email : Webview : Weekend Edition: Will’s first Weekend Wrap-up of the new year!

10! 9! 8!… Oh wait, just a tad late, huh? Hope you had a rockin’ New Year’s Eve and a New Year’s Day filled with family, friends, collards, and black-eyed peas. If you’ve got plans to hit the ground running into the New Year, I’ve got some killer recommendations this week to help soundtrack your sendoff. Ben Arthur’s astounding album/eBook combo, Service Unicorn’s embryonic EP, and ATO Records wonderful Winter Sampler all have amazing songs ready to ignite and inspire. Glynn Young’s book is a really encouraging read as well. So take a cup of kindness yet and cheers to you and yours!

– WILL HODGE, NoiseTrade Music Editor

Ben Arthur

If You Look for My Heart

Singer-songwriter-author Ben Arthur has crafted an amazingly creative dual-medium project titled If You Look for My Heart and the album/eBook combo is as compelling in its individual components as it is engaging in its simultaneous consumption. Okay, that sounds a bit too pretentious. Let’s try this again… Both the album and the novel are excellent enough to be enjoyed on their own merits, but the reader/listener experience is enhanced even more when they are taken in together. (So make sure to download them both!) The title track is one of the strongest songs on the project and special guest Rachel Yamagata adds an emotional depth to “Desolate” that really takes the song to another place.

Service Unicorn

Maps of Melodies [EP]

Finding the music of Service Unicorn was such a fantastic musical discovery for me last year and this EP of past and present material will hopefully tide me over until their new (recently-funded-via-Kickstarter) EP is released into the wild. For now, Maps of Melodies is a wonderful 5-track EP that features three songs from the pre-Unicorn incarnation known as MelodyMap, as well as the Service Unicorn singles “A Single Thread of Silver” and “Christendom Chrysanthemum.” Washed in waves of synthesizers and disembodied, robo-cold vocals, Service Unicorn brings to mind both late-70s/early-80s New Wave and modern day electro-pop influences

ATO Records

ATO Records Winter Sampler

With such a strong roster of past and present artists, ATO Records never disappoints with their offerings on Noisetrade. Their Winter Sampler this year is certainly no exception to their precedent, featuring standout tracks from Brandi Carlile, Old Crow Medicine Show, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Mariachi El Bronx, Hurray for the Riff Raff, and more. If you’re looking for a couple songs to sample, “No One is Lost” by Stars and “We Are Undone” by Two Gallants are both infectious numbers that will have you going back for more. As ATO continues to top themselves with each sampler, it’s hard not to overly anticipate what’s next.

Glynn Young

Poetry at Work

If you’ve ever wanted to try your hand at poetry (or become a better poet) and feel that your 9-to-5 grind is keeping that from being a reality, then you’d really benefit from checking out Glynn Young’s Poetry at Work. Even if you don’t have writing aspirations yourself but are looking for a few pointers on discovering beauty in your workplace, this book has helpful suggestions on how to accomplish that as well. If you think phrases like “the poetry of PowerPoint” and “the poetry of the organization chart” sound a bit far-fetched, you’re going to be pleasantly surprised by Young’s outlook on the office.

When writer Will Hodge isn’t in the sky tonight, you can find him running off at the keyboard about music, concerts, and vinyll at My So-Called Soundtrack .

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