An amusing podcast at the Afropop Worldwide about the influence of American performers on African music (beyond Michael Jackson, Jimi Hendrix or James Brown). Listen to how Dire Straits became massively popular in the Sahel, influencing Tuareg rockers like Tinariwen and Tamikrest. American country superstar Jim Reeves' had an African career. Death-metal was big in Angola.
In 1964 an impresario named Rudy Duclós spotted four young guys from Florida named Tom, Vic, Bill and Dave playing in a band The Ardells in a Miami club and decided to organize them a tour in South America. The band, renamed "The Beetles" for this particular tour, was in for it. Duclós sold them to South American cubs as the real thing, he even got them a spot on Argentinian TV. Once they appeared on TV, however, the con was uncovered. The media ripped them to pieces, but the fans who bought the tickets their concerts didn't mind that much. Mostly everybody really liked their music and what they were doing. Finally - they made a lasting influence. They inspired competitors to make their own Beatle-posing bands, as well the formation of a genuinely nation-shifting band Los Shakers in Uruguay who helped to birth the country’s revolutionary rock nacional music scene. BBC tells the amazing story...
In recent years, melody loops - snippets of original music that might serve as the instrumental hook of a song - and the musicians who create them, have become a fundamental part of the way rap music is made. For up-and-comers, supplying well-connected producers with packs of pre-made melodies has become the most effective method to get a foot in the industry’s door. And for producers working with prolific rappers, outsourcing the time-consuming work of writing a melody to a pool of dedicated loopmakers is the most efficient way to keep making hits - Pitchfork reports on the fundamentals of music production in hip-hop today.
"The Beatles began their career emulating and covering their classic rock’n’roll heroes but quickly set about exploring all the possibilities of sound, technology, broad-reaching historical revivalism and mad drug music that success made available to them. As a direct result, they invented pretty much every modern pop genre from EDM to metal and might’ve got the full house if they’d ever let Ringo rap... The Stones, on the other hand... popularised blues rock and, um, that’s it" - Mark, My Words argues in his latest column, wrote after Paul McCartney told Howard Stern his band was better. The other reason NME's blogger wrote about it - there aren't any good feuds anymore.
Fact Magazine has started a great new segment How To Make a Track, showing how the world’s best producers make their music in their studios. In the latest episode, Fact visited the Berlin studio of Hayden Payne aka Phase Fatale, a Berghain resident with a love of ’80s post-punk, industrial and EBM, who showed his fascination with the effects of different sonic frequencies.
Weird Al Yankovic's parody music seems ancient, but a great text in the New York Times about Yankovic's show - "a parody concert felt like a category error, like confusing a mirror for a window", made it so fun - "It felt less like a traditional concert than a Broadway musical crossed with a comedy film festival crossed with a tent revival". When it finished, the journalist decided "Weird Al Yankovic was a full-on rock star, a legitimate performance monster. He was not just a parasite of cultural power but — somehow, improbably - a source of it himself". Although a parody is essentially a joke, which lasts as long as a laugh, Weird Al's joke still endures, 40 years on.
Not all streamed or downloaded music needs to be of low quality - Rolling Stone offers advice on how to get the high-quality resolution. First, you need a good digital analog converter (DAC) - it’s the component that converts digital files into sound. It's there in computers, tablets, phones, TVs, and stereo receivers, but not all of them support high-resolution audio files. Rolling Stone also recommends a few high-resolution streaming services, and places to download high-resolution music.
The Quietus went to Czech medieval castle to speak with the leaders of the local dungeon synth scene, music reminiscent of the one that can be heard in fantasy video games. Fans of this genre number in the thousands, with a number of creators of this type of music being really small. Its creators, the Q writes, guard the promise of adventure somewhere else, in a never-never land whose laws cannot be fully explained. Dungeon synth is the outpost of those survivors, who have retained their childhoods' free imagination.
NME's blogger really appreciates 'The New Abnormal', the album, not the world's settings: "The Strokes’ comeback couldn’t have been better timed. I can’t be the only one for whom it’s provided a welcome distraction from all the hypocritical government briefings and fighting in supermarkets... From the record, title-down, you might even conclude that they saw all this coming".
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Paul McCartney's saying goodbye to the Beatles, NME's Mark Beaumont made a list of 20 best songs from the fab four's solo careers. Number 1? Not the one we'd expected - "a perfect crystallisation of the psychedelic hypno-state" of the '#9 Dream' by John Lennon.
A lovely column in the NPR about how sounds are beginning to emerge now that everything has stopped - the traffic, the daily commute, the stores are closed... Birdsong is more noticeable right now because noise pollution levels are down, so we're hearing the world as people heard it decades ago...
