Director's I'll Wait For Sound Release Dates Announced
0 comments Posted by musicunderfire at 4/16/2009
Highlighted as one of our 20 groups to watch in 2009, Director announced several months ago that work on their newest work was in the refining stage. Titled I'll Wait For Sound, the album certainly has many jittery hands awaiting it as the group's previous work, We Thrive On Big Cities, rivaled The Killers for the top spot in the UK charts in 2006.
The release date in Ireland will be May 8 and the first single, "Sing It Without A Tune" will prelude the release on May 1. Other release dates include:
May 8 (digital release on iTunes) - Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Greece, The Netherlands, Italy, Finland, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, Portugal and Denmark
August 3 - UK, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore
September 21 (physical and digital) - the rest of Europe and any other unnamed countries
Director prepared for their new music while staying above a bar in Dublin before hitting the road to LA where they then recorded during October and November of last year with producer Brad Wood (Ben Lee, Pete Yorn, Say Anything). Their single "Sing It Without A Tune" can be found streaming on their website.
We have the tracklisting for the new album and initial show dates, so get ready.
MP3: Director - Come With A Friend (buy)
MP3: Director - Play Pretend
Also, the initial show dates (not touring dates) revolve around Ireland, as you can see below.
4/18/09 Pumphouse Kilkenny, IRE
4/26/09 The Olympia Theatre Dublin, IRE
5/3/09 Breakers Portlaoise, IRE
5/22/09 The Button Factory, IRE
5/23/09 Cyprus Avenue Cork, IRE
5/28/09 Leixlip Festival Courtyard Leixlip, IRE
5/30/09 The Granary Killarney, IRE
Tracklisting
1. Play Pretend
2. Don't Think I'll Know
3. Sing It Without A Tune
4. Laser Point
5. I'll Wait For Sound
6. Moment To Moment
7. You See
8. Hold Up Now
9. At What Point
10. Can't Go Home
Top 20 Artists To Look Forward To In 2009 (Part 2)
6 comments Posted by musicunderfire at 12/27/2008
Our conclusion to the artists you can't miss in 2009 continues. If you missed our first 10, head here. Once again, enjoy.
Mute Math
For the boys from New Orleans, the road ahead is well lit. Two years after their self-titled debut album hit stores and flocks of new fans clung to "Typical", Mute Math have once again been drawn to the spotlight with their song "Spotlight", which features on the the Twilight soundtrack.
Paul Meany on the keytar and wobbly Rhodes piano certainly sparked our interest when we saw them live in early '06, but the strong supporting cast of Darren King (drums) Greg Hill (guitar) and Roy Mitchell-Cárdenas (bass) places Mute Math on a must-mention and must-see act for '09.
Bell X1
Bell X1 blew the socks off of thousands when they released Flock in 2005 inside their homeland of Ireland. Then they released Flock in 2006 and 2007 in Europe and the U.S. to the renewed joy of many others.
Just last week we mentioned their upcoming album Blue Lights on the Runway which is slated for release on March 3. Four years of writing and perfecting this already enamoring sound should draw some more smiles from eager listeners.
Coldplay
Every year Coldplay has hurdles to clear so that the orchestrated music they create doesn't receive bad reviews. Since they broke onto the scene 10 years ago, the Londoners couldn't have stayed firmer at the top of the rock scene.
Although gaps in albums have occurred in the group's history, live shows across the world and that ever-burning desire to hear new material will keep the group on top of their game. Plus, Viva La Vida is hardly over despite the Prospekt's March EP which was supposedly cleaning up from the album.
Video: Coldplay - Jingle Bells (live at O2 in London)
Delorentos
To no ardent MUF reader's surprise, the Dublin bunch of the Delorentos are hot on the radar of the music industry's finest.
2008 provided some readjusting for the group as they fiddled with labels and the 'making-it-big' syndrome. They have expressed plans to release a full-length fixture in the first half of 2009 which could be even more interesting depending of which label decides to step in. We have the full scoop here.
Beirut
Every time the conglomerate Beirut comes together to record, the results turn heads.When Gulag Orkestar launched in 2006 it ascended above the clouds and coasted its sweet melody to an international audience whom welcomed it as it should have been welcomed. 2007 marked The Flying Club Cup and another classic. With a somewhat silent 2008 from Beirut, we look forward to the big third album that sets them to another level of recognition.
