Archive for July, 2011

Meet In Town 2011

by karmanet on July 27, 2011 in Concert Review, Contest, Uncategorized with No comments

Meet In Town (MIT) is probably one of the most famous and popular festival of electronic music here in Rome. Set in one of the best venues for live music, Auditorium Parco della Musica, this year’s edition of the festival spanned over the course of 2 music-packed nights and took over the entire space of the venue (comprised on many different ourdoors and indoors rooms).

We have our frestyl reporter Alice Vivona telling us about her experience of MIT (in Italian). Alice has studied cinema in Rome and writes about music and cinema; she also has her own blog. Let’s see what she has to say.

Meet In Town, Rome 22-23 luglio: recensione e foto di Alice Vivona

Ci sono idee che vanno seguite e in cui bisogna credere: pensare ad esempio che un luogo concepito per ospitare prevalentemente concerti di musica classica e ad accogliere gente in abito da sera, potesse anche essere il luogo adatto a contenere suoni digitali, seguiti da persone che normalmente indossano abiti più casual. Gli organizzatori del Meet in Town ci hanno creduto per diversi anni in questa idea, e hanno prima realizzato un festival molecolare: nomi emergenti o già importanti come Mouse on Mars o Animal Collective erano chiamati a suonare per una serata, solitamente una Domenica. Nel Teatro Studio dell’Auditorium di Roma, la prima saletta che ha scardinato la rigida struttura del luogo; c’erano posti in piedi e bar interno alla sala. Continue reading →

qual’è la tua canzone da viaggio preferita?

by karmanet on July 26, 2011 in Contest, Uncategorized with No comments

Ed eccoci di nuovo a pubblicare “yet another contest”, ma questa volta non nostro. Recentemente frestyl si sta internazionalizzando sempre di più anche grazie alla comunità di fanatici musicali italiani espatriati; tra questi, il nostro Riccardo di Figurehead sta contribuendo a segnalare agli utenti di frestyl una serie di interessanti concerti estivi a Londra. Presto pubblicheremo anche delle recensioni che Riccardo ha scritto per il suo blog e che vuole condividere con noi (che siamo sempre aperti a collaborazioni interessanti!).

A parte ciò, il nostro corrispondente Figurehead ci ha anche segnalato un contest di HostelBookers ponendolo in un modo che ci ha incuriosito. Praticamente, sul blog italiano di HostelBookers gli utenti sono invitati a segnalare la propria canzone preferita da viaggio (entro il 3 agosto), e potranno vincere 2 biglietti per un festival musicale a scelta (del valore di 300€!), un iPod Touch 32 GB e 50€ in voucher iTunes. Non male, eh?

Il contest è certo interessante per gli appassionati di musica, anche se scegliere “una” canzone è certo un challenge non da poco. Ma il challenge ancora più interessante che suggeriva Riccardo è l’opportunità di dare spazio e rilievo ai musicisti emergenti anziché sempre ai soliti big da classifica.

Ed è per questo che ha coinvolto anche noi nella promozione di questo contest. Perché noi amiamo la musica emergente e indipendente, è quella che ascoltiamo, ed è quella che ascoltano anche i nostri fan. E’ quella che vogliamo sentir suonare, ed appoggiare con dedizione e costanza attraverso il nostro servizio frestyl.

Dunque, le dieci canzoni finaliste del contest di HostelBookers verranno pubblicate sulla loro pagina Facebook e a loro volta votate fino ad arrivare alla selezione della “migliore canzone da viaggio” secondo gli italiani. Chi vogliamo vedere in classifica? Non le canzoni da top 10 di radio e tv spero…

Diamoci da fare a suggerire la nostra musica preferita, e perchè no, se vincessimo anche 2 biglietti per un festival a scelta o un iPod Touch non sarebbe neanche così brutto in fondo…

YACHT @ Roma Vintage

by karmanet on July 25, 2011 in Concert Review, Music with No comments

Being a fan of electronic music and electro-pop I’ve know Portland-based band The Blow for quite some years now. Indeed, their last album was 2006′s Paper Television, which I’ve been listening quite a few times as it had a couple of those catchy songs you can hardly get out of your head (lke Parentheses and Pardon Me). While I was waiting to see what was coming out next from the band, I discovered that one of the band members (there’s 2 of them!), Jona Bechtolt, had a side project called YACHT which was at some stage revamped and got attention in 2009 thanks to its album See Mystery Lights.

