mac, Renee Geyer, Diesel, The Angels, Ian Moss and Bill Chambers.

The band will tour Australia later in the year and will also  head to the UK, Europe & Sri Lanka for promo opportunities and some headlines shows.

Stay tuned for the upcoming Sounds Like Cafe playlist.  

In the meantime, have a listen to Soul Sister NOW!

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Julie-Anne Marshall New Single Memory

"Julie-Anne Marshall New Single Memory"

A new bonus track for December is the excellent new single Memory from Julie-Anne Marshall.

Starting out with some percussion and simple piano this song quickly develops into a very catchy uptempo tune that will have feet tapping and heads nodding. Julie-Anne’s voice tells a great story of change and development we can all relate to. Some tasteful jazzy/latin acoustic guitar fits in for a nice instrumental break and rounds out the song well. Sure to be a summer favourite.

“Hailing from Adelaide, Julie-Anne is an independent singer-songwriter who is not limited by musical boundaries. Memory is her latest single release which could be considered alt pop. It’s JPY-Love is in the air, meets Lily Allen. Think Soft Rock, Easy Listening with some jazz, rock, roots and blues and a bit of folk and pop and that’s the diversity of this artist.”

Julie-Anne has had previous tunes on soundslikecafe that have all been warmly received so we are sure this one will be no different- enjoy – checkout the spotify link below for instant gratification or hear it on the Soundslikecafe Digital Playlist Track 3.

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Simply Beautiful, Beautifully Simple by R15ER

"Simply Beautiful, Beautifully Simple by R15ER"

Bonus Feature Track

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R15ER SBBS OUT NOW MORE PURPS WITH LOGO

1 – Simply Beautiful, Beautifully Simple  – R15ER – (from the single)

R15ER is a Musician Producer & Creator of Univibes Music from Melbourne, Australia.
After discovering the teachings of Dr.Wayne Dyer, Rumi, Paulo Coehlo, Laozi, Napoleon Hill, Rhonda Byrne, Abraham Hicks, Louise Hay, Michael Beckwith, Eckhart Tolle, Bob Proctor and Joe Dispenza just to name a few.
R15ER ‘s love for Music & the Universe merged as one, and as a consequence the musical genre UNIVIBES was born.
File Under Electro New Age

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Big Merino – Black Cockatoos Single/Video

"Big Merino – Black Cockatoos Single/Video"

Big Merino – New Single – Black Cockatoos

Click here or any image below for video

The second single to be lifted from the current Surburban Wildlife album (MGM) is called Black Cockatoos. Released in a 3-track format, the lead song is accompanied by another album track “Sometimes” as well as a brand new, previously unreleased tune “A Day Without You” held over from the album sessions earlier this year.

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Two stunning brand new videos for “Black Cockatoos” and “Sometimes” are in the final edit stage(see pics) and will be made available in the coming weeks leading up to the Black Cockatoos Launch at Django Bar Camelot on December 2, following a warm up show Sunday November 11 at the Botany View Hotel, Newtown.

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Formed a little over two years ago, Big Merino play original songs that blur the lines between rock, country, blues, roots, soul, funk and grunge, while occasionally making forays into lesser known genres such as New Orleans 2nd Line.

Citing their major influences as Glen Hansard, The Frames, Jackson Browne and The Rolling Stones, songwriters Alex Craig and Stuart Davis write socially and politically-charged songs that are sometimes gentle and nostalgic and at other times nothing less than a fierce cry for revolution.

Lead singer/guitarist Stuart Davis cut his teeth singing Gospel with Tony Backhouse in Cafe at the Gates of Salvation, and brings that soulful Gospel feel to everything he does. He is joined by Alex Craig on guitar, Peter Richardson on bass and Colin Sevitt on drums.

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The Suburban Wildlife album was recorded by Russell Pilling over three weeks at Damien Gerard Studios. Russell also remixed “Black Cockatoos” specially for this single release, adding some timpani tracks that weren’t on the album mix.

The album features guest performances from some of the cream of Australia’s musical talent including-
Living legend James Greening on trombone, souzaphone, euphonium, trombone, trumpet, flugelhorn and pocket cornet (the main feature of previously unreleased song ‘A Day Without You”)
Jonathan Zwartz – Double Bass
Johnny G – from Johnny G and the E-Types on piano, organ and accordion
Jess Ciampa – Australia’s most sought after percussionist
Michel Rose – pedal steel (The Catholics) and
finally a string quartet from the Sydney Chamber Orchestra. 

See TheMusic studio sessions article here. 

“Great songs, great songwriting and the best of it full of a real sincerity and commitment.”
Michael Smith – Rhythms
“‘Sometimes’ with its soaring backing vocals is one of the most powerful rock songs I’ve heard in many years. ‘Black Cockatoos’ with the string quartet and a brilliant guitar work by Alex Craig is destined to become an Australian classic.”

BIG MERINO
Black Cockatoos Single
Official Release All Digital Platforms via MGM
November 2 2018

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Inside the Secretly Lucrative World of Solo Piano Music – from Rolling Stone

"Inside the Secretly Lucrative World of Solo Piano Music – from Rolling Stone"

Thanks to streaming, a small cadre of independent solo pianists are making a killing.

By ELIAS LEIGHT

On October 3rd, Michele McLaughlin got some exciting news: Her music has been streamed over one billion times.

