"Performing a curious blend of stoner rock, psych, and extreme metal, Elephant Tree focus treacle-thick riffs and dense sludge grooves into chilled odysseys. In doing so they retain the focus and drive of metal whilst embracing the floaty warmth of psych" - The Quietus writes in review of London band's new album. "Elephant Tree feel like a total refresh, smart and savvy, delivering a charmingly wonky version of the tropes that make the [stoner rock] genre so likeable".
"They’re one of the most important, influential, revolutionary hip hop groups of all time. They’re cross generational, and definitely get a big response when you say their name" a former nutritionist Lisa Roth told Variety about her 100th release - lullaby renditions of Wu-Tang Clan (out today). So far they've released lullaby covers of, obviously, 99 acts - Radiohead, Metallica, Elton John, Tool, The Beatles, AC/DC, Elvis Presley... - and the artists loved those - "Steven Tyler wrote liner notes to Aerosmith’s lullabies. Joe Elliot contributed liner notes to Def Leppard’s lullabies. Elton John has been nice to us, mentioning us in the press many times. Kirk Hammett from Metallica likes us. I’ve yet to hear anything angry or nasty", Roth says.
The first of Travis Scott’s ‘Astronomical’ concerts within Fortnite had over 12.3 million concurrent players participating live, an all-time record. That means Scott beat the 10.7 million audience for Marshmello’s Fortnite concert in February 2019. Complex's journalist attended the show - "I tapped in tonight because I’m stuck inside with nothing better to do, but I’m surprised with how much fun this was. I could see myself going to one of these again when all of this is over" (although he got shot in the head by a teenager named Micah). Watch the show here (10 minutes).
Beyoncé has teamed up with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s relief fund #startsmall to make a donation of $6m for mental health and other initiatives during the coronavirus outbreak, Yahoo! Lifestyle reports. Beyoncé said mental burdens were accelerating for people who can’t access basic necessities during the crisis. She also gave support to a range of charities providing those necessities, including food, water, cleaning supplies, medicines, face masks and personal hygiene items.
The Rolling Stones have released their first new single in eight years, 'Living In A Ghost Town', a sparse blues track. It references the coronavirus crisis, with Jagger singing: "Life was so beautiful, now we all got locked down / Feel like a ghost, living in a ghost town". The track was initially recorded a year ago in LA but was "finished in lockdown", with slightly revised lyrics.
Rapper Lil Dicky is celebrating the first anniversary of his animated short film 'Earth' by donating $800,000 to help combat climate change and contribute to COVID-19 relief, All Hip Hop reports. "The fight to save this planet isn't even close to over, and we're going to have to amplify our efforts way more to turn this thing around. Because pretty soon, it'll be too late" - Lil Dicky said, adding - "even though times have never been scarier with the COVID-19 pandemic, it has shown me something: that we can modify our day-to-day behavior to adapt to a crisis when it's right in front of us". Rapper and entrepreneur Sean "Diddy" Combs has linked with The National Bankers Association to launch a new platform "Our Fair Share" to help minority-owned small businesses get access to the second round of Paycheck Protection Program Funding, PR Newswire reports.
From Minecraft to Imvu and Fortnite, artists have increasingly been turning to the world of video games as a way to give fans a more immersive, digital show-going experience, Paper Magazine reports on the new trend. By using an avatar, attendees can navigate 3D environments and interact in virtual space. Comrade Massie, a creative lead at Boiler Room, is taking it yet another step further - he has been spending his time in quarantine recreating stages from childhood video games and turning them into virtual clubs where viewers can party alongside characters like Sonic and Zelda...
YouTube’s lo-fi hip-hop channels are becoming more popular than ever in time of the pandemic, not just as background music, but as ways to find community in a difficult time, The Verge reports. The lo-fi channel College Music has increased the number of subscribers to their channel by 40 percent over the last 28 days, with total channel views up by 46 percent. ChilledCow added 340,000 subscribers in March (compared to 160,000 in January). The lo-fi channel Nickolaas has seen "a significant" rise in views.
