Jason Isbell asks Dr. Antohny Fauci questions about COVID-19 and safety protocols at live events. Fauci recommends outdoor concerts, since the danger of getting infected is dramatically higher in a closed space. Fauci suggests talking to people, giving them answers to valid questions. Fauci insists the work on the vaccine started two decades ago. Both also agree the audience should stop yelling out requests - "I know what you like, don't worry".

"I’m constantly going into different genres and fields to make the message more accessible. It’s really for young people and for mothers to be able to tap into what I’m doing. This record is like a gateway, a trickery: bringing people in with the smooth vibes. But if you know my music, I like to punch people in the heart and then kiss the heart" - Moor Mother says in Pitchfork interview about her forthcoming album 'Black Encyclopedia of the Air'. She also believes there's not enough proper protest songs now: "If we’re talking about radical statements and protest music, just standing around saying 'F this', what is that accomplishing?".

"I’m a walker, I love walking. That’s funny" - Steve Gunn says in a Tone Glow interview about his new album 'Other You', which features a few songs about the mundane habit. Why does he like it? - "Partially the walking correlates with being open and exploratory. I do a lot of walking that isn’t to a specific destination. I’m just being receptive to what’s around me, being observational. I’m present in my current space. Particularly with this record, and the fact that it was a very isolated time, walking was really important for me. Being in the park close to where I live was a godsend and it was an important part of my process, an important part of opening myself up a little more".

"With paintings, when you draw a body, you try to make your drawing look like the body more or less everywhere, even if it’s different from Africa to Asia or anywhere. Each time, you want to recognize something like a face or nose. But in music, it doesn’t exist" - Parisian composer and improviser Jean-Luc Guionnet says in a Tone Glow interview. He adds: - "I like to think that there was a deep crisis when language came, and music changed. Perhaps before, for example, a guy was coming back from somewhere, and wanted to describe the landscape that he saw yesterday. Perhaps he played music to imitate the sounds of this landscape, because he couldn’t say, because he didn’t have language. But when language came, it wasn’t useful to do that anymore. So then music appears".

"A large portion of the people that are streaming, they've never owned a CD, they may not listen to the radio, and when they hear David Bowie's Life On Mars, they're hearing it for the first time" - songwriter Ryan Tedder, who wrote songs for Adele, Ed Sheeran, Paul McCartney, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Lil Nas X - told the BBC. "So the source of discovery is the last 70 years of music. It's all brand new, right now. So you're competing with every song that has ever come out". He's got a point - entertainment analysts MRC Data say that catalogue albums (defined as anything older than 18 months) now account for 66.4% of all streams worldwide.

“We are a hardcore band. That’s the scene we come from. But one of the things that drew me to hardcore and punk in the first place, the thing I always believed it was fundamentally about, was that it was a place for open minds and for people who want to challenge norms" - says singer Brendan Yates of the band Turnstile in Guardian interview. “I want Turnstile to maintain the sense of community we found in hardcore. But I want a bigger community, to connect with as many people as possible. I’d like them to feel like I did when I discovered music – like magic existed, like anything was possible" - says Yates. Their new album 'Glow On' is the star of the week, getting glowing reviews in Stereogum, Pitchfork, Kerrang...

"A fascinating look at a fascinating article" - Music Journalism Insider writes in an announcement of the latest edition of their Notes On Process segment. MJI's Todd L Burns talked to music writer Simon Reynolds about his 1992 Melody Maker article 'Gathering of the Tribes' about a free party that drew tens of thousands of ravers to the English countryside. MJI shared Reynolds' final draft and the article that came out in the UK music weekly. A great read!

“I cannot imagine a society without music, it would be a dead society, I don’t know how it could survive. You can’t take music out of the hearts of people” - Ahmad Sarmast, the founder and director of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, told the Guardian after the Taliban overtook Afghanistan. The Institute also encompasses the Afghan Women’s Orchestra, which has become a “symbol of the emancipation of women”.

“I can only imagine it’s like having a nine-month pregnancy, and you know this baby has to come out of your vagina. But you know you’re ready to be a mum” - Little Simz says in Vice interview about waiting on her new album  'Sometimes I Might Be Introvert' to come out. While creating it, she listened to the "classics" like Michael Jackson, Nina Simone, John Coltrane, Biggie Smalls: “I was studying why people connected with these artists – why is their music so timeless? I want to make a staple album. I want you listening in ten years and you’re like, ‘Rah, remember when that came out and what that done?’”.

The New Cue talked to the "psychedelia-lovin' Texans" about putting their last album 'Mordechai' in the middle of the pandemic and not being able to play it in front of people: "It was really hard. We had to do it. We had the music ready and there was no reason not to put it out. It 100% should have gone out. But it was really hard not to be together. It was hard not to know how people were really feeling about it and digesting it. And it was hard to have so much time to read [people talking about it on] the internet". They have a 'Mordechai' remixes album out. They really liked what they got back from the remixers: "I really appreciate freedom when I create. I think it works better when you give artists permission to do whatever they want. They're going to end up doing their best work".

