All About the Ensemble (as of Nov 2007)

The Ukulele Ensemble is a music blog born out of a whim. We (or maybe just Jady) picked the quirky 'ukulele' (a small, Hawaiian version of a guitar) because that was the very first noun jumping to her mind, and in any case we have always adored it for the unique loveliness of its petite look and clear sounds. And 'ensemble'--well, it's hardly needed to say this blog is a cosy chamber for a small community of friends and music lovers, and we hope you enjoy it too.

{Basics}
Birth date: March 19, 2006
Founders: Jade & Zhu
Contributors: jady :: zhu :: jeremy (our last.fm music profiles)
Best viewd: in Firefox, UTF-8, 1024x768 and above.

{Disclaimer, Copyright Issues & Ethics}
We share music here by either putting it in the radioblog for online streaming, or sometimes put up download links created either by us or other sharing communities. For us, the files are usually hosted on YouSendIt, which allows a max of 25 downloads and 7 day validity period for each link whichever is reached first. We do not own any of the music and do not profit from any of it. You could download and try it out, by all means, delete it if you don't fancy it, but if you do like the music, please purchase it online or in stores--it's supporting the artists and the music you actually appreciate, especially the budding ones who not only deserve but need the money to go on and make more music. But regardless of establishedness, do support the artists you appreciate and PURCHASE the work! Alright, children? =)

{Main Blog}
Both blog entry title and time stamp are permalinks to the individual posts. Comment section comes up in a pop-up window--so make sure you allow it in your browser. You may also use the 'email post' buttom to send a post to a friend.

{Side Menu}
::Radio::
The red radioblog is periodically updated to feature what we are listening or recommend right now, and the black last.fm radio is Jeremy's special selection, which is more hardrock oriented and a lot louder than the red (girl) radio. ;) Tune in!

::The Cloud::
As the old posts (posted before the release of blogger beta tagging function) are still partially tagged, this tagcloud more accurately reflects the newer posts since 2007. You can see we listen to (or rather, write about) a lot of non-specific, "alternative" stuff. ;p

The various flags are for translating the site into other languages, and the search boxes...well, are for searching.

::Our Favourites::
Currently features 3 top-album quilts of jady, zhu and jeremy, generated by last.fm. Click on any flipping thumbnail and check it out!

::The Music Boxes::
Collapse menu of links to artists' official sites, musicblogs and useful music software and gadget sites.

::Other stuff::
Standard-issue recent posts and comments widgets, shoutbox, archive in hierarchy menu (currently not working in firefox, works fine in IE), real-time tracking maps and time-zone maps, and amazon widget.

{Footer}
Banner links to sitemeter, get-firefox, last.fm, radioblogclub and creative common license.

Bossa Nova & Ono Lisa

Alright, pick of the moment (see sidebar) issue—Bossa Nova and Ono Lisa. What and who? See the wikipedia links for details, I’ll just say a short word on each—

Bossa nova was derived from samba, and was very much influenced by jazz. It became massively popular in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America. It also enjoyed major international success during brief periods of popularity such as after the release of the film Black Orpheus in 1959 and with Stan Getz's recordings in the 1960s. Bossa nova repertoire consists predominantly of songs, while the instrumental music similar to it is generally called samba-jazz. Perhaps the best known bossa nova song is Antonio Carlos Jobim's The Girl from Ipanema (A Garota de Ipanema), which is widely known in both its original Portuguese and in English translation—which is also the autoplay item you hear in our current ukuradio right now. =)

And as for Ms Ono (小野リサ, Ono Risa)—she is probably the best bossa nova artist in Japan right now. Born in São Paulo, Brazil in 1962, she moved with her family to Tokyo at 10. From then on she spent half of every year in Japan, and half in Brazil. She is a native speaker of Portuguese and Japanese, and has released albums in Portuguese, Spanish, French, English and Italian. Her first album, Catupiry, was released in 1989—she was 27 then—after which she released about one album a year. She became internationally more recognized in recent years, when her passion and talent in bossa nova was remarked upon by Brazilian jazz artists, including the author of Girl from Ipanema. Her characteristic warm, gentle voice blends the light-hearted joyousness of Latino music and the dreamy feel of cool jazz, soothing and delighting lovers of this genre.

