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 […]
Plenty of indie-rock on Stereogum's list of the 100 best albums of the 2010s (not over yet, right!?), the strongest pop albums of this decade, the chosen hip-hop albums, and a few metal albums. Generally, it's mostly American music. Still, a good starting point to research a "shaggy, undefinable" decade.
The Illinois screamo threesome Frail Body released their new album 'A Brief Memoriam' last week on Deathwish, a good genre-defined album.
The song 'Bracer' is “about being disoriented and wanting to check out with a substance – I used whiskey”, Katie Gately said about her new song 'Bracer', coming out next year on her new album 'Loom', Stereogum reports. The experimental musician said she made this album after her mother died, and this song is "an […]
Sharon Stone is suing 31-year-old rapper Chanel West Coast for using her moniker dozens of times in a song called 'Sharon Stoned'. The first 30 seconds contain no words other than “Sharon” or “Stone(d),” and “Sharon Sharon Sharon Stone(d)” is repeated on loop several times throughout the remainder of the track. The actress says the […]
There's some well known videos like Lady Gaga's 'Telephone', Jamie XX's 'Gosh', and Grimes' 'Oblivion', and then there are a few surprises like Leningrad's 'Kolshik' and Duck Sauce's 'Barbra Streisand'. Childing Gambino's 'This Is America', below, is sixth on the list. Stereogum...
Mumbai-based producer and composer Sandunes recorded her new EP between Berlin, London and Mumbai, trying to explore “repetitive occurrences that we’re happy to call coincidences”. The Quietus says the music of '11:11' - "lifts you, but lightly so – surrounding you and elevating you... Sanya has once again created flourishing sounds brushing with a gentle and […]
Graham King, producer of 'Bohemian Rhapsody', the hit movie about the life of Freddie Mercury and Queen, is to create a biopic about the Bee Gees, Deadline reports. Paramount has purchased the rights to the Bee Gees songs on behalf of King, and will therefore be able to use them in the movie. King scored […]
Goth-rock greats Bauhaus played their first show in 13 years on Sunday night in Los Angeles. The audience got to hear band's favorites 'Bela Lugosi’s Dead', 'In the Flat Field', and 'She’s in Parties', rarities like 'Man with the X-Ray Eyes' and 'Spy in the Cab', with the band finishing up with covers - Iggy […]
"A rollercoaster of emotions throughout" and "a wonderful record" - The Line of Best Fit says in a review of second album by the London rap duo Krept & Konan, 'Revenge is Sweet'. The other critics like it too: "Almost feels like a compilation full of singles – quite a few tracks are Top 10 contenders" - Clash Music; […]
Last year American metal band Threatin made a publicity stunt building a big fake tour online, with shows that actually no one or a only a few people had attended. Some of the shows didn't happen at all. This weekend they played London, for real. NME reported from the show: "The music starts and the […]
New Zealand pop singer Lorde is in mourning, since her dog Pearl has died, so she announced she is delaying her new album. "I was holding him when he went, and I know he knew that I was there. But this loss has been indescribably painful, and a light that was turned on for me […]
Justin Broadrick from Godflesh and Kevin Martin aka The Bug put their project Techno Animal to sleep and started a new one, Zonal with help vocalist Moor Mother, polymath artist and activist. The Quietus likes what they did on 'Wrecked' a lot - it's "grinding negativity and tidal heaviness provides a necessary form of catharsis, […]
Soundgarden could easily finish a new album if they just had the demo files of Chris Cornell’s vocal recordings, band's guitarist Kim Thayil said. But the problem is - "we don’t have those files”. So, will the album happen? "Yeah, definitely", he said, "and I think that will happen. It would be ridiculous if it didn’t. […]
"My hope is that they find you here, on the blurred edge between reality and dreams, in the half-awake place where the familiar merges with the unknown" - Paris-based indie-folk singer-songwriter Flora Hibberd told PopMatters about her EP 'The Absentee'. Indie30 says it's a "stirring and satisfying debut by any measure, one of conviction and […]
By the age of 12, Flea was smoking joints regularly, had acquired his nickname, based on his fidgety nature and diminutive stature, which made him develop - "an undying sense that something was wrong with me, that everyone else is clued into a group consciousness from which I am excluded”, he writes in his new […]
Organizers of Kanye West's Sunday Service event in Baton Rouge on Friday charged $55 for a Styrofoam plate of lukewarm pancakes, bacon, sausage, and grits, All Hip-Hop reports. Several attendees posted photos of the meal on social media. To add insult to injury (or, maybe, to let people enjoy their meals 🙂 ), Kanye West was […]
"Basically we just want to confuse the fuck out of people, in a good way!” - vocalist and guitarist Sydney Minsky-Sargeant of UK band Working Men's Club said about his group. Sonically, they drew comparisons to the Fall, Soft Cell, Parquet Courts, These New Puritans, with lyrics dealing with the today's world - "If people […]
Kanye West reached the No. 1 spot at the Billboard 200 albums chart with his latest release 'Jesus Is King', which earned 264,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. Of that sum, 109,000 were in album sales, while the rest was powered largely by streaming activity. 'Jesus Is King' on top of Billboard makes Kanye West the […]
Musician Stephen Morris left his 310-year-old violin worth £250,000 on a train in south London, and after secret negotiations, the violinist got it back in a supermarket car park in Beckenham. The man who had the violin said he had made a mistake and apologized when the two met, and the detective involved in the […]
"At seven tracks that clock in at 15 and a half minutes, 'Feet of Clay' is by far Earl’s shortest project yet, but it doesn’t feel incomplete" - Brooklyn Vegan writes about Earl Sweatshirt's new album 'Feet of Clay'. It's experimental and simple - "just stream-of-consciousness delivery from Earl, who packs in threats, boasts, sentimentality, fun references".
