Interview with Callia: Debut EP out now!

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1. Can you tell us about yourself? What are the different sides to your personality and how do they show up in your music?

I’m a 20 year old musician, pianist, performance artist, creative director, dancer, screenwriter, songwriter.  I’m incredibly passionate, so anything I compose and write is really visceral.  The dance records are intense, their layers rise and fall and build.  I’m also a young blood, old soul kind of girl, and the slower songs are sadcore - they meditate on the experiences I’ve had.  Finally, I’m an alpha type personality, extremely ambitious, tenacious - I’ve got thick skin, which is how I know I’m in the right business.  All that comes through in my work in that I write, compose, produce, design absolutely all of it.  I also have a wonderful team of friends and artists around me who are instrumental in bringing my visions to life, to the screen and to sound.  You can find our work on my facebook page - and all over the internet.

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2. When did you start singing and was there a specific moment that you remember when you thought “I was born to do this?”

I’ve been singing for as long as I can remember.  I never had a eureka moment - instead, one day I realized that being a star - performing, making music and leaving my mark on the artistic realm - was really the one dream that kept on coming back.  I have a real affinity for show business, too, and that played a major role in my development.  I watched film, old and new, and studied great artists and works.

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3. Where does your inspiration come from, other musicians? Any non-musical sources?

Inspiration really does come in all forms for me.  In terms of songwriting, I write and compose my best work spontaneously, when that uncanny wave washes over me and I just have to write and play.  In under 10 minutes, I’ll have a fully structured song, and those are the best - the ones that come to you as if out of thin air.  I’m inspired by film, fashion, photography, art, history - I’m an avid student of culture, and I study everything from classic lit to runway shows to photos on tumblr.

Studying past performers is also incredibly important for videos, photo shoots and my live stage shows.  I’ve always been both musician and performance artist, and so my goal for every show and every piece I release is to push boundaries, to challenge the audience, to excite them, to give them a vicarious experience.  Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, Elvis Presley, Dita Von Teese, Lucille Ball, Janis Joplin, Freddie Mercury, Jim Morrison, Gene Kelly, Marlon Brando - they’re all performers I revere and absolutely adore.

You can find many records that inspired me on the "My Loves" playlist on my Whyd profile!  The Doors, Elvis, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Duke Ellington, Azari & III, Sinatra, Jack White, Daft Punk and more.  xxx  

4. What should we look forward too in the near future from you?

*My official music video for #TheOne is dropping JULY 1

*In the meantime, BEHIND THE SCENES featurettes of the making of #TheOne can be found on my CALLIA CAM YouTube playlist:

*The debut EP “CALLIA BARA” is available for purchase on 

iTunes <> Bandcamp <> Soundcloud 

*The second EP, HOLLYWOOD BABYLON, is out in September and will feature singles #Hollywood, #Shotgun, #SlaveToTheAirwaves

*The music video for #Hollywood will drop in August

Can’t wait to see it! Thanks Callia, make sure to Like her Facebook page, follow her on Twitter, and as always, subscribe to her on Whyd

18th June 2013

Do You Like That Song? Playlist Contest Starts Today!

Wondering what to add on Whyd? Need some inspiration to share your favorite tracks? Check this out!

The team at Do You Like That Song? is happy to announce that their playlist contest begins today! They have created a tracklist based on interesting situations like Chilling on a Rooftop or Partying at 5 AM (sometimes at the same time!!) The contest starts right now and will last two weeks, ending on Friday, June 28, 2013.

The winner of the competition will be selected from the three finalists by an all-star jury of music tastemakers and lovers: The prize is where things get fun! Instead of selecting something that might only be cool for certain people, we are announcing an open prize of your choosing. As soon as you finish your playlist, send the URL and the prize that you want to tony@whyd.com. What are we talking about here? Well, are you an artist? Want us to introduce you to a record label? Are you a DJ and want to promote your tracks across our entire community? Are you a blogger looking to get featured? Just a music lover? How about some new headphones? Are you just hungry? We’ll buy your dinner! The prize is whatever we can do to help you get the most out of the music you make, talk about, or just love. 
Read the official rules here, and use the link on that page to go directly to creating your playlist. May the most original music lover win! 

