The make-up loving rockers played a concert for sharks in Australia last weekend - the band set up their show on a small boat in an Australian harbour. The concert had been billed as proof that sharks can be attracted to tour boats without the use of blood or bait. Eight people had bought tickets […]
Emma Banks, co-founder of the UK arm of one of the world's biggest music tour agents, has said musicians "have to be proactive" about the impact tours like that have on the environment, BBC reports. She says some artist's tours - Banks' roster at the Creative Artists Agency includes Katy Perry, Lorde, Kylie, Arcade Fire, […]
Stormzy has announced his second album - 'Heavy Is The Head' will be released on 13 December, featuring Ed Sheeran, Burna Boy, Yebba, H.E.R. and Aitch, Independent reports. The album's cover image sees bare-chested Stormzy wearing a crown and looking down at the Banksy-designed stab vest from his headlining show at Glastonbury.
All Music chose 200 best albums from 2010 to 2019, listed somewhat differently. They picked the best albums, but unlike others, listed them chronologically, attached to the year they were published. Every year does not have the same number of albums, suggesting some years were better. A good list - check it out here.
Lizzo is nominated in all of the big four categories -- record of the year ('Truth Hurts'), album of the year ('Cuz I Love You (Deluxe)'), song of the year ('Truth Hurts') and best new artist. Following closely behind are both Billie Eilish and Lil Nas X, who each have six nominations, with Eilish also […]
"Blood Incantation take classic death metal sounds, and they push them way out into the cosmos, adding proggy time-signature tricks and expansive song-lengths and deep questions about the nature of humanity" - Stereogum writes about their newest Album of the week choice. It is "an album with real moments of beauty and of disarming pretension", […]
"Cohen is communicating with ghosts, aware he might soon become one himself, but he sounds strangely excited rather than scared" - NME says in a review of Cohen's posthumous album 'Happens to the Heart', helmed by Cohen’s son Adam and comprised of unfinished songs from the ‘You Want It Darker’ sessions. The album is coloured […]
Berlin-based production duo Amnesia Scanner have a new video ‘AS Acá’, made with Peruvian artist Lalita in the main role. Martti Kalliala and Ville Haimala provided an industrial-tinged backdrop for an impassioned vocal performance from Lalita in both Spanish and English – check it out below.
Listening to 78 minutes of music each day is recommended for maintaining good mental health, five minutes is enough to feel happier, and 11 minutes per day can deliver therapeutic benefits, a new study by the British Academy of Sound Therapy suggests. BAST concluded, based on a study on 7,500 people globally, that a “balanced diet” of […]
“I grew up fairly lonely, feeling pretty outcast and alienated. So my translation of that into a country and western star was to be this lone cowboy figure” - new country singer Orville Peck told the Guardian. He is finishing his European tour, in his regular outfit - cowboy clothes and a mask (there's information […]
Motley Crue are to reform for a stadium tour of the United States, five years after they played what they said would be their final ever show, Billboard reports. Before their supposed farewell tour in 2014-2015, the band had signed what they said was a "cessation of touring agreement". But on Monday they posted a video of […]
Taylor Swift's old publisher Big Machine Records issued a statement saying it had agreed "to grant all licences of their artists' performances" for "the upcoming American Music Awards", in reaction to Swift's claim that her old record label had forbidden it. However, in the second half of their statement, Big Machine said "that recording artists […]
"The trio's music still soothes" - PopMatters says in a review of The Good Ones' new album 'Rwanda, You Should Be Loved' where they keep the "spirit of hope and connection to Rwandan land and people". The album features a strong indie-rock team - TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe, Wilco's Nels Cline, Sleater-Kinney's Corin […]
Parisian band En Attendant Ana released a new song 'Woods', "accessible jangly indie-pop, just a little winsome, just a little motorik, and super catchy" - Brooklyn Vegan describes them quite correctly. It's coming out in January on their second album 'Juillet'; their debut 'Lost and Found' came out last year, listen to it here. 'Woods' - below. […]
"Anyone will thrill to Russell, whose ability to anchor wandering thought with melodic resolution is as strong as Bob Dylan’s" - Guardian said about 'Iowa Dream', a compilation of Arthur Russell's demos, mostly from the 1970. What sets this electronic pioneer is his "guileless stance, staring up at the world in confusion, hurt and wonder". […]
Each month, Fact Magazine makes a selection of best underground dance music from across the world, and this time around they feature legends and new faces in equal measure - TAYHANA, Ari Lennox, Static-X, Nazar, etc.
