Sunday 24 September 2017

Collaborations / Side Projects

When it comes to joining forces, creating synergies from mega artist and mega artists, sometimes it the ones who go a little under the radar who are the best.

I don't want to talk about 'featuring' tracks, or collaborations were both artist hold their stage names as the artists (ie Greenday & U2).. I'm talking side projects under new names, new publicity, starting back from the roots.

Lets starts at a personal favourite of mine:

Banks and Steelz.
Comprising of Paul Banks off of Interpol and RZA of Wu Tang Clan.
Neither are new to side projects, Pauls released Albums under several names and also his own name. He also released his own hip-hop mix. Which is where they lie.. a new breed of Rock meets Hip-Hop. With a full album and new wave of singles out, there is a plethora of Rap verses by RZA supported Indie lyrical riddles courtesy of Paul.

Most tracks have a theme with philosophical focus to the world and to humanity. Such as the most recent release Who Needs the World. But the track that gives a mixed taste to their album Anything But Words would be Giants



Transplants 
Yes lets go punk. Primarily the work of Tim Armstrong & Rob Aston (Rancid) and Travis Barker (Blink-182). Again artists not unknown for side projects, but they'll probably come up later on or in Collaborations Pt2. 

We're heading into deeper faster sounds as you'd expect from Rancid and the flowing hip-hop elements from a mixture of featured guests along with Rob. 3 Albums have been released over 15years, with the self titled first being a favourite of mind.. lets go with the most popular
- Diamonds and Guns  followed by  DJ DJ





Team Sleep 
Chino Moreno (Deftones), Gil Sharone (Marylin Manson's drummer) and DJ Crook bring together this headf*** of  band Team Sleep. With guests such as Mike Patten (Faith No More)
I say headf*** because this is the frontman of Deftones in an Alt.Rock/Trip Hop sound... His voice is so unique and awesome in Deftones, to hear him more relaxed is weird, but it works and it's awesome.




But it goes further - Chino Moreno has another - Palms
and from a scale of Deftones to Triphop, Team Sleep is in the middle and Palms is Triphop.


Heavens
Ahhh Matt Skiba (Alkaline Trio/Blink 182) and Josiah Steinbrick (LA Producer) come together to produce an Indie Album : Patent Pending (2006). Again Matt's unique voice is pretty recognisable from his major acts and this combination works. Its like Morrissey's down beat vocals meets Joy Division... with Matt's voice.



Hotel Persona
Ok this is more Side project than collaboration but hey I feel I've neglected one of my fav bands: Placebo. Naturally you'd be drawn to Brian and all his collaborations and features but today I'm looking at Stefan. Stefan and his husband have a side project 'Hotel Persona'.
Also a track does feature Brian Molko, so even better.


Love Amongst Ruin
Steve Hewitt (Placebo) and Perry Bamonte (The Cure). So this isn't major frontmen merging, but they have a good sound and very placebo-esque.

Lose You're way:
https://open.spotify.com/track/08ffNhyt2t9oYOsS1dYVPA

When I started this post I tried to add structure and maintain a flow of genre. The list of Collaborations & Side projects is ridculous so I've decided to continue with just a selection of some of my fav eclectic, new/old, side projects.



Zwan (AKA The True Poets of Zwan)
Formed by members of The Smashing Pumpkins, Slint, Tortoise, Chavez, and A Perfect Circle
Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins) and Paz Lenchantin (Currently of Pixies), with David Pajo (Slint and short term Touring member of Interpol)

Bring together this supergroup, who, with a very short stint bridge the gap after the original disband of Smashing Pumkins. The sound is very much smashing pumpkins with an increase in tempo.



If you've enjoyed some of these, check out some more well known ones 


Electronic
Bernie (Joy Division / New Order) with Jonny Marr (The Smiths)... what more could you want.

The Falcon
Punk Supergroup: Brendan Kelly (The Lawrence Arms), Dan Andriano (Alkaline Trio), Tod Mohney (Rise Against)

Dreamcar
Recent collaboration of Davey Havok (AFI) and Tony Kanal, Tom Dumont and Adrian Young (No Doubt)




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