Small disclaimer for the prizes: if it doesn’t cost money, we’ll do everything we can to deliver the prize you want. If it costs money, we can go up to 30 euro plus delivery.

17th June 2013

Track of the Weekend #44: Disclosure - “You & Me” (Flume Remix)

We’re going to do something that we’ve never done before, and before you purists out there start spouting off about how it’s not the weekend yet please read this first:

We are posting the sacred Track of the Weekend on a Thursday this week for a number of reasons:

1. It’s dark in Paris, rain falling incessantly, cold like autumn and just fucking disgusting out, so it helps to think about the weekend. 

2. Tomorrow we will be announcing the awesome new playlist contest organized by Do You Like That Song?

3. It’s after noon on Thursday, and for me mentally that means it’s the weekend. 

4. But most importantly, this track of the weekend this week is the most popular song on Whyd since Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky" took over the world. 

Flume’s remix of “You & Me” by Disclosure creates a mental impression similar to the semi-haunting Disclosure faces with the white lines. It is epic enough to be played during the series finale of Game of Thrones. At times it feels like a heart fighting back against a coming heart attack. Yet it is so satisfying and freeing that it cannot be listened to just once. It will be a big surprise if it relinquishes its place atop the hot tracks before the end of next week, or even the week after that. Thanks Steven for getting it to our ears!! 

13th June 2013

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Interview with Marie: Community Gal at Green Room Session

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1. Tell us about yourself! What are the different sides of your personality and how do they show up in your projects?

My name is Mary, I am in charge of social media and digital PR at Pumpkins Agency. I am told to be an eternal optimistic, very curious and talkative, and I enjoy sharing everything I find interesting with my friends and relatives. Finding the exact thing that will please them (sound, image, inspiration, article) is my daily challenge, talking about the interests we share and discovering other things we have in common is what pleases me. I’m always on the look out for unique and fresh content. 

The combination of my own curiosity with that hobby and my love of music is the reason why I chose to become a community manager, and to join the Green Room Session team. It also lead me to become a member of Whyd :-) even if the main motivation for me being part of Whyd was my need for putting my Youtube and Soundcloud finds (that were not on Spotify) somewhere where I could organize and share them among music lovers! I discovered the possibility to use it for sound digging afterwards and I now use it everyday on that purpose :)

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2. Give us a little background information about Green Room Session, where did the concept come from? 

The Green Room Session project was born from the reflexion of a brand (famous worldwide for its red star among other things) that had always been very active in the music community on the field. They felt the need to participate in sharing the best of contemporary music not only punctually during special occasions (big festivals and concerts) but also on a daily basis. That need for dedicating itself full-time to serving this goal required a dedicated team, and that’s how the Green Room Session project was launched. Everyday Green Room Session brings the best of the music news, exclusive content and attractive offers (free tickets and invitations to French festivals and concerts in concert halls from its partners) on its website, and everyday we share the website’s contents to our community of music lovers on Facebook and Twitter, connect with them on Instagram and Whyd to share our best memory snapshots and favorite musical nuggets. 

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3. Who does Green Room Session work with in the music space?

We have the chance to work with so many great people and projects from the music space! Just remember that you asked for this list when getting tired of reading it ;)

First we work with many french festivals and we’ve even got our own Green Room stage in some of them (Solidays, Eurockéennes de Belfort, Mainsquare Festival, Transmusicales de Rennes). You can find the list of our event partners here. We also work with the most amazing concert halls in France that allow us each month to give away to our community free invitations for great concerts: La Cigale, le Glazart, le Trabendo, le Social Club and le Zénith in Paris, Magazine Club from Lille, le Transbordeur in Lyon, l’Ubu Rennes, la Coopérative de Mai in Clermont Ferrand, l’Espace Julien in Marseille, la Laiterie in Strasbourg and more recently we starting working with le Noumatrouff in Mulhouse. 