I couldn’t quite get into this album somehow despite it being quite close to my music taste. But I did notice quite a change compared to the more chilled-out, a bit emo at times, project The Blow. YACHT was way more upbeat and playful, even if, at least for me, not as catchy. This was till I saw YACHT playing live at SXSW last year among about 100 other bands and I was, let’s say, more than impressed. And it is harder to make an impression when you hear so many bands over the course of four super-intense days. In short, YACHT were even more playful and upbeat on stage, they were engaging, making you dance and sing along, and seemed to have fun themselves which is a bonus.

YACHT @ Roma Vintage

Continue reading →

Introducing The Trononator: food + Max/MSP = music

by karmanet on July 22, 2011 in Frestyl Development, Frestyl News, Misc News, Uncategorized, Workshop with No comments

We’ve mentioned in a previous post that the frestyl team was going to run a workshop on Max/MSP in Lecce, called “Play With Your Food”, as part of the activities run by the Stramfest team (which organizes an upcoming electronic music festival in Salento). We chose to teach how to use Max/MSP by showing how you can use sounds related to food to make music. You wonder why, and the answer ain’t hard: Digital Food is the theme of Streamfest 2011!

Anyway, it turned out that the workshop was postponed til this coming fall, but it’s all prepared and ready and we’ve just released the documentation for it. Our fabulous developer and musician PJ Brindisi has built a series of modules for Max/MSP that will allow you to learn about how the software works and what you can do with it, in order to create audio applications. So you should check it out if you’re: a geek and like to make electronic music, a VJ or/and DJ and want to learn a new tool for live performances, a musician that knows about computers and wants to make electronic music, a person who loves food and music (just kiddin’).

Continue reading →

New partner: AnnoZero Live

by karmanet on July 21, 2011 in Frestyl News, Partnership with No comments

When you’re a new Internet service, it’s easy to spot straight away those people in the target market that have acknowledged and are taking advantage of the potential of the web as a promotional tool. In the music industry, here in Italy, a few players are relying more and more on Internet services to promote their events, while the majority is still mainly relying on traditional channels (local advertisement, posters and flyers and so on). We’ve discovered that event promoters are particularly active online and often use social media, try out new services, and have a pretty thorough understanding of how the Internet works (and believe me, it’s not so trivial!).

So among frestyl‘s power users are a wide number of music event promoters, and we’re very thankful to them as they contribute to making it an interesting platform for music fans as well. And among these, one of our early adopters was AnnoZero Live, a project that focuses on emerging Italian musicians and organizes events where they can play and gain visibility. On their about page they state that they “strongly believe that the successful spreading of any kind of content can only be achieved by accepting and understanding that the means and style of communication are everchanging“. And we do strongly support that!

Continue reading →

Vinci i Crookers @ Fregene e i The Thermals @ Padova!

by karmanet on July 20, 2011 in Contest, Frestyl News, Partnership with No comments

Eccoci tornati con un paio di concorsi super HOT.

Il 28 luglio sbarcano a Fregene i Crookers, accompagnati dalla Claypool’s Family e uno stuolo di altri Dj romani e non. Una festa che suona davvero imperdibile per chi è ancora in città e ha voglia di scappare. Pool party, beach party e tanta buona musica. Sounds cool right?

Per festeggiare vi offriamo un biglietto per l’evento. Vincerlo è facilissimo basta:
- registrarsi su frestyl, se non l’avete ancora fatto
- fare l’attend all’evento su frestyl

Continue reading →

44 Of The Best Italian Musicians You’ve Never Heard Of

by deadroxy on July 19, 2011 in Artist Review, Music with No comments

At frestyl we know that it can be incredibly hard break out as a musician in your own country, let alone cross national borders. It’s part of our mission to help artists bring their music abroad and to help fans discover awesome local music as they travel the world. Because so many people have been asking us what the Italian music scene is like, we put together a sampler of 44 of our favorite Italian musicians to help “foreigners” get an idea of how amazing this country sounds. Here is the track list of frestyl’s homebrew sampler 44 Musicisti Italiani:

1. The Record’s : We All Need To Be Alone
2. My Awesome Mixtape : Me And The Washing Machine
3. Boom Da Bash : ‘Till Di End
4. Mannarino : Serenata Lacrimosa
5. LE-LI : In The Backyard
Continue reading →

DANCITY 2011: reporting back from the future

by karmanet on July 19, 2011 in Concert Review, Contest, Partnership with No comments

We’re back with the reviews of Italian festivals by our frestyl reporters. This time we have Dancity, a 2-day marathon of electronic music that took place in the city centre Foligno, Umbria (1-2 July). We’ve already talked planty about the festival before it happened (as they’re our partners and because we like them of course!) and we’ve even interviewed them.