Warner Music Group is hosting a three-day streaming music event dubbed PlayOnFest that will stream concerts beginning this Friday (April 24, at noon Atlanta time, 6 p.m. Cairo time, midnight Shanghai time) for 72 hours straight, wrapping on April 26 - check out the schedule at MTV.com. Warner will feature some of the top acts in music, with Coldplay, Korn, Ed Sheeran, Green Day, Janelle Monae, Bruno Mars, David Guetta, Cardi B, The Flaming Lips, Lizzo, Twenty One Pilots, Panic! at the Disco, Slipknot, Weezer, Kaleo, Royal Blood, Paramore, Gary Clark Jr., Portugal. The Man, Lil Uzi Vert and more scheduled for the weekend. The event will feature recorded concerts taking place at some of the biggest stages in the world, as well as some unique performances as well. Warner will be while raising money for the Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund. The entire run of shows can be viewed via Songkick's YouTube Channel.
A lovely article in Pitchfork about bands being humane in this time of coronavirus pandemic. Post-hardcore band Thursday had their tour cancelled, which left them with lots of T-shirts stockpiled to sell on tour. They began donating the fabric to grassroots sewing collectives to make face masks. They also started selling factory-made Thursday-branded facemasks on their website, with proceeds going toward masks for frontline healthcare workers. Emo band Taking Back Sunday put together its own benefit initiative, selling various merch items from their inventory at discounted prices to raise money for masks. Together, Thursday and Taking Back Sunday have funded over 4,500 masks for medical professionals. Psych-folk guitarist and songwriter Kendra Amalie turned her merch inventory into cloth masks, doing the cutting and sewing at home herself, and sending them to people who needed them in her local community. My Chemical Romance is selling fabric face masks to benefit MusiCares’ COVID-19 Relief Fund.
Australian music writer Ben Freeman went into mandatory 14 days of quarantine after returning to Sydney from Berlin, and found his hotel room to be a - nightclub just for himself. He described it to Guardian: "On my first day, after doing a lousy excuse for a hotel workout, I began to just naturally have a boogie to whatever house mix I was listening to. All of a sudden, the anxiety about returning home and feeling confined subsided; I closed my eyes and was back on the dancefloor. What began as just a random shake of my ass quickly turned into a daily ritual. I was content with the fact I was dancing alone in my quarantine hotel room, lapping up the ridiculousness of it all. Funnily, both feelings weren’t dissimilar, I felt as alone in the world when I envisioned myself in a club and when I looked out the hotel window at Sydney Harbour. Finding comfort in solitude was calming and cathartic when the world felt so distant".
Erykah Badu's Quarantine Concert Series saw the singer and her band perform live from her Dallas home, playing a different set each time in the interactive live stream, Variety reports. Badu charged viewers directly - $1 for the first concert, $2 for the second, $3 for the third. The first two live streams together drew more than 100,000 viewers, which would put her gross in the low- to lower-middle six figures. Angel Olsen did a different thing - she performed a solo set from home to benefit her band and touring crew as well as a charity, MusiCares’ COVID-19 relief fund. The show had a mandatory $12 fee ($15 on the day of the show), filling her set with rarities and some new material.
Michael Stipe, Patti Smith, Cat Power, Rebecca Foon, Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ben Harper, Rain Phoenix and The Strokes bassist Nikolai Fraiture are slated to play Pathway to Paris’s 50th Anniversary Earth Day Festival on Sunday. Pathway will be livestreamed online via the organization’s Instagram page, on Sunday, April 26th (4 p.m. Haiti time, 9 p.m. Lagos time, 10 a.m. Monday Kiribati time).
Spotify has introduced a new feature Artist Fundraising Pick that allows artists to receive "tips" or donate money to charity, TechCrunch reports. Bands can pin a badge to the top of their Spotify profile, highlighting a fundraising destination where fans can send cash. As well as fundraising for themselves, artists can give money to charity or to road crews who are out of work while tours are on hold due to COVID-19.
