Katharine Blake's solo album Midnight Flower is available NOW and you can order it through her MySpace page.
I have had the pleasure of listening to the album for a week now and have written a review, which might give you an idea about what to expect from this album. I would also encourage you to post comments on the review page. The review is up on the new Forever Burning page on GoMojo:
Casper
28 July 2007
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Go MSG! GoMojo!
Finally time for some news again. What's been happening in the last year? Katharine: had a baby daughter Ava Sophia Marsh in February and is enjoying her new role as a mum, which has not slowed down her touring. She was appearing live with the Baebes until shortly before giving birth and got out there again very quickly - with Ava of course. A new little baebe in the making! The proud father is Nick Marsh who has been part of the "MSG family" for ages. He is of course also the man who started Flesh for Lulu in the 80s and later on Gigantic with his mate Rocco Barker. Nick can be seen occasionally on the show A Place in Spain shown on UK Channel 4 every Friday evening (second part just shown last night!). The show follows Rocco and his partner Dawn in their quest to buy a property in Spain. Yes I know it doesn't sound like the most exciting thing to do on a Friday night, but you should definitely check it out if you can - chaos guaranteed every episode and it's on at 8pm, so plenty of time to go out afterwards. Back to Katharine, she's also completed her first solo album which may come out as early as July. No fixed release date yet. More details to follow. Trevor: still beating his drums in The Servant and spending a lot of time in France where they remain a cult hit (what happened to the UK?!?). Ben: undoubtedly involved in some new, even weirder project. Must catch up with him and find out. In the meantime the Mediaeval Baebes are still going strong, although there has been a dramatic change in their line-up recently with Katharine now being the only original member. The constant changes in line-up seems to keep their output fresh though.
In this update I'm going to do something I've never done before in the 11 years (no way! Way...) that I've been running this site. I'm going to talk about something else that I'm doing, which I would love for you, the reader, to get involved in. One of the reasons why the updates to this site have been so infrequent is that I've been busy building another site. In fact spending pretty much every moment I could on it. In running Forever Burning, working with the Mirandas and through the interaction with you guys out there, I found a need for a new something. A need for a tool that would make it easy to track and discover side projects of your favourite bands, find more stuff (downloads, videos, CDs, etc.) without having to search far and wide for it and be able to share experiences and thoughts about music without all the distractions of the current music community sites run by the big media corporations. A kind of intelligent, low-fi social network come Swiss army knife music search tool with all user driven content. Deep breath! So I went about creating it. Razor GoMojo was born last year and initially the site was merely a small set of tools for ticket search and a few other bits and bobs. Finally this very month I completed the full site, although it will never be entirely complete of course, as I keep adding to it.
While Ben was recording Stories From the Moon, I talked to him about my ideas for GoMojo and they appealed to him. When the album came out, we got a Stories banner together and started running it. The banner that you've seen on this site has also been running on GoMojo ever since and has accumulated a large number of clicks, hopefully resulting in some new fans and a little bit of kaching for Ben! One of the things I am doing and want to continue doing on GoMojo is to promote quality independent artists for free. The big labels can pay - if they ever take any notice! This is the kind of stuff you can do on an independent site, where it's not all about making money out of every pixel of screen space. I will of course be promoting Katharine's new album on the site too. Watch out for the banner, which I'll also be posting on this site.
Let me make it clear that I don't see GoMojo as a "MySpace beater" - or clone for that matter. That's not at all how it was intended. I think you'll see for yourself why GoMojo serves a different purpose compared to the likes of MySpace, Bebo, etc. It's a different kind of "space" and one that I would like all of you to help me build. Yes indeed, because GoMojo needs you and you and you and you to feed it with band info, gigs, releases and anything goes if you're really into it. If you're passionate about it, then it has a place on GoMojo. So please come and visit, sign up, write a great profile text and feed the Mojo! By all means if you think it's crap, tell me about it and I'll try to make it better.
Watch out for more info about Katharine's album on this page very soon - and that banner. Now off you go to get your GoMojo account: www.gomojo.net - thank you, thank you very much!
