Korn will play a virtual concert in MMORPG games AdventureQuest 3D and AdventureQuest Worlds, where characters will receive a “magical concert ticket” to attend the show, where they can pick up loot while battling monsters as the band plays, Kerrang reports. The event is free to play and new players can also attend, as new […]
"Lillie Mae chants and sings non-lexical notes to create an ethereal energy... Captures the fear and beauty typically associated with angelic entities" - PopMatters says about second album by Nashville alt-country singer Lillie Mae. Here's a couple more reviews: "She plays acoustic guitar and fiddle throughout, but keeps her voice front and center, floating effortlessly […]
"Sleater-Kinney is changing, but change shouldn’t be a derogatory term. Changing is growing" - CoS says in a review of Sleater Kinney's new album 'The Center Won't Hold', produced by art-rock queen Annie Clark (St. Vincent), which some fans saw as betrayal. Two leitmotifs of the album is "how danceable it is and how almost […]
The U.S. Department of Justice has taken Led Zeppelin’s side in the long-running copyright dispute that pits the writers of the group’s anthem 'Stairway to Heaven' against the publishers of the earlier song 'Taurus' by Spirit. The DOJ filed an amicus brief late Thursday supporting Zeppelin, stating, amongst other things, that the relevant portion of […]
NME hears the song as "hypnotic", with Natasha Khan moving "between husky, spoken word-style delivery in the verses and a melodic, falsetto-heavy chorus" (listen below). Her new album, ‘Lost Girls’, comes out September 6, and it, as she said, pays “homage to Los Angeles where the album was recorded, to being a kid in the […]
Nergal, frontman of the Polish black-metal band Behemoth, was kicked out of a YMCA gym in the US where Behemoth are currently on tour, because he was wearing a Darkthrone shirt, and the band were asked if they believed in Jesus Christ, Loudwire reports. "We don't, because we come from Poland, and we worship Odin. Just […]
“You can’t ‘magic’ one of these [Woodstocks] into happening, and that’s what they tried to do with this. It had nothing to do with anybody feeling good about each other. It had to do with certain people making a huge amount of money. That’s a grubby way to start in the first place. It’s not […]
Nobody will know whether the Agent King has left the building, since he is a spy, there's just an issue of him having a good mask. His former wife Priscilla Presley, who is the executive producer of the animated series, says that "from the time Elvis was a young boy, he always dreamed of being […]
Amy, Looking For Sugarman, Bird, Walk The Line, Whiplash, The Doors, Cabaret, Vox Lux, Pink Floyd: Live At Pompeii, Woodstock, Control (and more) - a very good choice made by Anna Calvi, Neil Tennant, Nadine Shah, Wayne Coyne, Nitin Sawhney and Anna Meredith for the Guardian.
Slipknot sold 118,00 equivalent album units last week of their newest release 'We Are Not Your Kind' in the US, which earned them a top Billboard 200 spot. Of that sum, 102,000 were in album sales. 'We Are Not Your Kind' is the first hard rock album to lead the Billboard 200 since Foo Fighters’ 'Concrete and Gold' […]
"‘Hold Me In,’ is the sound of someone gripping their emotions so hard that unprecedented waves of pain and beauty shoot out from between their fingers” - guitarist Ben Levin says of their newest single (watch video below). There's another thought he shared - “When everything seems to be falling apart around us, the path […]
"The band’s most substantial and multidimensional offering to date... More of a career-encompassing opus than just the next album in their discography" - Metal Injection said, after hearing the album once. "A winding path through sounds mysterious and confrontational, uplifting and filled with darkness. Its 85 minutes unfurl like a brutal symphony in 7/4 time, […]
"I don't think I respected older people; if they didn't say anything I just thought they were boring. Now that I'm a 40-year-old, I'm not saying anything because I have so many experiences that make me quiet, there are certain reasons that make me not talk" - interesting thing to say for somebody who makes […]
“I hope to be playing eight-hour live shows one day" - New York veteran producer Nick Hook says about his new mix for the Fact Magazine (listen to ih here). That perfect show would be with all the phones "as far away as possible and [there would be] space that doesn’t exist for most of […]
Stereogum and Brooklyn Vegan made a very good choice of songs released this week (or is it just that the week was just rich witch good releases!?). There are, among many others: 'Nothing Is Safe' by the great experimental rap trio clipping.; 'Not', a "roiling, fraying rock", new song by Big Thief, coming on a […]
Slayer and Rick Ware Racing have recently announced a collaboration, in which NASCAR driver JJ Yeley would be sporting Slayer's iconic logo on his car at the annual Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race. But, it seems the thrash-grandads are too scary for the team's liking, as they have been pulled as the primary sponsor "due […]
