Tel Aviv band Buffalos is something to put under your radar.
This five piece band, who released their eponymous album last year, has received fantastic reviews and their debut was the star of all sorts of ‘best of 2009′ lists in Israel.

They produce mixture of country-blues-grunge-theatrical elements, which, if pushed to it, I’d describe it as the meeting place of Calexico, Tom Waits, Queens Of The Stone Age and Nick Cave.

Drummer Ran and vocalist/lead guitarist Omer have been playing together for almost 15 years in past bands like Lady Macbeth and Jet Sam, while Dan (bass) and Eyal (guitar) are adding depths and colors respectively, to form a tight, top form band.
This group is lead by female vocalist Sivan ‘Bella’ , who’s easily one of the most amazing voices I’ve heard in recent years. She’s powerful, yet gentle not tempestuous. She’s dramatic and provides a fantastic delivery to her strong lyrics, yet keeps away from cliche pathos and over-drama.

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STR Mixtape : Malfunction

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Sean Smith is an excellent guitarist and a visionary composer, in the field of steel-string guitar music.
He proved it over the years with several releases, though his talent was exposed to the world much thanks to the fantastic Tompkins Square compilation Berkley Guitar (this year they released the sequel – Beyond The Berkly Guitar).
In both compilations, Tompkins took the stars of the west coast acoustic guitar scene, and along Smith they included tracks by Matt Baldwin, Adam Snider and others, and the album documents in real time that west coast bubbling scene.

Smith is one of those guitarists I love so much. The kind that can mix their influences (Takoma school of music) and pour their inside world without risking themselves of being tagged as imitators. The last C Joynes album is just that (not an imitator! An innovator!)
In 2007, Smith had released Eternal on vinyl, 300 copies made and the record was gone. Lucky for all of us, the good guys at Strange Attractors Audio House, reissued it on CD, as a part of their Resurrection Series, so now it’s available again for everyone.
Disclosure for those who don’t read this blog often – I will have my album released by the label in this series, next month.

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Good news for Calexico fans out there.
The band had teamed up with Cash Music, a free musicians application company, and is giving away a free recording of their 2009 show in Nuremberg.
As explained in Cash’s website, this is not a b-class soundboard recording, but a true profession channels mix of the highest caliber.
For musicians – I strongly recommend you to check what Cash has to give, especially their new product Flower,  and for non-musicians  – just grab yourself a copy of this fantastic recoridng.

Here’s an example
Calexico – Two Silver Trees (Nuremberg 2009)

Free Music Archives (FMA) is an amazing website that hosts hundred thousands mp3 files from any musical genre you can imagine, that are allowed for a free download under Creative Commonce License.
It is the creation of the fabulous people of WFMU radio (aka – the best radio station in the world), and it’s a collaboration with other radio stations that contributes to the archive.
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Forever Changes Is one of the most important albums of all times. If you’re reading this post, you probably know it by now. If you don’t, I strongly suggest you’ll stop reading now, go to the store and get yourself a copy of this masterpiece by Love.

The first three records by Love documented a fascinating development of a band, that started as a folk-rock/garage, moved to dreamy pop and ended with the explosion of eclectism, in the shape of their masterpiece Forever.
First band to mix blacks and whites, Love wasn’t an ordinary band in any way. Aside from their fast musical growth, they revolved around one Arthur Lee, a controversial guy perhaps, but nevertheless a genius. Love was primary the musicians around Lee, but the importance of his songwriting partner Brian McLean cannot be diminished. Lee’s freaked out personality was a necessity for Love’s songwriting, even if it meant aiming a gun on your neighbor (he did ask Arthur to take down the volume on his stereo system, after all).

After three records, Arthur moved to different directions, experimented less with folk and psych and sticked to hard rock. He assembled a new band under the name Love and released two records Four Sail and false Start. In 1972, he released a solo album called Vindicator and after that released Reel To Reel and Black Beauty.
Before all that, he recorded an album in 1971 called Dear You. It was never released due to contractual issues with Sony/Columbia. Years after, Mark Lin, his agent, recalled the unreleased recordings with the label and asked them to dig their vaults. The tapes were found and 39 years too late, Love Lost, who started as Dear You was released.
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