Detroit artist Joe Hertler and his band The Rainbow Seekers put out a five song EP in April that is a great summation of the group’s live sound, recorded in the Russell Industrial Center in Detroit.

After recording Joe Herler wrote, “Let me just say that it’s very rare that I feel content with a piece of artwork that I’ve made. We filmed these videos in Russel Industrial Center in Detroit. They are our attempt to share a 100% live performance with the world, and thanks to our friends help I think we were able to capture just that. No auto-tune. No quantizing. No digital tricks.”

Without the brief interludes, the five track album could easily be mistaken for a studio recording. The Live at Russell sessions were also video recorded, providing a true look at the way Joe Hertler & The Rainbow Seekers play together. Intimately shot and featuring candid moments in and around the worn yet charming Russell Industrial Center, the video captures both the hard work and play that makes this band what it is.

Check out the live video for ‘Your Story’ below and visit their sites for more recordings and additional videos from the Russell Sessions.

[via friends @ Green Light Go]

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Tear into that BBQ leg son, multitask with your favorite 12 oz, and get ready for some quality blues rock. The compilation ‘Alive at the Deep Blues Fest’ is arriving this November 27th via Alive NaturalSound Recordings and features 13 incendiary performances from the festival which occurred from June 29th to July 1st, 2012 in Bayport, Minnesota [a suburb of Minneapolis].

Earlier in the summer the owner of Bayport BBQ, Chris Johnson, resurrected the popular Blues Festival for three days of sold out performances. Twenty six bands from four countries and sixteen states were featured. The forthcoming compilation is a document of the intense freeflowing performances from the festival and was mixed by famed Detroit producer/musician Jim Diamond, who managed to capture the loose and spontaneous feel of classic live albums produced decades ago.

Today’s feature from this forthcoming compilation is by Cincinnati, Ohio based band BUFFALO KILLERS. They really light up the stage for this meaty performance, a real quality track to enjoy on this lazy Sunday. Coming soon via CD, Digital & BBQ Sauce Red Colored Vinyl!

[via Pavement]

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Kali Giaritta and Matt Harmon, about half of the Portland group The Ascetic Junkies will be on a ambitious Summer tour over the next month or two, starting off June 8th in California, then heading to Idaho, and Washington before heading back to some shows in Portland with the full band. While on their West Coast Tour they are open to the idea of house concerts, playing at other venues, crashing at your pad, and of course accepting support to help fill their Corolla’s gas tank.

Today’s feature just released on their YouTube channel, and we’ve provided an embedded link to the video here. Its the Acoustic Duo Basement version of Windows Sell the House which you can find the studio version of on their 2008 release, One Shoe Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

In other news, the group is currently working on their fourth album, which will follow This Cage Has No Bottom. Also, in March they were one of many featured artists on the free digital compilation sampler Ides of March. Make sure to grab a copy, and enjoy…

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Performance under Creative Commons Attribution license.

Our musical crosshairs set themselves on Columbus, Ohio this psychedelic weekend, with an explosive set of blues flavored rock from trio Mount Carmel. The group has released a new album on Siltbreeze called Real Women, a great soundtrack as you spin donuts, jump bridges, and dodge explosions in your ’76 Trans Am.

In 2010, a few months after their appearance at SXSW, and on the way out of Philly during their first East Coast tour, the band dropped by the studios of WFMU and played a twenty minute set on Brian Turner’s Show, 6/15/10. Check out and download all five track listings at the link below. They are really something else.

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[audio:http://insomniaradio.net/audio/irl-mountcarmel-swaggs.mp3]

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Live at WFMU on Brian Turner’s Show, 6/15/10 by Mount Carmel is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Today we are featuring a new stripped down interpretation of a slightly older track from Los Angeles singer-songwriter Nico Stai, a favorite musician of mine here on our network, who has had repeat visits in the past few years.

Every now and then you when you visit a live show, the bar chatter slightly drowns out a musician, not letting up as the music plays on. Often, when visiting one of Nico’s solo shows the room tends to be tamed as soon as he starts pouring his soul through the stage speakers, while his guitar-work is perfectly punctuated with his haunting yet very relatable lyrics.

Here’s another one of those songs from Nico Stai, an acoustic live track called ‘Skies Over Your Head’, released a few
short weeks back on October 10th.

Stayed tuned for a new full length, coming in the very near future.

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[audio:http://insomniaradio.net/audio/irl-nicostai-skiesoveryourhead.mp3]

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Today we take a look at a new acoustic release by Kilsyth, Scotland’s ‘The Twilight Sad’.

The band actually got their start playing a few gigs in Glasgow, creating half hour pieces of music that incorporated loads of varied instruments, tape loops from old films and folk songs, effects, toy keyboards and other quirky angles like theremin. This was all in an attempt to find their own sound that they could call their own and continue forward with.

With the latest Twilight Sad record nearing completion the band have a great 8 track acoustic EP to giveaway. Recorded at Glasgow’s Chem 19 studio in 2009, the acoustic EP features songs from their last full-length, Forget The Night Ahead, as well as last fall’s The Wrong Car 12-inch.

