'Lost Highway will release Momofuku from Elvis Costello'

[migdd]

Stella Hurt made today's playlist at www.rollingstone.com. . .

http://www.rollingstone.com/listen

[spooky girlfriend]

Well la-tee-freakin'-dah. Rolling Stone, huh?

[johnfoyle]

Win copies of this album -

http://www.filter-mag.com/index.php?id=109&c=contest

[taramasalata]

Hi there
the German "Rolling Stone Magazin" (which sucks a lot less compared to the "original") gives it a 4.5 stars (out of 5) in its june 08 issue
I will post a translation any day soon whenever I find some time to do so...

http://rollingstone.de/content/tontraeg ... monats.htm

Die „richtige“ Version dieses Albums sei auf zwei Stücke schwarzes Plastik gepresst, schreibt Elvis Costello auf seiner Website. „Momofuku“ erschien daher zunächst nur auf Doppelvinyl (inkl. Downloadcode). Die gut 47 Minuten hätten zwar auch auf eine einzelne Platte gepasst, aber der Künstler wollte maximale Soundqualität. So mutet die schöne Idee, mit einer klassischen LP-Veröffentlichung noch ein letztes Mal die Kunstform Album zu feiern, am Ende wie ein spleeniger HiFi-Fetischismus an. High fidelity – can you hear me?

„Momofuku“ trägt den Namen des Erfinders der Instant-Nudelsuppe, denn „all we had to do to make this record was add water“. Eigentlich hatte Costello nur bei einigen Songs der Rilo Kiley-Sängerin Jenny Lewis mitsingen wollen, dann wurde daraus eine Session, bei der neben Lewis Imposters-Bassist Davey Faragher Songwriter Jonathan Rice, Dave Scher von den Beachwood Sparks, Tennessee Thomas (Tochter von Pete) und schließlich alle Imposters mitspielten.

Dass Elvis Costello nicht genügend gute Songs auf Lager hat, musste man noch nie befürchten. Wenn er mal scheiterte, dann an zu großer Ambition. Doch dafür war dieses Mal gar keine Zeit. „Momofuku“ ist der musikalisch direkteste Costello seit „Brutal Youth“. Und wie damals wirft er sich mit Verve in längliche Narrationen und brachiale Melodik. Doch die amerikanisch-beseelten Imposters (der Bass!) sind variabler als einst die britisch-bissigen Attractions, und die Mitmusiker erweitern das klangliche Spektrum noch um einige Farben. So hat „No Hiding Place“ zu Beginn zwar die Kratzigkeit von „Blood And Chocolate“, doch die Harmonien der „Vocal Supergroup“ um Jenny Lewis sorgen für den erlösenden Pop-Moment. Die Sex-&-Crime-Story „American Gangster Time“ kommt da kompromissloser, die Imposters im Crazy Horse-Modus, und Steve Nieve holt die alte „Pump It Up“-Orgel raus. Pete und Tennessee Thomas evozieren auf „Turpentine“ die Polyrhythmik von „When I Was Cruel“, psychedelische Gitarren durchkreuzen himmlische Harmonien, und man zählt seine zehn liebsten Costello-Songs durch und schaut, ob da noch Platz ist für diesen hier.

Einmal umdrehen, und es folgen der leichte, urkomische Bossa Nova „Harry Worth“, der federnde Shuffle „Skin & Bone“ und die erhabene Ballade „Flutter & Wow“ – Costello zwischen Allen Toussaint und Van Morrison. „Stella Hurt“ zeigt die Imposters zu Beginn der dritten Seite auf Attractions-Spuren, ca. „Trust“, „Mr. Feathers“ paart Kinks-Lakonie mit „Revolver“-Harmonien, das rührende „My Three Sons“ ist Costellos „Forever Young“. Die Träne, die man da verdrückt, muss man gar nicht erst wegwischen, denn auf Seite vier drosselt Costello das Tempo, nimmt sich Zeit für große Emotionen: beim in vollem Country-Rock-Ornat betörend zurechtgemachten „Song With Rose“, das er mit Rosanne Cash schrieb, und der mit Loretta Lynn verfassten filigranen Stilübung „Pardon Me Madam, My Name Is Eve“. Am Ende kehrt Costello mit dem furiosen Beat von „Go Away“ zurück an die Merseyside. „But she won’t need possessing/ Just undoing and undressing.“ Der größtmögliche Spaß, den man vollständig bekleidet haben kann. Jetzt auch auf CD.

