"It’s a bold, confident new introduction to an already-established band, and it’s not everyday that you see a band drastically reshape their sound and get heavier in the process" - Brooklyn Vegan says in review of Microwave's new album. They went from indie-rock from their first two albums to alt-rock at their newest, and - "the depth […]
Amazon has launched a high definition, “lossless audio” service Amazon Music HD with 50 million songs available in CD quality. The service is available now in the US, UK, Germany, and Japan for $14.99 per month, or $12.99 a month for Amazon Prime subscribers. This makes Amazon the first of the three streaming titans to offer high-fidelity […]
Toronto rapper Haviah Mighty has won the 2019 Polaris Music Prize - the prestigious Canadian prize - with her debut album '13th Floor'. Accepting the prize she explained - "for me, the 13th floor is something that we remove from our reality because it is something that we don't understand and therefore we dismiss it". […]
Guardian has an interview with Black Midi, nominated for the prestigious British Mercury Music Award, trying to explain their music. The journalist of the London paper says their album 'Schlagenheim' reminds her of "the ambience of the internet – a cacophonous, always shifting stream of sonic information that feels spellbinding in part because you can’t […]
In two days following the news of Ric Ocasek's death, sales of The Cars' catalog of albums and songs surged by 2,662%, Billboard reports. The Cars’ combined albums and songs sold 27,000 copies on Sept. 16 and in the late hours of Sept. 15. In the two previous days, The Cars’ music and sold 1,000.
"His rapping remains his greatest tool. JPEG is an impish writer and an athletic vocalist. He can slither in and out of rhythms and hopscotch through the densest arrangements without losing momentum. Here, he raps in compact spurts, volleys, and streams, his words slurred, stretched, and compressed as he channels his heroes and roasts his […]
The latest late pop-star with a hologram tour is Whitney Houston with her 3D image traveling through Mexico and Europe from January to April 2020, and North America in the fall. An Evening With Whitney: The Whitney Houston Hologram Tour is being produced by BASE Hologram, the company behind the Roy Orbison/Buddy Holly hologram tour. Apart from […]
'Memory' is first Vivian Girls album in eight years, the first since the band members all moved from New York to Los Angeles, "from a city with constant motion to a city defined by static sun", and the "band is as good as they ever were, and maybe even a little better". Stereogum chose it […]
Norwegian avant-garde artist Jenny Hval has a new album out, called 'The Practice of Love', and the critics like it a lot: "If she’s often felt to have been speaking from on high, Hval has never been more purely human" - The 405; "transcendental beauty" - The Independent; "some fierce poetry and song" - Clash Music; […]
NME's Mark Beaumont made a selection of best covers of songs by Ric Ocasek's The Cars, to mark the passing of the new wave rock visionary. There are: soft rock standard 'Drive' covered by songwriter Matt Pond PA, new wave nugget 'My Best Friend's Girl' in a "gurning grunge" treatment by Nirvana, "a primal, drum-led […]
American rapper Post Malone climbed the top of Billboard 200 chart chart with his third studio album 'Hollywood’s Bleeding'. His newest LP had the second-biggest opening week of 2019 with a total of 489,000 equivalent album units. Of that total unit sum, 200,000 were in album sales, while TEA units were 11,000 and SEA units […]
"Mike Patton and Jean-Claude Vannier have made an album enjoying a long distance bromance... They seem to have come from across the decades, and from different musical cultures and milieu", the Quietus says about 'Corpse Flower', collaborative album by Faith No More's Mike Patton and French composer Jean-Claude Vannier. But, stil, it's "a production of […]
NME's writers argue pro and contra of traditional album-tour-album cycle. So, contra: "Over the past few years artists have started to eschew these traditional album release schedules again, and it’s exciting! It’s boring being constrained by these rules, especially when it’s so easy to write, record and drop a song on Soundcloud in the course […]
'Murder in the Front Row: The San Francisco Bay Area Thrash Metal Story' is a "story about the fans and the musicians" the author Adam Dubin says in a All Music interview. "I tried to treat them equally, because there was a time when everybody, from James Hetfield on down, was just an 18-year-old kid […]
“It’s basically McDonald’s music – created quickly for a quick buck, but there’s nothing really going on at a deeper level and it doesn’t make your hairs stand up. I want to be the opposite of that” - UK rapper Master Peace tells NME about today's hip-hop, and he really is different. Take his rapping […]
NME marks the passing of Daniel Johnston with a choice of 13 of his best songs - "wonderful tales of mortality and purity" by "wonderful, gifted musician".