A great read in The Quietus about The Helicopter Of The Holy Ghost, a project/album with songs by Billy Reeves, who can't even remember writing them, due to memory loss after a traffic accident which happened after he finished the album. It's just bitter-sweet: "There’s a couple of songs that seem to be bitter break-up songs. The lyric 'featherweight summer that didn’t last too long', to me that’s amazing, but what is it about?”.

Dolly Parton has teamed up with author James Patterson for her debut novel 'Run, Rose, Run', People reports. The 448-page book - out March 7th, 2022 - is country star's first work of literary fiction and it “combines my love of storytelling and books". Parton also announced she has "a new album to go along with the book. All new songs were written based on the characters and situations in the book".

"There's a certain amount of pressure that comes into our album world when we go in to make a record because we're thinking about keeping people in the arenas, in the stadiums. I think that pushes you into a territory musically. Having everything shut down by Covid allowed these other songs to begin to be heard that were otherwise too quiet" - The Killers' Brondown Flowers says to The New Cue about their new album 'Pressure Machine'. It's much quieter, and deals with his childhood: "I think the thing that was most profound was just that how much grief that I still had that I didn't realise that I was walking around with for some of these people, some of these stories. And that was a little bit of a shock to me, that it was cathartic for me to talk about some of these things".

Former Maccabees guitarist and current member of Tailender podcast team, Felix White has written a memoir 'Always Summer Somewhere' about his band's breakup, about being the inspiration of an entire Florence Welch album, and his obsession with cricket. "It’s a brilliant book, funny, reflective, sad, funny again, dealing with the worst things life can throw at you with a real lightness of touch" - The New Cue gives its verdict. They also talked to the guy. White said that "some of the hardest stuff to write, that I really wasn't sure that I should or not, was the stuff about being a nice guy in a band but knowing that I'm being a nice guy in a band, because it was from a position of power".

Last year, Lil Baby wrote 'The Bigger Picture' in response to the police killing of George Floyd. In May, he joined the Floyd family at the White House, alongside attorney Ben Crump, to support passing the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. In his hometown of Atlanta, he bought out an entire Foot Locker store and gave away sneakers in his old neighborhood, later downplaying his efforts on Instagram. "My life feels like a responsibility” Lil Baby says to Billboard - “I’m not even trying to be no role model, honestly. [But] now that I know that I am, I try to carry myself differently, because I got people watching. I don’t even be doing what I really want to do. I do what I gotta do now”.

A very interesting interview in GQ with The Weeknd about his identity (does he feel more like Abel, or The Weeknd), drugs, alcohol, children, and making music: "I believe that when anybody is sad, they make better music. They make more emotional music, more honest music. Cathartic, therapeutic music. And I’ve definitely been a victim of wanting to be sad for that, because I’m very aware. I definitely put myself in situations where it’s psychologically self-harming. Because making great music is a drug. It’s an addiction and you want to always have that".

An interesting, yet laid-back interview with the Liars' frontman Angus Andrew in The New Cue. About releasing albums: "When I first put out the first record, I really had no expectation that anyone would listen to it. I wasn't worried about that. And, obviously, now, I'm more conscious of that. And in the whole technical sense, it just seems like when you put out a record nowadays, the music is a portion of it or something. It's not the whole thing, it's weird. There's so many different platforms and different things to do. It's a little bit overwhelming, to be honest. I definitely have worked through the time in which it’s gone from where putting out a record lost a lot of meaning at some point when things started to get digital to there being an onus on artists to produce works that lived beyond the digital. I suppose that's what we're doing. Even though it's all still digital". Liars' new album 'The Apple Drop' is out this Friday.

"It's maybe not as dramatic as an addiction story or a fallout or a premature death, all of the things that are in other music documentaries, a fallout and a reunion. The thing with them is to exist in the business for 50 years through changing times. It's like watching two people push a boulder uphill" - director Edgar Wright says in The New Cue interview about The Sparks Brothers. "It's one of the rare music documentaries about brothers in rock where the brothers don't fall out".

Warner Music Group‘s Chinese dance label Whet Records has signed a deal with Ha Jiang, in a first major label record deal with a virtual artist. "As with any form of fame, there are stars that cross over into music. ‘Virtual idols’ won’t be any different" - Jon Serbin, the CEO of Warner Music Greater China and Head of Whet Records tells in the MBW interview.

ZZ Top's bassist of 50 years, Dusty Hill has died on Wednesday at the age of 72, on Thursday the remaining member Billy Gibbons announced that the tour they just began would resume Friday after a brief lull, with their guitar tech of three decades filling in. It's what Hill had wanted, Gibbons says in the Variety interview: "But knowing that we can take his wishes forward and give him all due respect… You know, he was adamant. He said, 'I’m going to go down and see what’s up. In the meantime', he said, 'the show must go on. Don’t forget it'. And he was pointing his finger and shaking it".

