Decades long love between Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen is the subject of 'Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love', a documentary by Nick Broomfield, who also worked on 'Kurt & Courtney', 'Biggie & Tupac', 'Whitney: Can I Be Me', and other films, Brooklyn Vegan reports. 'Marianne & Leonard' premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, and it’s set for release in […]
Dancer Mona Berntsen was interrogated by airport security in Tel Aviv for hour and a half, after wearing a Palestinian flag during Madonna's performance at Eurovision. She says she was questioned about "my whole life story, my reasons for having travelled to Arabic countries throughout my life, my religious relations, my family matters, showing my […]
Three documents were discovered by Aretha Franklin’s niece Sabrina Owens - two handwritten wills from 2010 were found in a locked cabinet, and another from 2014 was found in a notebook underneath some couch cushions, the Associated Press reports. Franklin’s 2014 document requests that her son Kecalf Franklin serve as the estate’s personal representative - a […]
A supergroup featuring Muse‘s Matt Bellamy, Blur‘s Graham Coxon, Miles Kane, and members of Jet and The Zutons will play an intimate London show at London’s 100 Club on June 3. The Jaded Hearts Club Band are expected to form an eclectic selection of Beatles covers and rock classics. The all-star supergroup began performing as […]
Carly Rae Jepsen's new album 'Dedicated', released last week, now has the highest Metacritic user score of all time, 9,4, putting it ahead of albums like Kendrick Lamar’s 'To Pimp A Butterfly' (9,1) and Radiohead’s 'In Rainbows' (9,0), Stereogum reports. SG says it's - very much just a collection of pop songs, some of which are pretty good, but most […]
New York City’s Mayor Bill de Blasio talked to CNN about his potential Democratic 2020 presidential run, but the end of the conversation turned to music. De Blasio told the anchors his favorite band is The Clash and, in particular, recommends London Calling (“There’s many good hits on that one”). He also went on to say he […]
A grand jury has indicted 29-year-old Eric Holder Jr for murder of Nipsey Hussle, and two counts of attempted murder, after two other men were injured when the rapper was shot dead in March. Earlier this month, Holder's high-profile lawyer, Christopher Darden, filed a motion to withdraw from the case, citing death threats. Holder will now […]
American experimental sludge-doom band SubRosa are breaking apart, after 13 years together and four albums, Pitchfork reports. SubRosa announced that band members Rebecca Vernon, Sarah Pendelton, Kim Pack, Levi Hanna, and Andy Patterson are focusing on different projects going forward - Teleprom (Pack and her partner), the Keening (Vernon's solo project), DØNE (Patterson), and Asphodel Wine (Pendelton and […]
NME has a nice piece about new Liverpool scene, "terrific collection of misfits" united by label Eggy Records. "What unites these bands is a philosophy. Their collective is based simply on mutual creative admiration, a sense of humour and an outlet for anxiety. It’s finding the right amount of light and dark. The right amount […]
New York based Ensemble Signal, a classical group dedicated to performing contemporary and diverse works, performed Jonny Greenwood's two classical pieces 'Three Miniatures from Water' and '88 (No. 1)', Pitchfork reports. “It’s good to see musicians in the raw, away from stage lighting and backing tracks—as if they've just stopped by an office to play […]
American billionaire investor Robert Frederick Smith stunned the class of 2019 at historically black Morehouse College in Atlanta with his pledge to wipe out their debt, thought to be worth up to $40m. Mr Smith, 56, is the founder of the private equity firm Vista Equity Partners and one of the nation's most prominent African-American […]
Composer Harold Arlen's estate filed a 148-page lawsuit against Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, alleging they have committed widespread piracy, accusing them of running a "massive piracy operation for the purpose of generating profits from their sales and streams of pirated recordings". The lawsuit claims that technology allowed increased bootlegging by musical pirates, and because of this […]
The Brits call him "a 16-year-old music prodigy with a recording contract and a bright future", Alfie Templeman got a guitar from his father when he was just a kid, and wrote his first song - about sirens in World War One - when he was just seven or eight. Templeman is signed to Chess […]
Travis Scott told the crowd at the Hangout Fest in Gulf Shores, Alabama on Friday night that profits from his merch sales at the festival will go to Planned Parenthood, Pitchfork reports. The 1975 played Hangout Fest as well, where frontman Matty Healy made a speech out abortion ban: “I don’t believe it’s about the […]
"At some point while reading 'Sleevenotes' it becomes clear that it was much more than just a wise-cracking, experimentally punctuated, string of anecdotes about squat gigs in Belgium with improbably named noise rock bands and blocked studio toilets in Camberwell. This book should in fact be regarded as core curriculum reading for those just embarking on the […]
