folk | Musicosity

folk

The Middle East

The Middle East were a musical collective from Townsville, Australia, which formed in 2005. Fusing various influences from post-rock to folk to ambient, various members have at different times played in other North Queensland based groups such as Joseph Liddy and the Skeleton Horse, The Forest, and We Are Buildings.

After completing several East Coast tours, they released a split EP in 2006 with local Cairns band Sleeping in Trains. Their debut album The Recordings of the Middle East was released on 24th April 2008, shortly before the band announced their first split. They reconvened eight months later, and in the autumn of 2009 released their album in the United States as an abridged EP, also called The Recordings of the Middle East.

Their song "Blood" is featured in the films Accidents Happen, It's Kind of a Funny Story. and Crazy, Stupid, Love, as well as in an episode of the Australian television comedy-drama series Offspring and an advertisement for European bank BNP Paribas.

At the start of their appearance at 2011's Splendour in the Grass music festival, the band announced that their set that night would be their last show ever, thanking fans in attendance for making their finale special for the band. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

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Newton Faulkner

Born January 11, 1985 as Sam Newton Battenberg Faulkner. Faulkner began playing guitar at the age of 11-12 with session guitarist Bob "crazy guy" Cranham and also attended the Academy of Contemporary Music in Guildford, where he spent 2 years gaining both diploma and the higher diploma award under the tutelage of Eric Roche. His first band was a Green Day cover band, in which he played bass guitar.

Joe Pug

The day before his senior year as a playwright student at the University of North Carolina, Joe Pug sat down for a cup of coffee and had the clearest thought of his life: I am profoundly unhappy here. Then came the second clearest. Pug packed up his belongings and drove the longest route possible to Chicago. Working as a carpenter by day, the 23 year-old Pug spent nights playing the guitar he hadn't picked up since his teenage years.

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Julianna Barwick

Louisiana-bred, Brooklyn-based recording artist Julianna Barwick crafts ethereal, largely wordless soundscapes, all of which are built around multiple loops and layers of her angelic voice. Barwick, who credits a rural, church choir upbringing for her unique sound, begins most tracks with a single phrase or refrain, then uses a loop station and the occasional piano or percussive instrument to build the song into a swirling mass of lush, ambient folk.

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Grand Salvo

Grand Salvo is Paddy Mann - a musician from Melbourne who has been performing and recording albums for around a decade. He has produced five albums which have received critical acclaim, one of his albums is titled "Soil Creatures". "Death", released March 15, 2008, through Spunk Records, in association with Preservation, is an 'animal' concept album that focuses on a "bird, a rabbit, a rat, a bear and a man all telling their own tale, coming together to weave a fairytale," and features vocalist Zoe Randell.

He released a new album in 2012 titled 'Slay Me In My Sleep'. The songs featured on the album have unusual long titles and are absolutely beautiful. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

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Mirah

Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn was born September 17, 1974, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and has released a number of albums under the K Records label. She has collaborated with her close friend Phil Elvrum of The Microphones and has also worked extensively with The Black Cat Orchestra. Mirah is the youngest of three children and lived in Bala Cynwyd, a suburb of Philadelphia for most of her childhood. She then moved to Olympia, Washington and attended The Evergreen State College. She is modest and deliberate, prefers privacy to invasion and reconciliation to war.

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Dandelion Wine

There are at least four bands with this name, one is an ethereal post-dreampop band based in Australia, the second is a Canadian band that plays filk and folk music, the third a 70s funk outfit, and the fourth a jazz / pop unit from Latvia: 1) Dandelion Wine are an ethereal post-dreampop band that while based in Melbourne Australia, inhabit a very different world. A world where the centuries bleed into one another to create a seamless whole.

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CocoRosie

CocoRosie began in Paris, France and formed by Sierra Casady (Rosie) and Bianca Casady (Coco) in 2003. Sierra and Bianca Casady are North American half-Cherokee sisters. Sierra, the older of the two, was born in Iowa, and Bianca was born in Hawaii. Their mother nicknamed them Rosie and Coco, respectively, from which their musical act takes its name. In 2003, Bianca was growing restless and decided it was time for a change. Leaving her apartment in Brooklyn to travel the world, she ended up at Sierra's apartment in Paris.

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Dave Anderson

Dave Anderson is singer/songwriter based in Melbourne. He released his debut album Wish It All Away in August 2008. "Makes it clear he sings from his heart, not somebody else's" 4/5 Sydney Morning Herald
"Would sit comfortably on the shelf next to your Pete Murray CD's" 3.5/5 Sunday Telegraph Currently recording the follow up album, under playing in Melbourne as Dave Anderson & The Wine Merchants.

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