"A voice is inherently communal. I learned how to use my voice by mimicking the people around me through language, through centuries of evolution on that, or even vocal styles. A pop music vocal is often you're kind of emulating something that came before and then performing your individuality through that kind of communal voice. So I wanted to find a way to kind of reflect that communal ownership" - experimental musician Holly Herndon says to The Fader about her audio deep-fake AI Holly+. Herndon encourages her fans to upload audio files so they can be sung in her voice. She goes into the metaphysics of it: "I mean, we've been able to kind of re-animate our dead through moving picture or through samples, but this is kind of a brand new kind of field in that you can have the person do something that they never did. It's not just kind of replaying something that they've done in the past. You can kind of re-animate them in and give them entirely new phrases that they may not have approved of in their lifetime or even for living artists that they might not approve of. So I think it opens up a kind of Pandora's box".

"Some people say kids can't feel the blues. I feel like kids can. You don't necessarily need to leave your woman or nothing like that – folks have got dramatic stuff that happened in their life all the time" - blues guitarist-singer Christone "Kingfish" Ingram says in the NPR interview. He played his first official gig at age 11, sneaking out of the bed (he's 22 now).

Graham Coxon has announced a new graphic novel titled' Superstate', which will be accompanied by a soundtrack of original music written and recorded by the ex-Blur guitarist. "I started writing that when David Bowie died, so it has a sort of David Bowie tinge" - Coxon says in The New Cue interview. However, "this isn't really a Graham Coxon album", he says, adding that "playing different characters helped with my singing. If I was pretending to be somebody else, I could actually say what I wanted to say. I just found I could be a little more honest if I was playing another character".

"Very little of the present, internet-wise, may survive. The paradox of today is that we chronicle mundane existence to a degree that no human beings have ever done before, but we do so on phones with short lifespans and via platforms that will one day be bought, folded into each other, and shut down" - freelance writer and blogger Chris O’Leary says in Music Journalism Insider interview. "The 2000s already are full of holes—there are so many dead websites, ghost message boards by now... You see this play out all the time on YouTube—one day you’ll have every musical performance on David Letterman on there, then two months later, half of those videos have been pulled. Maybe they come back, maybe they don’t. It’s all sandcastles, really".

"Ultimately you must be totally prepared but you must also be empty. Empty of pre-conceived ideas on what you practice or study at home. You can use these ideas which you practice and study but only if it serves the music at hand at the necessary moment. It's not much different from theater acting in that way" - corneter and composer Graham Haynes said in 15 Questions interview about improvising. His collaborative album 'Echolocation' witch producer Submerged is out now.

"In the last 15 years, everything has changed a lot. I don’t feel any hostility; in fact, just the opposite. There is a lot of interest and support: from the public, from orchestras, from managers, and from the critics" - conductor Oksana Lyniv says in the New York Times interview about female conductors. This Sunday, Lyniv will conduct a production at The Bayreuth Festival in Germany, becoming the first woman to conduct a production in the festival’s 145-year history.

"His endearing videos are part history lesson, part nerdy tech outlet, part philosophical soapbox" - Pitchfork writes lovingly presenting Hainbach, an old-machine enthusiast and music producer. "The project grew from his fascination with obsolete test equipment—everything from particle accelerator components to lunks of antique metal used in nuclear research to a dolphin-locating device once used by the U.S. Navy". When he collected plenty of those, he arranged them into towers, and recorded their sounds live, calling the album 'Landfill Totems'.

“What do they say? ​‘It takes 10 years to become an overnight success’” - Brighton raper Arrdee says to The Face about the fame he is experiencing right now. He has been rapping since the age of 12, but he blew up only this year, with his 'Cheeky Bars' freestyle. He's also on Tion Wayne x Russ Millions' song 'Body 2', also featuring 3x3E1 & ZT, Bugzy Malone, Fivio Foreign, Darkoo, and Buni. Arrdee's latest single 'Oliver Twist' needs to prove that he's “smiley, I’m fun and bubbly, and cheeky”.

"It's an album that was created during the pandemic but it's not about that" Chvrches singer Lauren Mayberry says in The New Cue interview. She goes on: "I think maybe lyrically and creatively living through those things and being shut inside with your own thoughts makes you have to think about things in a way that you don't want to and I guess that I feel like the 2020s reflected in it in that way, but it's not like the themes of these songs are 'the world as it stands in 2020'. It's more just like it was an enforced lyric-writing camp I didn't want but that I'm grateful to have had".

The New Cue writers really like Shaun Ryder's new album 'Visits From Future Technology' so they talked to the former Happy Monday, touching the issue of today's technology and the possibility to work remotely. 25 years ago "the only thing I would have been doing would have been crack cocaine and heroin", Ryder says. Speaking about time passing, he says "the thing is, as you get older time goes really quickly. If you think to the five years you spent from 11 to 16, that seemed like a million fucking years. It's 11 years since I was in the jungle, but to me that's five minutes ago. And it's five minutes ago when I made this album". About his lyrics: "There's loads of metaphors in that and I can't fucking remember what they were doubling up for. You sort of smuggle and cover up lyrics but now I can't remember what I was fucking metaphoring about!".