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Stephen
Sondheim
If you don't know who went Into the Woods, or why Sweeney Todd made "The Worst Pies in London", let alone which show gave us "Send in the Clowns", then let Amazon.co.uk contributor Piers Ford be your guide as he goes side by side with Stephen Sondheim in our exclusive interview. When it comes to analysing music--and it's true of my lyrics too--people tend to take me very seriously and that leads them down certain paths that are, if not misleading, exaggerated State of Bengal With one foot in London and the other in the Indian sub-continent, State of Bengal's collaboration with the late sitar supremo, Ananda Shankar, Walking On talks in a vibrant dialect all of it's own. Sam Zaman, the man behind State of Bengal talked to Amazon.co.uk writer, Felchley B Hawkes about his experience working with a legend. I kind of wanted to educate people to understand about the entire spectrum of Ananda's music that we don't really know about Super Furry Animals  Because you see so many light shows, where there's all these reds and magentas and you just think [rolls eyes] it's all been done before. So now we're researching brown light Supergrass  We went round Gaza's house one day to do some song writing and he bought a few old analogue keyboards and spent the whole day being a synth pop band Richard Thompson The consummate storyteller in song, humour, pathos, love and death are all to be found in Richard Thompson's songs. In an exclusive interview he tells Amazon.co.uk editor Mark Walker how his own experiences in the "cultural wasteland" that is suburbia inspired his album Mock Tudor. I had accumulated a few songs about London, and suburban London specifically, and thought this was a good time to expand on it and give the album a theme. Having decided that the rest of the songs came fairly quickly Toploader  Watercress is a great thing to put with cheese. Just water really, but it makes a big difference Travis  If you think, music is vibrations in the air--that's all it is--it's invisible, it's energy Tricky  I look around at all these music channels and radio stations and I think they're insulting me. Back in the days of Marc Bolan your art had to be at such a high level to get in the charts, but that's all changed now Mark-Anthony Turnage  I tend to write very spontaneously when it's somebody's birthday, or when somebody's died, like Toru Takemitsu. It's a very emotional response. There's sometimes something a bit sterile about writing pieces to order U2  The humbling bit about songwriting is that anything above good usually feels like an accident. A lot of U2 songs are first drafts Armand Van Helden  I think house music today is made by people for people who want to be cool. That ain't me. I'm roots. I'm grease dirt fried chicken. I'm not cool. I'm using house music as a platform Tom Waits  Bill Hicks, blowtorch, excavator, truthsayer and brain specialist, like a reverend waving a gun around 
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