I'll upload her As Time Goes By album as soon as yousendit begins working on my computer again, check back soon. =d
***
Update: YSI is down for the moment, so I am using MegaUpload which doesn't seem to have an expiry date somewhere..here is the download link to the album, which I shall take down in a week's time. If you missed it, request and I'll send it personally to you again. Enjoy~ =)
***
Update: as zhu has pointed out, this is more likely a compilation of sorts than a formal release. But that's minor, which means we are just without an album cover for this one, lol.

Track list to As Time Goes By

1 RED BLOUSE
2 BEIJO PARTIDO
3 MOON RIVER
4 SO DANCE SAMBA
5 Samba De Verao
6 o barquinho
7 PALPITE INFELIZ
8 MOONLIGHT SERENADE
9 TEA FOR TWO
10 AS TIME GOES BY
11 ANGEL`S EYES
12 I WISH YOU LOVE
13 BE WITH ME
14 PRETTY WORLD
15 YESTERDAY

Love Psychedelico

News updates!! (from Love Psychedelico Official Site)



5TH ALBUM
LOVE PSYCHEDELIO
release date: 2006.3.22

# 01. Mind across the universe
# 02. Everybody needs somebody
# 03. Free World
# 04. Last Smile
# 05. Wasting
# 06. life goes on
# 07. These days
# 08. My last fight
# 09. Your Song
# 10. "O"
# 11. neverland
# 12. LADY MADONNA～憂鬱なるスパイダー～
# 13. A DAY FOR YOU

LP's new album! It's a collection of best live performances, definitely something to look forward to! CHeeRs!! One thing I find very funny about their album is, take a look at the titles. 2nd album - Love Psychedelic Orchestra, 3rd album - LOVE PSYCHEDELICO III ,and now 5th album - LOVE PSYCHEDELICO!! C'mon people, you can do better than that! I'm sure that saves a whole bunch of neurons on naming, which is most often a painstaking task... Did mention I downloaded LP's live concert (1GB) off emule, for a whole month, and guess what happens? It's missing codes and no bloody player can play it! So much for gastric surge. Oh but LP, so wonderful *_*

concerto pour deux voix

First of all, thanks for all the wonderful music sharing! As you know we all have different tastes. One man's food is another's poison or remedy, which one you never know. I'm not posting stuff specially tailored to anyone's preference. I'm really happy if you get to like the artist through my recommendation but honestly it doesn't matter if you find no appeal or simply hate it. No pressure either way. In case you wonder why I'm bringing this up, I'm just encouraging everyone to post whatever they like and don't be bothered by whether the rest will approve of your choice of music. After all (at least for me), this should be a playground for fun-loving people! Damn, I'm sounding so formal. Better knock it off.

Rusuming music sharing business...Let's put all the links on this blog and whoever likes it can download it. (maybe i should ask for permission first. anybody has objection that i share the links??? - rheotorical undertone =.=||)

from Jeremy, thanx!!
Aaliyah - Aaliyah (142978 KB)
Kidney Thieves - Zerospace (100222 KB)

These are from Jady, merci ^^
Simon Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water (29493 KB)

Back to the title, 'angelic duet', I got this short video(about 20+mb) from Ya a long time ago and when I rewatched it last night, I was thinking 'isn't this what Jady would call omm omm omming all the way?'. 'Om' or 'Ah' or 'Hom', it's a lyricless vocal duet performed by two talented French teenage singers. The show host was talking in fast, gibberish French and basically (80% blind guess) she's saying 'tonight, we have two young people from blah school... they sing really well... let's welcome blah and maunier... here is pour deux voir'.



Google is wonderful. Okay, correction, their names are Clémence and Jean-Baptiste Maunier and the song title is Concerto Pour Deux Voix (concerto for 2 voices). It's really impressive. The boy's from a church choir and he practices his vocal diligently every day for 5 or 6 hours aside from school work. He acted in the film 'les chorists' and performed lead solos. I heard it's a really good film, with fantastic soundtracks ^^

Top of the list

a bit on our top of the lister .... click here.

