Archive for January, 2006
The Zucchini Drive 12″ has passed all our tests to our fullest satisfaction and has been shipped to distributors and shops.
Here are some websites where you can order the record:
sonicane (Germany)
boomkat (UK)
Norman Records (UK)
dotshop (Sweden)
And here’s the tracklist:
A1 Sombre City (feat. Markus Acher)
A2 Easy Tiger (feat. Bleubird)
A3 Kölns Basement *
B1 Sombre City (Hitch Remix) *
B2 Easy Tiger (Tepr Remix) *
B3 Good Music & Indian Food (Nuccini! Remix) *
*) exclusive tracks, only on this 12″.
Listen to some snippets.
January 30th, 2006
Zucchini Drive printed some nifty t-shirts. If you want one (or two), please order directly from Tom (siazATshadowanimalsDOTcom).
You can also buy these shirts at the Zucchini Drive shows:
24.02.06 BEL - Bissegem/Kortijk, De Kreun (with Nuccini!)
25.02.06 FRA - Rennes, Jardin Moderne
01.03.06 FRA - Paris, Guingette Pirates
02.03.06 SWI - Bern, Freie Bühne
03.03.06 SWI - Emmenbrücke, Bau 604
04.03.06 AUT - Innsbruck, PMK
07.03.06 SWI - Zürich, Kalkbreite
09.03.06 BEL - Leuven, Tstuk
10.03.06 HOL - Tilburg, 013
11.03.06 HOL - Arnhem, Goudvishal
12.03.06 GER - Hamburg, Golden Pudel
13.03.06 GER - Frankfurt, Funkadelic
14.03.06 GER - Dresden, Altes Wettbüro
16.03.06 GER - Berlin, Roter Salon
17.03.06 GER - Würzburg, Cafe Cairo
January 29th, 2006
Corrado (Giardini di Mirò, Nuccini!) posted a little chat with his homie Tom (Shadowanimals, Zucchini Drive) on his blog (the intro is Italian, but the interview is in English).
January 25th, 2006
Amanda Rogers‘ new EP “Something Borrowed, Something Blue” is finally available in other European countries.
“Rogers has made the first essential EP of 2006. Buy it, borrow it, steal it.”, it says on the website of the online music mailorder Boomkat. True.
Britons can also order from the fine folks at Norman Records.
People from scandinavia should visit the online shop of our new distributor dot. If you’re from italy, please go to Wide Records. If you live in Spain you should check Red Musical, Austrians can probably order the CD from Soul Seduction (although it isn’t listed on the website yet, aba fragts die leitta do hoit einfach). Nameskeio is the swiss distributor, they don’t sell directly, but maybe they can tell you where to get the record in Switzerland, if you have problems to find it.
Of course you can order the CD also from our own online shop. We ship to all European countries.
January 23rd, 2006
To ensure the highest possible quality of our releases, we do lots of testing before they hit the shelves. One of our test series even includes animals, because those helpless creatures are often involuntarily exposed to the music their owners listen to. Studies prove that pets suffer from specific sounds, infact some frequencies are so painful for certain animals that they become severely insane.
It goes without saying that we won’t sell any products that will harm your beloved pet. But we at 2nd rec have higher goals. As you may know, music can have a relaxing and even healing effect not only on humans, but also on animals. And that is - besides hundreds of other things - what we are trying to achieve with every release: making animals happy.
Below you see some photos from tests we conducted for the Zucchini Drive 12″ “Easy Tiger” (in stores next week).
At first our laboratory animal Kapitan was very sceptical when he approached the record. The little tomcat was raised by an avid indie rock fan who listened to Guided by Voices, Lemonheads and Flaming Lips records all day long and it wasn’t until recently that the cat learned about hiphop. But since the record starts with the familiar voice and guitar strumming of Markus Acher (from The Notwist), Kapitan seemingly felt comfortable very quickly.
Kapitan showed a lot of interest in the record, examining it from all angles. Neurochemical tests proved our presumption: it’s the originality of the music and the appealing cover artwork (featuring two creatures of his own species) that intrigued the cat.
When we listed to the recordings for the first time, we’ve had some doubts about the title track’s influence on cats. The massive, bouncy beat (produced by Lord Grunge of Grand Buffet) and the intricate raps of three different MCs could be too much to cope with for a sensetive kitty, we thought. But - much to our surprise and relief - Kapitan behaved very calmly when we played this track.
Further experiments showed that it was mainly the lyrics of the chorus that were responsible for the cat’s zen-like equilibrium.
January 20th, 2006
Giardini di Mirò is collecting video footage for a DVD. If you have filmed any of their shows, please contact: jukka.re AT gmail DOT com.
January 9th, 2006
We love photos of studios. Above you can see the wonderful studio of magnificent Apparat. Unfortunately he has to leave his facilities for silly reasons. Read about it here and Berliners – help him find a new place.
January 8th, 2006
Giardini di Mirò started working on a new album. Here’s a little chat with Jukka, guitarist of GdM, about the recording session.
Hey Jukka, where did you spent the last days?
At the Bunker studio, which is the “b” room of Esagono Recordings.
Can you tell me a little bit about this place?
