Tag:   ed hale

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GET READY TO ROCK! INTERVIEW WITH ED HALE

1. What are you currently up to?
a.       Currently up to our necks is what we’re up to! Total madness. But a very cool kind. Semi-controlled madness. Just a lot of incredible things happening right now all at the same time. It’s a thrill and a rush for sure. But it also requires extreme focus and attention, which isn’t usually the stuff of artists if you know what I mean… More than anything else I’d say we’re all very excited about the upcoming release of the new Transcendence album All Your Heroes Become Villains. It’s hitting retail and digital stores all over the world as we speak and people are loving it. The concept of the album is resonating with people at this time. One critic called it “The perfect soundtrack to a beautiful apocalypse.” That pretty much sums it up I’d say. So that’s a good thing. Right now t’s making a big splash on College Radio here in the States.
b.       Oddly enough, at the same time we’ve got this other thing happening with my last solo album Ballad On Third Avenue which was totally unexpected. The second single “New Orleans Dreams” has been climbing up the Adult Contemporary charts here in the US and spinning in 21 other countries. Including the UK of course. Right now the song is currently #10 in the US. Because of this, there’s a whole new interest in this solo album. We didn’t see this coming. So we’re literally working PR and promo on two totally different albums at once by the same artist. AND trying to book two separate tours to support these two very different albums. It’s insane.
c.        We’re doing a ton of press, which is always fun, and at the same time we’re working on the music videos for the “Villains” album. Of course we are also planning the US tour, deciding which cities to hit and which other countries to books some shows in. That’s a daunting task. But obviously well worth it once we’re on that stage. We love performing live. It’s THE rush of all rushes. If that doesn’t sound like enough, we’re also in the studio and just about halfway through recording two new “Ed Hale solo albums”. We’re still attempting to get our minds around what these new albums ARE… what their all about… We recorded about 20 songs so far and we’ve found that about a third of them sound like Adult Contemporary, a third of them sound like a more mellow singer/songwriter vibe, and another third sound more like they belong on a Transcendence album. They’re more alt-rock. It’s weird how we work like that. It confuses some people… but not us. We’re used to it.
d.       And of course there’s the mysterious The Great Mistake album that we still haven’t officially released, but it’s been sneaking around the internet for a few years. We just found the master tapes and gave them a listen and they sound incredible. Just over the top raw garage rock but catchy as hell. So now we are all involved in this heated debate as to “when should we release this new-new album?” It obviously doesn’t make sense for us to release it now. And yet it sounds so damn good we want to! Take French band Phoenix and mix it with some Strokes and Vampire Weekend… add some early seventies Rolling Stones, Velvet Underground or Wolf Mother and you get a pretty good idea of what the sound of this new new album sounds like. It’s done. Just needs to be mastered. I can’t wait for everyone to hear it. I just love it.

Read the other 11 in-depth questions and answers here: http://reviews.getreadytorock.com/blog/_archives/2012/1/3/4971094.html
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ED HALE MAKES MUSIC MAGAZINE MAGNET A MIXTAPE – NEWEST ISSUE ON STANDS NOW

Check out the latest issue of the music magazine Magnet for a special feature on Ed Hale. The singer prepared a little holiday present for the uber-hip magazine’s Editors in the form of a custom Mix Tape featuring a list of his “Ten of the Most Important Songs of All Time and Why”. Each song is accompanied by a brief explanation of why Hale chose it and how it has influenced his own music, along with a link to the music video on YouTube.
The article also features a code listeners can use for a free download of the new single “Solaris” from Ed Hale and the Transcendence’s new album All Your Heroes Become Villains. Curious? Though many of you could probably take a damn good guess,  we’re not gonna tell you which songs or artists Ed chose. You’ll have to pick up a copy of the magazine for the full list; or simply click here to read it online. The December issue, #083, hit stands today, December 29th.

