Neil Young has been living in the US for most of his life, has been trying to become an American for some time now, but he is still only a Canadian citizen, Stereogum reports. The latest occasion when he applied for US citizenship there was a delay in the process because his use of marijuana may […]
Land of Kush is a Canadian collective of 20-ish musicians, headed by Sam Shalabi (Egyptian born in Lybia, raised in Canada), playing a combination of free jazz, Arabic classical, postpunk and pan-global folk music. Their last album from 2013 emanated "heady optimism inspired by the Arab Spring, and Shalabi has spent much of the last […]
"Adept with delay and other effects pedals, and know a good hook and driving beat when they hear it" - Brooklyn Vegan says about debut album 'Dream Noise' by Capitol. It's actually dream-pop, BV says, "just a bit like The National with more of a Cure obsession", and "they’ve also just got some excellent pop […]
Post Malone comes back to the top of Billboard 200 chart with his album 'Hollywood's Bleeding', for a fifth nonconsecutive week, a feat that hasn't been accomplished in over a year. 'Scorpion' by Drake was the last album to land at No. 1 for five weeks, however, it was all consecutive. 'Hollywood's Bleeding' earned 78,000 […]
Producers Pharrell and Rick Rubin interviewed each other in a wide-ranging interview, covering various subject - favourite music, racism versus the hip-hop, technology, as well as 'Blurred Lines' lawsuit which changed what makes a song different - "now there's a question on what a song is". Pharrell feels he's the one to blame for that. […]
"She sits bolt upright, doesn’t slouch, and speaks carefully and with great consideration in a soft, southern American accent. She’s fiercely intelligent and quietly assured. She drinks black coffee and frequently cracks her knuckles, which snap so loudly you wonder if there’s a metal skeleton in there after all" - NME writes about Poppy, singer-songwriter, […]
New York rapper Wiki "still sounds fresh, and still sounds hungry" on his second proper album 'OOFIE', Brooklyn Vegan says. It features his frequent collaborators Your Old Droog, Princess Nokia, Lansky Jones of World’s Fair, and R&B singer Duendita, but it's the main man Wiki's thing - "a gripping storyteller and a deft rhymer, and […]
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany analysed 80,000 different chord progressions from 745 songs, using machine learning to give a score to each chord based on how “surprising” it was compared to the chord preceding it, Newsweek reports. Chord sequences were then played to 39 volunteers, stripped of lyrics and melody to make […]
Maybe we live in an era so combustible, so filled with hate and division, that such libertarian frivolity is downright irresponsible. Maybe it’s time for Slayer to go away for a while. Sit out these strange times" - NME says in a review of 'The Repentless Killology', a combination narrative movie and concert film about […]
A story in the Guardian about an amazing project - album 'Home' made by Brazilian-British duo Mixhell. They are keyboardist and singer Laima Leyton, an art-gallerist and techno DJ, and drummer Igor Cavalera, a drummer in metal bands Sepultura, Nailbomb and Cavalera Conspiracy. While at home with their five children, Leyton would record poems over […]
Ticketholders for Tool’s recent Cleveland, OH show received a pre-show email warning them against taking pictures with their phones - "Please watch and listen to the show, not your phone. You will be ejected... if you violate this simple request". But, there's a catch - the band gave the okay for security to stand down […]
Artists and songwriters that have been nominated for induction to the annual Songwriters Hall of Fame 2020 include Outkast, the Neptunes, Eurythmics, R.E.M., Patti Smith, the Isley Brothers, Vince Gill, Journey, Beach Boys’ Mike Love, Mariah Carey, Gloria Estefan, Steve Miller, Motown legend William "Mickey" Stevenson, songwriting duo L. Russell Brown and Irwin Levine, and […]
"Okereke’s writing on ‘2042’ feels like his boldest to date. This is a vital touchstone in documenting the lives of those who must negotiate multi-faceted racial and sexual identities against a backdrop of continuing division. It’s the social commentary that makes this experimental album feel vital and unifying" - NME says in a review of Kele […]
"No real fan waits patiently in the pissing rain outside a stage door for some hog-wild aftershow to finish in order to make their soggy tour programme worth twenty quid more than they paid for it. To a real fan, an autograph’s monetary value is irrelevant; it’s priceless to them because it represents a small […]
London rapper Dave has released a new song ‘Paper Cuts’, which sees him explore drill for the first time. The song is produced by Ghosty, one of the central architects of the sound, Complex reports. It’s Dave's first song since winning the Mercury Prize in September for his debut album ‘Psychodrama‘.
