Today, we’ll continue our recommencement of activities on VanRamblings by introducing you to a plaintive, soul-stirring artist who we believe creates gorgeously transcendent music that possesses the potential to heal some of the acrid hurts which wound us daily.
Recent much-deserved winner of Great Britain’s prestigious Mercury Music Prize and considered by many to be the next big thing, below VanRamblings offers both a recent NPR interview and review, as well as a downloadable song from the new CD, I am a Bird Now, by Antony and the Johnsons.
NPR interview and review
Antony and the Johnsons — Hope There’s Someone
Antony and the Johnsons on the David Letterman Show

There’s a great deal that is salutary about the blogging phenomenon, not the least of which is the opportunity that is afforded bloggers to bring our own perspective to the news of the day.
Over the past couple of years, Flickr has made it possible to upload your entire photo collection to the Net, MSN Spaces (among other platforms) has made it relatively easy to create your own blog, video blogging is yet another recently-developed form of blogging expression (just check out a few of these video blogs), while podcasting (a portmanteau that combines the words broadcasting and iPod) makes available everything from conventional news shows to self-published radio shows, downloadable as mp3 files and playable on your mp3 player.
Perhaps the most salutary blogging development, though (at least for those of us who love music, and are always on the look out for intriguing new sounds) is the audio blogging phenomenon — where a new breed of tastemakers devote their spare time to disseminating, free of charge, music that’s obscure, unusual, cutting-edge, or on the verge of being forgotten.
Siddhartha Mitter, a Boston Globe correspondent, provides an introduction to the “the best music you’ve never heard” phenomenon.

The principle behind an audioblog — also called MP3 blog — is simple. You find a track you want to share with the masses. You place it online as an MP3 file, which anyone with a fast connection can play or save. And you write a little commentary, which might be pithy or detailed, straightforward or oblique. Think of each post as a whimsical capsule review, with sound attached.

In the course of his Globe piece, Mitter turns readers onto a number of audio blogging sites — including Paul Irish’s Aurgasm; San Francisco music journalist and scholar Oliver Wang’s Soul Sides; London-raised, Boston-based blogger Lee Caulfield’s The Number One Songs in Heaven, which specializes in near-forgotten soul tracks; and Christopher Porter’s appropriately named audio blog, the suburbs are killing us.
Treat yourself today: download some new music from the Internet.

One of the formative events on the Vancouver cultural calendar each year, the Vancouver Folk Music Festival closed late on Sunday evening with a rousing chorus of the Woody Guthrie chestnut, It’s Been Good To Know Ya (lead by noted Wobbly Utah Phillips), followed by as stirring and soulful a rendition of Ben E. King’s Stand By Me as one could ever wish to hear.
In the hours and days that comprised the 2005 musical narrative that became the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, from the gates opening at 5:30 p.m. Friday afternoon (under leaden skies) through til 11:30 p.m. for the cloudless sky Sunday evening finale, music was carried by the breezes that wafted across the Jericho Beach site — as a panoply of globe spanning, anthemic folk music encompassing folk genres ranging from Celtic, Cajun, hillbilly and progressive country (think the ever-so-fragile and lovely Iris DeMent) to the radical repertoire of The Grande Mothers (Frank Zappa’s band), hip hop, ambient, chill-out, the blues and more … transformed the Jericho Beach / waterfront Point Grey site into safe haven, where once again a world of peace and harmony and love and understanding prevailed for all.

Featuring more than 70 hours of non-stop music on eight outdoor stages — three evenings of mainstage concerts and two full days of performances and workshops throughout and across the always splendid Jericho Beach Park site, the 28th annual Vancouver Folk Music Festival is now underway.
Saturday Afternoon Update: Skies have cleared, and the sun has arrived.
While VanRamblings wanders the site, enjoys the music, greets old friends and recovers some semblance of our always tenuous sanity, we offer you 27 pictures taken by Sarah Pullman, posted at Shutterfly, as well as a few pictures focusing on the market area just outside the west gate.
For the sake of nostalgia, and because the weather thus far in the summer of 2005 has been inclement (just check out the webcam), VanRamblings offers a few photos taken by Susan McKeown at the particularly rainy, but ultimately satisfying, 2001 Vancouver Folk Music Festival.
And, oh yeah, there’s this Tony Montague article in Friday’s Globe and Mail on the Juno award-winning band, Le Vent du Nord, in concert at Stage 1 at 4:15 p.m. today, and set to take the Main Stage at 6 p.m., as well.