MP3: Beirut - A Sunday Smile (buy)
Broken Social Scene
The influence of Toronto-based indie icons Broken Social Scene mixes well with any indie rock fan's collection. Built around the idea that each album is a solo project has enabled their sound to
remain eclectic as well as manufacturable from year to year without losing any edge.
Most recently BSS released Brendan Cumming's Something For All Of Us..., which continues this individualistic approach the group has designed. Any time this group of talented artists release a new album, eager people will listen, including MUF.
MP3: Broken Social Scene - Hit the Wall (buy)
Video: Broke Social Scene - Churches Under the Stars
Pela
Hospital trips for Billy McCarthy, canceled tour dates and eventually memorable live shows highlighted 2008 for Pela. If it wasn't for such a dazzling Anytown Graffiti album from 2007, the group probably would have never traveled as much as they did despite the sporadic drawbacks.
For 2009 expect a lot less injuries, a complete tour and a new album. Anything less shouldn't suffice. MUF certainly hopes to finally see them live this time around.
Sea Wolf
Although no formal announcement has come from the group within the past few months, the touring success from Sea Wolf after their 2006 release of Leaves in the River speaks volumes about the folk hook the group has latched to the masses.
Video: Sea Wolf - You're a Wolf
Their show at the end of May really got us hyped about where they could be headed. In October the group stated they were finished touring for the year and that an album would once again be in motion starting in March. For a group with six members, including the uber-talented Alex Brown Church, the sky is the limit.
Thirteen Senses
Contact didn't jump out to the masses like Thirteen Senses expected. Many critics don't expect superb sophomore albums, so the so-called letdown wasn't really a letdown at all, just a bump in the road. What can be expected could be a reinvention of their roots that made The Invitation such a jaw-dropping debut.
With a new record in mind, lead man Will South headed to Cornwall to begin musing over lyrics and the direction of what will be their third release. Soon after his arrival, his bandmates joined in on the process at the North London studio.
MP3: Thirteen Senses - Into the Fire (buy)
Director / Editors
Filing Director and Editors together has become a routine thing for MUF. Both groups are important positions in video and print media. Both artists will both be important in 2009, too.
Director last landed on the UK rock charts in 2006 with their release of We Thrive On Big Cities, when they challenged The Killers for the top spot. For 2009 the Dublin rockers have prepared their follow-up, as we wrote about earlier this month.
On the same island in the pond, Editors last recorded An End Has A Start in mid-2007 and have their third album looming in front of them. We will keep you posted on any new info on the group as it passes our inbox.
Director Premiere New Song "Play Pretend" from Forthcoming Album!
0 comments Posted by musicunderfire at 12/03/2008
MusicUnderFire has many bands we take a liking to, and in an attempt to avoid watering anything down that we've written about previously, I'll just say this: You need to know Director.
Director is a Dublin-based rock band, whose 2006 album We Thrive On Big Cities swept the UK, tailing The Killers at #2 on the rock charts. With the vocals of Michael Moloney adamantly driving the guitars of Eoin Aherne (whom we interviewed earlier this year), the overall band chemistry creates something that simply unique and larger than life. Its safe to say that although the band has had their fair share of success from their debut album, their music could be one of the most underlooked acts of in recent memory.
As most bands have been doing these days, Director has a series of studio videos showing what the band has been up to, which in the last months includes mixing, recording and working over their songs to perfection. This all can be said, and backed up by their most recent song, released for free via their latest post on their MySpace page.Below is their message about their latest track, their excitement for the album and a short story behind it all. If this is your first time hearing about Director, send them your thoughts on their latest, and your tastes are in line with ours, we recommend picking up We Thrive On Big Cities to prep yourself for this one. You can also check out our interview with them here.
MP3: Director - Play Pretend (buy)Hello friends,
It's with great pleasure that we can finally upload some new music to the site. We've been working for about a year on this new album in different rehearsal rooms some nice, some not so nice. It's a well worn out story that a band gets about six years to work on their first album and about six months to do the second one. It's certainly true that when we first played the first song that ended up on We Thrive on Big Cities (I think it was 'Can You Take It' but I couldn't be sure) we had no idea it would ever end up on a CD of any kind. That day was still many years off.When we started work on album number two the slate was completely clean - a daunting and scary prospect. There were no old songs to fall back on. There was a tendency to second guess absolutely everything - is this good enough, will people like this, are these songs better than the last album. It's odd that thoughts like this never enter your head the first time round you're just so excited to be actually making an
album.