Gold discs, a custom-made bed, a late 20th Century two handed sword, record collection, motorcycle leather, jewellery - all personal items belonging to The Prodigy‘s Keith Flint were sold at auction last night. His possessions were divided into 171 lots at Cheffins' auction, which was 20 minutes late after their website crashed due to the high number of […]
Producer Mura Masa unveiled 'Deal Wiv It', an up-beat and raw news song with Slowthai on the microphone. The video for it, released yesterday, shows Slowthai getting out of an apartment ("Fighting with my sisters in the house/She's on the couch, she don't move much"), running about in slow-motion outside a housing estate ("I see […]
Tracks from Kanye West’s new album, ‘Jesus Is King’, currently hold all Top 10 song spots on Billboard’s Hot Christian Songs and Hot Gospel Songs charts. Apart from that, the album itself holds the all-genre Billboard 200, Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, Top Rap Albums charts, Top Christian Albums and Top Gospel Albums chart. With it West […]
‘I’m The Man’ was first heard, a snippet of it at least, in UK crime show 'Peaky Blinders', and it will come out on the upcoming 'Peaky Blinders' soundtrack album, as well as on Beth's solo album, NME reports. 'I'm the Man' is an industrial song, with emphasis on guitars, and some piano to finish […]
'Tak Zakalyalas’ Stal' ('Thus the Steel Was Tempered') is new album by St Petersburg's art-electro band Shortparis, one of the most brilliant and exciting live bands. The record, on the other hand, is "very, very highly polished and subject to a long period of refinement and recasting. Every beat, blurp, crash and cadence of the record […]
French streaming platform Deezer has released an AI tool Spleeter that quickly isolates vocal and instrumental tracks and separates a song into two, four, or five separate audio tracks, Pitchfork reports. Similar tools are difficult, time-consuming, of low-quality, Spleeter on the other side does the job at many times the speed of the original audio. […]
He is frontman of Winterpills, but this year Philip B. Price returns with his first solo album in over a decade, 'Bone Almanac', 8 November. PopMatters says it "frequently recalls American primitive guitar (John Fahey et al.) and British folk giants such as John Martyn" and what makes it different is Price's "pure, singular voice […]
First, he was a lounge singer, then he became an A-list actor, now - Joe Pesci is both. On November 29th, to coincide with his starring role in Martin Scorsese’s 'The Irishman', Pesci will release a new album called 'Still Singing', Entertainment Weekly reports. Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine, the late jazz vocalist Jimmy Scott, and Afro-Cuban […]
DJ Clara! is an authority on reggaeton, Maoupa Mazzocchetti is an EBM producer, together they’re dancehall mutants Clara! Y Maoupa, with a debut album 'Luna Nueva' coming out November 22. The album combines duo’s reggaeton, trap and perreo-channeling beats with DJ Clara!’s frosty vocal delivery, as Fact Magazine reports. Listen to their first single ‘Badman’ below.
A total of 439 songwriters have been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame since 1970, and of these, 31 are women. That's just 7% or every 15th honoree. This year's list of nominees, announced Nov. 5, includes six women. Three are nominated on their own - Mariah Carey, Gloria Estefan, and Patti Smith, and […]
19 Turkish musicians got together and made a rap epic 'Susamam' (stands for "I Can’t Stay Silent"), a 14-verse manifesto about social issues, ranging from domestic violence to animal rights and police brutality. One of the authors of the song Şanişer told the Guardian - “I’m a ‘white Turk’, we’re the people who had the […]
"Lyrically, now, I can’t relate to it, because it was so long ago. I would have no intention ever to write along those abstract lines anymore", Robert Plant said about 'Stairway to Heaven', adding - "lyrically, now, and even vocally, I go, ‘I’m not sure about that'". The rest of the song, however, Plant says, […]
Korean boy-band BTS score a major milestone on the Billboard 200 as their 'Love Yourself: Answer' spends a full year on America's main albums chart, Billboard reports. 'Love Yourself: Answer' re-enters the Billboard 200 at No. 165 for its 52nd, non-consecutive week on the chart. 'Love Yourself: Answer' has now earned 1.1 million total equivalent album […]
American band Federale named themselves after the first film ever scored by Italian composer Ennio Morricone. All Music says Federale's "music pays homage to many of Morricone's hallmarks, like reverb-drenched guitars, whistling, shuffling rhythms, and otherworldly vocals that could be mistaken for the cries of distant animals". Their new album 'No Justice', out this week, […]
Danica Roem, the lead vocalist of thrash metal band Cab Ride Home, made history in 2017 when she became the first openly transgender official to be elected to a state legislature in the US, in conservative-leaning Virginia, Brooklyn Vegan reports. This week the history repeated itself - Roem won her re-election campaign against anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion challenger […]
Dua Lipa was named a double winner at the Brit Awards - she took home the British female solo artist and album of the year titles. Little Mix became the first all-female band to win best British group, Harry Styles took best British single for his song 'Watermelon Sugar', while J Hus received best British male solo artist. Female singer-songwriters Arlo Parks and Griff took home the British breakthrough artist and rising star awards respectively. The Weeknd won the international male solo artist prize, Billie Eilish was named international female solo artist winner, while Haim were dubbed best international group. The BRITs 2021 served as a government COVID pilot event, meaning that a scaled-back live audience – largely made up of NHS and key workers – witnessed this evening’s performances and acceptance speeches in person without the need to wear masks or social distance. NME reported from the event.