"Perhaps there is some wisdom in treating all songs, or for that matter, all experiences, with a certain care and reverence, as if encountering these things for the last time" - Nick Cave told his fans on his Red Hand Files blog. Specifically, he was answering fans' questions about the newest Bob Dylan song 'Murder Most Foul' - "I say this not just in the light of the novel coronavirus, rather that it is an eloquent way to lead one’s life and to appreciate the here and now, by savouring it as if it were for the last time. To have a drink with a friend as if it were the last time, to eat with your family as it were the last time, to read to your child as if it were the last time, or indeed, to sit in the kitchen listening to a new Bob Dylan song as if it were the last time. It permeates all that we do with greater meaning, placing us within the present, our uncertain future, temporarily arrested".
"The film’s revelatory perspectives on Sun Ra’s work arise not only from the filmmaker’s analytical understanding of it, and the discussions that he films with Sun Ra and other members of the band, but also from his approach to filming music itself, in rehearsal and concert" - The New Yorker writes in a review of 'Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise', a documentary about the afro-futurist collective. The thing is it starts from the music - "scenes of performance, whether taken from archival clips or filmed anew for the documentary at hand, run for a few seconds at a time before being covered on the soundtrack by voice-overs". So, it's music first...
Washington Post has a great read about the beauty of walking while listening to music (on your earphones): "In her book 'Wanderlust: A History of Walking', Rebecca Solnit writes that 'walking is a mode of making the world as well as being in it'. What a terrific definition for listening, too. Listening to music requires imagination — and listening to it while walking gives you the rare opportunity to move through three places at once: your mind, the song and your route. Somehow, instead of ripping your psyche to shreds, your brain synchronizes all three worlds effortlessly".
"The likes of Biffy Clyro, Haim, Lady Gaga and Kehlani have postponed their album releases, presumably because they won’t be able to tour in support of them as planned... ‘It doesn’t seem appropriate,’ goes the standard delay line, but nothing could be more appropriate right now than giving music fans a brilliant, time-guzzling distraction from the world" - NME's blogger Mark, My Words writes longing for new music - "We’re losing a year of our lives, but we don’t have to lose a year of our music too".
"Los Angeles rap is governed by politics. If your favorite rapper’s neighborhood hates another rapper’s neighborhood, it is practically impossible for them to collaborate or even be on the same show bill. There is fake love and real hatred. To overcome those deeply rooted divides in both life and death is practically unheard of. Nipsey was the only one" - the Level looks back at Nipsey Hussle's legacy, one year after his death.
MySpace defined not just the previous era, but the way we continue to consume and discuss music online - Stereogum says in their long read about the music social network. In Stereogum’s oral history of Myspace Music, twenty artists and former Myspace executives discuss their experience both using and working on the site, living through the bubble years and why it couldn’t last forever.
Spin turned back to 30 years of Pearl Jam, trying to explain the how:
The ability to say "No" to anything that didn’t feel right
Getting Jack Irons to play with them - he was the grounding force that allowed the band to concentrate on music
Having Neil Young as a friend - he helped them keep their heads on straight through all manner of turmoil and triumph
Getting a perspective - Eddie Vedder got into a crappy van in 1995 to play sideman on Minuteman bassist Mike Watt’s solo club tour
Having Pete Townshend as a friend - after the 2000 Roskilde Festival tragedy The Who’s Pete Townshend helped the band survive with advice and consolation
Getting Matt Cameron into the band - the former Soundgarden drummer was just the friendly quick study who could learn the band’s catalog in three weeks, saving the summer tour right then and there and in fact turning it into a particular powerhouse
There is no cure for coronavirus, but there's help, LA Times suggests: "I have no interest in knitting. Same with sewing, embroidery, crocheting. I’m beyond bad at anything involving illustrations. What I really need right now is to belt out the comfort food music of my youth... One reason singing feels so good is that it releases endorphins, neurochemicals similar to morphine that bring about feelings of euphoria and general well-being... Singing also releases oxytocin, a hormone that can alleviate anxiety, stress and depression, the unholy trinity presiding over these uncertain times... And make sure the window’s open. The neighbors will be happy to know you’re OK".
The majority of the planet is at home now, with plenty of time to do some stuff properly. LA Times wishes it be listening to an album - "with intention, like you were watching a movie or reading a novel". Not just to hear the album, as a soundtrack to some other activity, but to listen deeply, give it full attention - "stoners will probably tell you to consume an edible an hour prior. Scotch is wonderful. (LSD is illegal.) None of it is necessary. Mindfulness is essential".
Kranky made a great meme out of their release, Godspeed You! Black Emperor's cover for 'Lift Your Hands Like Antennas to Heaven', a post-rock classic about, well, end of the world, more or less. It might be coming now with coronavirus. Or maybe not, if we wash our hands properly.
