Atmosphere shares a space-rap song ‘Barcade’ with a posthumous verse from MF Doom; Black Country, New Road manage to get chaotic and groovy in the same song - 'Chaos Space Marine’; just some pretty folk-rock by Scout Larue Willis on ‘Love Without Possession’; Stammering share s math-prog song ‘No, Yeah’.
The first Black Lives in Music study found that 63% of Black music creators in the UK had experienced direct or indirect racism, including explicit racist language or different treatment because of their race or ethnicity, and 67% had witnessed such behaviour. Racial microaggressions were rife, experienced by 71% of Black music creators and witnessed by 73%. The report highlights the racial pay gap that disproportionately affects Black women. DJ Mag brings the important story.
Produce Pandas are said to be China's first ever "plus-size" boyband, debuting in July last year, sing upbeat songs about being confident and true to oneself. Some fans are now revelling in the idea of having celebrities that look just like them, after years of seeing thin and clean-cut male stars known colloquially as "little fresh meat" - BBC writes looking at the bottom of the story.Five wonders
Pitchfork asked its readers to rank the 200 best albums released between 1996 and 2021, in celebration of the site's 25 years online. The People's List is also an interactive, infographical look at how their readers’ gender identities, ages, locations, and the number of years they’ve been reading Pitchfork. Check it out here.
Pitchfork made a list of 25 new artists "that help us consider the future of music: how it’ll be made, where it’ll come from, what role it’ll play in shaping scenes, and how genre lines may be increasingly dismantled". Some of the promising ones the P staff chose: MIKE for being "a beacon within the modern rap underground", Black Midi for "oddity and unpredictability", 100 Gecs for their "extreme pop music", Moor Mother for her "radical message", Bartees Strange for "his vision of what guitar music can encompass", Yves Tumor for their "restless experimentation", Amaarae for "bending the boundaries of Afro-fusion music", Navy Blue for being the "leader of a new class of introspective rapper-producers", Blood Incantation because they've "elevated old-school death metal into a psychedelic, ever-expanding solar system".
Primary Wave has acquired a stake in the company owned by the estate of the legendary Bing Crosby, in a deal "estimated in excess of $50 million’, AP News reports. This deal includes the Bing Crosby Archives, featuring thousands of recordings by Bing Crosby and other artists, many of which have never been released. Terms of the deal include artist royalties from master recordings featuring Crosby’s performances, writer royalties from songs written by Bing Crosby, his rights in the film 'White Christmas', as well as other film, radio, and television productions. In addition, Primary Wave has acquired a stake in his name, likeness, and rights of publicity.
Taylor Swift returns to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart with her remade album 'Fearless (Taylor’s Version)', for a second non-consecutive week atop the list with the album, Billboard reports. Swift's version of 'Fearless' surges from No. 157 to No. 1 with 152,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in last week. The set vaults back to No. 1 after the Oct. 1 release of a signed CD available only in Swift’s webstore and its vinyl LP. The album debuted at No. 1 in April.
A 469 million-year-old fossil of a newly discovered species of conodonts (extinct jawless vertebrates that closely resemble eels) has just been named after founding Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi, Blabbermouth reports. A team of Danish and Swedish paleontologists retrieved the fossil from a succession of limestone in western Russia which, during the Ordovician Period (a 45-million year period dating 488.3 million years back), formed sea floor sediments. Mats E. Eriksson, one of the paleontologists on the mission, has an extensive background in naming newly discovered fossils after heavy metal legends, having already honored Motorhead leader Lemmy Kilmister, Cannibal Corpse bassist Alex Webster and singer King Diamond in the fossil.
Californian musician Lanny Cordola six years ago started The Miraculous Love Kids, a music school for girls in Kabul, Afghanistan. Two months ago it just perished. Besides this precious and once unimaginable school being shuttered, these girls’ lives are in peril. For now, laying low in their homes, having to wear a Hijab to go out is something that they have not grown up with - Spin points out and looks behind the hijab.
Teodoro “Teodorin” Nguema Obiang Mangue was born with power: since the late 1970s, his father had run the small central African country of Equatorial Guinea as a despot overseeing a murderous regime buoyed and financed by unending flows of crude oil. As a result, Teodorin enjoyed flaunting his wealth however he could. Some of his wealth Mangue spent building the world’s largest Michael Jackson memorabilia collection. Rolling Stone brings an excerpt from Casey Michel’s book, 'American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History' which describes how, among other themes, federal agents used Mangue's MJ fetish to track down millions in ill-gotten gains. The book is out November.
