Guardian made a selection of 20 best small music and arts festivals around Europe this summer. There's details about each festival, location, dates, costs... It's: Meadows in the Mountains, Bulgaria; Awake, Romania; Sacred Ground, Germany; Secret Solstice, Iceland; Uprising, Slovakia; Instytut, Poland; Ypsigrock, Sicily; Mandrea, Italy; Love International, Croatia; Horst, Belgium; Evasion, France; Parallel, Spain; […]
Carrie Underwood selected an all-female lineup for her upcoming Cry Pretty Tour, with opening acts Maddie & Tae and Runaway June, but then she wondered - “Can we do that?”, and then told herself: “OK, we have to do this!”, Billboard reports. Underwood says she wants the audience “to leave saying, ‘That’s the best show […]
Public figures including Stephen Fry, Gene Simmons of the band Kiss, Sharon Osbourne, comedian Al Murray, Spanish singer/songwriter Conchita, Marina Abramović, and pop mogul Scooter Braun have signed a letter speaking out against a proposed boycott of this year’s Eurovision, which is to be held in Israel in May, the Guardian reports. Their letter states […]
The Quietus made a new monthly selection of punk and hardcore, for the month of May, and this time it is particularly noisy, unintentionally. Bananas Belgians Cocaine Piss serve as light relief among the crop, tQ says. Listen to the May-nosie collection here.
Debuting at No. 11 on the midweek UK singles chart is a song 'Let Nature Sing', and it’s literally just birds, Pitchfork reports. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds released the track of pure birdsong with the hope that it would chart and raise awareness for endangered birds in the UK. Vocals on […]
UK artists were paid £746 million in 2018 for their tracks being played, and that was record high - a rise of 4% on 2017. For the first time, PRS for music, which collects the royalties for artists, counted songs used on Facebook and Instagram Stories. But, as singer-songwriter Ruth-Anne Cunningham says to BBC, "a […]
John Singleton, Oscar-nominated director of 'Boyz n the Hood', 'Poetic Justice', and 'Higher Learning', has passed away at the age of 51. With 'Boyz n the Hood', in 1991, then-24-year-old Singleton was the youngest nominee and the first black filmmaker to be nominated for the award. "He not only made me a movie star but […]
“Britain produces so much interesting, creative stuff, but it has become a nation where any kind of gathering together seems terrifying to the authorities" - Vinca Peterson tells Guardian in an article about artists who depict clubs. It connects escapism of dancing with social commentary of arts - "From pagan festivals that have been taken […]
British telecom company EE will be trialing a 5G mobile network at this year's Glastonbury, which raised some health issues, and some fans were questioning whether they will even attend the festival now because of the trial, Plymouth Live reports. The trial would mark the first time the 5G technology has been used at a […]
BBC has a political piece with South African rappers about elections being held May 8, since six million young eligible voters in South Africa didn't even bother to register earlier this year. Rapper Lex Lafoy puts it simple and correct: "What use are these freedoms if we don't know how best to use them".
The Guardian reporter visited Ronnie Wood at his art studio in Hertfordshire village, in England, a cottage where Rolling Stones hellraiser turns into calm and delicate painter. “The studio evolved with the clarity I gained from sobering up over the last few years,” Wood explains in the subtly ironic article - "in the past it […]
Sex Pistols star Johnny Rotten has asked Los Angeles police officials to help him keep homeless vagrants from his Venice Beach home which they target as a party pad. The Anarchy in the U.K. singer told Newsweek thugs have started ripping the bars from the windows of his home, breaking windows and turning the home […]
Loudwire has made a list of 16 UK bands defining UK's rock'n'roll. It's: Brighton proggers Black Peaks, pop-punkers Boston Manor, metal-core band Bring Me the Horizon, pop-rock by Don Broco, power-rock band Dream State, post-hardcore band Enter Shikari, punk-rockers Frank Carter and The Rattlesnakes, post-hardcore band Holding Absence, punk-rockers Jamie Lenman, math-rockers Marmozets, punk-rockers Milk […]
“It was all against the systemic control of the music system. This idea of provocation in the streets, the field of punk was a social protest, elements of that still exist" - the curator, Andrew Blauvelt, says to Guardian, about new exhibition Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die: Punk Graphics, 1976–1986 about graphic […]
Guardian has a funny article about band's names of festival posters. It's about who comes first, and who has a bigger font. According to insiders, it’s the music world’s touchiest topic.