In order to always offer increasingly rich and varied contents we collaborate all year long with Tsugi and Le Tournedisque: an amazing French blog held by three fellows passionate about music discoveries that allow us to offer each month our “Green Room Session x Le Tournedisque” playlist, we will celebrate our first year of collaboration in June! 

Last but not least, this year we have been working closely with Talent Boutique, Because Music and Ed Banger Records to celebrate their 10th anniversary: we offered them the Ed Banger Room where we gathered together memories, special contents and unique collector objects that has been marking their history from 2003 to 2013. We were so proud when this website was awarded by FWA as “site of the day” on May 25th! We also partnered the 10th anniversary world tour of Ed Banger, giving away tickets for each date of the tour that will allow our winners to tour with the label  (currently the dates at stake are Tokyo, Los Angeles and Berlin).  

 

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4. Can you tell us how you use Whyd with Green Room Session?

The Green Room Session team is composed of music lovers: we naturally dig sounds for ourselves and share them to each others and on the official Twitter account. We wanted to store these somewhere where our followers could find them organized by category, and we enjoy the “no small talks, just music” that rules the Whyd community of sound diggers ! The “hot tracks" category and the "similar to you" one in "Discover" section inspire us everyday, and our finds punctuate our days! 

5. When you get to choose the music, what do you like to listen to?

That would be so hard to talk in the name of everyone from the project: Manu for example surprises us regularly with his “voodoo funk” mood and other alternative styles that I had never heard of before, Audrey is making the office a Boiler Room regardlessof the time of day, Guillaume is Muse’s biggest fan, BH is our hip hop expert, Marco loves Daft Punk, Chris’s besetting sin is Daniel Avery and Greg’s one would be Metronomy or Phoenix… 

I think this question was for myself but that would not be representative of the eclectic tastes in our beautiful project ! Though currently if I had to choose one song, that would be the remix Hostage made from Willy Moon’s track “My Girl.”

Thanks for filling us in Marie! Make sure you follow Green Room Session on Twitter, like the official Facebook page, and of course, subscribe to them on Whyd!  

12th June 2013

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Do You Like That Song? Playlist Contest Starts Friday

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Summertime is in full swing and with the fête de la musique coming up in a few weeks the team at music blog Do You Like That Song? are announcing the next playlist contest on Whyd! Take a look at the tracklist above, and start thinking about which tracks you are going to pick, since this time, the prize is something you definitely want. How do we know that? Because you will tell us what you want! When you complete your playlist entry, you send us a message telling us what you want to win if your playlist is selected as the champion by the judges.

Are you an artist? Want us to introduce you to a record label? Are you a DJ and want to promote your tracks across our entire community? Are you a blogger looking to get featured? Just a music lover? How about some new headphones? Are you just hungry? We’ll buy your dinner! 

Make sure you start thinking about it now, the playlist contest launches on Friday and will last for two weeks. The top three playlists with the most votes are the finalists from which the winner will be selected by the jury. 

Small disclaimer for the prizes: if it doesn’t cost money, we’ll do everything we can to deliver the prize you want. If it costs money, we can go up to 30 euro plus delivery. 

11th June 2013

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Interview with Benin City: “One of the UK’s most exciting bands” - Huffington Post

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Named after a Nigerian state capital, Benin City is Theo Buckingham on drums, Tom Leaper on tenor sax, and Joshua Idehen on rhymes.”

