Brooklyn Voices – August 2015
Elle King :”Ex’s and Oh’s” Photo courtesy of RCA Records
Skyzoo, Torae, and the Pitch Blak Brass Band are among the local artists who represented our fair borough at the 11th annual Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival that moved from DUMBO to 50 Kent in Williamsburg … Kid Cudi, whose career took off in 2008 after moving to Brooklyn from Cleveland, is planning a late-summer release for his latest album, Speedin’ Bullet to Heaven. The musician, rapper and sometimes actor is also taking over for Reggie Watts as the one-man bandleader on IFC’s cult faux talk show Comedy Bang Bang on July 10 … Among Cudi’s favorite collaborators are Crown Heights alt-rockers Ratatat, whose fifth album, Magnifique, is due out July 17 … You’ll have two chances to catch singer / songwriter / multi-instrumentalist Sarah Jarosz locally this summer. The Texas émigré and 2014 Grammy runner-up opened for another Brooklyn act, the Punch Brothers, at Celebrate Brooklyn! on July 9th and, on August 4th, she will be part of the Prairie Home Companion “America the Beautiful Tour”… You would have had to cross the Williamsburg Bridge, however, to catch Elle King (Ex’s and Oh’s) at the Bowery Ballroom for her July 20th performance. It was part of the Bushwick artists’ first headlining tour … Sharon Van Etten, no stranger to the music halls of her adopted home borough, had released a new five-song EP, I Don’t Want to Let You Down. It includes the title single and Just Like Blood, one of NPR’s “Songs We Love”… Other new releases in time for summer listening include: Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell; Torres (Mackenzie Scott), Sprinter; Stranger Cat, In The Wilderness; and Kenny Vance, Lost and Found: Archives – Vol. 1.
Notable Quote: “We just wanted to, I guess, sound alike … a gang or a bunch of brothers. So that was the whole idea of using the name Ramone.” –Marky Ramone (Marc Bell) on NPR’s Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me.