Matt Healy of the band the 1975 went into the crowd at their concert in Dubai on Wednesday and kissed a male fan on the lips. Homosexual sex is illegal in the United Arab Emirates and there have been arrests in the past for kissing in public. Videos shared online showed the band playing onstage […]
An album John Coltrane recorded with his Classic Quartet in 1964, between celebrated 'Crescent' and 'A Love Supreme', will be released for the first time September 27, Exclaim reports. 'Blue World' takes an unfamiliar route for Coltrane, comprising revisions of his earlier work (listen to the title track below). The album was made at the request of Canadian filmmaker […]
Metallica has donated €250,000 to support the construction of Romania’s first pediatric oncology hospital. Band made the donation ahead of their sold-out show Wednesday in Romania’s National Arena, Billboard reports. In other Metallica related news, Tom G. Warrior, Celtic Frost frontman said he wasn't happy at all with how Kirk Hammett and Rob Trujillo covered […]
Contemporary folk played by the Slovenian band is "densely written and meticulously plotted music, played live on acoustic instruments, apparently without any overdubs", the Guardian states. "The songs (some of them 15 minutes long) are episodic, dreamlike voyages – qawwali-style vocal wailing and medieval drones mutate into free-jazz freakouts; steampunk techno (played on pots, pans […]
Chance the Rapper is the first artist in the SoundCloud Premier program to earn a billion streams. His first music dropped on the platform eight years ago, he released his album 'Coloring Book' on SoundCloud for free, and his most recent album 'The Big Day' was released via the streaming service as well. All Hip Hop...
The Iowa masked band's sixth LP, 'We Are Not Your Kind' has gone straight in at the summit of UK chart, knocking Ed Sheeran's collaborations LP off the top spot. It is also the band's first chart-topping album for 18 years in the UK, after 2001's 'Iowa'. The last metal act to conquer the UK […]
"Relentless, almost ruthless in its melodic radiance, both a testament to the power of positive thinking and a poignant reminder of its limitations" - Pitchfork says about their latest choice for Best New Music, third album by Long Island singer-songwriter Jade Lilitri. Lilitri was in an emo band prior to Oso Oso, and you can […]
Brazilian samba icon Elza Soares has shared a brand new song 'Libertação', featuring fellow Brazilian vocalist Virgínia Rodrigues (listen below). Soares (82) has released nearly three dozen albums across her career, which has spanned for nearly 70 years.
"Loud, nasty, serrated music, music built on thudding drum machines and squalling sirens and scuzz-rasp vocals and house pianos and distorted guitars" - Stereogum argues their latest AOTW choice (the man behind it, Benjamin John Power made music for the London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony). "Innocent music for degraded times... heavy and emotional"; listen to […]
You could say Moken plays afro-pop indie-folk, but what distinguishes him from the rest are his "richly bizarre imagination", as PopMatters puts it, and his voice and style of singing. So, yes, he's special - "it's certainly the musical road less traveled. But to hear Moken singing his truths is undeniably delightful". Part Time Audiophile […]
"Berman altered my perception, permanently. Because I’ve listened to and read him, I see city skylines as jagged rows of car keys, the ground sometimes seems to wobble in the moonlight, and I know that they build corduroy suits from gutters. When I drive by a yard filled with broken stuff I imagine the crumbled […]
"Bold, fearless and exhilarating" - Kerrang! says about masked metallers' sixth album, but it's not only metal scene that likes it. NME calls it "an astonishing record", Exclaim says it's a "rebirth of the maniacal and constantly changing sound that earned them their fame, and opens a new chapter for the band", even the sophisticated […]
On the Beaches of Portima, Portugal there were 20,000 people of African descent last weekend at Afro Nation, the first festival in the world to celebrate the African Diaspora. It was festival's first year, and in four days it saw live music from Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, Jamaica, the UK and the US, performers like Burna […]
"YBN Cordae is one of the most interesting breakout stars of the year" - High Snobiety says in review of Maryland rapper's first official album 'The Lost Boy'. His style "switches from goofy to street smart to introspective at the drop of a hat", he is open about his emotions - "a heartfelt record", and […]
“The hatred shown towards me from the creators of the Simpsons is obviously a taunting lawsuit, but one that requires more funding than I could possibly muster in order to make a challenge” - Morrissey writes on his website after a Simpsons episode which parodied the former Smiths frontman. "The worst thing you can do in 2021 is to lend a bit of strength to the lives of others. There is no place in modern music for anyone with strong emotions … In a world obsessed with Hate Laws, there are none that protect me” - the singer says. Morrissey satirised during the episode 'Panic on the Streets of Springfield', in which Lisa Simpson becomes obsessed with a fictional band called the Snuffs and befriends its frontman, Quilloughby.