Some years ago it was one of the leading studios mostly used for major productions, but actually they are open to different kinds of music. We are working in the cheaper place, which is called Bunker, because it was a “big refrigerator” in a warehouse. To get in you have to pass this big, heavy door and the only window is very, very little. It was used by the people that used to work in that refrigerated cell to look what is inside… weird. Anyway, it’s a very small place, but it is run by two guys who know how to work with people…. passion and kindly mode are their best qualitities. Of course they also got a good outboard mic and all the stuff that makes a professional studio.
You’ve also recorded your last album “Punk… not Diet!” there, haven’t you?
Yes, we did the main recording in that studio, because it’s run by a friend and it’s close to our home town. We could sleep at home and eat for cheap in the area. Being near at home means that you can still go to work, meet your girlfriend, go to the supermarket, doing laundry and walk the dog, while you work on recordings.
But we will definitely do the mixing at Alpha Dept., Francesco’s studio. Because the mix is very import for our music, so we go to a better equipped studio for that.
How many songs did you record during this session?
To be honest, I’m not sure. Recording is always so hard for me, i really can’t remember. I’m not joking. But i think we put our hands on 6 songs, but none is finished yet… this was just the first step, a very important one, but just the beginning.
When you did “Punk..not Diet!” you went back to the studio several times, always changing something, adding this and that…
Indeed, but this time it will be an even longer process. For “Punk… not Diet” we’ve written and rehearsed all the songs before we went to the studio. Now we have developed the songs in the studio and add some homerecordings. We only had a vague idea of the songs before we started recording. In the studio the songs got their driving license. So this is new for us.
I know it’s a bit early to say which direction the new album will take, but telling from the demo recordings you gave me, it’s - once again - a new step for GdM. Do you agree?
I can’t tell you what we will have in your hands at the end. But for sure it’ll be one hundred percent bloody GdM. Maybe we will have more electronics and more vocals, but it’s still an album written by us, so i don’t think it will be something totally different from the previous albums.
But a major difference to your previous work are the vocals. You’ve had vocals before, but now you and Corrado sing on a couple of songs.
Yes, but we will also have guests again. Doing the vocals ourselves is new, but Corrado and I are “old history” for GdM. I can’t speak for Corrado here, but i never sung because i don’t like doing it, but now i’m kind of “forced” since this is the direction we took with our first album by starting to add vocals to our songs. Now we decided to work with that line up (without Alessandro), so the old guard has to sing.
I was surprised to find out that you can sing pretty well. You might remember that i didn’t believe it was you singing on one of the first demos you gave me.
Yeah, I remember. Actually that demo was meant as a joke for a friend, but then it seemed to work out. We’ve got some appreciation for that song from you, Hood, Apparat, Ellen Alien (via Apparat)… people seem to like that song, which surprised me, because it started as silly stuff I did with Corrado, to make a joke to a friend…so…funny!
January 6th, 2006
Here’s something for you to click on:
1) Sexy hiphop duo Zucchini Drive just launched their new website. There are some audio samples from their magnificent upcoming album, so crank up the volume and point your browsing device to zucchinidrive.com.
2) We finally got a MySpace page. We’ve been watching the website since the beginning and are fascinated how fast this community exploded, but we’ve always had - and still have - some concerns about it (the fact that it is now owned by News Corp, the butt ugly design etc).
But nevertheless we’ve set up a MySpace profile, uploaded some music there and are ready to make ‘friends’. Some of our artists have their profiles there as well, just check the links on the left (”General Info”) or browse through our friends section to get to their pages.
January 6th, 2006
As promised earlier in this blog, we’ll release a free MP3 compilation with songs from our back catalog plus two tracks from upcoming releases in the next few days (still working on it).
January will also see the release of an EP by a new hip hop group called Zucchini Drive, which consists of Marcus from Stacs of Stamina and Tom from Cavemen Speak. The EP will contain 6 tracks, 3 songs produced by Aqua Luminus III & Markus Acher, Lord Grunge (Grand Buffet) and Pilot Balloon and 3 remixes by Tepr, Hitch and Corrado Nuccini (Giardini di Mirò). Here’s a little snippet for you.
Luca di Mira aka Pillow, keyboarder of Giardini di Mirò, will release his solo album in February. We’ve posted some info about it earlier, so if you want to know more about it, click here.
The Zucchini Drive full-length “Being Kurtwood” is due in March, right in time for their European tour. The track list was already revealed earlier.
Giardini di Mirò will release the 2nd part of “North Atlantic Treaty Of Love”. This 12″ will be strictly limited and comes with a hand screened sleeve (like the first one). The 12″ will feature two new Giardini di Mirò songs and two remixes by Alias (Anticon) and Apparat (Shitkatapult).
We’ll also release a CD combining all 8 songs from both 12″s.
Corrado, guitarist of Giardini di Mirò, just finished the final mixes of his Nuccini! album and it turned out even better than we’ve expected. Corrado did all the production (and some vocals) and invited Tom (Zucchini Drive), Bleubird and Nomad to add their raps and singing. The result is hard to describe, some songs sound like Godspeed You Black Emporer doing hip hop, some tracks are quite funky and rocking with crazy raps, but there are also very beautiful, melancholic ballads on the record. Corrado uploaded two songs to his myspace page, so check it out.
That’s all we can talk about right now, but there’s more in the making…
January 2nd, 2006
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