New Horizons
with William Dart
Sundays at 7:00 pm
Series One 2010
28 February - 2 May (10 programmes)
2 May
With the final programme of this series coinciding with the first weekend of NZ Music Month, William devotes an hour to two acts, three women, who are such a force on our local music scene:
Anika Moa - Love in Motion [EMI]
Topp Twins - Honky Tonk Angel [self-released]
Anika's back-story is outlined with tracks from her three previous albums Thinking Room, Stolen Hill and In Swings The Tide. And he plays a couple of real old tracks from Jools and Linda - Mr Ronald Reagan from Go Vinyl and Radiation from Twinset and Pearls.
25 April
A bunch of local new releases:
Connan Mockasin - Please Turn Me Into The Snat [self-released]
Simon Comber - Endearance [Yellow Eye]
Nightchoir - 24 Hours of Night [Elevenfiftyseven]
Julian Temple Band - Quiet Earth [Oscillosonic]
18 April
As William confesses, he's always had a vulnerable spot for tribute albums and quite a number have been featured on the programme over the years. In this edition he samples some new ones and not-so-new ones:
The Bird And The Bee - Interpreting the Masters Volume 1: A Tribute to Daryl Hall and John Oates [Blue Note]
Stolen Roses: Songs of the Grateful Dead [Arista] ... we play tracks from The Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band and The Persuasions
Eight Miles High: 19 Tracks inspired by The Byrds [Uncut magazine] ... the title track performed by Roger McGuinn himself backed by Crowded House
Incredibly Hot Sex with Hideous People Presents: My Life with John Lennon ... Chris Knox's take on Isolation
God Save The Clean [Flying Nun] ... tracks from Barbara Manning and Calexico, and Bressa Creeting Cake
Face A Frowning World: An E C Ball Memorial Album [Tompkins Square] ... Handsome Family, Michael Hurley, Catherine Irwin and Bonnie Prince Billy
And to round off we play a few tracks from:
The Magnetic Fields - Realism [Nonesuch] (not a tribute album)
11 April
Holly Miranda - The Magician's Private Library [XL] ... The American singer-songwriter's second solo album
Pastels/Tenniscoats - Two Sunsets [Geographic] ... A collaboration between Glasgow band The Pastels and Japanese duo Tenniscoats
Owen Pallett - Heartland [Domino] ... Sought-after Canadian sideman releases his first album under his own name
John Phillips - Andy Warhol Presents 'Man On The Moon' [Varese Sarabande] ... Warhol recorded the "long-lost" musical by Phillips (ex-The Mamas and the Papas) from within the audience in 1975 and this release includes these recordings as well as studio tracks from the Phillips-produced cult album Romance Is On The Rise by Genevieve Waite.
4 April
William features composer-harpist Joanna Newsom's new triple-album Have One On Me [Drag City] after playing a sequence of tracks from her previous two CDs The Milk-Eyed Minder and Ys. The one interloper is Joni Mitchell with her song California from Blue.
28 March
William's starting point this week is James Taylor singing his 1977 hit Handy Man. He also includes Doris Day performing Sentimental Journey and Sarah Jane Morris singing Me and Mrs Jones. The adhesive that holds these three in place, believe it or not, is Pere Ubu and David Thomas and we have tracks from the following albums:
Pere Ubu - Datapanik In The Year Zero [Geffen]
Pere Ubu - Worlds in Collision [Fontana]
David Thomas - Vocal Performances [Rough Trade EP]
The Pedestrians - More Places Forever [Twin Tone LP]
David Thomas and The Wooden Birds - Blame The Messenger [Twin Tone LP]
David Thomas and Two Pale Boys - Erewhon [Tim/Kerr LP]
various - Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys [Anti]
various - Harry Smith Project [Acadia]
Pere Ubu - Long Live Père Ubu [Cooking Vinyl]
21 March
William looks at the recent EMI release The Complete Fourmyula, an exhaustive collection of The Fourmyula's recordings 1968-70 which were originally released as singles or on five albums The Fourmyula, Green 'B' Holiday, Creation, Alive and Turn Your Back On The Wind.
Well ... almost exhaustive, because there are three tracks on 'Alive' featuring vocalist Shane that don't make it to this collection. William plays one of these, Black Sheep Boy, from the gristly LP.
14 March
Barbara Morgenstern - BM [Monika] ("...a beguiling package...")
Wave Machines - Wave if you're really there [Neapolitan] ("...cheers the heart of any survivor of the 70s...")
Vampire Weekend - Contra [XL] ("...extreme cleverness afoot...")
Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus [Loyaute] ("...some piece of work...")
Eels - End Times [E Works] ("...a sad, miserable trek...")
At the end William segues - for the hell of it - from the miserable to the magical and celebrates one of his favourite songwriting teams.
7 March
William: "The various music that I'm playing tonight strikes me as the work of songwriters testing just how much they can stretch and toy with the object of their craft."
Examples of song stretchers and the albums featured are:
Tom Waits - Glitter and Doom Live [Anti]
Yoko Ono - Between my Head and the Sky [Chimera]
Rain Machine - Rain Machine [Anti]
Jan Hellriegel - All Grown Up [Blind Date]
There are cameo performances by B J Thomas, Johnny Cooper and Margaret Francis, and John Pizzarelli. And we end with a birthday tribute to a songwriter whose work you might not expect to hear on New Horizons, with songs performed by Madeleine Grey and Linda Thompson.
28 February
Songwriter Kate McGarrigle died in January. William pays her tribute with tracks from the following albums:
Maria Muldaur - Maria Muldaur [Reprise]
Kate & Anna McGarrigle - Kate & Anna McGarrigle [Hannibal]
Kate & Anna McGarrigle - Dancer with Bruised Knees [Hannibal]
Kate & Anna McGarrigle - Pronto Monto [Warners LP]
Kate & Anna McGarrigle - French Record [Hannibal]
Kate & Anna McGarrigle - Love Over and Over [Hannibal]
Kate & Anna McGarrigle - Heartbeats Accelerating [Private Music]
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason Soundtrack album [Geffen] (Rufus Wainwright and Dido perform I eat dinner)
Kate & Anna McGarrigle - Matapedia [Hannibal]
Kate & Anna McGarrigle - La Vache qui Pleure [Tribu]
Kate & Anna McGarrigle - The McGarrigle Hour [Hannibal] (Irving Berlin's What'll I do performed by the whole Wainwright-McGarrigle clan)