Sights and Sounds: ASIA to release 'The Official Live Bootlegs Volume 1; elbow's stirring advance track 'Six Words'; new singles / videos from Color Theory and Ryan Levine

This has been a super exciting week for music news. Featured in this update are major announcements and/or new music from forthcoming releases featuring ASIA, elbow, Color Theory and Ryan Levine...Robert Kinsler

The Official Live Bootlegs Volume 1 Out on November 26th   Multi-platinum selling English supergroup ASIA are to release a 10CD boxset The Official Live Bootlegs Volume 1 through BMG Records on November 26, 2021.  There will also be a digital album (also called The Official Live Bootlegs Volume 1) featuring a selection of 24 tracks taken from the full boxset, out on the same day. Pre-order it here: ASIA THE OFFICIAL LIVE BOOTLEGS VOL 1

ASIA: Geoff Downes (The Buggles, YES, keyboards), Steve Howe (YES, guitars), Carl Palmer (Emerson, Lake & Palmer, drums) and John Wetton (King Crimson, UK, bass/vocals), took the world by storm with their eponymous debut album, globally the biggest-selling album of 1982, and the single Heat Of The Moment. The Official Live Bootlegs Volume 1 celebrates the huge appeal of the concert tours that followed ASIA’s first two albums in 1982 and 1983. The success continued following ASIA’s 25th anniversary reunion in 2006 and three more highly acclaimed albums. The slipcase boxset features  5 x 2CD concerts from 1982 (Buffalo, NY, USA), 1983 (Worcester, MA, USA), 2007 (São Paulo, Brazil), 2008 (Tokyo, Japan) and 2010 (London, UK).   “This historical collection represents some of our finest and most defining live moments,” says Geoff Downes, “from the very first ASIA tour in 1982 and the Alpha tour the following year through three of our many ‘Reunion’ shows. It was such a privilege to take ASIA’s music to these different continents and feel the warmth and support from fans all over the world. We hope this brings back great memories and inspires others to appreciate the music of ASIA”.  The sets for ASIA’s original 1980s tours featured only the band’s new music. For the ‘Reunion’ years tours, ASIA included heritage tracks from each of the band member’s pre-ASIA groups. The 2007 and 2008 concerts also feature the Wetton/Howe composition Ride Easy, a song omitted from the debut album that was issued as the B-side of Heat Of The Moment, and included in their later live repertoire as a thank you to their fans for their support over a quarter of a century. This the first time these recordings have been made officially available by ASIA and they are presented together in a superb collector’s edition boxset with original artwork by Roger Dean, who created all of ASIA’s album artwork.  ASIA, The Official Live Bootlegs, Volume 1 is available as a 10CD boxset and Digital Album on 26thNovember 2021 through BMG Records.