1. You have been described as “one of the UK’s most exciting new bands” by the Huffington Post. What gets you guys moving?
We love gigging and making music. We’re inspired by a lot of good stuff around us at the moment: There is a really cool spoken word/music scene in London at the moment and we really want to contribute to it in our own way.
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2. How do you as musicians and creators work together?
Musicians are creators as well lol. If you mean how does a non musician get on with musicians then… well the first good thing about Benin City, like any other band is you can stick us in a room and we don’t kill each other after an hour; we get on. It means we get to share ideas with as little ego as possible. Everyone in the band contributes - every idea is tried out no matter how silly it might seem at first -and that helps us manage our different inspirations. I think.
 
3. Give us the story behind the debut single “Baby.” In what context was the song conceived?
I lived next to a junkie couple for a bit a while back. Argued through the night, mostly her cussing him about ‘the other woman who wouldn’t have him anymore,’ which must’ve been really toxic for both of them. I remember one night he just kept saying ‘what do you want me to say’ over and over. I was playing tekken at the time. INSPIRATION! I stopped playing tekken, wrote some words down and met up with Jon Cottle, a friend of mine and an amazing bass player. Few years later, brought the song into Benin City as a consideration and Tom was like ‘tis good, but i can make it better.’ Horn lines later, voila.
4. What should we all be looking for from you guys in the near future? Any plans?
We’d like to tour, to be honest, I mean we REALLY, REALLY like gig. We’ve just roadtested our three piece which is really killer at the moment. Faithless is coming out on today, so that’ll be swell. We got some festival slots lined up (one I cannot mention on pain of death) a gig at the Embassy Bar on wednesday. But more than that: just getting the album out would be great; so far the response to our singles have been brilliant, which has left us all really humbled but nervous at the same time. Beyond that, we’ll see, I guess.
If you’re in London, make sure you head down to see Benin City live on Wednesday night, and in the meantime Like their Facebook page and of course subscribe to them on Whyd! 

10th June 2013

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Track of the Weekend #43: Robin Schulz - “Cheating” (Bootleg)

Summertime is definitely here, you can feel it in the way the music grooves these days. And there is nothing brighter right now on Whyd than this shiny groove unearthed by Radar! The Track of the Weekend “Cheating" by Robin Schulz is everything that summer should be: smokey like a rose vine BBQ, hoppy like an ice cold IPA, and smooth as the clear blue sky. 

See you in the sun!

7th June 2013

Interview with Duncan: Jam Sessions at Second Story Garage

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1. Give us the history behind Second Story Garage, what do you do exactly?

Second Story Garage is a “live” music video website/recording studio I started with a few colleagues at the newspaper where I work in Boulder, Colorado. It began as a small guerrilla project— we had to hide our expenses a bit so the finance folks wouldn’t shut the plan down. The idea to marry the reach and connections of a newspaper to music production is not new, but it requires some insane engineering to pull off. 

2. Why is it so much harder to do in this environment, but also rewarding?

The newspaper industry is suffering, no one can deny that. There is simply no money to use for lengthy production and expertise. With videographer Paul Aiken shooting  and me engineering the sound we keep a session to about two hours from load-in to pack-out. We pride ourselves, and the project relies on the speed at which we can record a band. The lending of the name of the local newspaper to what we are doing really helps develop the trust needed to bring in bigger and bigger acts. Our slam-it-out approach is really the only way to do this every week, indefinitely.

The format is three songs and an interview. Interviews are hosted by our talented reporters Ashley and Quentin, who also have the lead in reaching out to bands we’d like to record.

My role has been pretty wide-ranging. At the beginning, I pitched the idea and developed three potential budgets. Naturally, I was asked to cut the cheapest budget in half. Touché. However, the great thing about having no money but plenty of musical and recording background in 2013 is the wealth of cheap, good-enough chinese-made audio gear. Companies copying each other’s product lines and re-programmable factories in China have allowed for competitive environments to build quickly around innovations. Unchallenged monopolies rarely exist anymore in this realm of audio. So, knowing my target was internet-fidelity, played over, at best, a good desktop audio setup, my choices for gear could include for example a good lot of ~$50 microphones or a $200 small USB mixer.

