Today’s free download is from a new band , A Minor Bird. Well, they are new to us. These four guys actually came together in 2009 and released Where The River Breaks Free in 2010. However, we just discovered these guys today and I doubt many of you own this mini album. Frontman and man writer Kevin Embelton has constructed a set of songs that are complex, compelling and dynamic. A Minor Bird deliver a set of songs with a clever interweaving of instruments and highly dramatic tonal and tempo changes. Embelton’s high, thin voice delivers on the emotional depth of a believer who marvels at the richness of his relationship with God. If you like melodic, textured rock go straight to Noise Trade and download Where The River Breaks Free.
Sean Michel is a delta bluesman prophet from Arkansas. Watching Christian musician Sean Michel perform you experience the bold faith and intensity of Elijah or Paul. He plays a smoking hot blues that we have all been trying to find since John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf left the delta for Chicago recording studios. In the decades since the 50′s, music has become a commodity to packaged, sold and now stolen. The record industry laments the loss of an business while a few of us lament the loss of an art form that we have only heard about. Sean Michel has launched a project to recapture the soul of that legendary music. He can describe it better than me:
Yep, we can all participate in this cooperative recording project. We can all contribute from $5 to as much as we like. In response to your participation, Sean will extend his gratitude, his music, dinner with him, even his guitar. I want all of us to contribute as much as we can because I want to enjoy this new music Sean Michel is creating. See what I mean with a preview of “The Curse Is Broken”, one the songs that will be part of this project:
Once you put out the fire coming from you speakers grab your credit card or you pay pal account and join “The Back to The Delta Project”:
Christian musician Moby is one of the pillars of electronic music. In the late 90′s he redefined this music style and brought electronic music from the clubs into the mainstream. His Everything Is Wrong set a new bar for the genre that many have reached for since. It was the best album of 1995 in any genre. 1999′s Play was a revolution that ranks as one of the top 100 albums in the rock era. Both recordings are on One21music’s Essentail 100, our collection of 100 recordings by Christian musicians that we believe everyone should own, or at least listen to.
Moby‘s latest’s, Destroyed, lands in stores on May 17th, see our Release Dates for a full list of music releases over the next few months. You can buy the cd with a book of images that Moby has taken from around the world, in a deluxe cd package with some of the photos, as a standard jewel case cd or digitally. However, Moby has given us a gift. He is streaming the entire album online along with a map of the pictures he has taken on his travels around the world. It is an incredible piece of art. I cannot wait until Tuesday so I can get my hands on this package. Here is what Moby says about his newest creation.
“i don’t sleep very well when i travel. and as a result, i tend to be awake in cities when everyone else is asleep. that’s where this album, and the pictures that accompany it come from. it was primarily written late at night in cities when i felt like i was the only person awake (or alive), a soundtrack for empty cities at 2 a.m, at least that’s how i hear it. the pictures were taken on tour while i was writing the album. i wanted to show a different side of touring and traveling. a side that is often mundane, disconcerting, and occasionally beautiful. ”
Twinkie Clark was recently named one of the 50 greatest voices to ever grace this earth by NPR. A member of the famed gospel group, The Clark Sisters, Twinkie Clark has been amazing the Chruch going folks for 30 years. The entire list is being revealed slowly over the rest of this year but Twinkie Clark joins the likes of bluesman Howlin’ Wolf, Irish Tenor John McCormack and Ukrainian Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt.
Here is what NPR had to say about gospel icon Twinkie Clark:
“Gospel music has come a long way since the early 1930s, when Thomas Dorsey fused a Christian message with blues chords and rhythms. Over the years, innovators such as Mahalia Jackson, Shirley Caesar, Andrae Crouch and others have played major parts in pushing the music forward. But no list of gospel greats would be complete without Elbernita “Twinkie” Clark. Many know her as the leader of The Clark Sisters and as a master organist. But Clark’s voice is the sum of many parts.
Twinkie Clark sings like John Coltrane played: Her notes are clear and clean, her phrasing and timing exquisite.
“She can do a growl, she can do a moan, but there is a clarity in her singing that has always appealed to me, and I think that reaches a lot of people,” says Deborah Smith Pollard, who teaches a class on gospel music at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.
Bringing The Sunshine
Clark’s fans love her solo albums, but know her best as the leader, arranger and main songwriter of The Clark Sisters. She and sisters Karen, Dorinda and Jackie have been making hits and winning awards since the 1980s, none bigger than 1981′s “You Brought the Sunshine.” It was first a hit on gospel radio before moving onto R&B stations and then to the clubs, where DJs used it to kick-start many a dance-floor groove — much to the chagrin of some of the faithful.
Meanwhile, Twinkie Clark, a fan of jazz and R&B who studied classical music at Howard University, continued to innovate, creating a vocal style that many gospel and R&B singers now imitate.
“That’s how the riffs came,” says Karen Clark Sheard, Twinkie’s baby sister and a member of The Clark Sisters. “She had to sing opera, and you could hear them doing their little acrobats in the opera. And then, even in jazz, people like Ella Fitzgerald — for you to hear someone do riffs and do little turns with your voices and yet put it in gospel — that was something that was very unusual that Twinkie pretty much started.”
Twinkie Clark has always been the vocal leader of the group. No surprise, then, that she’s been teaching her sisters their parts since they were children. It’s a skill she says she learned from her mom, the late Dr. Mattie Moss Clark, a renowned choir director, arranger and songwriter in gospel music.
“Sometimes she would wake us up at 3 a.m. and we were crying and sleepy, talking about, ‘Momma we don’t feel like getting up,’ ” Twinkie Clark says. “And she said, ‘No, I’m going to make you do this. It’s going to pay off after a while.’ And it did. She would have us sit around the piano, and she would say, ‘I’ve got a song on my mind that the Lord gave me and I want y’all to learn it.”