About ASIA ASIA was a true ‘supergroup’ pooling the talents of Geoff Downes, Steve Howe, Carl Palmer and John Wetton, who had already amassed tens of millions of record sales with their collective bands of the 70s. Leaving behind their progressive roots, ASIA embraced the commercial FM rock sound that dominated US airwaves and took that, and the new MTV video channel, by storm.  The single Heat Of The Moment was a world-wide monster smash and their eponymous 1982 debut album spent an incredible 9 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard chart as ASIA became the biggest selling album of the year and world tour dates sold out. A second album, Alpha, was released in 1983. The four original members reconvened in 2006 for a world tour, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of that incredible success, and the album Phoenix followed. While the members were still heavily involved in other projects they came together again to record Omega in 2010 and XXX in 2012, both albums were acclaimed by their faithful fans and supported by more world tours. Steve Howe stepped back from ASIA to concentrate on his work with YES and was absent for 2014’s Gravitas. Following this tour came the news of John Wetton’s treatment for cancer, a fight he sadly lost in 2017. FOR ALL THINGS ASIA, please visit:  originalasia.com elbow reveal second studio track titled "Six Words," taken from forthcoming album 'Flying Dream 1,' out Nov. 19, 2021 Watch the music video for "Six Words" HERE PRE-ORDER 'FLYING DREAM 1' OUT 11/19   elbow have shared a second track taken from their forthcoming studio album, ‘Flying Dream 1.’ ‘Six Words’ is a stunning love song and in true elbow tradition, is a complex rhythmical and melodic composition, both lyrically intense with fulsome rumination on the endless power of love to harness souls young and old as Guy Garvey explains:  “I can’t remember the exact genesis of the track, but it is definitely one of Craig’s. In some ways it’s familiar territory lyrically, it has similar sentiments to ‘Mirrorball’ but it draws heavily on my teenage years: the bottle green in the song is the colour of my school uniform and the six lanes is the traffic on the road to school in Prestwich. Though that six lanes line was something I originally wrote back in the early elbow days when I sat in The Cornerhouse people watching so it’s a double reminisce and a return to my love of writing about love. The musical revelation came when we heard the backing singers that now end the track. We had this pyramid of voices making something incredible that reminded me of the early classic Disney soundtracks. It was so powerful that we knew we had to throw the spotlight onto them so that is why they end the track.”   As with ‘The Seldom Seen Kid,’ the first track to be released from the album, ‘Six Words’ is accompanied by a film of the band recording the song, captured during the recording sessions for ‘Flying Dream 1’ at Brighton’s Theatre Royal. You can watch the film here.   ‘Six Words’ is also available on all streaming services   elbow’s ninth studio album, ‘Flying Dream 1’ will be released on November 19. Pre-Order/Save/Add HERE OFFICIAL WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM | YOUTUBE Color Theory returns with compelling original cut "The Limit" Watch the music video for "The Limit" HERE Listen or download "The Limit" HERE You're in a relationship with someone who wants a rival, an enemy, a fight. You feel like you've been here before, watching the threads of your friendship fray and unravel. You think to yourself, "Just let me go... I'm stretched to the limit." Make sure to listen to the amazing Brian Hazard-penned "The Limit." Ryan Levine releases new single and video, "I Miss The War" WATCH HERE   GOOD THINGS TO REMEMBER EP OUT NOVEMBER 19 October 15, 2021 – Los Angeles, CA – Today, singer and songwriter Ryan LeVineshares his new single and music video, “I Miss The War,” via BMG: LISTEN HEREand WATCH HERE. This is the latest offering from his upcoming debut EP, Good Things To Remember, out November 19.  “’I Miss The War’ feels like a confession,” Ryan shares about the emotive new track. “It admits, almost shamefully, how much power toxic relationships can have over you, even when you think you’ve moved on from them.” The new single arrives on the heels of the previously released tracks “Signs” and “You Don’t Hold The Cards Anymore.” Praising “Signs,” Grimy Goods wrote, “Hot new artist alert…Out of the song’s slowly trodding strums and drums emerges a crescendo of blisteringly woeful riffs that reaches the height of LeVine’s lucidly broken heart.” Glide Magazine said that Ryan “brings a tenaciously soulful approach to folk and root music,” and “showers us with his emotive vocals that spawn the low key experimental mood swings of The National up through Hozier.” At the end of 2018, Ryan LeVine’s life cracked down the center. His band of six years, Wildling, called it quits and his relationship with “the one,” fell apart. Like it always had been, songwriting was the only tool he knew to use as a means of processing the loss and confusion. This time however, he traded elaborate home demos for simple voice memos and focused a lot more on the songwriting rather than the production. Ryan started recording the EP in early 2020 at Boulevard Studios in Los Angeles and then connected with his co-producer Kevin Ratterman (My Morning Jacket, Ray LaMontagne) to finish the songs at Kevin’s home studio later that spring. The result was an introspective body of work which reveals a songwriter searching for answers. While he may not always find them, there is a resolving sense of peace that comes from the process. Photo credit: Harvey Hale

Travis return with new album '10 Songs' (October 9, 2020 on BMG)

A great song and super cool video - Travis is set to return with a new album titled '10 Songs' this fall! 

