Aidan Moffat from the Arab Strap wrote a Valentine's Day special for the Quietus as Uncle Agony, answering to questions about love problems. One on the problems - love affair within a band: "Shagging’s great, but it’s also a gateway to many other emotions that may not have existed before: jealousy, infatuation, obsession, insecurity… emotions that may become especially apparent as you watch your paramour nightly shredding their way into the hearts, minds, and pants of ripe, enthusiastic, and sexually generous fans". Moffat released his new album 'Aux Pieds De La Nuit' today under the pseudonym Nyx Nótt - listen here

The reunited Rage Against the Machine have announced that they’re doing what they can to keep scalpers and broker sites from ripping their fans over tickets for their reunion tour. RATM say that "at many concerts, up to 50% of the seating is scooped up by scalpers and then resold to fans at much higher fees" (some tickets were already being sold for $400), so they decided to do "everything we can to protect 90% of the RATM tickets from scalpers”, adding "WE are holding in reserve 10% of the seating (random seats throughout each venue) to sell at a higher ticket price (but low enough to undercut the scalpers)”. They will be donating “100% OF THE MONEY over the fees and base ticket price to charities and activist organizations IN EACH CITY”, and they also plan to donate the profits from their first three concerts to immigrants’ rights organizations.

Pone was a beatmaker who helped shape the sound of French hip-hop in the 1990s, but when he fell to the motor neurone disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis - (ALS), he wasn't able to produce music, at least not in the way he was used to. In 2019, with Ableton Live installed on his computer, he started producing again - using his eyes to operate like a mouse. He could do everything he used to, just at a slower pace. This way he produced a full album, 'Kate & Me', an instrumental beat record created as an ode to Kate Bush, and the first album in history to be entirely produced through an eye-tracking device.

To hear a snippet on new Pearl Jam single, 'Superblood Wolfmoon' fans have to visit moon.pearljam.com via their mobile phones and point their phone camera at the moon. As Billboard explains, the regular moon will turn into a bright red "Superblood Wolfmoon" and the song will automatically start playing. The experience is available through Feb. 18. The song is coming out on Pearl Jam's 11th studio album, 'Gigaton', March 27.

Australian psychedelic-pop wonder-man Kevin Parker has his fourth Tame Impala album 'The Slow Rush' out, and critics really like it. PopMatters goes philosophical in its review - "the record is the mark of a rare talent, and yet also someone who lives in both doubt and curiosity amidst his talent and success"; the Clash calls the album a "testament to the patient productivity and unrelenting creativity", similar to MusicOMH who praise Kevin Parker as "a true auteur, an artist who has moulded pop music to match his incredible vision", and the Skinny said Parker has "his own unique sense of time"; NME hears the album as a step into mega-pop with "exhilarating" results; Pitchfork says it's "an extraordinarily detailed opus" with an "internal tug of war within the Australian musician’s lyrics—between trying to better yourself and stay present, or succumbing to your own worst thoughts".

“Michael is not a fearless person, but he is a fearless artist” - bandmate Thor Harris says about Michael Gira in a new Swans documentary 'Where Does a Body End?', focused mostly on the frontman. It was directed by Marco Porsia who spent five years “in the band’s tight inner circle”, filming “rehearsals, songwriting sessions, the grind of life on the road, petty arguments and transcendent performances”, and Swans final tour.

Billie Eilish has shared 'No Time to Die', dark and dramatic, with orchestral arrangements by Hans Zimmer and classic Bond-style guitar by Johnny Marr. The grandiose ballad was written with her older brother Finneas. The movie hits theaters in April.

A few interesting songs (+videos) these days: Grimes shared music video for her new single ‘Delete Forever’, about the opioid crisis, the latest from her forthcoming album 'Miss Anthropocene' (out next week); New Zealand rockabilly queen Tami Neilson dropped 'Queenie Queenie', an anthem of empowerment for women; Azealia Banks dropped a bass-heavy/strings driven new song, a bilingual, English-Spanish 'Nirvana'; sister duo CocoRosie relives their roller rink memories on their new track 'Restless', from 'Put the Shine On', the band's first album in five years; Human Impact is the new band of Unsane, Swans and Cop Shoot Cop members, and they shared their new single. attitude-heavy 'Consequences' off their debut album (due 3/13 via Ipecac); Beirut-based experimental musician Sary Moussa is ambient and minimalist on his debut album 'Imbalance' (out March 6), as well as on the single 'In Praise of Shadows'; producer Tornado Wallace dropped a new video 'Midnight Mania', a psychedelic bit with 'Avatar'-like characters sexy-dancing, it's a step away from being too strange...