A sweater worn by Kurt Cobain during the last photoshoot before his death went for $75,000 at an auction. The cardigan was worn by Nirvana frontman in a photoshoot for band's last album, 1993’s 'In Utero', which was released just months before Cobain’s death in April 1994. Promotional photos of Cobain in the sweater were taken […]
California rapper Logic debuted on top of Billboard 200 chart with his fifth album 'Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind'. It sold 80,000 equivalent units in the USA in it's first-week, mostly by streaming activity - 'COADM' has 54,000 SEA units, which equates to 73.93 million on-demand audio streams for its tracks, which also made it […]
"We are always trying to blend things, and so we listen to funk, disco, electronics, prog, and ambient styles and we keep in mind when writing songs. But we mix it up all together" - Elie Ghersinu, the bass player of the Swiss band L'Eclair says in an interview with the PopMatters. They have a […]
"Rude grooves and pretty songwriting. Kaboom, shhh. You love yourself, you want to love life. There’s only one YOU. Be unique. Fight for what you don’t like. Make the world a better place. Do your thing. Love. Sex. Kindness. Family" - Husky Loops describe themselves in NME's segment 'What’s Your Band Called Mate?' where they […]
Mike Patton of Faith No More, Tomahawk, Fantomas and Dead Cross has announced a new album with Jean-Claude Vannier, the French composer and producer best known for his work on Serge Gainsbourg’s 'Histoire de Melody Nelson', the Quietus. The duo will release its debut collaboration 'Corpse Flower' on September 13 via Ipecac. “I would send […]
BBC has nicely rounded-up Eurovision 2019 contest held in Tel Aviv last week. The Netherlands' Duncan Laurence, bookmakers' favourite, has won the contest with the grandiose piano-ballad 'Arcade'. Madonna performed at the show, sending a message of peace - two of her dancers, wearing Israeli and Palestinian flags - walked arm in arm (video here). […]
Paramount's Elton John biopic 'Rocketman' made its long-awaited debut at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday night, as first major studio to depict gay male sex onscreen, Hollywood Reporter reminds us. The Dexter Fletcher-helmed film features scenes with men kissing, simulated oral sex and a steamy bedroom scene with both Taron Egerton, who plays John, […]
Guardian has a nice story, happy-afternoon-movie type, about an English folk singer Sam Lee who is trying - and succeeding - to save birds. He goes into the night with shruti box – the instrument used by Indian musicians to create drone effects – and sings to nightingales: “They love the harmonics. They love cellos […]
"I decided to stop making music for a while. For a year or so, I just messed around in my little home studio and tried different things, reconnecting with what I really wanted to do, digging into my obsessions and trying to find a more personal approach of production and mixing genres. I enjoyed being […]
However bizarre it may seem now, in 1994, the British government attempted to outlaw dance music and rave culture, defining troublesome music as that which “includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”, Guardian reports. New indie movie, 'Beats', produced by Steven Soderbergh, is a Scottish coming-of-age story describing […]
In newest edition of the Quietus' segment Columnfortably Numb they pick out stand-out psych and noise rock tracks for the month of May. With Big Business, Orchestra Of Constant Distress, Raketkanon, Centrum, Hibushibire, Terminal Cheesecake, and Hey Colossus compiled in 44 minutes at tQ, it's actually a good compilation.
Selena Gomez has declared that social media is "dangerous" for her generation and encouraged youngsters to impose time limits on themselves. Gomez spoke out about the dangers of social media during a press conference for her new movie 'The Dead Don't Die' at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, saying "social media has really been terrible […]
The Who’s Roger Daltrey is very allergic to pot smoke and the mere presence of it causes his voice to shut down, and exactly that almost happened at show in New York on Monday. Some fans didn't realize it, or maybe just did as they pleased, and smoked pot at the tour kick-off in New […]
Fifth season of Netflix's series 'Black Mirror' is due out on June 5, it will only contain three episodes, and it features Miley Cyrus playing - a pop star on the rise, Spin reports. The 90-second trailer features a series of quick cuts between the three stories, with the first glimpse of Cyrus' character, first seen sitting glumly […]
The historic live music venue the Borderline in London's West End is to close this summer, due tu rising rents in the West End, licensing pressures and the redevelopment of the building where it is housed. The Borderline is one of the last remaining live music venues in Soho, after the closure of the Astoria […]