Drummer Neil Primrose and singer-guitarist Fran Healy at the Wiltern
in Los Angeles on Oct. 4, 2013. Photo: Drew A. Kelley 

I am a long-time fan of the band. Check out my glowing review of the band's November 2007 performance at House of Blues Anaheim here. Read my review of the band's 2013 performance at the Wiltern in Los Angeles here. The band performed at Coachella in April 2007, and I of course noted the band's winning performance in that recap that can be found here. Robert Kinsler

Travis Return With New Album 10 Songs

First Single “A Ghost” Comes With Video Created By Frontman Fran Healy And His Son In Isolation

Beloved Socttish band Travis are back with the first new music from their stunning ninth studio album 10 Songs - out October 9th on BMG. The first single from 10 Songs is “A Ghost”, which arrives with an impressively animated video directed and drawn by frontman Fran Healy, with his 14 year old son Clay leading the beautiful cinematography work - all done whilst in Covid-19 isolation.

Watch The Video For “A Ghost” HERE

Co-produced by both Fran and Robin Baynton (Coldplay, Florence & The Machine), and recorded at RAK Studios as 2019 turned into 2020, 10 Songs is an album about the way life comes at love and what love does to weather those challenges. It’s grown-up. There’s sizzling synergy in abundance, and many of it’s songs benefit from the almost psychic sense of mutual attunement that comes from being in a band whose line-up hasn’t changed in its entire collective lifetime.

There’s also inspired cameos to be found, including synth work from Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle, lap steel from Greg Leisz (Beck, Emmylou Harris, Bruce Springsteen) and vocals from Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles that came about from a chance exchange on Twitter.

It’s been twenty-five years since the four members of Travis first set foot in a Glaswegian rehearsal room. At various points along the trajectory between then and now, the band have sold millions of albums, they’ve been the subject of the award-winning feature length documentary Almost Fashionable and Fran has elicited acclaim from Paul McCartney, Elton John and Graham Nash – all songwriters whose ability to divine a timeless melody out of thin air has sustained them through the decades.

And today marks another new chapter in the band’s extraordinarily prolific and unflappable career. 10 Songs is yet another body of work that showcases Travis as one of the UK’s finest songwriting exports.

Of the intensive work that went into making the video for “A Ghost”, Fran says: "The video for ‘A Ghost’ started out as a mocked up picture of me and three ghosts playing the last chorus of the song in a deserted alleyway. It looked cool so I took that image and back engineered a story out of it. Just when everything was ready to shoot, the world went into lockdown, so we had this great song with no way to make a video. Frustrated and in an act of desperation, I decided to draw it. I did a test to calculate how long it might take me. 16 hours for each, 10 seconds of footage. It worked out that it would take around 30 days which landed exactly on the deadline date. So I drew and drew and drew and drew. 2,500 drawings later, it was done.” He continues: “One day, I was watching a sequence back and when it got to the end of what I had drawn, it flashed and went into live action. It looked great. This was the moment I realised I could shoot the mock up picture of me playing with my band of ghosts in the alleyway. This helped in 3 ways. 1. Filming the last 47 seconds would save me 10 days of drawing. 2. I could recruit my 14 year old son, Clay as the cameraman. He has a drone camera so could shoot it remotely and could use it as part of his school video project 3. Most importantly, we could film it socially distant.  It was the most bizarre video shoot I have ever worked on. You realise how important proximity is to getting things done when it's taken out of the equation. But we did it and it turned out great. Clay has to wait till we release the song to hand in his video project."

Travis are Fran Healy (guitar/vox), Andy Dunlop (guitar), Dougie Payne (bass) and Neil Primrose (drums).

10 Songs - Track Listing

Waving At The Window

The Only Thing (feat. Susanna Hoffs) 

Valentine

Butterflies

A Million Hearts

A Ghost

All Fall Down

Kissing In The Wind

Nina's Song

No Love Lost

10 Songs comes available as Standard CD, Heavyweight vinyl plus Deluxe 2CD and Deluxe 2LP (red and blue vinyl) including 10 Demos.  Pre-Order 10 Songs HERE.

For more information on all things Travis: travisonline.com

Steve Howe to release new solo album 'Love Is' on July 31, 2020

Just announced this morning - acclaimed and legendary guitar master Steve Howe (Yes, Asia) is set to release a new album this summer! Robert Kinsler

Steve Howe of Yes to release new solo album 'Love Is'

Out July 31, 2020 via BMG Records

Steve Howe
Photo credit: ©Will Ireland/Prog Magazine/Future Publishing

Legendary YES guitarist STEVE HOWE has announced he will release LOVE IS via BMG Records on July 31. LOVE IS marks HOWE's first solo album since the all-instrumental Time in 2011 and has a balance of five instrumental tracks and five songs.