In the same vein of their experimental and sampled beginnings, we mixed some Scottish newsclips we found over at archive.org on the ‘SAD’ intro of this piece. Now whether that stands for Scotland Against Drugs or Seasonal Affective Disorder is for your determination ultimately. We hope you enjoy the track and make sure you head over to the website and check out the three videos that they included there from the acoustic recording session.

Yes, you read correctly! 8 FREE ACOUSTIC TRACKS from THE TWILIGHT SAD are now available at their website below as well as this track without the intro banter.

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[audio:http://insomniaradio.net/audio/irl-thetwilightsad-thewrongcar.mp3]

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Summer will be arriving in a few weeks in the US and some of you coastal denizens and vacationers will be returning home from the beach, discovering that you couldn’t quite scrape the remnants of that washed up stray tar-ball from your heel.   I can only imagine Floridians delight as their kids whole feet are shellacked this summer from the deepwater oil rig volcano drift, a readily identifiable mark as to where they spent their time.

We recently featured Mimicking Birds over on our daily blog to much fanfare, and decided to place this track here on the acoustic feed. It eerily seemed to mirror some of the recent events in the Gulf, and well its just an excellent song from the crew’s free collection over on Virb.  I’ve tagged on some opening and closing commentary that fits in with the name of the group – enjoy.

Live MB photo by inger klekacz (via flickr cc)

Mimicking Birds Website
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[audio:http://insomniaradio.net/audio/irl-mimickingbirds-shellackedintar.mp3]

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It had been several years since I had first seen the Damon Castillo Band live, performing against the sun-drenched backdrop of the Pacific Ocean up in Avila Beach at the annual SLO Vintners Festival (held each November). At the time I had signed up for his mailing list in my grape induced haze, periodically receiving e-mail notices on upcoming shows and band updates over the next few years.

At the head of this Memorial Day weekend I had a bit of time to explore his most recent mailing which happened to feature a live track that he put together for the show “In Sessions” down in San Diego.  It’s a beautiful well executed track that the band wants to share with as many people as possible.  In that regard, they are giving it away starting this weekend – just make sure you visit the link below to get your FREE copy!

• Damon Castillo Band’s Website
• Social Media: Facebook | Twitter | MySpace
• Download for free @ the DCB website!

[audio:http://insomniaradio.net/audio/irl-damoncastilloband-stcecilia.mp3]

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[youtube]I3JEJAnpZwM[/youtube]

I had recently promised you all more Wisconsin-based rock over on my Twitter account after realizing that we were sorely lacking in showcasing the home state in which our trademark java is sent out to the masses for guaranteed all night rocking.

Well this is the first musical delivery to you after that announcement. Unfortunately our featuree – Milwaukee based band, NORTHERN ROOM, played their final show on November 8th, 2008. Regardless, we really enjoyed this track that was discovered via music-discovery site ‘thesixtyone’, and really thought it was time to bring this amazingly clean live and acoustic track to your ears.

A little history on these guys. They opened for Bon Jovi at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee after winning a contest in 2006 (out of 100 bands), to open for Mr. ‘Shot Down in a Blaze of Glory’ himself. At some point the group also signed to a Japanese label, BM3 Records, and after several releases, band-member Andrew Jonathan made the decision to leave the band, at which point the band decided to also call it quite. Later before they were entirely consumed by flames from today’s featured track, they released one last effort – “Blacklight”.

Enjoy and when you get a moment check out the album from whence this version came. In late 2007 the band combined the ten tracks from both of their EPs, three live acoustic tracks, and one previously unreleased song — Home — to create Last Embrace – Deluxe Edition. This enhanced CD, which also contains a music video for Last Embrace, was independently released internationally in November of 2007. Word.

• Northern Room’s Website
• NR @ thesixtyone.com
• NR @ Facebook
• NR @ MySpace
• NR @ emusic | itunes | amazon

[audio:http://insomniaradio.net/audio/irl-northernroom-wereonfire.mp3]

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Two short years back in Copenhagen Denmark we would have loved to have been in-house when Danish indie 5-piece EFTERKLANG (translation: ‘reverberation’ or ‘remembrance’) tackled an ambitious live project, performing with the Danish National Chamber Orchestra for a limited edition LP/DVD set.

The performance occured live at DR Koncerthuset, Studie 2, Copenhagen on September 26th, 2008 and featured some notable guest musicians from Denmark who you may know – notably IR friendly artists Peter Broderick and Niklas Antonson of Slaraffenland. The live project is documented on their album ‘Performing Parades’ which is basically a performance of the entire 2007 album ‘Parades’.

We love the artistic vision in the set design for this performance (as seen in the accompanying video) and its nice that all the performers were good natured enough to wear their supplied elf hats which create a nice dimension with the faux snow-covered peaks in the background. Adding in some ‘rosy’ face paint splotches and colorful sprite-like clothing still doesn’t take away from their champion performance in this jolly fantasy setting.

Special thanks to IODA for bringing us this nice recording, and making it available for free download here on our live performance blog.

[audio:http://insomniaradio.net/audio/irl-efterklang-cuttingicetosnow.mp3]

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Efterklang, The Danish National Chamber Orchestra
“Cutting Ice to Snow” (mp3)
from “Performing Parades”
(Rumraket)

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