Wednesday, July 29, 2009

#31 - Youth, Tweeting, and Stalking

In this episode of the Casey Stratton Podcast I discuss more of my childhood musical path. I left Twitter open during the show and responded to some of your tweets. I then performed two songs I wrote when I was 16 including the first song of my own I ever played live. That song is called It's About Time and the other performance was a song called Paintings. Music recommendation this time is Paula Cole's This Fire.
Cole's self-produced 1996 breakthrough, finds her investing her songs with outsized emotions, framed by consistently inventive arrangements built around Cole's keyboards, and reaching a zeitgeist-piercing intensity on "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?" and "I Don't Want to Wait," making Cole seem very much like Fiona Apple's older, slightly less cracked sister. --Sam Sutherland


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Wednesday, July 15, 2009

#30 - Politics, Religion and Sex

Have I allured you with that title? In this episode of the Casey Stratton Podcast I discuss some current events before talking a bit about officiating my sister's wedding next week. I take 2 questions including a suggestion that I build a track live so you can hear the process a bit. I bring in a drum loop and quickly write a piano line and then build on it, just like I would in the recording process. After that I play the piano and vocal version of Man in the Mirror, also by request. Music recommendation is Imogen Heap's Speak For Yourself.

Imogen Heap is an enormously gifted singer, songwriter, producer, keyboardist, and programmer. She does it all here on her second solo CD which showcases her remarkable talents. The stunning track 'Hide and Seek' offers the electronic equivalent of a cappella, with only Imogen's expressive voice heard via vocoder -- an early favorite that shot right to #1 on iTunes Electronic Chart in June 2005. The song was also featured on the season finale of THE O.C., and earlier in the season, THE O.C. previewed another track from this album called 'Goodnight and Go', a bittersweet ballad about the secret admiring of a neighbor. Comparison's have been made to Bjork, Alanis Morrisette, Joni Mitchell and Annie Lennox, among others, but no one can hold a candle to Imogen Heap. - Amazon.com

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Wednesday, July 01, 2009

#29 - Celebrity, Vampires and Self-image

In this edition of the Casey Stratton Podcast I discuss the death of Michael Jackson, the situation in Iran and the current state of affairs in Iraq. I then answer two questions, one about the book series and movie Twilight and one about the song Daylight from Whirlwind Medusa which I subsequently perform. Music recommendation is Jane Siberry's When I Was A Boy, from which I perform Love is Everything.

Nothing Siberry has done in the past quite prepares the listener for this album's prevalent mood of spooky obsession, bewilderment and resignation, and deathbed reflections. Though there's occasionally a rumble in the reverie ("All the Candles in the World," for instance, is positively funky), the overall ambience is prayerful, abetted by a production that often creates a cathedral of silence between the low tones (husky viola or cello filigrees) and the spare front line (an acoustic piano or guitar). Though songs like "Temple" (co-produced by Siberry and Brian Eno) and "Candles" are immediately likable, long free-floating meditations like "Sweet Incarnadine" and "The Vigil (The Sea)" are the album's centerpieces, gradually unfolding songs about love and dying. - Rolling Stone

Listen to Podcast #29