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I get away with less gear, inputs and time by going old school in my engineering approach. I live-track, Nashville style, and try to isolate miked areas through clever placement, DIY diffusors, a drum shield or the arrangement of bodies. I record down to a single stereo channel (yikes! can’t change anything major after the fact) so it’s necessary to do a lot of “fader riding” where I live mix solo entrances and buildups and other song elements. It’s really a performance for me as well as for the musicians. 

The most difficult aspect, and the reason why it’s hard to obtain a full track well via live tracking, is the vocals. The way we set up, so much sound energy is focused on the area where the singer stands that I really have to get creative to get a good vocal take. Add in the fact that vocals can be more important on video than plain audio, and you can see the voice is the linchpin of my recording success or failure.

Fortunately I have some tricks up my sleeve, including my favorite “secret weapon” piece of outboard gear— my beloved, ancient DBX 118 dynamic enhancer. I got it at a nearby Goodwill thrift store for $4. With it I can parallel-compress different elements of the sound, for example laying the vocal channel above the rest of the sound so as it peaks and dips, the rest of the band’s volume accommodates so the voice stays in “focus.”

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3. Who are the musicians that you get to play for you?

We started out small and local. Our first act was a duo including a sales representative who works on the first floor at the Daily Camera. From there, and under the direction of the reporters and me, we reached out to bigger and better acts, ones with large online audiences but most importantly ones who could nail a performance in one or two takes. That second requirement whittles out a lot of groups, but I think also serves to keep the interest high for our videos. 

We’ve since recorded up-and-coming locals The Yawpers, String Cheese’s Kyle Hollingsworth, Carlos Santana’s son Salvador and his band, NYC’s multi-talented Nellie McKay, New York folk duo Mike + Ruthy, 90s pop stars dada, Elephant Revival’s Bonnie Paine, supergroup T.E.N. (featuring players from Mars Volta, Parliament Funkadelic and Fishbone), and even a couple local 12-year-old homeschooled child prodigies Jaden Carlson (Stevie Ray-influenced blues rock- she rips) and Bella Betts (mandolin, who’s captured the interest of Chris Thile and Michael Daves and is on her way to Brooklyn).

Our highest viewed video, Greensky Bluegrass’ “Leap Year” at 37,000 so far, is a testament to the power of social networks and their role in serving content to viewers.

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4. How’s the music scene in Colorado? 

The music scene here is more rich than I knew going into this. Several years ago I created and ran a local Reggae club night in town and was equally impressed at the breadth of just that segment of music in the area. Denver is nationally known in the jazz world, I think much of Colorado is known to represent a lot of the new bluegrass explosion, and certain electronic circles have heard of Boulder, home of Big Gigantic and others. It’s a very busy scene for whatever you’re playing or listening to.

5. What are your longterm goals with the project?

I hope Second Story Garage can continue indefinitely. We’ve come so far in a year with little more than determination and curiosity, earning 4 press association awards, racking up over 100,000 views on YouTube alone and continuing to keep quality high as we try more challenging arrangements. 

We do our part to keep costs so low it would be foolish to shut down. But the reality is in this “roller coaster” period of the news business, nothing is guaranteed. We’re doing our best- I’m throwing posters up on Pearl Street this afternoon to advertise our latest set with The Epilogues, and we’ve got piles of stickers in every music store in the area. The public is generally rising to see that week after week they can trust us to deliver an immersive, high quality intimate sit-in with the bands they know and love.

When it’s this interesting and fun, it’s doesn’t feel like work. I’d really get a kick out of doing this as long as I can.

We hope so too, thanks Duncan! Make sure you Like the SSG Facebook page, follow them on Twitter, and of course subscribe to them on Whyd

6th June 2013

Playlists of the Week: SUMMER!!