The music video for ‘Don’t Call Me Angel’ – Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus and Lana Del Rey’s theme song for the 'Charlie’s Angels' remake – has arrived (watch below). Grande is the mastermind here, Cyrus the strongwoman, and Del Rey the weapons expert; they look cool, wear angel's wings and eat... and get kicked out by the movie director Elizabeth Banks.
“What does music do, Where does music start? How simple can it be? How honest can it be?” - Mark Nelson asked himself before he started making his latest album, 'A Son', under his Pan American moniker, Fact Magazine reports. The acoustic-focused LP is due out November 8. Listen to the guitar melancholy of 'Memphis […]
"Tucker is blessed with a singular croon, one that manages the remarkable feat of being both deadpan and laced with emotion" - the Quietus says in it's review of 'Guild of the Asbestos Weaver', new album by English (not too) experimental musician Alexander Tucker. What stands out the most here is Tucker’s voice - it […]
"It’s been around ten years since a new underground scene really broke through... So, with the South London scene already dubbed gristle rock, let’s continue with crank wave – Fontaines, Squid, Idles, Do Nothing, Life, Famous, insert your own band here; smart, modern guitar bands with a singer who sounds like someone having a psychotic episode […]
“I’ve always just been fascinated by [masculinity]... I’ve just been smothered by it and at the same time expected to behave like that” - Australian singer Alex Cameron tells the Guardian about his new album 'Miami Memory', where he reflects on the harm men’s behaviour causes women. Relationship with his partner, the artist, actor and Girls star […]
California AB-5, which has already been passed by the Senate and verbally supported by the Governor, seeks to give regular employee benefits to individual contractors, like Uber drivers. It essentially turns freelance workers into actual employees of the companies. The music industry will be directly affected by the bill in the sense that independent artists […]
UK producer Special Request has announced his new album 'Offworld' with just a few words - “what if Jam & Lewis signed to Metroplex? 80s soul meets Detroit electro". SR has released a first song from it - 'Shepperton Moon Landing', which "frames breathy R&B samples against a backdrop of space age synths and earworm […]
It's clever, it's funny, it's even philosophical, and it's simple. It makes you think and discuss. Just genius!
Police in Montana, USA blasted AC/DC to move a bison blocking the road. The Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office shared a picture of the road-blocking bison on their Facebook page, stating: “Being a deputy around West Yellowstone comes with unusual duties, including herding bison off the highway so no one gets hurt. When deputies respond to a bison on […]
Lo-fi singer, songwriter and visual artist Daniel Johnston, rose to cult fame in the 80’s alternative and underground music scene. An outsider figure revered by musicians including Kurt Cobain and Tom Waits, his style combined childlike innocence, the avant grade and the eccentric – a style which earned him cult status amongst his many fans, The Austin Chronicle reports. […]
Camila Cabello gets punished each time she isn't completely honest with her billionaire boyfriend, and has to start over and over again ('Groundhog Day' style), until she acknowledges the whole truth, being hit by elephants and drones on the way.