"Pop music is having a potentially fatal existential crisis: when did pop cease to suggest a life more glamorous or exciting than your own? When did it cease to be aspirational, strange and intriguing?" - Alexis Petridis asks - "how did we go from Lady Gaga wearing the contents of a butcher’s counter to the […]
Disney+ has removed 'The Simpsons' episode 'Stark Raving Dad', which appeared in the show's third season. The now-notorious episode does not appear on the service as part of its removal, which also extends to Blu-ray DVD box sets and syndication. In the wake of pulling the episode, executive producer James L. Brooks told the Wall Street Journal, "It […]
Twenty One Pilots finished on top of Billboards list of albums of last ten years with 'Blurryface' - their 2015 album sold over 6.5 million copies worldwide. Their mash-up of hip-hop, pop, reggae, and indie rock brought hits like 'Ride' and 'Stressed Out'. After 'Blurryface', the top selling rock albums of the last decade are […]
British photographer Terry O'Neill, whose work captured iconic images of London's Swinging Sixties, has died. He photographed celebrities - including The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Elton John, Amy Winehouse - and received a CBE last month for services to photography. BBC...
'Dance Monkey' cruises to a 16th week at No. 1 on the Australian singles chart, breaking the all-time record for longest stint at the summit. Tones And I's second single eclipses the previous mark set by Ed Sheeran’s 'Shape of You' which spent 15 non-consecutive weeks at the top of the chart. The Industry Observer...
Kanye West has announced his first opera, 'Nebuchadnezzar' - it opens on November 24th at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. It is about the longest-reigning monarch of the Neo-Babylonian Empire and a ruler who West relates to. The opera is directed by Italian performance artist Vanessa Beecroft and will feature music by Kanye’s Sunday […]
In 1958 Patricia “Miss Pat” Chin and her husband Vincent “Randy” Chin set up a stall selling off old 45s, and, as new Jamaican styles of mento, ska, rock-steady, then reggae emerged, opened a shop, a distribution company and then a studio. In the 1970s, political violence in Kingston got out of hand, and the […]
American country singer Luke Combs has climbed the summit of Billboard 200 chart with his newest release 'What You See Is What You Get'. The album had 172,000 equivalent album units in the United States, with 74 million on-demand audio streams, which made for the largest week for a country album in over a year […]
Brilliant new disco single 'Anna (Flowers Don't Grow)' is the banging follow up to the 'Combustion', the single so good, we assumed that it couldn't be repeated - the Quietus says enthusiastically about Pregoblin's new song. Band's members have artistic background - songwriter and multidisciplinary artist Alex Sebley is a former member of Saudis and […]
American sympho black-metal band Abigail Williams have added cello on their latest album 'Walk Beyond the Dark' which made Brooklyn Vegan take this album out - "cello parts really dominate this one in a very effective way, and the beauty of the cello mixed with the intensity that the rest of the band brings makes […]
"It’s the diary of a young girl going through heartbreak, loss, betrayal, fame, insecurities, doubt, boundaries, self-care, and more than anything, healing. Healing as a young girl at the start of womanhood. Healing and being honest with everything that I’m feeling and experiencing, and bringing it into poetic light and making it very powerful" - […]
Drums & electronic duo Broken English Club made a "banging" remix of 'No Walls, No Air' by Gum Takes Tooth, adding "vocals and lyrics, essentially building a new track, albeit one with the same nerve-shredding build". The song is taken from Gum Takes Tooth's 'Arrow', an album the Quietus hears as "one of the LPs […]
Since it's Loudwire the list was made from a specific position, so it's narrowed down to, more or less, alt-rock. It goes from Dorothy at No. 66 to Stone Sour at No. 1, with expected names on the list - Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Deftones, Marilyn Manson, etc. - and quite a few lesser-known in between. […]
Danger Mouse shared a previously unreleased track that he recorded with Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous, before Linkous' death in 2010. 'Ninjarous' features the rapper MF Doom. “Mark and I worked on a lot of music together,” Danger Mouse said in a statement - “but the song we did with MF DOOM was always one of Mark’s […]
'The Right to Rock' tells the story of Filipino American sisters June and Jean Millington who in the late 19602 formed ferocious garage band Fanny. They were the first all-women band signed to a multi-album major label, and who used this platform to fight racism, sexism, and homophobia. "With members nearing age 70, it’s wonderful to see Fanny connecting with a new generation of listeners" - MJI writes presenting Bobbi Jo Hart’s documentary.
ouTube Shorts has launched its ‘Shorts Fund’ worth $100 million that will be distributed to its creators over the course of 2021-2022, TechCrunch reports. Shorts Fund will be available to anyone creating original content for Shorts, with the company saying “thousands of creators” will be paid for their content on Shorts through the Fund. Creators won’t be able to apply for the fund. Instead, YouTube will reach out and reward creators whose videos have exceeded certain milestones each month, including engagement and view counts.
