It was originally intended to be an acoustic album, but if the style of Jónsi Þór Birgisson’s first solo single, “Boy Lilikoi,” is any indication of the rest of the album, it’s going to be a bit more than that.  The Sigur Rós frontman has been toying with side projects for years now, and is now set to release his first official solo album, entitled Go.

John Best, Jónsi’s manager, said of the album, “It seemed apparent to us that it would be missing a trick to limit a bona fide Jónsi solo album to being a small scale acoustic project, so some subtle cajoling and encouragement to reach beyond his comfort zone was the order of the day.  We shot the breeze about producers and Peter Katis’ name came up off the back of his work with Fanfario and The National.  Jónsi weighed in with drummer Samuli from Mum, who he’d heard playing with Alex in Nordic art supergroup Kira Kira.  Suddenly the “acoustic” record wasn’t looking so acoustic after all.  From then on it’s been a slow and ineluctable slide towards the full-on, barely contained, glorious mayhem soon to be available on Go.”

The first single, “Boy Likikoi,” is available for download at Jónsi’s website.  Go is set for release on March 22nd through XL Recordings, Ltd.

In a New York Times op ed piece a few days ago, U2 frontman Bono blasted ISP’s for not enforcing illegal file-sharing on their networks. He says that those being hurt the most are the young musicians who can’t live off of merchandise and ticket sales alone.

A decade’s worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators — in this case, the young, fledgling songwriters who can’t live off ticket and T-shirt sales like the least sympathetic among us — and the people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.

Bono fails to realize that the market has been changing. No longer are we in the pre-digital age where ipods and streaming content did not exist. If individuals paid full price for all the music in their itunes library, you can bet that their library would be 5% (or smaller) than what it currently is. To say that would help the small musician trying to “make it” is ridiculous. No one would even know who they are and if no one knows who they are I can guarentee you no one is buying their album.

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Mason Jennings song “The Field” represents a new kind of war protest music. It is a personal, emotional plea to evaluate the costs of war.

Jennings talks about his friend (or relative?) who goes off to war and how proud they were for him. But when they received his first letter, it sounded nothing like him.

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noisecake is a group music blog that aims to cover new music, old music, and a whole variety of other topics.  When we find a good band that we want to share, we will write a post about it.

What we want to provide for our audience is a place to share music, bands, and ideas.  If you find a post interesting, please comment and let us know.  If you have something to add, please comment as well!

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