Kanye West talked to David Letterman in his series 'My Next Guest Needs No Introduction' (Netflix, May 31), where he talked about his career, health and family. “I had the confidence, this delusional confidence, to think I could rap as good as JAY-Z—even to the point of not playing him beats and saving them for […]
Daniel Higgs it the former frontman of legendary post-hardcore band Lungfish, coming from the same time and place as Fugazi, with Lungfish always rendered weirder and more exploratory. Ahead of an appearance at Terraforma, an "experimental and sustainable music festival" happening in Milano, Italy, in July, the Quietus made an interview where Higgs presents his […]
“I hope jazz doesn’t become synonymous with pop again. Part of the fun of jazz is discovering this isolated, secret scene that is radically reflective of its time. That means it now encompasses the hip-hop work Kendrick Lamar is doing in LA with Kamasi Washington, and club culture here in London with people like Nubya Garcia […]
“I talk to every person like they’re my friend. If you stand on every stage and talk like you’d talk to your best friend, you might step on toes. That way of interfacing is not always appropriate or successful" American singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco says in an interview with the Guardian about her new autobiography 'No […]
"The past 50 years or so have seen such an explosion in musical development that anything starts to sound retrogressive after a couple of years. What I try to do to avoid re-treading old ground is to create music that does something interesting with the form: to push and pull the verse structure, the time […]
“Everyone has that stereotype when you’re a bad kid: you’re going to go to jail and end up with a kid at a young age. Well, I ain’t in jail and I ain’t got a kid and my family’s proud of me” - English rapper Slowthai says in an interview with the Guardian about his […]
Guardian has a great article about how getting rid of hard drugs affected Fat White Family and making of their new album 'Serfs Up!'. They moved to Sheffield to make the album - “It was just far enough away from London to keep smack out of proceedings”, as Lias Saoudi points out. Questions of racism […]
London-based drum'n'bass musician Basic Rhythm has a new album out, 'On the Threshold', and for PopMatters he chose 10 tracks that influenced this album the most. Coil seem to be one of the biggest influences "not just sonically but in that they had the courage of their convictions", as well as Moodyman - "a big influence […]
Guardian talked to Burt Bacharach about his career, and about how he still has the urge to write songs. Why? “This is my form of resistance. I can’t stand what’s happening in this country – my country”. There's this one person who he really dislikes - "We must pick somebody who’s capable of getting rid […]
Seattle rapper Porter Ray makes an appearance in PopMatters' 20 Questions segment, where he chooses his favourite albums - "music for me is a mood... some of my favorites are Arthur Verocai's self-titled debut, OutKast's 'Aquemini', and Pink Floyd's 'The Dark Side of the Moon'". The best thing he bought is "the equipment I use to record […]
"Things happen in childhood that both form us and break us. And then in adulthood, we try to basically fix the ways in which we were broken as children" Moby says PopMatters in a very candid interview. He just published an autobiography 'Then it Fell Apart', where he describes how childhood traumas "lead us to […]
A great read in the Guardian - part-biography, part-interview with the National, starting point being their Paris concert held on the very same evening the Notre-Dame burned. Multi-instrumentalist/songwriter Bryce Dessner, a Parisian now, was having second thoughts about playing (they did), and later concluded - “When so many institutions are crumbling, basic concepts of liberalism, […]
Mark E. Smith died in 2018, and the remaining members of The Fall - Dave Spurr, Keiron Melling and Pete Greenway, have continued where they left off with Imperial Wax, with new frontman Sam Curran. "We think about him [Smith] all the time but instead of being down about it it’s more positive, talking about […]
Guardian has a beautiful interview with Peter Doherty, who is still alive, and still on heroin. He's 40 now, and has an album out - 'Peter Doherty and the Puta Madres'. But, it's his life what they talk about, not music. Why is he still on heroin? - "Because my brain thinks I enjoy it. […]
'Defying Gravity' is a new memoir by Sex Pistols' friend Jordan Mooney, and it follows punk’s rapid rise and fall, as well as Jordan's own evolution from keen ballet student to the Boudicca of new wave to a veterinary nurse. But, in 1976, as she tells the Guardian - “Men were confused by me. They […]
