LA-based house music producer Channel Tres is about to drop his debut LP 'Real Cultural Shit', but the voyage to accepting himself as a house musician in LA's Compton wasn't easy. “At the time you had to be ‘hard’ and a certain type of way. I knew I wasn’t like that. I liked to dance, and that wasn’t always cool. When I saw Moodymann and how gangster he was with house music, I was like: ‘Oh, I could do this! I don’t have to give up my whole hood energy” - he says to the Guardian. He studied music theory at university where he discovered the electronic sounds - “It was kind of like a coming-to-Jesus moment. I started seeing like, ‘Oh, there’s these Black people creating this type of music? People from London came to Chicago and got this music, and now it’s popular over there?’”. His next step is to try and reach big venues such as stadiums, and to continue exploring choreography - “​​I see creativity in everything. In architecture, cooking, administration work. You have to be creative to problem-solve.”

The Irish folk band Lankum talk to the Quietus ahead of their fourth album 'False Lankum'. “I like to think of us as a gateway” - Ian Lynch, the vocalist, piper, concertina player, whistler and multi-instrumentalist describes the idea behind the band - “I think it’s important to have bands who are in some way accessible, then once you’ve got used to those kinds of sounds you’re open to hearing stuff that’s straight-up tradition. It’s like that with any genre, whether you’re talking black metal, noise, or classical music, there’s the outer layer that you have to train your ears to.”

uper-producer and songwriter Jack Antonoff talked to the press after his Grammy win last night, addressing soaring concert ticket prices and the sustainability of pandemic-era touring for musicians. "The whole thing is incredibly tough. There's no reason why — if I can go online and buy a car and have it delivered to my house, why can't I buy a fucking ticket at the price that the artist wants it to be?... Let artists opt out of dynamic pricing. Stop taxing merch, and let artists sell tickets at a price that they actually believe. Don't turn a live show into a free market. That's really dirty. Charge what you think is fair". He also went into the motives behind the decision to become a musician: "We're a very easy group of people — historically, and not much has changed — to take advantage of because we didn't start doing it because of money."

An interesting experiment by the Music Journalism Insider - they gave ChatGPT a task to make an interview with itself about music journalism. Turns out, the AI is quite self-aware: "AI tools can extract data from various sources, analyze it and generate articles or reports that can be used to supplement human journalism. However, this doesn’t mean that AI will replace human journalists completely. AI is good at producing basic information and data-driven reports, but lacks the emotional intelligence and creativity that humans bring to journalism."

Tone Glow talked to Detroit techno trio HiTech about their debut album, and also, among other issues, about reaching for freedom through dance:

"King Milo: I be tired of seein’ people be locked up. You gotta understand, and I know you understand this for sure, bro—when people, these days, are at a show, they’re a little more tightly-knit since before COVID. And after COVID, you have to get these people to chill the fuck out. Release these inhibitions out, and kind of let it go, and have fun. You’ll have people out to shows, and if it’s not one of those A-tier joints, they tend to be a little more reserved until they see a million people be unleashed. I want people to feel like it can be ten, twenty, thirty, a thousand people there and you can unlock, just jazz out. I don’t want no locked in, confinement of the mind and expression.

47Chops: We want people to have fun, not worry about all that other shit. And, dancing is not only spiritual, but it’s good for you, it’s healthy.

Milf Melly: Burnin’ hella calories (laughter).

47Chops: Relieves stress".

Tunisian producer and composer Ghoula is about to release his new album 'Demi-écrémé'—which translates roughly to "semi-skimmed", and which features songs built around the sounds he captured during his travels around Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Lebanon. On that voyage he found a lot of vinyl, so he played around with chords, tunes, and instruments to make his second album. "It’s like being in conversation with another person through sound. I found myself thinking, ‘These sounds are derivatives of the original source.’ So I’ll call it 'Semi-skimmed'” - he says to Bandcamp Daily.

This week’s special edition of Music Journalism Insider is bringing interviews with nominees for the Grammy Award for Best Album Notes. MJI talked with four nominees - Gareth Murphy, who earned his nomination for the notes to the important Irish album 'Andy Irvine Paul Brady'; Fernando Gonzalez who is nominated for the notes to 'Astor Piazzolla: The American Clavé Recordings' about the tango master; Bob Mehr, the liner notes author for the important Wilco album 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot'; Ted Olson who wrote liner notes for 'Doc’s World: Traditional Plus'.

"I think art is the best medium for this awareness. Art comes from the heart, the pain and the suffering. I know that’s the case for me and other artists doing amazing work right now. The truth of my work is what is happening in Iran right now. I am just mirroring it" - Iranian rapper Säye Skye says in a Mix Mag interview about using revolutionary rap in the current protests in Iran. "The regime takes these mediums, and deals with them, very seriously. They know that having a podium and speaking the truth of the people can resonate with society, it can unite communities and that’s what they are afraid of. For the past 40 years the regime has been trying to diminish the power and value of art."

Each week, music journalists Courtney and Melissa sit down with a guest to discuss the one song they can never hear quite the same way again thanks to a past relationship. Big Joanie bass player Estella Adeyeri swings by Song My Ex Ruined to talk about how Mitski's 'Happy' was "almost" ruined by an ex but she refused to let it. Adeyeri says - "I just love the storyline that she sets in that song where it’s like, oh, like she didn’t hear them leave, and now’s, now I’ve got tidy up. It’s the come-down. It’s like, oh, this person’s here and stuff, and they made everything about them and not really considered my input, like my time. A few years later you’re like, 'Why was I so impressed about this man? Shouldn’t have been.'"

"The first thing you learn as a Palestinian is that you’re probably going to die. You have to engage a little bit extra because life could be over in 10 minutes” - DJ Sama' Abdulhadi says in a Guardian interview. Talking to Resident Advisor, she goes a step further: "We're human beings before anything else, and it's our trauma that creates our music and makes us who we are. It's just normal life for us, which is sad, because we're much more than that". She says her goal is to bring the world closer to Palestine—and Palestine closer to the world. Sama' Abdulhadi's short documentary, 'Portrait of Sama' Abdulhadi', will premiere online January 31st.