Announcing Sound City in New York

Sound City announce new festival in New York

 Sound City go global in 2012, raising the bar for urban, multi-venue festivals and music conventions.   

Continuing their mission to globalise discourse about the entertainment industry and identify opportunities for international partnerships, Sound City announce their inaugural New York show.  Having already paved the way for global collaborations through boutique events in Dubai, Texas, Norway and their home base of Liverpool, New York is the next step in a series of exciting new initiatives to be announced by Sound City in 2012.

New York and Liverpool share a historic cultural identity and have given birth to some of the most exciting musical sounds in history.  As part of this cross cultural exercise Liverpool will be presenting some of their most innovative acts of the past 25 years and up and coming acts that are the future of this cities proud musical heritage.  New York will be presenting the best emerging artists the city has to offer.

- Inaugural Sound City announced for March 2012

The inaugural New York Sound City (NYSC) will take place on Monday 12th March 2012 as a one day and night music event and will feature key public and media partners from both the UK and the US.

By day there will be sessions from the very best transatlantic innovators, forward thinkers and new creative’s, with the primary aim being to build working and creative relationships between the music communities in both these great port cities - as well as inspiring and educating in equal measure.

The daytime sessions will feature one-to-one networking opportunities, roundtable sessions and high-quality keynote addresses.

And by night, after a VIP reception for business and media, Sound City will present ‘Six of the Best’: featuring three of the best emerging acts coming out of the UK together with three of their NYC contemporaries.  This will be open to the general public as well as NYSC delegates and will feature The La’s playing their first NYC gig in over 20 years, with full line-up TBC.

Access to the conference, networking events, lunch, cocktail parties and the live show at night will cost £75 ($120). Tickets for the live show that evening will be priced at $30.

Places are strictly limited on a first come, first served basis and capped at 100 delegates.

So to book, please go to www.newyorksoundcity.com

Sound City Liverpool runs 17th – 19th May 2012
www.liverpoolsoundcity.co.uk

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New Band Alert - Pearly Gate Music (No 778)

Hometown: Seattle, Washington.

The lineup: Zach Tillman (vocals, guitar), Josh Tillman (drums), Joe Syverson (bass), Colin Wolberg (guitar).

The background: The history of rock is full of examples of what happens when siblings form bands. The Kinks, Sparks, the Jesus and Mary Chain, and Oasis all feature creative alliances fuelled by brotherly tension. With Josh and Zach Tillman, we don't get to see sparks fly because they've each got their own outfit – the former is in Fleet Foxes while the latter has his Pearly Gate Music, which began as a lo-fi, laptop-and-scratchy-guitar bedroom exercise, although it's grown to include Zach's drummer brother as part of his recording and touring band.

That said, unlike Oasis, the Kinks, and the Mary Chain, Pearly Gate Music aren't about fury and flying sparks (as for Sparks themselves, they merit a category all their own). No, PGM make a hymnal, spectral sound that is often quiet, even sepulchral, so much so that this could function effectively as alternative church music – a lone, mysterious church that you might stumble upon in some backwoods somewhere – and in this respect it's definitely a case of, if you like Fleet Foxes, you'll love PGM.

There are differences. We can't put it any better than the reviewer who concluded that, though both Tillmans are Neil Young fans, Zach is more about the haunted, harrowing folk-blues of On the Beach than Josh and Co's sweeter After the Goldrush influences. Or to put it another way: he's more Hank Williams than Brian Wilson. This is indie-country, although there are echoes of other stuff here – on Golden Funeral, the startling opener of the self-titled debut album, you think of Alex Chilton's fractured, after-hours ballads from Sister Lovers, but then suddenly a track like Big Escape will veer closer towards power pop territory, even if it is done on the cheap, bringing to mind an unplugged version of Big Star's Radio City. But what really makes PGM and FF blood brothers are Zach Tillman's vocals – when Josh joins in on Oh! What a Time, they evoke the pure, clear tones of those other warring siblings, the Everlys.

When he was a kid, the Tillman family home caught fire and Zach got trapped in the attic where he was "putting the finishing touches on the handmade crafts I was gifting my parents and siblings that year". By the time the rescue crew got to him through the flames, he had been "technically dead for at least three minutes". Bizarrely, when he came to, he discovered that he could sight read any piano sheet music that was put in front of him, from Thelonious Monk to Mozart. He's since lost this strangely acquired skill, but you still get a sense with PGM – as you do with FF – of a musician in touch with mystifying sources.

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