Beirut’s debut album Gulag Orkestar and single Elephant Gun established Zach Condon as one of the biggest stars of alternative, indie ukulele. On his new album, The Flying Club Cup, he delivers only two new uke heavy songs – The Penalty and St. Apollonia – but both are instant classics.

The new album suggests that Beirut’s music is making a steady drift westwards and forwards in time: from Beirut, to traditional Balkan music, to early twentieth century French. Flying Club Cup is packed with accordion waltzes, chanson strings and French song titles. The concept behind the album is that of a balloon race with each song representing a flying over a different French city. The concept, fittingly enough, doesn’t weigh the album down but gives it continuity and an atmosphere.

The sound of the album is noticeably larger and more cleanly produced than Gulag. Whereas Gulag Orchestar was recorded in Condon’s bedroom, Flying Club Cup was recorded in the Arcade Fire’s church come studio. Whereas Condon recorded Gulag Orchestar alone, Flying Club Cup features the eight regular touring members and string arrangements by Owen Pallet (Mr Final Fantasy). The album is very much in keeping with the move towards grandeur and intricacy in indie music at the moment.

There are two things that haven’t changed: Condon’s acquired taste of a voice and the risk that at any moment the whole thing could crash over into pretentious, student-railcard music. But the songs are strong and regular moments of absolutely gorgeous sound (the opening of Forks and Knives, The Penalty and Cliquot) that you are quickly distracted from the possibility.

Overall, eight thumbs up.

At the current rate of geographical and chronological trajectory, I estimate that the next album will be based on 1940s England. So the next Beirut album is like to have an Arthur Askey vibe to it. Can’t wait.

Buy The Flying Club Cup US UK

Tab and chords for The Penalty, St Apollonia and more Beirut.

The King Blues – Mr Music Man Demo (mp3) via KingBlues.com

This ukulele kills fascits.

In a world where popstars fly halfway around the world in their private jets to tell us not to leave our TVs on standby, you’d be forgiven for dismissing any musician with political pretentions. The King Blues are a polemical, left-wing, ska-punk band who have been mainstays of the London squatter scene. They have three advantages over these acts: they seem to practice what they preach; they have songs called Fuck You Bono and Fuck Bob Geldof; they have a ukulele.

Their political credentials are boosted by the support of, left wing activist and writer of Pirates of the Caribbean, Tariq Ali. According to Ali, The King Blues make, “rough, radical music that should unsettle the rulers of this country.” I’m not sure exactly how much weight Gordon Brown places on the opinions of the UK’s ska-punk squatter scene when setting policy, but I did hear he consulted with Ramraid the Offy on the decoupling of payments under the Common Agricultural Policy.

Buy Under the Fog (if you can stand to do something so capitalist)

I’m quite ashamed to be mentioning Britney Spears for the second time on this blog, but the quality of this ukulele version of Toxic didn’t really leave me with much choice. She does a great job of cramming all the essential parts onto the uke.

The most challenging part of the song is the riff that kicks the song off. It starts off with a string of hammer-ons and pull-offs. The Fluke she uses is louder and has more sustain than many ukes. If you’re using a soprano you’ll have to work a little harder to get all the notes to sound clearly. The second bar of the riff she plays all on one string. If, like me, you’re so lazy you don’t like moving your hand unless it’s completely necessary, you could the second bar like this:

Buy Toxic

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For those of you jonesing for some uke talk, here’s a list of every ukulele forum I’m aware of:

4th Peg
ezFolk
Flea Market Music
King David Ukulele Station Forum – Francophone.
My Dog Has Flea – a young French forum.
The Uke
UkeClub.nl – In Dutch.
Ukemaker
Uke Surfer (RISA) – In German and English
Ukulele Club – In Chinese
UkeTalk
Ukulele Cosmos
Ukulelekommissionens – In Swedish.
Ukulelenboard – In German.
Ukulelenurkka – Finnish forum (with international section)
Ukulele Underground
UkuleleWorld2

There are also a number of Japanese ukulele boards (translated into English by Google). Here’s a smattering:

NUA
Ukulele Afternoon
Kyushu Ukulele Family

If you know any that I’ve missed, please let me know in the comments.

The big news this week is that Mark ‘JazzUkes’ Occhionero has made public a series of instructional ukulele videos. These are absolutely jam packed with great tips and fancy chord move. You can get the tab for a number of his arrangements at his website.

Get your weekly dose of the best ukulele videos over the fold.
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I’ve started bookmarking ukulele related sites I come across on Uke Hunt’s Tumblr. Mainly for my own reference but there will be plenty of uke related stuff there if you’re interested.