There is an object floating in the sky today over Paris that is really unusual, something that we haven’t seen in a very long time. It’s bright, warm, and is injecting energy into our minds and lives like an adrenaline spike. Finally, after a winter that lasted nearly 10 months, it’s summertime!!!!!!!!!

So, cue the summery music! Here is a collection of summertime playlists to enjoy while you sip rosé in the sun.

SUMMER TIME by Gregory Ruxel

Summer Time! by Laurène Sturm

Summer 2013! by Jean-Sebastien Nicholet

Summer House by Steven Jeuris

Summer Grooves by Lazynaj

5th June 2013

Interview with 10 Tracks Per Week

1. Where does the spirit of 10 Tracks Per Week come from?

If we must discuss from where the spirit of the blog comes, I pay homage to the boss of Darker Than Wax, whose simple phrase explains everything. “Music is meant to be shared.” Essentially, the objective of 10TPW is not to have millions of fans from around the world (as amazing as that would be) it is just to share songs and musical gems that are relatively — or completely — unknown. We are four on the team, huge music lovers, all with, I think, the desire to share new discoveries of the music we love. The 10TPW spirit also comes form the desire to work with artists to learn about what their 10 ultimate tracks are. 

2. When was the idea born, where?

Render unto César that which is César’s: the original idea came from Vikius, he spent, and continues to spend, his days digging through all of the sites where one finds sound. And instead of spamming himself with Facebook posts or filling up our inboxes with links, he had the idea of starting a Tumblr to organize all of his discoveries. I remember making a pretty good amount of discoveries there. RIP little Tumblr! 

Anyway, I met Vikius via a complex history of social networks and friends in common. At the time I worked at a radio station, and I thought, me too, look at all the time I spend preparing for the next show!!  When we started to exchange music, we realized very quickly that we have roughly the same taste, and the day he told me about the project, I immediately send him an email demanding to be in. We got started rapidly on something more consistent, with a selection of 10 tracks every two weeks and eventually every week. A little bit after we started to see the project in another way, I had an abandoned blog and I sent the codes to Vikius to see what we could do with a more powerful platform. He worked on it by himself for a while, and one evening we saw each other at a party, and it was there where it was really born. I brought my touch to the blog with my selections of artists and DJ friends to make, little by little, selections that became more and more followed. In this way, we started to gain a broader audience. 

Once the concept was established, all we had to do was come up with an innovative marketing strategy like we see all the time from boutique shops, fringe brands, and indie labels. The blog was ready and we already had a good amount of content, but instead of launching, we waited for New Year’s Day to have a cooler anniversary. As Vikius said, it started off really well, but we had a little trouble managing everything between our studies and the radio for me. So we decided to take a different route, to get a third person on board who could bring us artists and his own style. That’s how Asiku came to the team. A few months after our fourth member arrived: Johan. 

If we must say where 10TPW was born, I would say in space, at the center of the galaxy, give or take two or three hundred meters. 

3. Who makes up your team? Why did you start to work together? 

We are four. Vikius is the founding father who created it to share his music discoveries. Pieral gave a boost with the name and the highly-researched baseline that the blog enjoys today. A little after, he joined the editing team at The Chemistry Magazine, which is where he met Asiku, the third member, a vendor of dreams filled with Japanese beats and sounds. And finally Johan, who, while he doesn’t produce himself, scours the web looking for the soundtrack that he needs when he is flirting with the stars. 

4. Who should listen to your selections?

The selections are made for everyone. They are there to let our followers discover and rediscover music, and even for the artists that we are proud to count among our followers. We are happy to see that artists who made selections for us often come and check out other artists’ selections. 

If we had to explain exactly who our selections are made for, I would say that they are there so that people can stop listening to the shit of the radio and so they can find new music without spraining something! You band of slackers!! No, seriously, we are just here to share our love for music, and maybe our future deafness. 

Thanks guys! Make sure to like the 10TPW Facebook page, and of course subscribe to them on Whyd

4th June 2013

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