After a little while we just got on with it. Enjoyed coming to practice every day and working on the songs a little at a time just as we had done the first time. There were discussions about how we wanted the album to sound, how we would like it to come accross, what we wanted to convey to a listener.
Anyway, this song is called 'Play Pretend'. It rocks hard and it rocks fast and that's just the way we like it. Please click below to download it and feel free to copy it and play it to your hearts' content. We hope you enjoy it.
Eoin
Official - http://www.directormusic.com/
MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/directormusic
When it comes to music, the Irish rock scene has much to offer, particularly with Director, the 2006 sensation whose We Thrive On Big Cities captured the attention of avid rock-seekers abroad. Whether their matter-of-fact approach pulls you in, or if you're merely looking for a solid rock group to build your music library on, Director fits the mold.
Now that they've been back in the studio working on their next album for a few months, Music Under Fire is pleased to pull some thoughts from guitar lead Eoin Aherne about the band's current status and what to expect on their upcoming album.
First off, where are you all originally from, how long have you known each other?
We're all from Dublin. Michael, Rowan and I are all from the same town Malahide. It's a fairly small suburb, a seaside town. It’s become a little more cosmopolitan in the last few years (it now has a Starbucks etc.) but it’s mostly quiet with a few schools, a few pubs, a couple of churches a video store and increasingly a lot of women’s clothes shops. I went to national school with Michael and then secondary school too so I’ve known him for about twenty years which is usually a phrase only old people are able to use. Rowan was at the same secondary school and we were friends mostly – all quite into music but not in a band. The three of us finally got it together around the end of school and started playing at school shows and that kind of thing. We started to get much more into it once we started college and started doing our own songs but we still didn’t have a drummer and were playing our shows with quite a cra
ppy drum machine. We weren’t having much luck with drummer auditions until Michael met Shea. They were both studying Music at college and Shea was up for abandoning his classical guitar to fulfil his Dave Grohl/Stuart Copeland ambitions. It was great to get a really musical drummer and we all have the same sense of humour which is always really important. It worked pretty much from the start.
What made you choose the name Director for your band?
It wasn’t really an epiphany moment. We wanted something that was one word, something that looked good on a poster and not to be a ‘the’ band. We played under the moniker of ‘Business’ for a time but it was taken by about a million others. I do think that in a way just the sound of the word Director or what it conjures up in your mind suits the type of music that we play. It’s authoritative obviously and that can only be a good thing. Most importantly if you say, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen…Director’ it doesn’t sound lame.
We Thrive On Big Cities has undoubtedly been a great step for Director. Your album reached #2 on the Irish album charts within its first weeks back in 2006, how has this changed your careers leading up to 2008?
We haven’t had to get real jobs would be the main one. We’ve been able to play shows around Ireland consistently with people always wanting to come and see us play. We hadn’t really been on the ‘scene’ much before it came out so it put us on the map in Ireland straight away. We moved from never having done an interview or having been on television to people ringing us up asking would we do stuff for them. It’s just so much easier to try and do something, get people interested in your band if you have an album under your belt. Obviously you guys are interviewing us because you like the record. If you try and tell one of your friends about a band you’ve just discovered the first thing they’ll ask is if their album’s any good? We’re really looking forward to its release internationally in the Summer. Hopefully it’ll be a slow burner while we’re recording or just get people interested for the second record.
We understand you've been back in the studio as of late, what have you been up to?
We recorded two tracks at the beginning of the year with a guy called Tom McFall who is Jack Knife Lee’s engineer. It was nice to be back at Grouse Lodge Studio where we recorded the first record. We weren’t really sure what the plan for the songs would be – whether we would go with one of them as a single or if they would be the start of the new album. I think mostly we were interested in trying to work with someone new to see how that process worked out. Tom had just finished recording R.E.M.’s new record in the same studio so he had a lot of experience in using the studio to its full potential. We realised after the session that we weren’t ready to push ahead with the rest of the album and needed more time to write. The writing’s gone well over the last few months and we plan to start recording the new album at the beginning of July but still haven’t made a final decision as to who we will be recording with.
Have you been experimenting with anything new?
We’ve been working a lot more with harmony and extra vocal lines. Big Cities has almost no backing vocals on it at all and Shea and I are singing a lot more which is opening up the songs more in ways we used to not try at all. We’ve also moved away a little from our policy of working on the songs just as a band in the room, making them work with just what we were playing there and then. In the beginning it was what we always did so we would never be faced with having to make a chorus ‘work’ in the studio by layering and layering or ‘fancy’ production and then have it sound weak live. We would always have the different parts speak on their own terms. I think we’re more open now to the possibility of adding keys or extra percussion as integral parts to the songs even if we’ll have to find a way around it live.