Ukulele warm up exercises on DoctorTrey.

Colorado Ukulele Festival February 9th 2008.

10 steps to ukulele madness from the Ukulele Allstars.

Banjo-lele blog in a language unknown to me.

UkuleleStrummers.com

Minotaur serenades with a ukulele on a sadly unmade t-shirt.

Mix your own samba band (including uke player).

If we’d had a summer this year rather than floods and tornadoes, this would have been the hit of the summer.

The song samples Stand By Me, so you can learn two chord progressions for the price of one. It also makes it well worth learning to play the bass riff mixed in with the chords.

I think the chords and the riff sound even better in D-tuning.

Buy Beautiful Girls

There are many American shows I know only by their parodies on other American shows. The Captain and Tennille, Laverne and Shirley and Gilligan’s Island: I’ve sat, stone-faced, through parodies of them all. So when I was asked to tab out the intro to Gilligan’s Island I was a little reticent. Until I heard it and realised it contained a snippet of one of my favourite tunes to play on the ukulele.

The tune is quite unconventional in that it raises a semitone on each repeat. But my favourite part is the interaction between the lyrics and the music that occurs (even if it is done in a rather obvious way). The challenge is to make these parts stand out from the melody and give each it’s own distinctive flavour.

Buy Favourite TV Theme Tunes

You can get the chords on Alligator Boogaloo but, like my version, you’ll have to capo at the first fret if you want to play along with the original. Also, you’ll have to raise the chords on Boogaloo by a semitone in the second verse.

Requested by James

As they mentioned in their very first ukulele love-in, Bosko and Honey developed their uke playing a long way from other uke players and had never met another uke player before their sojourn to the New York Uke Fest. They’re planning to make up for that by spending most of next year touring the globe, meeting and jamming with other ukers and documenting their travels for YouTube and a DVD.

They’re going to be visiting the east coast of Australia, Japan, the USA, the UK and Europe (which covers everyone who has visited this blog ever apart from one person in Djibouti). So if you want to be one of the strange and exotic animals they observe on their safari – or you fancy jamming with them or putting them up for the night – head over to their website and shoot them an email.

Ukule Flambe – In The Jailhouse Now (mp3) via their website

I knocked up this tab for the intro to In The Jailhouse Now. Some of the positions are different to those Bosko uses.

The chords for the song follow a similar structure – but with a D on the ‘They’ve got him in the jailhouse…“

Earlyguard is a big favourite here at Uke Hunt. I’ve already tabbed his tunes Busy Bee and Blue Smoke. Yesterday he released an album of his ambient and atmospheric tunes Time To Relax which you can download it for free at his MySpace.

Earlyguard’s music is far removed from the ‘rata-tat-tat’ delivery of most ukulele songs. When I asked him about how he developed his style he was typically self-effacing, “I’m not able to play the usual style. My fingers are too slow and my knowledge of the usual playing techniques is still at the very beginning.” His style is very distinctive. It’s the first style I know of that is unique to the electric ukulele (rather than sounding like an amplified acoustic-uke or an electric guitar). All but two of the tracks on Time To Relax were record with his trusty RISA Uke-Solid.

It’s hard to believe but Earlyguard (the name is a translation of his surname, Fruhwacht) only started to play the ukulele at the beginning of this year after commandeering a ukulele he had given his daughter for Christmas. Since then he has produced new tunes in rapid succession. As well as the tunes on this album, you can hear many more on his MySpace and his YouTube channel.

Earlyguard’s influences may not be what you’d expect, “I love music of all styles. The Beatles as well as Metallica for example. I don’t like ‘New Age’ music that much but it’s funny that my own music could be described that way.” Indeed, it was The Beatles that inspired his uke playing, “Watching the beautiful Concert For George tribute on DVD where Paul McCartney played Something on a ukulele – this was the point for me – the wish to play this lovely instrument took over.”

As well as his solo work, Earlyguard is one half of Earlywolf, “Earlywolf is a relationship with WS64 and some friends as guest musicians. It started at Ukulelenboard where I posted a song at the ‘membersound’ section in January. WS liked it very much and asked if we could do some songs together. I recorded many songs in the past years (2004-2005) with my GarageBand software and WS took the single tracks and re-recorded and re-arranged them. His musical skills are extraordinary and so he did a fantastic job I think. On some songs we asked some friends to play a solo or do better vocals than me and it was great fun to work this way.” You can download the resulting album free at earlywolf.com.

I’ve only had Earlyguard’s album for 24 hours but I’m already chilled out and relaxed. I highly recommend you take a little time to relax and head over to his MySpace and download it.