Big Thief touch into death and love on ‘Change’, although simply and directly; Robert Glasper does his jazz/hip-hop/r’n’b thing on ‘Shine’; Dean Wareham sends a strong and simple message about loss on ‘As Much As It Was Worth’ - “it hurts, just as much as it was worth”; Sonically, Stick in the Wheel are delicate and gentle combining electronics and folk, emotionally, on ‘The Cuckoo’ they’re quite heavy.
London model-turned-singer Alewya started with club music, before making a U-turn into live jazzy guitar music in the past year. Now she's back on the clubby track. Her new song 'Play' combines moody disco and afro-beat with a catchy melody on top.
Sony Music and Warner Music published their UK gender pay gap reports, revealing a mean average gender pay gap in 2020 (as of April 5, 2019) of 26.0% and 31.5% at the two companies, respectively, Music Business Worldwide reports. It's slowly closing, but it's still a crevasse - last year it was 29.1% at Universal Music, 20.9% at Sony Music and 38.7% at Warner Music. The mean average ‘gender pay gap’ reflects what the average female employee earns versus the average male employee at each company.
K-pop icons BTS have raised an impressive $3.6 million after teaming up with UNICEF four years ago to create an anti-bullying campaign called Love Myself, NME reports. Launched in November 2017, the Love Myself campaign sends a powerful anti-bullying message, promoting self-love among children and young people across the world. In addition to the $3.6 million raised, the campaign has also generated significant interest online, with almost five million tweets mentioning the initiative, as well as over 50 million engagements.
YouTube has taken down R. Kelly's video channels “in accordance with creator responsibility guidelines” on the social network, Reuters reports. Channel owners convicted of egregious crime may be barred if the content is closely related to the crime, making Kelly liable on the basis that he used his fame and power to establish his racketeering enterprise. R. Kelly songs uploaded by other channels, however, do not violate the creator responsibility guidelines, and his songs and albums remain available on YouTube.
Tina Turner has sold the rights to her music catalogue - share of her recordings, her music publishing writer’s share, neighboring rights and name, image, and likeness - to BMG, in the biggest single-artist rights acquisition for the German company. MBW believes that this acquisition is in the $50 million-and-above category.
Pop stars Shakira, Elton John, Ringo Starr, and Julio Iglesias were named in a new leak of private financial documents, known as the Pandora Papers, published over the weekend by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, offering a glimpse at the tangled web of offshore accounting and alleged tax avoidance schemes used by some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people. None of the above were accused of any wrongdoing or of violating any laws.
The effect of background music on concentration largely depends on a person’s personality and taste, but work-appropriate music tends to share a few general qualities - Maria A.G. Witek, a professor in the Department of Music at Birmingham University, states in a new study she co-authored. The best kind of music to listen to while working should have no vocals, Witek says, because lyrics tend to be distracting. The music should also be slow, repetitive, and soft. Tram Nguyen, a member of the Cambridge Brain Sciences Team, recently also found some evidence that low-tempo songs may benefit the regions of the brain responsible for memory and completing tasks. Elemental reports on the science of music to work to.
"I am throwing in the shoes. I'm retiring" - David Lee Roth, the original lead singer of Van Halen, has sad announcing his retirement in an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Roth's announcement comes just shy of a year after Eddie Van Halen, the band's lead guitarist, died of cancer. Roth referenced his friend's death, saying he had been thinking about "the departure of my beloved classmate. I am encouraged and compelled to really come to grips with how short time is, and my time is probably even shorter".
LCD Soundsystem have announced a 20-date residency at Brooklyn Steel, marking their first live shows in more than three years, Rolling Stone reports. The run of shows takes place between November 23rd and December 21st. It was only a few months ago that LCD Soundsystem leader James Murphy said the band was on a “full hiatus”.
"More than just an exceptional body of music that goes well beyond techno, ‘Tresor 30’ stands as a testament to the community-building power behind the music. What started in a small pub in Schöneberg and sweaty basement in Kreuzberg now has leylines extending right across the world" - DJ Mag presents Berlin club's monumental 52-track boxset, ‘Tresor 30’. It also draws a short history of the club.