Modern technology can be used to put on big unlicensed raves that have an old-school mentality - Mix Mag argues in their article about illegal rave crews in the UK setting up parties under the noses of the police. London-based party crew "SGL" was formed in November last year, and they have already organised three raves via a specially designed smartphone app. It transmits the party location to ravers in a way that can’t be monitored by police, and once there are around 200 people in the building then it’s much harder for the police to shut the party down, so they release the location over social media without worrying too much.

London producer "has developed a singular sensibility: inquisitive, inventive, attuned to textural nuance and the power of a well-timed surprise" with her debut, which earned her Pitchfork's "Best new music" banner (grade 8.3). The P especially likes "that uncommon tempo, pitched somewhere between techno and drum’n’bass... an inspired choice" and "the album’s unsentimental polish", making for "that rarest of creatures in electronic music: something we haven’t actually heard before".

Streaming was already a popular hangout for Chinese musicians and artists across the region, and now with a general shutdown of public space with coronavirus online interaction is becoming essential, because people are effectively all isolated at home. Every streaming platform is full of music across genres, that includes major virtual nightclub-style events, one of which reportedly reached millions of viewers.

Bassist in a black metal band Vodka Vultures, a 22-year-old Holden Matthews has pleaded guilty to putting fire to three Louisiana Baptist churches last year. At his plea hearing, Matthews admitted to burning the churches "because of the religious character of these buildings, in an effort to raise his profile as a 'Black Metal' musician by copying similar crimes committed in Norway in the 1990s". Two points: 1. A fool; 2. This is not what black metal is about.

Spotify is paying close to $200 million upfront for the Ringer, the growing online sports and pop-culture outlet, as part of its push into podcasting, according to Bloomberg. This amount will be followed by more than $50 million later. Spotify has now spent more than $600 million to acquire four companies that can accelerate its podcasting business -- the Ringer, Gimlet Media, Anchor, and Parcast. In other music business news, Music Business Worldwide reports that SoundCloud has secured $75 million investment from SiriusXM – which acquired another leading music streaming platform, Pandora, last year in a $3.5bn all-stock transaction.

Little Simz won the NME award for the best British album for her 'GREY Area', with Lana Del Rey winning the best album in the world award for her 'Norman Fucking Rockwell'. Best song in the world award went to Billie Eilish for her ‘Bad Guy’, Robyn was named songwriter of the decade, FKA twigs got the best British solo act award, Clairo is the best new act in the world, Emily Eavis got the godlike genius award, and the Foals were named best live act. All the nominees and the winners at the NME. Photos from the awards - here.

Technology lawyer and musician Damien Riehl and his associate, programmer Noah Rubin have copyrighted all of the possible unique melodies, billions of them, in an attempt to prevent musicians from being sued on grounds of copyright infringement. They saved all the melodies on a hard-drive and placed them in public domain. Riehl made an amazing TED talk about it.

The idea of being divinely gifted, to such an extent as to dream lucidly of your artistic purpose and material, is a trope that often artists revert to. Ladysmith Black Mambazo founder Joseph Mxoveni Mshengu Bigboy Shabalala deployed this routine expertly as the foundational myth of the group - Mail & Guardian says about the South African musician who died Tuesday. Shabalala would say he had these dreams in 1964 over an extended period of about six months. He dreamt of an ensemble dressed in robes, performing a particular repertoire rich in harmony and melody. Musicologist Sazi Dlamini believes Shabalala’s primary legacy is in how he expanded the music’s visibility through his openness to collaboration, especially with his Paul Simon collaboration 'Graceland'. Smabalala himself said this about what they did: “We are not singing this kind of music to make ourselves famous — we are singing to remind our people of who they are.”