Kanye West's charitable collaboration has partnered with Chic-fil-A to help Christian non-profit the Los Angeles Dream Center provide food and other items to those in need since March. This partnership has helped provide more than 14,000 meals every single day, 300,000 meals in total to the needy in Los Angeles, CBN reports. In similar news, Cash Money’s Bryan "Birdman" Williams has offered to pay the rent for people hit hard by the devasting coronavirus pandemic in New Orleans, All Hip Hop reports.
Deradoorian's 'Monk’s Robes' is just a beautiful and just slightly strange song by the singer-songwriter; 'No-One' is a psychedelic stadium-rock song by the everlasting Psychedelic Furs; Deerhoof demonstrate chaos control on 'Farewell Symphony', with a good video; Sex Swing share their new psychedelic noise track 'Skimmington Ride'; Moore Jewelry demonstrate noise-industrial rap on 'Look Alive'; Skullcrusher's 'Places/Plans' is a delicate piano and guitar ballad; the beautifully named Angelo De Augustine shared a new single, 'Santa Barbara' which he worked on with the beautifully voiced Sufjan Stevens; Chelsea Wolfe and members of Dillinger Escape Plan covered Ozzy Osbourne's 'Crazy Train' - it's different, and it's great, especially with her voice; 'Halogen Eye' by the O'Brother is a big alt-rock song designed for stadiums
Large festivals, keen not to lose a year’s worth of planning and income, are rescheduling for after the pandemic has passed its peak in summer, but before a potential second wave of infection in winter. In the UK, the large-scale Newcastle indie festival This Is Tomorrow has been moved from May to August. In September and October there are revised dates for Detroit’s Movement, Tennessee’s Bonnaroo, EDC in Las Vegas and both legs of Coachella in California. In Ibiza, a marketing blitz is under way to move spring events to autumn. The Guardian is reporting on the possibility of big gatherings in the autumn, and on the willingness of fans to attend such events.
Fender launched American Acoustasonic this year, a hybrid instrument, half electric and half acoustic, with new tonal possibilities. Rob "Freaky Rob" Gueringer - lead guitarist for Kendrick Lamar and Lil Wayne - is the face of the new guitar, and... it sounds great when he plays it (just like when a top-class football player starts messing with a ball). Guitar World talked to him.
In recent years, melody loops - snippets of original music that might serve as the instrumental hook of a song - and the musicians who create them, have become a fundamental part of the way rap music is made. For up-and-comers, supplying well-connected producers with packs of pre-made melodies has become the most effective method to get a foot in the industry’s door. And for producers working with prolific rappers, outsourcing the time-consuming work of writing a melody to a pool of dedicated loopmakers is the most efficient way to keep making hits - Pitchfork reports on the fundamentals of music production in hip-hop today.
The great Cherie Hu has identified five major music-tech pivots happening right now that are impacting all corners of the music industry with potential for far-reaching systemic consequences:
"The current situation is going to dramatically change the music business, as a huge accelerator of user behavior on the digital side" - Denis Ladegaillerie from the big French distribution company Believe wrote in Music Business Worldwide. He added - "we are making the assumption when physical sales return in September, they will return at levels that are 50% lower than they were pre-this crisis... Yet, on the plus side, because of this expected change in user behavior, we are expecting a substantial surge in online digital usage. This could accelerate a physical-to-digital music consumer transition... Believe’s key message to artists and labels today is to try to make the best out of this situation by accelerating your knowledge of the digital business in response to the likelihood that you will be a more digital artist at the end of this".
"I hope that the people will identify with the sobriety. A lot of people have a different idea of what constitutes being an alcoholic or an addict and when it’s a problem. So I really would like my story of getting sober to inspire people" - The Go-Go's bassist Kathy Valentine told Spin about her new autobiography 'All I Ever Wanted'. The book is "shockingly candid, at times difficult to read, full of incredible stories and anecdotes", Spin says. "What distinguishes the book though from other rocker memoirs is her turbulent adolescence and her candor about it, from having an abortion as a teenager to being raped at 14. As tough as it can be at times, it is ultimately a story of triumph".