Wired doesn't like how music sounds through Alexa loudspeakers and argues in favor of listening to some music - classical and classic rock in particular - on a CD, rather than streaming, for a simple reason - sound quality: "The zany operatics of all tempestuous evergreen musicians—you just gotta let them fly. Big emotions need big sonic landscapes. Loud bass is fine when you have your life together, but where would we be without the wide-ranging dynamics that alone can give voice—and thus solace—to the bipolar youth in ecstatic anguish?".
The woman from the Dirty Dancing song teams up with a mobster and a kid from a pizza parlor to - by a combination of timing, luck, forethought, and stolen lyrics - start a revolution - Complex says about Sylvia Robinson, their choice of the best hip-hop producer od 1979. The best in 2019 - Madlib, for creating soulful, era-spanning beats. In-between the two - Kanye West, Dr. Dre, The Neptunes...
Simon & Garfunkel made one of, or the best album of their career 'Bridge Over Troubled Water', and - broke up (for the third time). The latest edition of Acast podcast discussed that very issue - energy coming out from not a conflict, but a crucible of honest creative confrontation. Host Andy Bothwell speaks to musicians Nick Thorburn (Islands/Unicorns) and Mattiel on the importance of creative conflict. Listen to it - here.
Hot Pod notices a shift in music marketing - releasing a podcast about an album seems almost antithetical to other hot marketing tactics in the music world today, like TikTok and Triller campaigns, that are meant to maximize virality and rack up surface-level metrics with ever-increasing velocity. Producing a podcast that tells a compelling story in its own right, and that extends an artist’s world and brand in a cohesive way, takes a lot of time that not everyone may be willing to commit. Yet, artists from all genres and at all career stages are now creating podcasts to promote their albums, the demand and the resources - at least from bigger companies fighting for market share - are certainly there.
"It looks as if the days of the pop fan death cult are about to come to an end" - Mark, My Words writes in his column after attending a private Circa Waves gig for super-streamers. What happened? - "The gig, it turned out, was put on for those couple of hundred fans who had streamed the bands’ songs most on Deezer. But it could also finally mark the end of the hardship of the superfan. If this becomes common practice, all of your superfanning can be done from the comfort of your own Styles-den... Now you can gain priority access to your favourite band’s gigs by sitting up all night in your home-made altar to Lewis Capaldi and streaming your way to the front".
Nick Cave has opened up on how the death of his son Arthur inspired the 2016 track ‘Girl In Amber’, and how the song relieved him and his wife of their pain. He described on his The Red Hand Files blog how he was "numbly sitting" in a studio a few months after “Arthur, my son, had died", existing "in a kind of fugue-state... and as I listened to the version of ‘Girl in Amber’, I was completely overwhelmed by what I heard. It was suddenly and tragically clear that ‘Girl in Amber’ had found its ‘who’. The ‘who’ was Susie, my wife - held impossibly, as she was at the time, within her grief, reliving each day a relentless spinning song that began with the ringing of the phone and ended with the collapse of her world". Cave goes on to explain that the early live performances of the track on the ‘Skeleton Tree’ tour made him feel like he was singing to his “wife, [who was] still trapped in the amber of her grief”, but he continued to perform it and that has “released" his wife Susie "at least in part, from the suffocating darkness that surrounded her”.
Andrew Weatherall was producer and remixer of tracks by the likes of Happy Mondays, New Order, Björk, The Orb, The Future Sound of London, My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream, among others. Guardian made a selection of 10 of his greatest tracks, from Primal Scream and Saint Etienne to Ricardo Villalobos and Fuck Buttons. Listen to the 10 gems by the recently deceased musician here.
Funny and clever as always, NME's Mark Beaumont delves into questions of fashion and identity in his latest Mark, My Words post: "Metallers' image has been assimilated deep into the mainstream. They’ve undergone painful surgeries at the hands of their drunkest mates in order to declare their extreme tastes and lifestyle to the world, yet if you wander into a record shop (remember them?) in 2020 with piercings through your pancreas and Cannibal Corpse lyrics tattooed across your eyelids, you’re more likely to be recommended a Post Malone, Billie Eilish or Lil’ Jaily record than anything that might even slightly melt your face. The ultimate signs of personal non-conformism have become the New Normal. Luckily, there is an answer – if the mainstream has stolen your identity, why not steal theirs?".
"Emo has long been denied serious critical assessment, often dismissed as music for teens but never subject to the generous leeway or empathy given to pop music specifically designed for adolescents. But unlike with grunge or goth or any other subgenre that evolved from a defined set of sonic characteristics to a fashion phenomenon, the definition of 'emo music' is either too narrow or too vague to the point of being almost completely useless" - Ian 'Master of Emo' Cohen writes in the introduction to his list of 100 best emo songs, going back almost 40 years.
