the butter dish

Anthony Green definitely turned a page in his music career when he created his second full-length album, Beautiful Things.

The work is a step up from Green’s first album Avalon, showcasing a more complex collection of lyrics and music. Common elements like the energetic vocals and a faint electronic influence unify the work as a whole, and every song offers soulful observations about creativity, poetry and sensuality…

…Her latest disc, Biophilia, to be released Oct. 11, maintains Björk’s status as the weirdest—and craftiest—kid at the school of pop. “I feel technology has finally caught up with humans,” explains the 45-year-old via phone from New York. “That’s why I got this guy in Iceland who makes instruments to make me a small pipe organ that I could connect directly into an iPad touch screen. He reworked my old celesta [a keyboard that resembles a glockenspiel in sound] this way—which made composing much more tactile and impulsive.”…

When you’re trying to conquer a new territory, it helps to have a few big-name emissaries ram down the door for you. Such was the case for The Joy Formidable. The Welsh rock trio, led by singer and guitarist Ritzy Bryan, scored some high-profile props shortly after landing on North American shores.

“I would personally like to thank The Joy Formidable for writing the song of the year, Whirring,” Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters posted on Twitter.

“My favourite song right now is Whirring by The Joy Formidable,” tweeted blink-182’s Mark Hoppus.

As flattered as Bryan is by their comments, she says she doesn’t need their approval to validate her Formidable powers, which she shares with her boyfriend/bassist Rhydian Dafydd and drummer Matt Thomas.

“We’re very much blinkers down; we believe in what we’re doing,” says Bryan. “But (what they said) makes your belly warm because they’re in the industry, they’re musicians, they know all the little idiosyncrasies about this industry and it seems to have come from a very honest place. I think it’s very heartwarming; it’s certainly not manufactured.”

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For Alaskan psychedelic rock group Portugal. The Man, channeling an expressive combustion of straight-up trippy recordings isn’t a primary objective. Given they’ve released more material in the past four years (six albums) than multi-layer lovers The Flaming Lips and MGMT (two each), guitarist John Gourley, bassist Zachary Carothers, keyboardist Ryan Neighbors and drummer Jason Sechrist have become underground pysch opportunists. In The Mountain, In The Cloud, an elaborate mosaic enclosed in the concept of people helping each other, models Portugal. The Man’s best work in a start to finish format. With Gourley’s graceful howl, each song floats in and out of jam rock perfection, forcing out choruses that are too hard not to pay attention to or replay.

Heavy rock innovators MASTODON will release their first ever live experience package entitled MASTODON: LIVE AT THE ARAGON on March 15, 2011.  Filmed at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago on October 19, 2009, the searing concert captures the band in support of their critically lauded album Crack The Skye.

The DVD + CD capture the band in all of its glory while the DVD also features a 58 minute tour film titles Crack The Syke: The Movie and contains the films that play behind the band during their concerts.  These films are specifically created to illustrate the conceptional thread linking each of the songs.

For more information about the DVD+CD visit www.mastadonrocks.com