Shakira was recently attacked by two wild boars while walking in a Barcelona park with her eight-year-old, as she has shared on her Instagram. Nothing really that bad happened - the two animals messed up her purse. BBC reports how in 2016, Spanish police received 1,187 phone calls about wild hogs attacking dogs, plundering cat-feeders, holding up traffic, and running into cars in the city.
Tori Amos shares ‘Speaking With Trees’, the first single from her new album ‘Ocean to Ocean’; Elton John and Stevie Wonder reunite on a new song, lovely gospel/soul ‘Finish Line’; Aurora clears the dust from Boney M's 'Rasputin' for a space-folk cover.
“I completely recognize that I stand on her shoulders, as [do] all the younger women that came after me . . . whether they know it or not” - drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, who has toured with Herbie Hancock and led late-night bands for Arsenio Hall and Quincy Jones, said about Dottie Dodgion. New Yorker reminds that "Dodgion forged a once legendary but now overlooked career at the conclusion of the big-band era—despite a rocky childhood, difficult marriages, and the steep challenge of breaking into what Enstice called the 'hard-core male jazz fraternity on the drums'".
Sony Music Entertainment has announced a new wellness-focused program called Artist Assistance, which is planned to be a “broad global effort aimed at promoting wellness for our signed talent and providing them with relevant information and key resources for their careers”, Music Business Worldwide reports. Artist Assistance starts with access to “free, confidential counseling services to address stress, anxiety, depression, grief, family and relationship matters and more”. It means that SME’s “active roster artists” worldwide can now connect with a licensed therapist completely confidentially and for free.
Eminem’s 'Mom’s Spaghetti' restaurant opened in Detroit on Wednesday, and Slim Shady himself manned the takeout window, Detroit Free Press reports. The rapper worked the walk-up window at the alley-set eatery when it first began serving customers at 5PM. Em served the first 10 customers their takeout containers of spaghetti and meatballs (with a vegan option available!). The line for the opening day celebration stretched for blocks around Detroit’s Foxtown neighborhood.
A Los Angeles judge has suspended Britney Spears' father Jamie Spears from the conservatorship that's controlled the singer's life, career and finances for 13 years. The decision is a major victory for the pop star, who has pushed to remove her father from the court-appointed arrangement, NPR reports. Mr Spears called the court’s decision “disappointing, and frankly, a loss for Britney”. Rolling Stone quoted Jamie Spears' statement sent through an attorney: “For 13 years, he has tried to do what is in her best interests, whether as a conservator or her father. This started with agreeing to serve as her conservator when she voluntarily entered into the conservatorship. This included helping her revive her career and re-establish a relationship with her children. For anyone who has tried to help a family member dealing with mental health issues, they can appreciate the tremendous amount of daily worry and work this required".
A cassette containing what’s believed to be a previously unreleased John Lennon and Yoko Ono song, 'Radio Peace', as well as an interview has been sold for $58,300 at an auction in Copenhagen, Denmark. NPR looks back at the nice story of four Danish teenagers who were late for a press conference, but Lennon nevertheless spent half an hour with boys talking about war, local action, and singing 'Give Peace a Chance' for them.
Supergroup Blood Moon, with Chelsea Wolfe, Stephen Brodsky and members of Converge release their dark-metal onto the world; the awkwardly named Croatian band ### shares a noisey post-rock song 'Tamo to ne mogu ovdje to ne želim'; Explosions in the Sky rise and shine on ‘Chisos’; Karloff go extremely screamo on ‘Hibiscus’.
When Ludwig von Beethoven died in 1827, he left some musical sketches for his 10th symphony and nothing more. In early 2019, Dr. Matthias Röder, the director of the Karajan Institute, an organization in Salzburg, Austria, that promotes music technology, was putting together a team to complete Beethoven’s 10th Symphony in celebration of the composer’s 250th birthday. He hoped an AI would be able to help fill in the blanks left by Beethoven. Ahmed Elgammal in the Conversation describes how he presided over the artificial intelligence side of the project, leading a group of scientists at the creative AI startup Playform AI that taught a machine both Beethoven’s entire body of work and his creative process. And - they did it" A full recording of Beethoven’s 10th Symphony is set to be released on Oct. 9, 2021, the same day as the world premiere performance scheduled to take place in Bonn, Germany – the culmination of a two-year-plus effort.