Richard Benson is an English guitarist based in Italy. Watching him in action, it’s evident he knows how to play and he understands musical concepts but his guitar methods are unorthodox. His audiences come to see him play so they can throw food at him. Benson is willing to be a punchline to perform in front of an audience for the love of his art. He’s obviously passionate and dedicated, but at what point do you face the fact that people don’t just dislike your expression of music, they hate it - Medium gets curious about the strange man. There's also a short docu about the anti-guitarist.
New concerts are being added on a daily basis to the touring schedule in the US, mostly by American artists, thanks to the high vaccination rate. Trapital's Dan Runcie asks, rightfully so, "will you have the energy (and money) to still attend all their shows in the post-pandemic boom?". Live Nation's CEO Michael Rapino sits down with Recode’s Peter Kafka to talk about the industry’s comeback and how he’s figured out new tricks.
Apple Music announced it’s adding both Lossless Audio and Spatial Audio with support for Dolby Atmos to its service. From June 1, Apple is bundling these HD formats into its standard $9.99-per-month streaming subscription price. Amazon Music moments after confirmed that a range of HD audio options on Amazon’s Music Unlimited Service will now all be available for just $9.99 per month. Music Business Worldwide's founder Tom Ingham believes this is bad news for music in general and predicts that "over the next decade, we can now expect a slow war of attrition to trundle on between music rightsholders and the world’s largest tech giants over precisely this value calculation". Ingham also believes selling pricey hardware is the wrong way to go.
"Today, Berlin is one of the premier destinations for techno music fans. People come from all over the world to party all night to the rhythmic beat of Berlin’s club scene. And this music that the city is most famous for developed in large part because of the thing the city is most infamous for: the Berlin wall, which divided the city into east and west for almost thirty years" - 99% Invisible podcast introduces its new episode about the unusual destiny of the dance capital.
"For decades, I have taught courses on nuclear weapons and the Cold War. Conveying what life was like with the everyday fear of immediate destruction, especially to younger students, has become more and more difficult over the years... But one medium from the Cold War, more than any other, gets through to my students: MTV, Music Television. When I show them videos from the age of glitter and spandex that are filled with images of nuclear destruction, they finally grasp how much the threat of instant and final war was woven into the daily life of young Americans" - Harvard professor Tom Nichols writes in the Atlantic about his latest addition to the curriculum. "In fact, messages about nuclear weapons, nuclear war, and the end of humanity, by some counts, appeared almost hourly on MTV, making nuclear destruction second only to sex as the most ubiquitous video theme flooding the eyes of America’s youth in the 1980s".
"You have generations of Black artists who have been wary of where and how their material archival life-worlds are handled” - author Daphne A. Brooks says in Audiofemme interview about her new book 'Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound'. The book is divided into two sections (“Side A” and “Side B”), crisscrossing through time as Brooks connects writer and singer Pauline Hopkins, who was active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with Janelle Monáe. Brooks is a Yale professor who previously wrote 'Bodies in Dissent' and the 33 1/3 book on Jeff Buckley’s album 'Grace'.
The Foreign Desk podcast looks into the Eurovision Song Contest from a point of geo-politics, with a witty twist from the hosts, coming from the least-successful country. TFD asks what the dos and don’ts of using Eurovision to project your nation are, and does it really have real-world political potency? Europe’s most popular cultural event will take place in Rotterdam next week, following last year’s cancellation.
The rising south-London rapper Enny talks to Guardian about a genre-generated shift in hip-hop and music in general: “It’s almost like a Renaissance moment for women who are taking a stand in what they want to do, and just being whoever they want to be when it comes to music. They’re not getting stuck in boxes, or focused on what they think that people might want to hear, or what labels are telling them to do. They’re just being themselves". There were women in hip-hop before, of course, but they were sporadic, now there's a movement: “Before Cardi [B] and Nicki [Minaj], it was Lil’ Kim and Missy Elliott, like you could pinpoint specific moments. But now you’ve got hundreds of lady rappers”.