There’s a subtle movement in songwriting now, expressed by Kacey Musgraves and Sharon van Etten and even Taylor Swift: writing from a place of happiness is more creative than mining the classic bad guy motif - Guardian says in their interview with liberal-country singer who won a Grammy for her latest album 'Golden Hour'. Musgraves […]
Shortparis is a Russian indie band with members from Siberia and St. Petersburg, and, according to the Quietus, they are following in Sergey Kuryokhin's legacy of provocative performance art - "ambitious, bombastic, incredibly pretentious, erotic, thrilling, impossible to pin down, vaguely deviant, fun to dance to and full of revolutionary potential". In tQ interview the […]
Another Sky's song 'The Cracks is an "ode to our generation, one that is more self-aware and being forced to have the difficult conversations that lead to progress and evolution”, singer Catrin Vincent says in an interview with the NME. The new single is from new EP 'Life Was Coming In Through The Blinds’ coming […]
“It sounds like us making music in 2019. And yes, we’re influenced by everything from Prince and Joni Mitchell to Biggie Smalls and 2Pac" producer Nico Segal says in interview with Stereogum, speaking about Intellexual, his project with Nate Fox. Segal, signed as Donnie Trumpet, has produced and played for the likes of Kanye West, […]
Guardian tells the story of Anderson .Paak, who's newest album 'Ventura' - the fourth and final named after a California beach - was just released to critical acclaim. In high school he was "that talented black kid who can rap, sing, danc", but after record labels rejected his demo he reinvented him as "the alternative […]
"I'm very attracted to moving into darkness and expressing that. But I want to do that in the context of catharsis and ultimately turn toward hope", Anoushka Shankar, one of the most recognizable names in world music, has told PopMatters in an interview about her new best-of collection 'Reflections', which chronicles her two decades as […]
"I think we are in the process of creating a more fair and equal music industry than it’s ever been in the past," Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said in an expansive new interview with the Freakonomics Radio podcast. He claims that more recording artists can make a full-time living now than they could in the […]
"I don’t use Spotify. I think all those streaming services are… the new MTV, the new gatekeepers... they’re all just ripping everyone off. You can have your online existence, but trying to suck on Spotify’s sweet sweetness is just a waste of time for me" Julian Casablancas says in a Billboard interview. The way he […]
"We want to cash in on each other’s ambitions, not shoot them down,” Lias Saoudi of Fat White Family tells in an interview with the Quietus about their new album 'Serfs Up!' coming out April 19. tQ calls it "a tremendous album, a sonic volte-face into driving, luxurious pop". Listen to their new song 'Feet' […]
Consequence of Sound picked out Los Angeles indie punk Sego as their April's Artist of The Month (isn't "indie punk" supposed to be an oxymoron?), so they made an interview with the band about coming from Utah, living in California, making a band, listening to Primus, etc. "It’s ultimately when Sego are at their most […]
“What I think of as popular song isn’t 21st century pop, which to me is a totally different beast. It’s usually more the nostalgic version of popular music from the 20th century. I really love chord changes and lots of meaning in lyrics. A lot of money was given to weirdos in the studio to […]
A photo is "like a little story. It's a piece of time, time travel", Chris Stein says in an interview with PopMatters about his photography collection, 'Point of View: Me, New York City, and the Punk Scene'. It contains images that span from the late 1960s to 2001, and since Stein was a Blondie co-founder […]
Billie Eilish has appeared on US TV show Ellen, where she opened up about Tourette's Syndrome and how she controls it: “I’ve learned that a lot of my fans have it, which made me feel more at home with saying it. I felt like there was a connection there. I felt like when I said […]
“These are all upbeat rockers. They’re all pretty rich rock songs with big choruses. It’s all material that we can see being played in a club with people dancing" Interpol frontman Paul Banks said about band's new EP 'Fine Mess' coming out in may, in time for festive season. As for the lyrics of the […]
“The live show has always been our number one priority. There’s just something primal about live music" - Crows' frontman James Cox told NME in an interview about recording their debut album 'Silver Tongues'. They recorder the album on several locations, always in pitch dark: “We had been rehearsing so much that we were really […]
