H-Burns: Live at the We Love Green

A chance to catch the live set by H-Burns at the We Love Green festival in Paris the other weekend,
courtesy of the good people at Arte making the show available to watch online.

The show was held at the Parc de Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne on Saturday May 30. H-Burns were the opening band to play the event that also featured Christine and the Queens, C.A.R., Flavien Berger and other favourites of this blog.

It's great to see H-Burns playing in such a pastoral setting on such a beautiful day.  Can there be a better place for a show than in a park in Paris on a sunny afternoon?

H-Burns deserves to be massive, or at least well known as a cult act outside France. A listen and a watch of their set should convince you.

Their last album Night Moves was released in January this year and a special record store day release album of covers emerged since then.

Woodkid with the Orchestre national de Lyon

Some great video has been made available of a performance by Woodkid with the Orchestre national de
Lyon on the Arte website.

I've repeatedly written about Woodkid on this site, his debut album The Golden Age came out in March and is probably one of the best releases of the year.

This live performance sees Yoann Lemoine with a full orchestra, and it was filmed on July 1 2013.

It gives another dramatic interpretation of his work, and while some artist's work sounds overwhelmed by an orchestral treatment, Woodkid's work takes on another aspect, the orchestra adding new colours and textures to the work.

It's with some disapopintment then that I read that apparently he's planning to kill off Woodkid by 2015. He's been working as a musical artist since 2011 and while he's had a successful career as a music video director, he's keen to pursue work on a film

Next year he's got a series of dates in France at the arena-sized Zenith venues, but before then he plays at the O2 Academy in Brixton, London on Wednesday November 13.

La Route du Rock: Festival

This weekend sees the La Route du Rock summer festival in St Malo in Brittany.

The festival has been running since 1991, this year's event being the 22nd time it's been held.

With a very open-minded indie and international outlook, prevous years have seen the likes of Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, PJ Harvey and Mogwai playing.

The town is a great venue for a festival, with shows taking place at a number of venues in a seaside town at the height of summer.

This year thirty bands play at three venues, the beach stage, the auditorium of Le Palais du Grand Large and the castle stage at the 18th century Vauban castle.

On the bill are the likes of Squarepusher, Spiritualized, Yeti Lane and Dominique A on the Friday, the Saturday sees Mark Lanegan, the XX and Breton, along with a second show by Dominique A.

The Sunday features amongst others Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Mazzy Star and the Walkmen.

Quite a few of the shows will be shown live online at Arte's Live Web website http://liveweb.arte.tv/fr including Spiritualised, Dominique A and Alt J.

Hellfest on Arte

This weekend saw Franco-German arts channel ARTE running a documentary about this year's Hellfest festival, which was held in Clisson from June 15-17.

Every year since 2006 the town, near nantes, hosts one of Europe's biggest metal festivals, this year featuring some of the biggest names in rock from Guns 'n' Roses and Ozzy Ozbourne to smaller bands representing pretty much every genre in contemporary rock music.

While hugely popular, rock music has never attracted the serious critical attention that it deserves, so it's hugely encouraging that a channel like Arte taking it on board.

Over 110,000 fans attended the event this year, and Hellfest returns on June 21, 22 and 23 next year.

Sadly I wasn't able to watch the documentary online, as music rights are a complicated things for broadcast companies and while they may have permission to broadcast music from an event and put it online, they don't have the right to do so in other countries, hence the video of the broadcast is geoblocked.

If you are in France or Germany, you might be abel to watch the video here http://videos.arte.tv/fr/videos/hellfest_2012-6841496.html

Anyway, a number of the performances at this year's festival have been made available to watch online on the Hellfest website, I thought the Dropkick Murphy's with their celtic punk particularly appropriate for a Brittany (almost) based festival. Their intro tape, Foggy dew, was of course covered by Alan Stivell.

Tindersticks: Paris gig live streaming

A quick link to a live streaming this evening (March 5 2012) for a live streaming of the gig at the Trianon in Paris thanks to Arte

http://liveweb.arte.tv/fr/video/Tindersticks_en_direct_du_Trianon/

Although an English band who work predominately in English, they have long had associations with France throughout their career that has spanned over 20 years.

They were responsible for the soundtracks of the films Nenette et Bon, Trouble every Day, 35 Rhums, and White Materials, while former band member Dickon Hinchcliffe was behind teh soundtrack for Vendredi Soir and Stuart Staples did the soundtrack for L'intrus.

Last year a collection of their soundtrack works was issued as a box set collection and they performed shows related to their cinema work in collaboration with Denis last year.

Their new album The Something Rain, was released last month.