Maik Brüggemeyer

[johnfoyle]

Latest U.S. sales -

#175 Elvis Costello - Momofuku [3,747 -37.2%, 24,441 total]

[pophead2k]

It doesn't appear as though people are racing out from those Police gigs and buying Momofuku! No wonder he's tired of putting out albums......

[verbal gymnastics]

Well if he's starting his shows before the scheduled time then the punters won't have had chance to have heard the new stuff. Especially if they're queueing to buy their tour T-shirts, mugs, commemorative hampers etc

[johnfoyle]

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/ ... age_of_mp3

Vinyl Returns in the Age of MP3

LP and turntable sales grow as fans find warmer sound in classic format
DAVID BROWNE

Posted Jun 12, 2008 2:00 PM



For his 19th birthday, Simon Hamburg wanted only one present: a turntable for his dorm room at the University of Southern Mississippi. His father bought him a portable $69 model, and Hamburg's older brother chipped in LPs by Simon and Garfunkel and the Who. "Listening to 'Baba O'Riley' on vinyl is always better than listening to 'Baba O'Riley' on anything else," Hamburg says. "You can hear every instrument. It sounds stupid, but it's like you're feeling the music. You're part of it."

As CD sales continue to decline and MP3s are traded without thought, the left-for-dead LP is staging a comeback. In 2007, according to Nielsen SoundScan, nearly 1 million LPs were bought, up from 858,000 in 2006. Based on to-date sales for 2008, that figure could jump to 1.6 million by year's end. (According to the Recording Industry Association of America, CD shipments dropped 17.5 percent during the same 2006-07 period.) Sales of turntables — which tumbled from 1.8 million in 1989 to a paltry 275,000 in 2006, according to the Consumer Electronics Association — rebounded sharply last year, when nearly half a million were sold.

From Bruce Springsteen's Magic and the Raconteurs' Consolers of the Lonely to Cat Power's Jukebox and Portishead's Third, it's now possible to buy vinyl versions of many major new releases at retailers like Best Buy, Amazon and indie record stores. And artists are making their preferences for vinyl known. Before releasing Consolers, the Raconteurs announced that they "recommend hearing it on vinyl." In April, Elvis Costello and the Imposters' Momofuku arrived first on LP, though it included a coupon for a free digital download (the CD version arrived weeks later). "Is it a revolution?" says Luke Lewis, president of Costello's label, Lost Highway. "Fuck, no. But our beliefs have been validated a little bit — not to mention we're making a couple more bucks. It's hard to do that now in the record business, you know."


"Everybody feels last year was a watershed year," says Cris Ashworth, owner of United Record Pressing, the Nashville plant that's one of the country's largest and few remaining. (Around a dozen exist now, down from more than twice that in the Eighties.) When he took over the business in 1989, Ashworth made only a little over $1 million in profit and barely had 10 employees. Today, he employs over 50 and profits have more than quadrupled, thanks to a surge in jobs that included Costello's LP along with pressings of Nine Inch Nails' Year Zero, Ryan Adams' Easy Tiger and independent-label products. "My son was very worried for 10 years," Ashworth says. "He kind of looked at me and shook his head and said, 'Dad, you just ain't livin'.' Now he says, 'Well, maybe Dad's a little bit smarter than I thought he was.'"