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LISTEN LIVE TO ED HALE CALL-IN INTERVIEW ON UK RADIO THURSDAY 4PM EST

Tune in to Liverpool’s RadioHope 1350 radio station in the United Kingdom at 4:00 PM EST (10:00 PM UK time) to hear a one-hour live call in interview with Ed Hale of Transcendence. RadioHope is the student-run radio station of Liverpool’s Hope University. If you’re in the UK, tune in to the radio station. Everywhere else, simply CLICK HERE and listen in LIVE on the web.  Questions can be emailed in to onair@radiohope.co.uk to be answered live on the air. The very brave and adventurous can call in by dialing 011-44-0151-291-2067.

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ED HALE SHARES HIS “TOP 25 FAVORITE SONGS OF ALL TIME” LIST

What if someone asked you to turn them on to “the top 10 greatest pop-rock songs of all time”? Where do you begin? How is that even possible? It’s not. That’s the answer. Unless of course you’re willing to make a list of at least 500 to 1,000 songs. And that’s a maybe. Of course Rolling Stone and Mojo and other music magazines attempt this feat every few years and sell them for ten bucks a pop, and most of the time they’re a good read, create a bit of controversy, and piss us all off a bit because there’s just no way to decide what ORDER to put all these great songs in… Besides the fact that there are so many that we are forced to NOT include.
Ed Hale was recently assigned this impossible task by the super-cool music magazine Magnet. Says Hale, “I thought about the idea of this list for a while,  in terms of the “how” of it. What’s most important? What’s not? Eventually I decided that the goal would be to assemble a list for these groovy people not of “the greatest songs of all time” but rather a “list of my own personal favorite songs of all time” instead. I tried as hard as I could to resist the urge to be “political,” as in dropping names of the hot new indie artists currently swelling underground, as well as to equally resist the urge to “just go old school”; which was also tempting.”
“What we’ve ended up with I hope is a good mix of everything, both old and new, famous and not so famous, well known and not so well known. More than anything else at least, I think the list is a very real and sincere representation of some of the music that has been most influential on me and my own output as an artist.”

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NEWCOMER ED HALE ABOUT TO BREAK INTO THE TOP 10 WITH “NEW ORLEANS DREAMS”

Newcomer to the Adult Contemporary radio format Ed Hale, who also happens to have a second new album up for release in 2011 as the singer of the eccentric indie-rock group Transcendence (now renamed “Ed Hale and The Transcendence), looks to be headed for the Top 10 next week. This marks one of the few occasions a non-major label “indie” artist has been able to achieve such a feat. This week’s chart available here.
Breaking into the Top 40 is accomplishment enough. The Top 20 even more so. Once one crosses the Top 10 barrier the competition becomes fierce. But in the newly transformed music business, the old record company models are shifting faster than the labels seem able to keep up with. The best example of this was the recent shock when the break up and sell off of long time stalwart EMI was announced. All of this shifting about makes it appear that the playing field has been leveled, allowing more room for independent artists to reach the same fanbase that major label artists are able to. But Hale, who has been signed to both major and smaller independent labels over his fifteen year career, claims that the terrain is still wrought with challenges for independent musicians attempting to make a living at the art of music making.

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ED HALE AND THE TRANSCENDENCE RELEASE THE MONSTROUS ROCKER “BLIND EYE” AS A FREE MP3!