Making The Organ Sing
Twinkie Clark the vocalist is perhaps only matched by Twinkie Clark the organist. She’s known in gospel-music circles as “Queen of the Hammond B-3,” so her vocalizing and organ playing are very much intertwined — so much so that, according to Dr. Cedric Dent of Take 6, she makes the organ sing.
“You hear music teachers say that to their students all the time: ‘Make your instrument sing; make it sound like your voice,’ ” Dent says. “She was incredible at making the organ sound like her voice.”
You can even hear the harmonizing that she would teach her sisters in her organ playing. You can hear all of those parts — the nuances, the riffs — that they would sing vocally. It’s all there in her organ technique.
Clark’s technique as a vocalist and musician may be what makes her a great artist, but she says all the credit goes to the Spirit.
“If you have the Spirit of God, the Spirit of God will lead you to which songs to do, what type of music to do, when to do your runs and your little riffs,” Clark says. “You know to kind of make the audience emotional and kind of get them into what you are doing, and to get them into the presence of God.”
Twinkie Clark has made a career of mixing artistry and ministry. Her fans seem to agree that it’s a divine combination.”
Check out why NPR named Twinkie Clark one the Top 50 Voices
The guys over at Indie Vision Music are known for putting together huge samplers filled with known and unknown bands. Last year they unleashed their first all “heavy” sampler called Songs To Slay Dragons Too, and this weekend the sequel to that sampler hit the net. The tracklisting will speak for itself, but if you want to know what is going on in the heavy Christian music scene, do yourself a favor and download this sucka!
1. Phinehas – I Am the Lion
2. Messengers – Judge (Courtesy of Facedown/Strike First Records)
3. With Life In Mind – King of Frauds (Courtesy of CI Records)
4. Close Your Eyes – The Body (Courtesy of Victory Records)
5. Gnashing of Teeth – Separate (Courtesy of Sancrosanct Records)
6. Hundredth – Desolate (Courtesy of MediaSkare Records)
7. Called to Arms – Vintage Pharisee (Courtesy of Tragic Hero Records)
8. The Gun Show – The Adegan System
9. Strengthen What Remains – Pathetic (Courtesy of On The Attack Records)
10. Where the Ocean Meets the Sky – We Are But Instruments (Courtesy of CI Records)
11. Fallstar – Hunters (Courtesy of Come & Live!)
12. Silence O Israel – Beware: Alexander the Coppersmith
13. Righteous Vendetta – The Dawning (Courtesy of Red Cord Records)
14. Centuries Apart – Malachi (My Messenger)
15. Cast Them To Ruin – Ocean Straight
16. I Am Alpha and Omega – The Bride (Courtesy of Come & Live!)
17. ForChristSake – Sleep
18. As Bold As Lions – Face of Reality
19. The Brigade – Teeth and Crowns
20. As Bold As Lions – Moving Forward
21. Mercy Screams – Thief In the Night
22. As Bold As Lions – The Anthem
23. Dependency – Fragile (Courtesy of Blood & Ink Records)
24. Sovereign Strength – Deliverance (Courtesy of MediaSkare Records)
25. Thin Ice – You Were There (Courtesy of Blood & Ink Records)
26. Sovereign Strength – Heartless (Courtesy of MediaSkare Records)
27. Debtor – Escape (Courtesy of Blood & Ink Records)
28. Sovereign Strength – The Suffering (Courtesy of MediaSkare Records)
29. Not One Is Upright – And They Were Likened Unto Dogs
30. Inlow – Ecclactide
31. Senseless Beauty – Fear and Loathing in Iowa City
32. Moshe Dayan – Arms of Desolation
33. Every Man For Himself – Te Mana Whakahaere (Autonomy) (Courtesy of Deadboy Records)
34. Divide the Sea – In Knowing, Triumph (Courtesy of Blood & Ink Records)
35. Milosny – Battle Line (Courtesy of Red Cord Records)
36. Awake the Suffering – Purities Walk Through The Vines (Courtesy of Raging Storm Records)
37. Before There Was Rosalyn – The Warrior (Courtesy of Victory Records)
38. Corpus Christi – Monuments (Courtesy of Victory Records)
39. Creations – Boom (P.O.D. Cover)
40. Clear Convictions – Justice From Heaven (On The Attack Records)
41. Saving Grace – Oaxaca (Courtesy of Deadboy & Strike First Records)
42. Second Thief– Perfection (Courtesy of Darkslate Records)
43. Auburn – Weary Bones and Watering Eyes (Demo) (Courtesy of Blue Duck Records)
44. Parallels – Patterns
UK Christian hip-hop artist Cadet has posted the video for his latest single, “Realise”. This a serious club banger,lots of bass and catchy hooks. I hope you dig it!
Amazon MP3 is having a huge sale of $5 digital albums this whole week. I waded through the 545 some odd albums and came up with this list of digital albums for sale from the artists we cover. There is a lot of good stuff on here, including a lot of albums that came out just this year. $5 isn’t bad either, considering a LOT of the albums are closer to ten songs than five, so its almost like paying 50 cents a song. Let me know if I missed anyone, here is the list:
Moby‘s latest’s, Destroyed, lands in stores on May 17th, see our Release Dates for 
Twinkie Clark was recently named one of the 50 greatest voices to ever grace this earth by NPR. A member of the famed gospel group, The Clark Sisters, Twinkie Clark has been amazing the Chruch going folks for 30 years. The entire list is being revealed slowly over the rest of this year but Twinkie Clark joins the likes of bluesman Howlin’ Wolf, Irish Tenor John McCormack and Ukrainian Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt.
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