Photographer Christopher Wray-McCann formed Operation Aloha by inviting a group of friends, including members of Gomez, Maroon 5, and Phantom Planet, to shack up in Maui for a month to see if they could make music together. “The end result is a collection of songs that captures the tranquility, freedom and spirit of Hawaii.” The group’s self-titled debut will be released tomorrow. Buy the CD at the Operation Aloha Official Online Store ($12.99) or download all of the MP3s on iTunes or Amazon ($5.99).
Operation Aloha Musicians:
Dajon Everett (Gomez)
Ian Ball (Gomez)
James Valentine (Maroon 5)
Jesse Carmichael (Maroon 5)
Olly Peacock (Gomez)
Sam Farrar (Phantom Planet)
Christopher Wray-McCann (Photographer)
Charles Danek
Fil Krohnengold (All Spots To Black)
Mathew Chaney
Maureen Wray-McCann
Nadav Kahn (Kahn Brothers)
Saam Gabbay
Will Nash
Watch Ian Ball performing “Failure” below and see the band on Last Call With Carson Daly on Thursday, May 14th.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvIzYhu_xZs&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]
Mobius Band released their sophmore album Heaven in the US in 2007, but I’ve never heard it until today. Editors became friends and fans of the Brooklyn-based Band when the two toured together in the UK in 2008. Editors liked Heaven so much that they partnered with MBs US label, Misra, to release it in the UK today. Mobius Band’s biography on Allmusic describes their music as “hard to place, lying somewhere between bittersweet indie rock, electronic pop, and alt-country leanings.” I’m still listening to the album on Rhapsody–so far, not bad. They remind me of Elefant, but that’s not necessarily a good thing because their playlist shelf-life may be very limited. The tracks “Hallie” and “Friends Like These” are available to download free on their website.
According to MediaBistro’s MediaJobsDaily, Dan Baum was fired from the New Yorker in 2007 but he’s writing about it now using Twitter. Instead of micro-blogging, he’s often posting incomplete sentences that are continued in subsequent messages. One of his “posts” spans 10 tweets while another covers 63 during more than two and a half hours. The web is always evolving because it’s shaped by its global community of users, but this kind of storytelling is best suited to the articles Dan used to write for the New Yorker. I do appreciate his experiment with new media, but I recomend that he start a blog.
Doves are using their presence on three different social networking sites, Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo, to alert fans about a free, alternative version of “Birds Flew Backwards” from the recently released Kingdom of Rust. As usual, sign up for their newsletter in exchange for the song. I guess I’ll have to check my News Feed more often.