"'Resonant Body', the new album by DJ and producer Octo Octa, celebrates moments... when temporary intimacy coaxes the bashful into gasping emotion" - Pitchfork says in it's review of new album by American house producer Maya Bouldry-Morrison (gave it grade 7,8 of 10). A nice text about how music binds us together: "She captures that […]
"As much as we try, we cannot always control the feelings that enter our lives. They can come in unexpectedly, like a wild animal appearing just when you thought yourself alone. Have you ever crossed paths with a wolf? In the North, where we lived and worked for many years, they call them Amaruq" - […]
Baltimore singer :3LON has shared a his new single ‘Aria of Resilience’ produced by fellow Baltimore-based musician Sentinel and built around a harp sample derived from musical notes painted on a body in Hieronymus Bosch’s classic painting 'Garden of Earthly Delights', Fact Magazine reports. :3LON wrote that the lyrics were "written from the perspective of a character in a medieval […]
Music technology and music industry Cherie Hu goes deeper into NFT. Her high-points:
Danish singer Kira Skov has released 14 albums in her career, but the new one, 'Spirit Tree' coming out in May is special. It is a duet album featuring Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Mark Lanegan, John Parish, Jenny Wilson, Bill Callahan and others. Skov explains the idea to TNC: "Uniting forces with artist that has specialized in something, that I could not master myself and vice versa, merging and creating something more than we could have done by our selves. I wanted to distill this experience on this album. It's a homage to the duet".
An amazing, albeit not the newest, Twitter thread by YourWullie, about famous album covers, and the photographs that inspired them. One of them is the original photograph used for Sonic Youth's 1990 album 'Goo'. Pictured are Maureen Hindley and David Smith, key witnesses in the Moors Murders trial. Maureen was serial killer Myra Hindley's sister.
"I’m at peace with my life, with my stories. That peace is a dignity. Which means I guess I’m kinda proud of my life. In fact, my life is extraordinary! I truly feel joyful and I think the book has helped provide some joy" - singer-songwriter Rickie Lee Jones says in The New Cue interview about her new autobiography 'Last Chance Texaco'. The Washington Post describes the book as a "raw and roving life story", whereas Arts Fuse writer declares it "the most transparent about the vagaries of fame... of all the biographies of female musicians I’ve read in the past year".
Logic and Madlib have formed a new duo project, MadGic, and have already represented it with a new joint single 'Mars Only pt. 3', Pitchfork reports. The song's lyrics allude the pair have made an entire MadGic album in lockdown. Logic announced his retirement from music last year to spend more time with his family.
Ticket touts and resale sites such as Viagogo and StubHub impede the tracing of fans in the event of coronavirus outbreaks, leading music industry figures have warned, Guardian reports. Their investigation found that dozens of professional touts have snapped up tickets for eagerly awaited festivals and are demanding massively inflated prices from fans. Festival firms are required to retain attendees’ details for 21 days as part of government efforts to prevent coronavirus outbreaks but industry figures warned the greed of resale firms and touts would make it much harder to comply.
The first trailer for Questlove’s documentary 'Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)', premiered at the Oscars last night (watch it below). 'Summer of Soul' focuses on the little-known history of the Harlem Cultural Festival, dubbed “the Black Woodstock,” which took place the same summer as Woodstock in 1969 over the course of six weeks in New York's Harlem. The lineup included Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, B.B. King, Gladys Knight and the Pips, and more. The clip juxtaposes many of these performances with the cultural and sociopolitical upheaval happening at the time. 'Summer of Soul' is Questlove’s directorial debut, and it was already awarded both the U.S. Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award in the U.S. Documentary category at the Sundance Film Festival.
Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Jon Batiste win best Original score award at the Oscars last night for their work on the beautiful animated feature film 'Soul'. In the Best original song category, H.E.R. took home the trophy for 'Fight for You' from the feature film 'Judas and the Black Messiah'. 'Sound of Metal' won Film editing, and Sound. Check out all the winners and nominees here.
Young Thug's star-studded 'Slime Language 2' debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, earning 113,000 equivalent album units last week. The 23-track features Young Stoner Life’s artists Gunna, Yak Gotti, Lil Duke, T-Shyne and Lil Keed, as well as acts from outside the camp, including Drake, Lil Uzi Vert, Big Sean, NAV and Future. Young Thug himself performs on more than half of the album (13 of the 23 tracks), and, in turn, the set is billed on the chart to Young Thug & Various Artists, Billboard reports.
Lil Nas X has released a new version of his controversial hit single 'Montero (Call Me By Your Name)' in which he recreates every sound on the song with his mouth. The new rendition of hit single arrives with a very innocent Brady Bunch-style music video.