Despite the uptick, vinyl remains a niche market. Most new releases, indie or major, sell between 2,000 and 10,000 copies; recent bestsellers include Radiohead's In Rainbows (13,000) and Bob Dylan's 2004 Blonde on Blonde reissue (25,000). The possibilities of future growth are limited: As Matador general manager Patrick Amory says, "There's definitely a ceiling." And thanks to higher fuel prices (oil is used to manufacture plastic vinyl, and LPs are shipped by truck) and the scarcity of pressing plants, an LP can cost as much as $4.50 per unit to manufacture, compared to roughly a dollar for a CD. "There are still reasons not to do vinyl," says Mac McCaughan of Merge Records, which has seen an increase in sales of vinyl releases by Arcade Fire and Spoon. "It's more expensive, it's more complicated, it takes longer. We try not to lose money, but we probably are."

Although technological advances (like the CD) seriously wounded the LP, new technology is now playing a part in its resurgence. Old LPs can be converted to MP3s thanks to a new breed of turntables equipped with a USB port. Numark, one of the leading manufacturers of these models, produced them for club DJs and was surprised when the model took off; the company recently shipped its millionth unit.

Also abetting vinyl's homecoming is a growing disillusionment with CD and MP3 sound. The CD has long been known for its clean but overly bright (sometimes grating) audio. "With vinyl, the range is from accurate to warmer" when it comes to reproducing the original source material, says renowned mastering engineer Bob Ludwig, who has worked with everyone from Springsteen to Nirvana. "With digital, it's totally the opposite: accurate to brighter. The brightness in the digital domain is a sound our ears don't seem to like that much, whereas people don't seem to be bothered by the slight loss of top-end you might get with vinyl." (Ludwig, like others, does separate mastering sessions for CDs and LPs.) The compressed audio heard in MP3s has only exacerbated the trend in audio degradation. "It's taking 90 percent of the music and basically throwing it out," says Ludwig. "It takes the bad part of digital and makes it even worse."

Assuming a record is pressed under optimum conditions and played on a high-end system, vinyl can restore some of those missing sonic properties. When the Doors' Ray Manzarek listened to recent high-grade reissues of the band's original studio albums, he was stunned. "On 'Light My Fire,' the guitar and organ solos are like, 'Yeah, that's it — that's the way they're supposed to sound,'" Manzarek says. "Vinyl has a warmth and crispness without the edginess of CD."

There's also something less technical lurking behind vinyl's mini-renaissance. Whether it's inspecting a needle for dust or flipping the record over at the end of a side, LPs demand attention. And for a small but growing group, those demands aren't a nuisance. "There's nothing like putting the needle into the groove of a record," says country singer Shelby Lynne. "It's about as real as you can get. You got your vinyl, your weed, your friends, and while you're rollin', they're pickin' out another record. We're all taking music for granted because it's so easy to push a button. I mean, come on — music should be fun."

[From Issue 1054 — June 12, 2008]

[MOJO]

Where are all the radical hippies when you need them? A revolution only starts when people actively participate in making a change and believe in a change. I guess you could call it a movement, then. Moving and following the money without stopping to think about how a change might actually work in the favor of free enterprise or better business practices. In this chase, more rights/money for the artists. I will lighten up, now.. Toodles!

[johnfoyle]

Contest for copy of cd/vinyl/poster/stencil-

http://www.scenepointblank.com/contests/34

[johnfoyle]

'fuku has a bit of presence in a shop in Vienna, Austria -

[bambooneedle]

^ Can there possibly be a thread called 'relatively insignificant EC tidbits' or something (maybe a sticky) for stuff such as this?

[migdd]

Yeah, seeing Momofuku on prominent display in a record store could almost be posted in the "Elvis When You Least Expect It" thread!

[bambooneedle]

At least that wouldn't induce an unexpected seratonin drop.

Do I really expect my helpful suggestion to lead to any consideration or action? Not really.

[verbal gymnastics]

Yeah, seeing Momofuku on prominent display in a record store could almost be posted in the "Elvis When You Least Expect It" thread!

It's only on prominent display because John put it there! What you don't see is the scene 30 seconds later when he got chased out of the store.