What are your biggest influences as an artist?
As a guitar player I love melodic guitar playing and guitarists. I’m a fan of guitar lines you can sing and can easily hum you any number of George Harrison solos. I love the fact that people like The Edge or Matt Bellamy or Josh Homme have their own sound – an identifiable sonic quality that when you hear them play on any number of different songs and different parts you still know it’s them. That’s something I would definitely strive toward. In the bigger sense of being involved in something creative I’m a huge admirer of people who are engaged in a craft, something that you have to work at. I’ve just finished reading Andy Summers from The Police’s memoir and despite 
being a massive rockstar and all that goes along with it the amount of time he talks about just practising his guitar by himself, for years before they ever made it is quite inspiring. I read a lot and admire the late Irish writer John Mcgahern for his very measured prose, carefully worked out and gone over again and again until it feels right. Someone like Nick Cave seems to subscribe to this mantra as a songwriter, just going and doing it everyday until you finally get something you’re happy with, and the whole band and Michael as a songwriter would definitely go along with this idea. Some days we’ll only make one bit of progress, one little change in a song and it’s only when you compare what you started with with what you have at the end that you can see all the progress you’ve made.
While you're not making music, what do you find yourself doing in your freetime?
I would like to say playing guitar; the idea of the musician who always has an instrument to hand but it’s nowhere near the truth. I’m a bit of a square and just do completely normal stuff like watch tv or read or go to the pub. We all have the same group of introverted friends pretty much from school but as it has happened none of us have real jobs. We’ve all ended up in a different band or as an actor or dj or journalist so we just hang out or go to gigs or to see movies. Michael has a passion for making weird home movies with another friend of ours so sometime we get roped into making small appearances in those but heaven forbid if they ever see the light of day.
If you could visit any place and play a show, where would it be?
For me I’d love to go and play shows in the States. I’ve never been over and I’d love to match up all my expectations from the countless American tv shows and movies and news with the reality. I really hope we get to some touring there with the new record. I think the further you get from your home with your music the more progress you feel you are making as a band so I think travelling to America would be both one big holiday and one big step for the band.
MP3: Director - Reconnect (buy)
MP3: Director - Big Cities (buy)
For more videos and info on Director, visit their Official Site or visit their MySpace page. Support Director by buying We Thrive On Big Cities through iTunes.
Shananigans! You can't say there's nothing good to listen to this past month. There was plenty of great music and we'd like to think we found some of the best, especially since we did have an extra day this year. The below list may not be all new music from February, but we've had it on repeat this past month nonetheless. Please, if there's a group you think we may have missed or need to check out, let us know. Here's our 'Best of February' list, enjoy!
Director - Leave It To Me (buy)
El Ten Eleven - Living On Credit Blues (buy)
Bell X1 - Bad Skin Day (buy)
The Reign of Kindo - Do You Realize (cover) (buy)
The Cribs - Don't You Want To Be Relevant? (buy)
Fields - Charming The Flames (buy)
LCD Soundsystem - North American Scum (buy)
Idiot Pilot - Last Chance (buy)
Pela - Song Writes Itself (buy)
The Answering Machine - Lightbulbs (buy)
Chris Walla - Geometry & C (buy)
Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma (buy)
The Twilight Sad - And She Would Darken The Memory (buy)
Electric President - Ten Thousand Lines (buy)
Your Vegas - Troubled Times (buy)
The Bell - On and On (buy)
Fields - If You Fail, We All Fail (buy)
This Will Destroy You - Threads (buy)
Air Traffic - Come On (buy)
Bell X1 - Rocky Took A Lover (acoustic) (buy)
Download Director on iTunes
MP3: The Whitest Boy Alive - Don't Give Up
MP3: The Bloodhound Gang - The Bad Touch
MP3: Director - Leave It To Me
Hey folks,
Hope you all have a good Xmas. Just want to thank everyone for making 2007 a great year for us, for coming to the shows, listening to the music and everything else.
We will be starting 2008 in the studio, starting the sessions for the new record. Its shaping up very nicely indeed and it will be very interesting to get a few tracks down and see what direction the album will go. My prediction is .....fucking rock....
Have a good one
Cheers
Director