"I really like the parts of NFT that foreground the support of artists directly, and I love seeing whole new forms of art flourish in a new medium. But I think the financialization around the NFT space needs some heavy auditing... I don’t want people to bet on me like a racehorse” - Zola Jesus says to Pitchfork about NFTs, the latest creative-financial trend in music (and broader). Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova believes "NFTs are good because they claim that digital art is art, and they actually show that there is value in something that no one can touch”, whereas ANOHNI thinks "it’s shit".
Slate tracked down imposters using famous artists' names to attract listeners on Spotify, without even trying too hard to hide what they're doing. There was a Diana Ross who didn't look anything alike to the "real" Diana Ross, the age didn't match, music neither, and the artist was actually connected to Philippines-based record label Star Music. Electric Light Orchestra is the English 70s band, with the same name co-opted by an autotune-happy rapper. DJ Quik suddenly on Spotify started rapping in Spanish, and wasn't willing to show his face either. This happens a lot on Spotify, Slate argues.
The Punk Rock MBA YouTuber this week presents trap metal, a new genre combining trap-rap and metal, especially the industrial segment of it. The video-blogger goes from early pioneers like Suicideboys, Bones, Scarlxrd, Ghostemane, and XXXtentacion, and suggests newer trap metal artists like Mugxtsu, Mimi Barks, Sinizster, Gizmo and Sematary.
Beethoven's morning hygiene routine involved standing half-dressed before a mirror and pouring enormous pitchers of water over his hands while singing loudly to himself. After this, the German composer would count out exactly 60 beans and grind them, and make himself a coffee. Van Magazine's writer tried a week of this routine, as well as other somewhat strange daily routines of 4 other classical composers - Edvard Grieg, Erik Satie, Igor Stravinsky, and Antonin Dvořák.
Compass Music presents the Pakistan metal scene, including several stand-out bands. Dusk started in the early nineties, considered to be the first metal act in the country. Mizraab’s album 'Maazi Haal Mustaqbil' was the first commercial metal release in Pakistan. Odyssey, had a successful album 'Ghosts of Yesterday', with BlackHour, Tabahi and Wisdom Salad also presenting the scene.
Foo Fighters, The Go-Go’s, Jay-Z, Carole King, Todd Rundgren, and Tina Turner have been announced as The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees for the year 2021 in the Performers category. Additionally, LL Cool J, Billy Preston, and Randy Rhoads will receive the Musical Excellence Award. Kraftwerk, Gil Scott Heron and Charley Patton will get the Early Influence Award. NPR reports. "This is our most diverse class in the history of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame” - says chairman John Sykes.
If there was a year when music was the agent of change it was 1971, the new Apple TV+ docuseries '1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything' argues, Rolling Stone reports. The documentary was inspired by the book 'Never a Dull Moment: 1971 the Year That Rock Exploded' by David Hepworth, and it features footage of artists, many of whom have albums turning 50 this year, including George Harrison, Marvin Gaye, Joni Mitchell, Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones, John Lennon, Bill Withers, Elton John, Graham Nash, Bob Marley, Alice Cooper, and more. The eight-part docuseries also touches on the post-counterculture era and political and social upheaval.
Talib Kweli, Yasiin Bey, and comedian Dave Chappelle have launched a new podcast, 'The Midnight Miracle', on the subscription podcast network Luminary, Complex reports. The first episode, titled “How to Inspire,” is available for free via YouTube. The hosts spoke about life between clips of the late Amy Winehouse. The second episode features Bey and Kweli’s first music as Black Star in over 20 years.
The 82-year-old folk artist Peter Stampfel has just released '20th Century', a 100-song album, featuring a cover of one pop song from each year within the 20th century, beginning in 1901 with 'I Love You Truly' and closing on Coldplay’s 'Yellow'. Punk gets its place with The Buzzcock’s 1978 single 'Ever Fallen in Love', disco got its place with 'Gloria Gaynor's 'I Will Survive', whereas the 1990s are represented by The Spice Girls’ hit 'Wannabe' (1996), Beck’s 'Loser', Pulp's 'Common People' and others. The project took nearly 20 years to complete. American Songwriter talked to the cool old man.