Dark ambient artist and painter Tor Lundvall made a list for PopMatters of five albums that shaped him, as a musician. It's albums by Peter Gabriel, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, The Durutti Column, Harold Budd & Brian Eno project, and Slowdive.
Uncompromising. Independent. Prolific. Bloody-minded. Off the radar of the influential booking agents. Unable to play any sort of game. Totally honest - the Quietus writes about Mike Vest, British guitarist who burned a bunch of his old guitars in an act the musician himself describes as "better than just putting them in a skip". Vest […]
A British couple traveled 30,000 kilometers around Europe in an old motorhome, recording love songs in their mobile studio for their Oh Europe project, Guardian reports. They recorded 731 love songs – Kiss song 'I Was Made for Lovin’ You' was sung by a seven-year-old Greek boy, a British man who only sings at karaoke […]
He says it's “a return to my solo recordings featuring character-driven songs and sweeping, cinematic orchestral arrangements”, but it's really just a lovely song. 'Hello Sunshine' is the first single from his upcoming album 'Western Stars', his first new record in five years, out June 14, Pitchfork reports. Watch the accompanying video here.
TheGrio website sat down with prominent Black men in the entertainment industry to discuss how Nipsey Hussle inspired the community and music industry as a whole and what steps need to take place to continue the work amid such tragedy. Watch the 34-minute conversation here.
Riot grrrl legends Bikini Kill played their first show in 22 years last night (April 25) performing 27 songs at Hollywood Palladium. NME collected a few fan-shot footages of several songs.
You rarely see a face depicted in Michael Stipe's photo book, instead Stipe shoots hands, arms, the backs of heads. “I didn’t even realise that until the book came out”, he says, “It might be a built-in shyness, although bringing a camera up automatically alters the experience of being with another person. I might have […]
BBC has a lovely article about a busker Lazarus from Malawian city of Lilongwe who, by pure luck, made his first album. He was filmed with a phone by an English tourist in Lilongwe, and that recording made it's way to Johan Hugo, a Swedish-born, London-based musician who found Lazarus through an acquaintance. A makeshift […]
Madonna has released a music video for 'Medellín', the lead single for her new album 'Madame X', and with it comes her new eye-patched alter-ego (watch the video here). It all started with her moving to Lisbon: "My son wants to be a professional soccer player and he was never going to have the highest […]
Laurel Canyon was a centre of counterculture activity in the mid-late 1960s and early 1970s - it was home to Frank Zappa, Jim Morrison, The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, The Eagles, Love, Neil Young, The Monkees - and it is the subject of new documentary 'Echo in the Canyon'. It features in-depth interviews with many of […]
Prince's estate is about to release a new 15 track album, featuring the original versions of the iconic hits that he wrote for other artists. The 'Originals' spans the period from 1981 and 1991 and includes his original takes on Sheila E.’s ‘The Glamorous Life’, the Bangles’ ‘Manic Monday’, Kenny Rogers’ ‘You’re My Love’, and […]
Lost live recordings of a Bob Marley gig have been found in a London hotel basement and are now heading to auction. The 10 analog tapes, which were found by chance after spending 40 years in a damp hotel cellar in a hotel in Little Venice, west London, suffered water damage and mold. However, they […]
Sony Pictures has won a bidding war for the movie rights to a new Broadway musical featuring Britney Spears' hit songs, Deadline reports. The stage version of 'Once Upon a One More Time' premiers in autumn, but the hype surrounding the show has already piqued the interests of movie executives. The fantasy musical imagines Cinderella, […]
Guardian visited California prison in Lancaster to speak to inmates about "healing and justice", and, in the wake of Nipsey Hussle's murder, about gang violence. Recently, rival gang members in LA and inside prisons appeared to have united around Hussle’s death and discussed whether the tragedy could lead to a long-term “ceasefire”, an end to […]
The indie bands of the Chinese capital have their own raw, distinctive sound, partly because they are so isolated from the rest of the rock'n'roll world - BBC reports from Beijing. Like Sydney's music scene in the 1980s, Beijing's creativity has been accentuated by being further away and less visited. The sound itself is raw, […]