Young artists in popular genres are racking up streams like crazy these days — presumably McLaughlin is an ascendant rapper releasing 90-second battering rams through SoundCloud? Or maybe she’s the guest vocalist on the latest reggaeton posse cut to rule YouTube?

Nope: McLaughlin is an independent artist in her forties who makes contemporary instrumental solo piano music. She’s a star in her field — to the point where another pianist says, “I’m not quite doing Michele McLaughlin numbers” — reportedly making around $250,000 a year. And she’s not alone. “We have a large group of solo piano players that are making a killing, making $7,000 to $10,000 a month,” says Kevin Breuner, VP of Marketing for CDBaby, which touts itself as “the largest global digital distributor of independent music.”

“Some of them are making far more money from their music than the artists than you see on major labels that sell OK but are not crossing the threshold of really having an income stream for years to come,” Breuner continues. “These piano players have cracked that.”

That’s thanks to the rise of streaming services and an accompanying shift in listening habits. “It used to be that, to get signed, it had to be something that somebody thought they could sell to a mass market,” Breuner explains. “But now, music gets used in so many different ways. When we dug a little deeper, this particular genre group and a lot of other genres that tend to be mellow and instrumental perform really well on streaming — there are a lot of dentist offices, a lot of work-office environments where people are putting on quiet, soothing music in the background and just letting it play.”

“I had someone ask me the other day, ‘Are you OK with being known as sleepy music?’” says Chad Lawson, another successful solo pianist. “I think he was trying to take a jab in a roundabout way. But I said, ‘Yeah, I really am.’ I have a running joke: Don’t listen to my music while you’re driving. It needs to have a warning sticker: Do not operate heavy machinery while listening to this.”

 

Read the rest of the article here at Rolling Stone.

 

and be sure to check out some of the stellar solo piano albums on our featured page from artists such as Fiona Joy Hawkins, Rachel Lafond, Andy Iorio and Loren Evarts.

Fiona Joy - Story of Ghosts - Cover Encounters of the Beautiful Kind cover artwork Andy Iorio - II (Front Cover) home again loren evarts

 

 

Tailor Birds NEW ALBUM – Where Will We Go To Break Free From The Crows

"Tailor Birds NEW ALBUM – Where Will We Go To Break Free From The Crows"

Sophie Kinston is Tailor Birds.
Tailor Birds newest album is music that soothes the soul, warms the spirit, and ignites your passion.
Even though the content is 6 songs they are each a 7-10 minute ‘Piece’ forming an album length body of work. Following the success of the previous work ‘Stilts on the Water’ (a single 40 minute piece) this release explores further electro/folk/world territory with more instrumentation such as Piano and Flute added to the already lush soundscape. Recorded in various studios throughout Europe while on tour and mixed and mastered at Damien Gerard Studios Sydney the sonic quality is exceptional.

In Sophie’s own words, “Tailor Birds combines electronic violin, live looping, foley art, percussion, and rich harmonised vocals, to create a sound like no other. A sound that is all about the vibe and positive energy, building an audience that is as diverse as much as it is one, you could say that Sophie is a traveling troubadour. She believes that music should not just be about playing one gig after another with just the music making an impact, but is also o about connecting people to something good again, in a world that is constantly changing. Music needs to inspire and placing Tailor Birds in a space that can do just that, it makes an impact greater than you could ever imagine.”

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“Faint echoes of Kate Bush here, Enya there  but really like neither and often much spookier”
Michael Smith – Rhythms Magazine

Tailor Birds’ key influences are Sigur Ros, the Kronos Quartet, Bear’s Den, Chet Faker and more. 
-=Sophie Kinston

Tailor Birds is currently touring through Australia.

Friday October 26 – Miama Marketta, Miami QLD

Saturday October 27 – Storytellers Festival, Raymond Terrace, NSW

Saturday November 3 – The Sound Society, Rainforest Green, South Bank Parklands, Brisbane QLD

Sunday November 4 – Peregian Beach Markets, QLD

Saturday November 17 – Cooran Acoustic Night,  Cooran QLD

 

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Adam Jones – Little Death Acoustic Anniversary Edition

"Adam Jones – Little Death Acoustic Anniversary Edition"

Following a recent move to Melbourne Adam has just released his Anniversary Edition of his 2017 Debut Album -Little Death. This version of the album is live in the studio acoustic featuring some pedal steel as well – a great new version of his well received first release.

The acoustic backing has given the album a new lease of life as easy listening cafe music, more accessible than the original Rock album.

Already proving popular online, you are sure to hear it in a cafe nearby soon.

Heres some words from Adam….

What inspired you to become an artist and who are your early influences?
Feedback and responses from others has always inspired me.  My early influences include listening to a lot of Beatles, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, The Eagles, Rodruigez, Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple.  Plus anyone with a melodic, meaningful, simple acoustic song inspired me as well.

Tell us a little about your music and what a crowd can expect at a live show?

My music is quite dynamic and I write in different styles such as modern blues, rock, folk and some country styles (more Eagles and Neil Young than traditional country).  People always seem to comment on my energy on stage, that I always look like I’m really into it and having fun while performing well.  I have some quieter songs that people seem to really warm to as well.  So lots of fun, energy, variety, some songs to dance to, some to listen to with interesting lyrics.

Check Out The Album

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