Guardian journalist Brigid Delaney curated her own three-day multi-arts, multi-platform culture festival, from the comfort of her own home. She went to a nightclub - "it’s so fun, no one’s sleazing on anyone and I don’t have to worry about getting an Uber home" - and danced from 9:45 p.m. to 1 a.m.; she watched Isolaid for two hours - "not only reconnected me with my favourite artists (and their houses) but introduced me to a heap of new music"; she saw Australian Chamber Orchestra play Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony while drinking wine, texting wine and eating pepperoni pizza - "but this immense work by Beethoven remains undimmed"; dropped by a Broadway piano bar - "singing via the internet is better than having no singing at all". Her conclusion after three days of some of the best art and culture the world has to offer – "without the festival crowds and a posse of friends it’s like the proverbial tree falling in the forest".
Bob Dylan's original manuscripts for 'The Times They Are A-Changin', 'Lay Lady Lay' and 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' are currently in the hands of a memorabilia company, and fans are now being offered the chance to bid for the handwritten lyrics, Rolling Stone reports. 'The Times They Are A-Changin' is listed for a record high asking price of $2.2 million, 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' is listed for $1.2 million, and 'Lay Lady Lay' is the least expensive of the three items, as it's listed for $650,000. The auction also includes photos of the handwritten pages, which show where Dylan made amendments to his original song lyrics.
San Diego prog-metal band Corelia raised over $33,000 from fans via an Indiegogo fundraiser in 2015 to record their debut album, then disappeared a year later. The album still hasn't surfaced. On April 11, the page Corelias posted an update presumed to be from a former member of the act, saying the album was never released due to inter-band fighting. It turned out the page was a product of an Internet troll, but it had however prompted the real Corelia to issue a statement, a first one in 4 years - "Sadly, a member of our band abruptly ceased all communication over a year ago, despite our attempts to continue communicating... We've only ever wanted to complete this album that we spent so much time recording and show the world our art. But, unfortunately, that has been a very rocky road". In yet another twist, the person behind the fake Corelia page identified themselves as Tim Ossenfort, a metal producer from Los Angeles. The instigator added - "This was all for the joke, not my music, but if you wanna check out some legit prog metal by someone who has never stolen 35k from their fans, please go check out my band's newest song!".
Ronan O’Rahilly, the Irish founder of the notorious Radio Caroline that popularised pop music on British radio, has died aged 79. O'Rahilly started out as a manager in the 1960s, but had struggled to get his musicians noticed by the UK radio so he circumvented licensing laws by acquiring a former Danish passenger ferry, anchoring it in the North Sea off Felixstowe, and broadcasting from there. Radio Caroline quickly amassed a listenership of millions for its daytime pop-focused output. In 1967, parliament outlawed offshore radio stations, causing a number of Radio Caroline’s DJs moved to the newly created Radio 1, which had been influenced by the success of the former. Radio Caroline moved to Dutch waters, and continued broadcasting at sea until 1991. Alexis Petridis says that O'Rahilly, by championing bands ignored by the establishment, paved the way for the pirate DJs of soul, acid house and grime.
Bandcamp plans to forgo its entire revenue share on Friday, May 1st, so that artists can receive 100% of all profits made that day, in an effort to assist artists during these unprecedented times, Resident Advisor reports. Bandcamp did the same thing last month, which ended up pulling in $4.3 million dollars, all of which went directly to the platform’s musician.
Many festival organisers are hoping that people who have tickets will keep them for next year because if they need to refund on mass, they might not be able to return next year, according to the UK Association of Independent Festivals (AIF). Staging festivals is a year round endeavour, the BBC reports. There's a cashflow concern and a lot of money has already been spent that festivals won't get back - festivals of all sizes have already paid out on things like artist deposits, contractors' deposits and fees, press and marketing, staff costs and infrastructure.