Endless greed, war, exploitation, lies. Turn the anger and outrage into a guitar riff, and you have the pulsing heart of “Blind Eye,” the latest free MP3 release from All Your Heroes Become Villains by Ed Hale and The Transcendence. The riff, accomplished by some tricky open-D tuning by Hale, and then mirrored by syncopated bass (Roger Houdaille) and drums (Ricardo Mazzi), sets the emotional tone, giving the listener more than a hint where the song is going.
“It’s cynical as hell but I think it’s how a lot of us feel right now in the US; and all over the world,” says singer Ed Hale. “You [politicians, elected officials] can do whatever the fuck you want to. I’m sick of your lies. I’m sick of your endless wars. So here’s the deal: do whatever you want to. I’m sick of fighting you. So I’m going to turn a blind eye to you and your wicked bs because I’ve got a life to live. But just don’t mess with me or my family. Don’t come near my home. Don’t come near my work or my family. And don’t ask me to help you in your quest to destroy the world.”
Hale’s haunting lyrics, “Everything I hear/And everything I see/I won’t be afraid/You won’t bother me/All your evil ways/With everything you do/I will turn away/You won’t bother me,” are delivered with such steady resolve that you can almost picture the sneer on his face while he sings. The refrain, “Murder Greed Destruction Exploitation Rape Sex and Violence/Take your money Take your money Take your money” whispered quickly and venomously, came from a list Hale wrote of all the things he was protesting at the request of Producer Fred Freeman. About halfway through, “Blind Eye” begins to spin out of control into a giant convulsive climax: vocals, guitar, drums, bass and effects all coming together in a climactic representation of the chaos and evil present in the world today. This is about as heavy as Transcendence has ever gotten in song. And it’s very, very good.
Download the mp3 from Green Light Go or stream it below from SoundCloud.
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TRANSCENDENCE SINGER ED HALE TALKS DEATH AND THE BAND’S NEW SINGLE “SOLARIS”

Out of the 11 songs on the new Ed Hale & the Transcendence album, All Your Heroes Become Villains, there are only 3 that offer any kind of hope, optimism, or hopefulness: track 3 entitled “Solaris,” track 6 “Here it Comes,” and the album closer “Last Stand at the Walls of Zion.” The rest of the album is a dark heavy brooding downward spiral into the lead character’s disillusionment with everything in the world and his own personal life. From the album’s trance-hop meets operatic opening — which starts with a slow dirge-like rhythm and then builds to a climactic crescendo of dissonance punctuated by two competing melodies played by a trombone and guest vocalist Dee Dee Wilde’s gorgeous gospel-tinged wailing — all the way through to the album’s closing track, All Your Heroes Become Villains feels and sounds like the perfect soundtrack to the end of the world.


Song by song the lead character vents his anger and disappointment with the society he lives in and his own personal life, aiming his rage at everything from the political system (“Blind Eye” and “We Are Columbine”) to God and religion (“Waiting for Godot”) to friendship and romance (“Indian Princess” and “Messed it Up Again”). The climax of the album is track #10, the majestic seven-minute ‘suicide letter in a song’ the band entitles “After Tomorrow” (already a favorite among adventurous college radio DJs) where it becomes clear that the lead character has had enough of blaming the world around him and has turned inward only to discover that he doesn’t have what it takes to continue any further in a world full of hate, war, disease, crime and betrayal.
And yet amongst all this drama and pathos there is the beauty and hopefulness of the song “Solaris.” In their traditional Britpop meets post-modern rock style, Ed Hale and company deliver a near perfect pop song clocking in at three minutes and thirty seconds that shines a bit of light on the stage of their apocalyptic rock opera. Sweet and tender and yet mysterious, “Solaris” seems at first to be a love song. But the female character being sung to doesn’t appear to even be alive, at least not alive in the traditional sense; on planet Earth. Rather, the lead character sounds as if he is singing to someone far removed from all his earthly troubles, someone who is far far away, living in another galaxy or star system called “Solaris.”
Lead singer Ed Hale summed it up this way, “A girl I knew, someone very close to me, had just passed away. And I found it impossible to deal with emotionally. Right around the same time, I had a chance to see the DVD of this beautiful movie called “Solaris” starring George Clooney. This movie is a trip. Very slow. You have to flow with it. It was based on the book by Stanislaw Lem. Seeing that movie hit me at the right time. I had my guitar with me of course and while I was watching the film I just started strumming these chords and creating this song about my friend… What I did really, was just place her, Julia, into the movie… in order to bring her back to life for myself. I just felt that because it was unbearable to contemplate her passing that at the very least I could make her alive in some other form, like she’s still living but in a different dimension. So the song “Solaris” is me, or the lead character of the album I guess, singing a prayer to her or for her, talking to her… asking her how she’s doing… like “how’s life in your new world Julia?” It made me feel better. And although it isn’t enough to keep the lead character alive by the end of the album, I think it gives him some hope along the way to his final decision… like that.”

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