US based Rhino Records have released a Goth box set called "A Life Less Lived: The Gothic Box". It's got a very decent selection of tracks and even some videos. Although this is "goth" in a broad sense, don't be put off, it's all classic stuff. Not the rubbish that you normally get in these large compilations. Miranda Sex Garden are featured with the track Ardera Sempre from ye good olde album Suspiria. The box set comes in rather snazzy packaging too (see below). If you want to own one of these and for the complete track list, please follow these links:
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Amazon.com (US)
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Right, so what's in a street name? Well apparently a street is being named after Miranda Sex Garden in the southern part of the Bakersfield, California. It will be called Miranda Garden Street. "Sex" had to be dropped for obvious reasons. It will have an intersection with Lacuna Coil Avenue. No, I kid you not. In fact the whole area will have streets named after "female artists and female fronted bands in the Goth/Goth Metal/Trip-Hop/ Ambient/Ethereal/Celtic genres", according to the guy responsible for naming these streets. It will be about a year before the street signs go up though. Photos to follow. Watch this space!
Finally for those of you in the US, the Mediaeval Baebes are visiting! They'll be appearing at the Maryland Renaissance Festival on 30 September and 1 October.
I have added some live photos to the EYES section. They were taken at two different gigs around 1999 (actually could have been 1998). This was between the release of Fairytales of Slavery and Carnival of Souls, where the band had the same line up that recorded Carnival. Still without a record deal, they had a bunch of new songs and were doing gigs around London - and a few in Norway as far as I remember. At the same time Mediaeval Baebes were doing very well and The Naked Goat (Ben's other project at the time) were doing fantastic live sets (never managed to get that album together though!). In fact there were a few gigs where MSG/Baebes/Goat appeared together in various combinations of support/headline.
Anyway off you go to look at the new old live photos. I'll be adding some more images shortly. If you have any good live photos of MSG or Naked Goat stashed away somewhere, please get in touch using the link above, but PLEASE DO NOT ATTACH ANY PHOTOS BEFORE CONTACTING ME.
In my news update on 30 September 2005, I mentioned that the track Cells by The Servant had been cut from the official soundtrack to Sin City. I have since discovered that the track is used for the menu of the DVD release. Well it's something at least!
It's been a long time once again, but hey all good things come to those who wait. What a load of b******s! Anyway sound trumpets, abuse some strings and be very afraid, for Ben Golomstock has completed his solo album. It's called Stories From the Moon and you can buy it now exclusively through its very own Web site. As expected it features a number of collaborations with people who should be very familiar to the MSG devotee. You can listen to tracks at Ben's myspace page, read a short description posted by Ben here and you can order the album on the Stories From the Moon Web site. Some may find the price tag a bit on the expensive side, but don't forget that it includes P&P worldwide. You should also keep in mind that making an album like this ain't cheap and if you want to hear more of this stuff, you've got to support the man! It's as simple as that. So go on then and buy, buy, buy!
Those of a more bluesy inclination will be thrilled to know that Nick Marsh (Flesh for Lulu, Gigantic, Naked Goat), a long time friend, collaborator, etc. of the Mirandas has also just released a new album. It's called A Universe Between Us and you can learn more and listen to tracks on Nick's myspace page. Nick is also doing gigs in London at the moment. More info on his page.
Greetings weary traveler. Come inside. Enter the Haunted Palace...
Yes, a lot of stuff is happening on the recording front. July saw the release of Mirabilis, the latest album from The Mediaeval Beabes (Katharine Blake, Teresa Casella, et al). The Servant where Trevor Sharpe is beating his drums these days had one of their tracks on the trailer for Sin City. Unfortunately it was cut from the actual movie soundtrack, but you can get their very own album now. Visit the LINK section.
The most exciting news for Miranda Sex Garden fans however is that Ben Golomstock is working on a new solo album. Don't take the "solo" too seriously though - he's been working with a bunch of people, some of them very familiar to MSG fans. No more shall be revealed at this time... Anyone who's heard The Naked Goat, Ben's previous main project outside MSG (the Goat is currently hibernating), will know that he is capable of producing the same kind of controlled chaos that was/is the trademark of MSG's sound. Expect tracks with roots in both MSG and Naked Goat and more. In fact you can listen to one of Ben's tracks called Haunted Palace on his very own slice of the web right here. Don't be too disturbed over what else you might find on his page. You may not understand if you don't appreciate toilets :-)
Ben describes his new album (as yet untitled) as being "inspired by ghosts and full of weird blokes and strange girls". Yes - we like it! The album should be available in the near future as a strictly limited edition. Watch this site and Ben's for more info. By the way, Ben is also playing in a band known as Owls around London these days. Did I mention Ben?