'Ohio' is a live favourite by King Princess; Moon Destroys have Mastodon's Troy Sanders on their psychedelic new song 'Blue Giant'; Myrkur go for strange, albeit easy-listening mix of Nordic folk and dream pop on 'Leaves od Yggdrasil'; Bay Area rapper The Jacka was killed in a 2015 shooting at 37 years old, and 'Can't Go Home' is his collaboration with Freddie Gibbs, coming out on his first posthumous album; Johanna Warren goes for simple and pretty on 'Bed of Nails'; Justin Bieber released a nice song 'Intentions' with a great message; The Strokes are back, drumless, with 'At the Door'; Poet laureate Simon Armitage launched a band LYR, mixing poetry, jazz and post-rock; Napalm Death released their first new songs in four years - an original 'Logic Ravaged by Brute Force' and a Sonic Youth cover 'White Cross'; I Break Horses go spacey psychedelia on 'I'll Be the Death of You'; Figazi people have a new band Coriky, much more laid down on 'Clean Kill'; Nigerian guitarist Mdou Moctar follows his last year's great 'Ilana' with a song 'Ibitlan', equally groovy and rich; Caroline Rose wrote 'Freak Like Me' because "I’ve always wanted to write a pretty song with the word ‘vomit’ in it"; Drain play just some straight punk-metal from California on 'Sick One'. Listening to all of these takes an hour or so, take that time, it's worth it!

The English pop-rock band have pledged to no longer play festivals that have too few female artists on the bill. Singer Matty Healy made the promise to Guardian journalist after this year's Reading and Leeds festivals were criticised for a gender imbalance. Only 20 of the 91 acts on the initial line-up are women, which made the journalist ask Healy to promise not to play festivals with far too few women, to which he agreed saying "people need to act, not chat".

Publicist Meghan Daum wrote an interesting article for the GEN about how she switched from listening to music to listening to podcasts when she turned 40. Not that she doesn't like music anymore, it's just that - “music is alive with associations. I can’t listen to some of it if it’s too connected to a painful situation. Podcasts don’t seem to hold those same associations for me”. That's mostly music she listened to before, where there are associations. There's a solution - "to get a new car, one with Bluetooth so I can listen to my old music in a new way. Or force myself to listen to — and enjoy, god dammit — some new music". Plenty of that...

Richard Beck is a psychology professor who teaches a weekly Bible study, and he recently published a book 'Trains, Jesus, and Murder: The Gospel According to Johnny Cash', which got his title via Beck's son who jokes that Cash's songs are all about murder, trains, and Jesus. Beck deals with questions about solidarity and patriotism, with the complexities of Cash’s simultaneously conservative and countercultural appeal, his relationship with the authorities (well, mostly, avoidance). The Quietus says the book is a "welcome companion for anyone wanting to know more about what Cash insisted was not only the key to his music but to the kingdom, too", and that it goes well with the audio of Johnny Cash reading the whole of the New Testament.

While popular music is constantly evolving, classical music is stubbornly frozen in time. The field in the USA is overwhelmingly white - black musicians make up only 1.8 percent of orchestra members, Latino musicians just 2.5 percent, and white musicians comprise 85 percent of orchestra members. The general population is around 12 percent Latino, 12 percent black. Classically trained musicians Wil Baptiste and Kev Marcus are changing the rules - their collaborative project Black Violin, with a unique sound that fuses classical string instrumentation with hip-hop, has been attracting vast audiences from low-income children, which might also be an entry for many of them.

“The Black Box” royalties is a growing sum of undistributed and/or undistributable royalties that have been collected on an artist’s behalf, and what happens with it is a hotly debated topic within the industry, as every collection society that has one deals with these unclaimed royalties differently. The Future of What uploaded a podcast about the subject John Simson (American University), Wayne Milligan (TriStar Sports & Entertainment Group) and Steve Ambers (SOCAN).

Homosexuality in Spain was only decriminalised in 1979. Spanish women had long been subject to a patrician curfew, which made most streets and bars an entirely male domain by 9pm. The country’s Civil Guard could detain anyone whose clothes, hair, or face gave them the flimsiest pretext under the prevailing law of “dangerousness and social rehabilitation”. The country was still being effectively run by soldiers and priests when a ragged lineup of young punks staged a free concert at Madrid Polytechnic on 9 February 1980, and everything changed, for the better. Forty years later, that night is remembered as the event that launched La Movida Madrileña, a countercultural eruption in the city during the country’s volatile “transition” to democracy.