"Anggun was born in jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, on 29th April 1974. Born into a showbiz family - her father, Darto Singo, was a renowned singer, songwriter and producer on the Indonesian music scene - it was hardly surprising that young Anggun soon decided to follow in her father's footsteps.
Darto Singo recognised his daughter's talent at an early age and encouraged her to train her voice. Anggun would soon go on to become something of a child prodigy, launching her career at the tender age of 7 when she recorded an album of children's songs. By her early teens Anggun had moved onto rock and in 1986 the young singer returned to the studio to record a heavily rock-influenced album entitled "Dunia Aku Punya". This extremely popular album, recorded with one of the top producers on the Indonesian music scene, would help catapult Anggun to fame. Needless to say, the young singer soon went on to become a veritable megastar in East Asia. ....... "

Deep Blue Sea

Jangankan biar hilang semua yg telah di beri...

Jangankan pergi rasa manusiawi dan naluri diri...

Biar bumi tetap bersinar di bawah mentari...

Jangankan lenyap keindahan diri kesucian hati...

Agar kita tetap bersinar di bawah mentari...

(Chorus)Let there be joy and harmonyfrom the roof of sky above

to the deep blue sea...

All that we have under the sun

Singing loud in unheard sound

telling us that we are one

Eminem Links

yo!

As requested by zhu:

When I'm Gone

Mockingbird

Stan

Cheers!~

The Kidney Thieves

I was wondering if I should leave Jeremy to finish this post since he recommended the band and should surely know much better than me. I looked up the Wikipedia entry for Kidney Thieves (let's put a link to Wiki, all-u-can-find source of information!) and these two songs I got from Jeremy are from their 2002 studio album 'Zerospace'. One is called 'Serene Dream' and the other 'Dyskrasia'. You can follow the links and try them out! Here's their official website (lots broken links btw).

Brief Profile
Kidneythieves is an Industrial rock band led by Free Dominguez (vocals) and Bruce Somers (guitar/engineering). Along they way they picked up other band members such as Chris Schleyer (guitar), Christian Dorris (bass), and Sean Sellers (drum). Free Dominguez often puts a lot of influences from psychology, mainly Jung, into her lyrics. The band released two albums, Trickster (1998), Zerøspace (2002). They re-released Trickster as Trickstereprocess in 2004, which includes completely digitally remastered tracks, included is also 5 bonus tracks only available on this version and a bonus DVD. They also released a remix EP called Phi In The Sky (2001) in between Trickster & Zerøspace. They broke up after the release of Trickstereprocess. Free Dominguez went on to create an indie project while Bruce Somers created the band ShockNina.

Album: Zerospace
(Click on cover for more details)


'Serene Dream', hmm, I'm at a brain block as how to describe it. Free Dominguez's voice reminds me strongly of Wong Faye's (Maybe Jady will write a review on her) but don't be fooled by an ethery floating song like this, Free's total flip of style in 'Dyskrasia' just shows how versatile she is. Look who's speaking. I've only heard two tracks but two is enough to prove her scope of talents. Ah, 'Serene Dream', makes me feel rather cold and it might be the half flat tone merged with cello and lonely random piano keys whispering in the background. I don't know why but my gut feeling tells me ET-sama will dive for this type of songs.

'Dyskrasia', excuse my limited vocabulary but actually I have to look it up in www.dictionary.com to tell you it means abnormal blood condition. If you disect the word, it should come down to the meaning of 'bad mixture'. This song is edgy, fast-beat with urgent acoustic guitar kicking off in the background and Free's voice is just wild and free style lol. Love it!

So here's my mini mini review. BTW, when I saw a small cover image of 'Zerospace', I thought Free looks like Katherine Moenig probably coz of the dark eyeliners, which, well, if you enlarge the image and see for youself... a rather modern ghost story.

ps. anyone heard the first track on the radioblog? Deep Blue Sea. I think it's really nice.