Michael Jackson has topped Forbes’ 2019 list of highest earning dead celebrities after his estate made over £46 million in the last 12 months. Jackson’s streaming numbers “surged” to “2.1 billion US spins, up from 1.8 billion a year ago”. It's his seventh year in a row on top of this list. Elvis Presley came in […]
Dark-emo icons My Chemical Romance announced a reunion show in Los Angeles on December 20, and tickets sold out in a matter of minutes. This will be their first gig since 2012. Alt Press...
"A beautiful mix between folk, pagan, progressive, death, black, and even melodic, gothic and most of all symphonic metal" - the Prog Space says about third album by the American prog-metal band Wilderun. Angry Metal Guy thinks the album is even better than that: "They have raised the bar for what progressive and melodic death […]
Julien Hairon has spent the last six years recording traditional music in Asia, Oceania and Africa, and now he has released his first songs, under the name Judgitzu. ‘Umeme’ is a 180bpm slice of brain-melting bass and ear-shredding synthesis, while on the flip ‘Kelele’ obscures the madness with field recordings of motorbike revs and animal […]
"Music has the power to make people feel what you want them to feel. Music can be manipulative, enriching, oppressive. It’s good that people use it for the best reasons" - Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett says in a Rolling Stone interview with St. Vincent. She described her amazement by people being amazed by her music: […]
Last year British singer-songwriter Eliza Shaddad released her first album 'Future', which she toured this year that felt like an "achievement and joy" because she met people "who've traveled from far away to hear you sing, that's magic, and it feels especially personal because of being a solo artist". She released her new single 'Girls' […]
The Quietus looks at the long history of fizzy drinks brands getting involved in popular music in an attempt to sell sugar to children: "Soft drinks exhibit the very essence of predatory behaviour. Reach them while they're young, addict them to sugar, caffeine, addict them to addiction itself, addict them for life. Both music and […]
Californian producer PBDY explores love, loss and death on his debut album 'Careworm', out November 15. “Reveling in sadness can create such beauty, but what degree of masochism do we need to go through to find this place of peace with what’s given in life?” - he says, Fact Magazine reports. PBDY shared video for […]
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.
A funny interview in Van Magazine with John Colan about his hilarious blog Composers Doing Normal Shit, where he publishes pictures of composers doing normal stuff. There's John Cage drinking beer, Claude Debussy on a picnic with his daughter looking really bored, Igor Stravinsky trying on shoes and plenty more stuff like that.
Instrumental startup flagged Arizona Zervas nearly two years before Columbia signed the American rapper, Lil Nas X was on its radar months before Columbia came calling, while Tones and I was recognized by the tool long before the Australian-born artist signed to Elektra Records. Instrumental has built-in a new approach to finding musical talent looking only at data – from social media and streaming numbers. Wired presents the tool.
"It’s a wonderful way to say goodbye, a celebration of Tony Allen doing the thing he loved and doing it as brilliantly and as unassailably as ever" - the Quietus wrote reviewing the posthumous album 'There Is No End', by the afrobeat drummer. It's Guardian's choice for their Global album of the month as it "plays as a cohesive record because of Allen’s capacity to slot into place behind seemingly any collaborator without diluting his innate sense of rhythmic style" (collaborators include Sampa the Great, Skepta, Ben Okri, and Danny Brown). Pitchfork argues "'There Is No End' is Allen as his most copacetic, polished self. It doesn’t feel like the finish line, but rather a passing of the baton".
Amazing Pakistani band Jaubi share a very groovy South Asian-jazzy 'Raga Gujri'; produced by David Lynch, Donovan's 'I Am The Shaman' is very minimal, with only acoustic guitar and voice, and atmospheric; Mina Tindle shares angelic, gentle, beautiful 'Indigo'; Backxwash expands on her rap-meets-metal energy on 'I Lie Here Buried With My Rings and My Dresses'.
“That’s me now. Fake head of hair, fake eyebrows, fake teeth, fake hip. I’m the biggest fucking fake going!” - Shaun Ryder says in Guardian interview. It's a funny read (maybe not 100% scientific) - "I was a heroin addict for 20-odd years, but there’s been no damage off that", or maybe not entirely - "Yes, my teeth went from the crystal meth and crack cocaine".
Six strands of Kurt Cobain's hair are being auctioned as part of Iconic Auctions' 'The Amazing Music Auction', Loudwire reports. This one-of-a-kind artifact is "accompanied by an impeccable lineage of provenance including photos of Kurt posing with the woman who cut this hair, scissors in hand, and a fantastic shot of the hair actually being cut! The lucky friend who trimmed the Nirvana frontman's iconic blond locks was an early confidant, Tessa Osbourne, who cut his hair in 1989 — well prior to his 'Nevermind' breakthrough — while on the 'Bleach' tour", the press statement reads. The bidding started at $2,500.
Co-founder and namesake of Vans shoe company, Paul Van Doren has passed away at age 90, NBC reports. Van Doren launched Vans in 1966 and has since built the Anaheim, California-based company into a global sneaker and streetwear brand. Last month, Van Doren released his memoir 'Authentic'.
At the Brit Awards on Tuesday, Taylor Swift is to become the first female winner of the Global Icon award, CNN reports. She will also become the first non-British recipient of the prize, which the Brits characterise as their highest honour. Only three other artists have been named Brits Icons - Sir Elton John, David Bowie and Robbie Williams.