The big lockdown has erased the festival and live music industry for this season, but it has also badly hurt the fashion industry as well, the New York Times reports. “For some brands, festivals aren’t just a season like summer or fall, but the season of the year to build relationships with a certain kind of shopper, who buy fun new extra additions for their wardrobe that they wouldn’t normally be tempted by” - said Lucie Greene, a trend forecaster and the founder of the Light Years consultancy. “They define an entire aesthetic of collections and products for some labels”.
"'Pray for Paris' is one of the best albums to come out of the Griselda camp so far, good enough to help you forgive the obnoxiousness and make you understand why the crew now have a cultural cachet that rap legends are dying to be attached to" - Pitchfork says in a review of Westside Gunn's new album 'Pray For Paris'. Westside explained in the GQ interview what's the connection this album has with fashion and Kanye West.
"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".
Billy Reeves was best known as a singer-songwriter who had worked with Sophie Ellis-Bextor in a band called theaudience. After he quit, he made an album worth of music when in a traffic accident he suffered severe brain injury and subsequently amnesia - "there’s a whole three-year chunk of my cultural memory missing – I don’t remember any of the music or TV shows from 1999 to 2001". He also forgot all about his recent music - "I was hearing songs that I had written but had no recollection of. I didn’t know what the lyrics were about, what I was thinking, who they were written for", as Reever wrote in a beautiful piece for the Guardian. He decided however to put it out, calling the record 'The Helicopter Of The Holy Ghost' - "I’m not religious, but it’s like the songs were written by a ghost because I don’t remember anything about writing them".
"Last week, Kanye West hosted a 'Donda' album listening party for 40,000+ fans at the Mercedez-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. Kanye sold 40,000+ tickets for this event on three days' notice. Tickets were $20 or $50. He gave away around 5,000 seats, but still, he likely made at least $1 million from paid tickets. Plus merch sales. Plus the record-breaking Apple Music livestream. And all he did was press play and walk around the stadium. Only a handful of artists can pull this off" - Dan Runcie looks back at the release party of the album that wasn't released.
Mega Bog "exists in a universe both familiar but foreign. I do not always understand what her songs are about but I am drawn to them all the same and find myself quoting lines" - Brooklyn Vegan writes about the latest album by the experimental pop artist. "Musically, 'Life, and Another' is the most inviting Mega Bog album yet, with jazzy chording, dreamlike synths, and impressive playing all around... It's loaded with instantly likeable songs".
A great video by music theorist 12tone where he analyses a month-old video by another music theorist, Rick Beato who did a livestream called 'Why Today's Music Is So BORING. The Regression of Musical Innovation'. Beato attempted to argue that modern music was no longer doing interesting things. 12tone argues Beato's wrong. 12Tones' argument is also beautifully illustrated.
"What do musicians who blend fact and fiction owe their real life subjects?" - NPR's Ann Powers writes exploring "self-referential musicians making waves in 2021 not only because so many notable current songs tread this ethically shaky ground between self and other, true and imagined, but because that's what songwriters who perform their own work have been doing for at least a half-century... What unites these artworks is a thrilling immediacy that comes at the risk of their makers' dignity and their close companions' right to anonymity". A clever text about the sensitive issue.
Revolver asked a number of musicians "which scream stands alone as the greatest out there". The Black Dahlia Murder's Trevor Strnad, Coheed and Cambria's Travis Stever, Testament's Alex Skolnick, Incendiary's Brian Audley, and more select Tom Araya, Bruce Dickinson, Chino Moreno, and others.
"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".
"Tokyo has shaped the sound and image of songs all the time, and this Tokyo emerging in 1964 is the one that shapes ‘70s “new music,” that provides the glitzy excess of “city pop” and other ‘80s offerings (not to mention the fake memory of the capital latched on by people today), the continent-hopping cool of Shibuya-kei in the ‘90s and even the more glum post-Vocaloid hits of now" - Make Believe Mailer writes introducing part one in a series of texts about music from Japan and the Olympics.
