THE 21st CENTURY

Listen to THE 21st CENTURY by Andrew Vladeck.

We interrupt our usual weekend break to bring you some great news. Andrew Vladeck is rolling out some product, and it sounds great!

First Andrew has an EP, called "The Magnet," out now on End Up Records. As Andrew and Amy and I go way back, I've gotten to hear quite a few versions of these recordings (not to mention the songs themselves), and I can tell you that he's put a hell of a lot of work into the mixes. The fear when you pour so much into something is that the finished product sounds tight, overworked, and lifeless. (This was the specific fear I had for this record, in fact.) But Andrew's got good taste and he got good people to help him put it together. It sounds superb: fun, loose, confident, open... just as it should be.

The only one I hadn't heard before is the one I'm sharing with you now, an acoustic version of The 21st Century, which once upon a time was a huge, over-the-top, set closing sort of song. This version is just Andrew & his banjo.

If you want to hear more, you can download a couple more at the End Up Records site, and the blogs will be digging into it. Most importantly, Andrew's throwing a release party in a couple of weeks at Mercury Lounge. November 25, to be exact. You can RSVP on Facebook.

I'll leave this up a little bit before getting back to the usual guff sometime Monday afternoon.

Photo: Welcome to Vladeck Houses. (By the way, I'm trying out something new that I think I'll keep, by loading up these photos on to Flickr instead of my own server. That should take some pressure off the latter plus if you click through the photo you can go to its own Flickr page and all that stuff.)