 

The album will be available as a CD in a gatefold digi-sleeve with a 12-page booklet, and a black vinyl 180gm LP with a gatefold sleeve, liner notes and lyrics. 

 

Link to Steve Howe Official store pre-orders: https://SteveHowe.lnk.to/D2CPR

 

STEVE HOWE sings lead vocals and plays electric, acoustic and steel guitars, keyboards, percussion and bass guitar on the instrumentals, while Yes vocalist Jon Davison provides vocal harmonies and plays bass guitar on the vocal tracks. The album also features Dylan Howe on drums.

 

Many years in the making, LOVE IS brings together a consistently strong and polished listening experience, forging the very best from the writing and playing throughout the album. This may well be considered the real 'stand out' album of Howe's solo career. The instrumentals keep a highly progressive rock guitar style to the fore, with songs that explore stories of lives lived and lives only just begun. "Love Is A River" is the central longer song with several textural shifts, featuring a theme played on 12-string and steel guitars.

 

"I called the album LOVE IS because it hints at the central idea that that love is important but also love of the universe and the ecology of the world is very important," says Steve Howe. "Alexander Humboldt went around the world and recognized we are destroying the planet but that was 200 years ago! We are still destroying the planet and, I suppose, my songs show the yearning I have for the love of nature and how beauty, art and music all stem from nature. There is a theme about those things, love, beauty, ecology, nature and wonderful people.

 

"'Love Is A River' just seemed a very important track to me, a sort of quintessential track with lots of moods, lots of interesting things going on with steel guitars and acoustic guitars. Further tracks grew from time spent writing in my studio.

 

"'See Me Through' looks at the idea that we get through life by not driving ourselves that hard but attempting to achieve things with people who help you along the way, and 'Imagination' is dedicated to my granddaughter Zuni. It's about how I see some of the things she's experienced in her short seven years.

 

"I invited Jon Davison to sing harmonies with me and add bass on the songs. If he was singing on the songs I thought 'why doesn't he play bass' as well and it turned out nice. He's been with Yes for seven or eight years and he's a great guy, great performer and a great interpreter of Yes songs.

 

"I've been singing for years, mainly in harmony but I've sung lead on lots of my own albums before and I feel that, as I've got older, I've got a grip on that and, hopefully, it's improved over the years."

 

The album includes many distinctive STEVE HOWE signatures among the instrumental tracks from the delicate beauty of "Fulcrum," "Beyond The Call" and "Pause For Thought" to upbeat rock, "The Headlands," and the jazz-tinged "Sound Picture."

 

"The instrumentals are like a mood, a place I went to one day, thought this is nice and then I develop that to a point where it's a finished track. There might be key ingredients that I thought about using musically that I like, that I'm drawn to, and then developing them into something." LOVE IS was written, engineered and produced by STEVE HOWE with further engineering and mixing by Curtis Schwartz. "I write in my own studio and then go to see Curtis in his studio," Howe explains. "We expand the tracks and put them on Pro Tools and everything starts to be possible. At some point, probably around 2 years ago, Dylan came down to Curtis's studio and we recorded the drums on some of the tracks. I could see a balance of five instrumental tracks and five songs and there was a feeling that it was an album, sitting there, looking at me."

 

The track listing for Steve Howe's LOVE IS album is:

1 Fulcrum *

2 See Me Through

3 Beyond The Call *

4 Love Is A River

5 Sound Picture *

6 It Ain't Easy

7 Pause For Thought *

8 Imagination

9 The Headlands *

10 On The Balcony

* instrumental

Formats:

CD Catalogue No. 538608592

Gatefold digi leeve with 12 page booklet with liner notes by Steve Howe & lyrics

LP - Catalogue Number - 538608601

180gm Black vinyl in Gatefold sleeve with liner notes by Steve Howe & lyrics

 

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