Featured Artists: February 2010

Here's my list of featured artists for February, 2010. This time is a little different, as I'm featuring one artist, one label and a concert series that spawned a series of CD's.

First off, the concert series. The Awakenings concert series in England has been around for several years now. It's a showcase for ambient and electronic music of all sorts. Makes me wish I lived there so I could see all these great shows. Here's the link:

http://www.awakenings-em.co.uk/

For those of us who can't make it to the concerts, they put together CD collections of many of the artists who play at these shows, as well as other artists of a similar nature. These CD collections come out a couple of times a year, and often include songs you won't find on other albums. I always get these when they come out so I can hear some great new music. Here's a link to find out more:

http://www.ambientlive.com/

Next up is a great ambient label, Infraction. Infraction has been around for a few years, releasing ambient and experimental electronic music. The quality of the albums are always top notch. Three of the top 20 albums in my February, 2010 playlist (Parks, Loren Dent and Sleepy Town Manufacture) are Infraction releases. I highly recommend them.

http://www.infractionrecords.com/newsinfraction.html

Lastly, I'd like to mention an artist who has performed on my show before, Daryl Shawn. Daryl was here a few years back with Jim Goodin performing as Chinapainting. Back then, he used old vintage tape recorders to get that Frippertronics kind of sound, but with acoustic guitar. I remember the soundcheck vividly. I couldn't hear his guitar through the monitors, just some sort of garbled noise. I told him this, and he told me that that was his guitar played through the tape loops. He's playing more identifiable guitar sounds lately on his own, and he's immensely talented. Check out his website for more information.

http://www.darylshawn.com/