Snafu Records is a California startup officially launched this week, with $2.9 million in seed funding, and their approach, as its founder and CEO Ankit Desai said, is using technology "to essentially turn everyone listening to music into a talent scout on our behalf". The company’s algorithms are supposedly looking at around 150,000 tracks from unsigned artists each week on services like YouTube, Instagram and SoundCloud, and evaluating them based on listener engagement, listener sentiment and the music itself - Desai said the sweet spot is to be 70 or 75% similar to the songs on Spotify’s top 200 list, so that the music sounds like what’s already popular, while also doing just enough to “break the mold”. AI should find 15 do 20 tracks per week, and then the human team gets involved.

Iceland composer and cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir got the 2020 Oscar for Best Original Score, making her the fourth woman composer to win overall, the first to win for a dramatic score, and the first Icelander to win any Oscar. She makes modern classical musical - "a moving fusion of ambient drone and contemporary classical that places an emphasis on exceptionally controlled tone", as Pitchfork describes it before they choose 7 of her essential tracks. There's some interesting music there: Mr. Schmuck's Farm - her project with Schneider TM, improvised electronics with scraping cellos sounds; on her second album 'Without Sinking' she improvises with layers of sound; on her project with Berlin pianist Hauschka they composed tracks inspired by colors; on her album 'Saman' (meaning "together"), she added her crystalline voice; she has done impressive work on the soundtrack for HBO series 'Chernobyl', haunting from a distance; her score for 'Joker' is special - she began composing before filming even started, an unusual practice, with director Todd Phillips and main actor Joaquin Phoenix using her music for inspiration; her latest track is 'Fólk fær andlit' ("people have faces"), released late January, about the (mis)treatment of immigrants on Iceland.

Rage Against The Machine have announced a full itinerary of 2020 reunion tour Public Service Announcement - the first shows of the tour will take place in America-Mexico border towns, and proceeds from those shows will go toward immigrant rights organizations. The tour starts at the end of March and runs all the way through November, from North America fo Europe. Run The Jewels will be opening the tour on most of the dates.

"Heavens almighty, what beautiful music Lotus Thief have created" - Invisible Oranges starts it's text about 'Oresteia', new album by the post-black metal/doom/psychedelic New York band. "Lotus Thief have completely revamped their sound, adding significant dynamics, amplified emotions, and the absolute best singing from frontwoman Bezaelith yet... I bow my head to this level of mastery; I give my everything for this quality of music".

Songwriter extraordinaire Diane Warren and operatic prima donna Anna Netrebko have been named the Laureates for the 2020 Polar Music Prize, an award founded in 1989 by Stig "Stikkan" Anderson, the manager and music publisher of ABBA. Traditionally, it is awarded to a person from the pop world and one from the classical or jazz genre. Previous winners of the Polar Music Prize include Sting, Elton John, Metallica, Ennio Morricone, Led Zeppelin, Paul Simon, Björk, Wayne Shorter, Patti Smith, Dizzy Gillespie...

As the Passion Economy grows, more people are monetizing what they love. The global adoption of social platforms like Facebook and YouTube, the mainstreaming of the influencer model, and the rise of new creator tools has shifted the threshold for success - Andreessen Horowitz in an interesting article about the shift in what and what people do what they do. He names a few examples of this shift: the average initial pledge amount on Patreon has increased 22 percent over the past two years; on the online course platform Podia, the number of creators earning more than $1,000 in a month is growing 20 percent each month; on Teachable, the average price point per class offering has risen roughly 20 percent, year over year. So, it's not that everybody's going to do what they love and get paid doing it starting today, but we're going there.

PopMatters chose 29 black music documentaries for Black History Month 2020, and today rounds up the first 10. They had, so far, the Wu-Tang Clan documentary 'Of Mics and Men', Motown docu 'Hitsville', Beyonce's Coachella film 'Homecoming', Bette Davis' 'They Say I'm Different' etc. The rest is coming by the end of the month.