And now it’s the time to find out what happened during the festival, where dozens of outstanding musicians played in different scenic locations of the town, such as historical buildings and deconsecrated churches. Us of the frestyl crew were there and experienced it all, but we will now see the festival from the perspective of our frestyl reporter Davide Angelilli. Davide is a University student, he’s an electronic music fanatic and organizes events in Rome with his collective DayC aSocial. So let’s read his review of the festival.

 

DANCITY Festival, 1-2 luglio 2011. Recensione e foto di Davide Angelilli.

DANCITY. Chi si ferma è perduto!

Ciò che conta del Dancity, ciò che realmente resta è la sensazione di avere assistito a un festival di alta qualità musicale organizzato da giovani. Da giovani! In Italia non si vedono più! Sembrano spariti tutti, come gli abitanti di Foligno il pomeriggio poche ore prima dell’inizio, causa diluvio. Io, a bere birra dentro un bar mentre guardo la strada sotto la pioggia e penso di ritrovarmi in una location che profuma di passato. Ha smesso di piovere, mi dirigo all’Auditorium di Santa Caterina. E tutto comincia a profumare di futuro.  Sì perché il futuro lo immaginiamo tutti un pò strambo e il festival di Foligno è tutto meno che normale, è strambo.

Continue reading →

SOLUZIONI SEMPLICI FESTIVAL: NADA & JOAN AS POLICE WOMAN. TAKE TWO.

by karmanet on July 15, 2011 in Concert Review, Contest, Frestyl News, Partnership with No comments

And here comes the last review of Soluzioni Semplici Festival, of the last day (5th July) featuring Nada and Joan As Police Woman. Like for the first day of the festival, for this concert we have back to back Giulia Trapuzzano and Giuseppe Zingaro, whose review is below. We’ve already introduced Giuseppe, so if you can’t remember read his review of Brunori SAS and Le Luci Della Centrale Elettrica! This time, Giuseppe has joined forces with Rosy Romano of 06live, who’s been so kind to lend us some of the photos she took of that night.

This was all part of a little experiment we did for the Soluzioni Semplici Festival. Together with the organizers, we decided to choose 2 frestyl reporters per night, in order to give us different views on the same concerts. We hope you’ve enjoyed the reviews. We like them all! And with the new features of the blog, you can now share the reviews and tweet them out. So go nuts!

 

Soluzioni Semplici Festival – Day 5: Nada & Joan As Police Woman. Recensione di Giuseppe Zingaro. Foto di Rosy Romano.

Tra un semaforo e l’altro rischio di farmi investire. Ma un centauro con una missione è più forte del banale traffico metropolitano. Fiero e deciso, inseguo il tramonto a bordo del mio motorino scassato, direzione Casa del Jazz. Sta per cominciare l’ultimo appuntamento di Soluzioni Semplici Festival. Bisogna essere puntuali ad un evento simile. È la serata conclusiva, la più importante, l’unica con un ospite internazionale. Joan As Police Woman è fenomenale, non ho fatto altro che ascoltare i suoi dischi durante il pomeriggio. Mi chiedo quali sorprese riserverà dal vivo, quando concluderà la kermesse con lo spessore che trapela dai suoi lavori.

Continue reading →

SOLUZIONI SEMPLICI FESTIVAL: NADA & JOAN AS POLICE WOMAN. TAKE ONE.

by karmanet on July 14, 2011 in Concert Review, Contest, Frestyl News, Partnership with No comments

We’re getting closer to the end of the reviews marathon for Soluzioni Semplici Festival. Here comes the first review of the last day of the festival (5th July), featuring Nada and Joan As Police Woman. By frestyl reporter Giulia Trapuzzano, who has already written for us twice before (reviews of Valentina Lupi and Marta Sui Tubi, and Brunori SAS and Le Luci Della Centrale Elettrica). Yes we do like her, we’ll be honest.

Soluzioni Semplici Festival – Day 5: Nada & Joan As Police Woman. Recensione e foto di Giulia Trapuzzano

Quando ero bambina e studiavo musica mi piacevano Marvin Gaye, Jeff Buckley, Stewie Wonder e James Brown. Mi dicevano che la black music non era roba per ragazze, che se mi fossi impegnata con tutta me stessa sarei diventata una brava pianista e che magari, imparando a cantare, avrei potuto comporre della buona musica leggera. Ma se hai i diavoli blu da piccola, te li trascini dietro tutta la vita. Continue reading →

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