I get hundreds of emails a day. Many of them contain music people want me to listen to and various band “pitches”. I scan and delete most of them but every now and then something catches my eye.

I got an email from Jonathan Dagan, a Brooklyn-based producer behind the project j. viewz, with a link to a video for the song “Rivers and Homes”. It said “2000 photos, 300 fans, no computer fakery there”. Color me curious!

The video is incredible. A euphoric rush of music and images to match. Watch:

It’s that kind of life-affirming electronic music I love, combined with a concept that warmed my heart. A perfect three-minute musical moment to start the weekend.

More on the video:

Brooklyn-based producer with director Shelly Carmel  treated the video portion, which was shot mostly in upstate New-York, while photographer Eran Amir created the stop-motion part using 2000 printed frames during a j.viewz tour in Israel earlier this year.

RR

by Billy Kidd

Actress/designer/singer/model Milla Jovovich stopped by our studios this week to tape an edition of the Guest DJ Project, which will be airing in Fall around the release of the 5^th Resident Evil movie (“Resident Evil: Retribution”).

She shared her new single “Electric Sky” with us, just days before she will debut it at the Life Ball in Vienna, the biggest charity even in Europe supporting people with HIV. She dubbed it the “Burning Man of the fashion industry”.

Stream “Electric Sky” below and buy it here.

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The track, which you can buy digitally, is a bit more electro-influenced than her previous work and she credited Randy Jackson (of American Idol fame) for freeing her from any genre barriers.  Take a listen to her chat with KCRW DJ Garth Trinidad.

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You MUST tune in to hear her Guest DJ Project when it airs in a few months – she raps some hardcore Eazy Z. It is something to behold!

RR

p.s.: We asked what music her Resident Evil character Alice would listen to. Without a second of hesitation she said “Bad Brains“!

Milla and Garth

BADBADNOTGOOD are three young jazz enthusiasts based out of Toronto.

They bring to the table interesting jazz covers of Kanye West, Odd Future, James Blake, Gangstarr and Tribe Called Quest tracks.

Flashing Lights by BADBADNOTGOOD

What makes these guys really good at what they do is their ability to keep it simple — to set a mellow groove and then take into a whole new direction.

It’s really great to see artists like BBNG and Robert Glasper push their sound to a younger audience and keep the elements of jazz still intact, especially in an age where MPC’s and samplers seem to be the new tool of choice of young producers.

Vices by BADBADNOTGOOD

They’ve offered their second album as a free download on their website. Grab it!

 – Anthony Valadez

Most people know French musician Yann Tiersen as the composer behind the film “Amelie”. It was a quirky and heartwarming movie and the music, much of it from from Tiersen’s early albums, matched it perfectly.

We were treated to a bunch of songs from his latest album “Skyline” and his music has this transportive nature – it doesn’t take you anywhere specific, it just takes you away, particularly a longer song like “Till The End”.

Yann says he aims to make his music abstract, simple and beautiful, which is as good a description as I could ever come up with. The recording of “Skyline” was fueled by the energy of the tour before it and he recorded part of it on a small island off the coast of France with just 700 occupants (and lots of pubs). He seems to enjoy the process – starting with an initial idea, adding layers, and occasionally abandoning the original genesis of a song for something all together different, saying he likes to be “surprised” and “lost”.

This is a gorgeous set of music and I highly recommend you give it a listen!

RR

Yann Tiersen Live on KCRW

Monuments

Ashes

Till the End

The Gutter

The Trial

I’m Gonna Live Anyhow

Vanishing Point

(Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

This morning “Queen of Disco” Donna Summer passed away. Her iconic voice is and ever shall be the definitive voice of an era.

In a familiar narrative, Summer (born LaDonna Adrian Gaines) was raised in a devout Christian family and sang in church as a teen until she got the theater bug and decided to move to New York City.

Where the narrative takes it’s legendary turn is that she performed in the Broadway production of Hair (which traveled to Germany,) sang back-up vocals on a Three Dog Night record, met young producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte and ended up playing a foundational role in a sound and scene that changed popular music forever.

Post-Flower-Power and punch-drunk from Vietnam and a brutal economy, the country was primed for a cultural explosion. There was a need for release and this so-called “Disco Music” was gonna give it to us.

Like Delacriox’s painting of “Liberty Leading the People“, Summer was raising the flag. The combination of Euro-synthesized syncopation and brazen sexuality of “Love to Love You” (particularly it’s definitive, epic 17 minute version) was a clarion call for liberation right in time for our country’s Bicentennial.

A year after “Love To Love You” hit the top of the charts, Saturday Night Fever was released and the whole world was for all intents and purposes a massive disco ball.

Summer’s gorgeous voice and Moroder’s icy production produced a steady stream of undeniable hits, “I Feel Love“, “Heaven Knows,” “Hot Stuff, “On the Radio”, “Bad Girls” to name a few.

Given the level of her immense talent, through the late 80s and 90s her popularity may have waned but it never, ever faltered as she contributed tracks to film soundtracks and continued recording and changing with the times, all the while being consistently rediscovered and lauded by every new generation of dancers. As to be expected with any world class diva, there were controversies and dramas, regrets and redemption…but she aged gracefully, fabulously and will forever be remembered for her “…Love.”

– Mario Cotto