As of October 2020, TikTok was reaching 732 million monthly active users around the world, which was more than double Spotify‘s global monthly active user base as of the end of 2020 (345 million), but less than half the 2 billion-plus logged-in monthly active users YouTube pulls in around the world, MBW reports on the popular app's statistics. TikTok’s average user opens the app 19 (nineteen!) times in an average day, in an average of 89 minutes per day. Nearly half (42%) of all active users on the platform were between the age of 18 and 24, a further 17% were aged between 13 and 17, and just 7% were over the age of 45.
Pakistan-born, New York-based artist Arooj Aftab is releasing her new album 'Vulture Prince' later this month, with South Asian, reggae, western indie music influences, which she explains in an NPR interview: "I sometimes feel that, even approaching my own music - what I mean is South Asian music - is like the quintessential imposter syndrome situation where it's like, you know, I haven't really studied this, and I never went back since 19. I might be appropriating it, too, you know? So I'm always kind of making sure that I'm actually inheriting the music with integrity and with some kind of depth and with some kind of respect for its history rather than using it".
The No. 1 YouTube musicologist delivers yet another fun music class, this time about "the most elegant key change in all of pop music", written by Eric Carmen and made famous by Celine Dion. Neely says it's "modal mixture, common tone, enharmonic, double chromatic, mediant modulation".
Apple Music told artists and labels it pays a penny per stream, according to the Wall Street Journal. Apple's penny-per-stream payment structure is roughly double what Spotify, the world's largest music-streaming service, pays music-rights holders per stream. Spotify pays an average of about one-third to one-half penny per stream. However, Spotify's larger user base generates many more streams.
Songwriter of, well, the most popular pop band in the history of pop music, has some ideas for underpaid songwriters, which he shared in an op/ed in the Guardian: "Record labels could encourage a 'songwriter in residence' model, where artists are paired with songwriters at the development stage, as a long-term partnership: the writers would effectively become part of the band, paid a regular salary... I suggest that streaming services allocate their royalty payments based on the behaviour of individual listeners. The subscription should be divided by the number of songs the individual listener has played during a month".
P-MRC, the owner of Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Billboard and Deadline, has acquired a 50% stake in SXSW LLC, making it the biggest single shareholder in the music/film/tech conference and festival based out of Texas, the Wall Street Journal reports. The SXSW 2020 event was scrapped by Austin officials due to the coronavirus outbreak, and in 2021 an online event was organized, so, when “Jay Penske approached us with an interest in becoming a partner, it was a true lifeline for us", SXSW CEO and Co-Founder, Roland Swenson, has said.
The Face presents 'Deviation Classics', a compilation of music that best represents "a key part of a healthy musical ecosystem", the London club night Deviation. With Dorian Concept, Carl Craig, Flying Lotus and James Blake featured there, it "arguably represents certain values of club culture that are worth preserving for a post-pandemic world".
Plenty of records set by Taylor Swift on Billboard 200 chart this week, according to Billboard. Re-recorded version of her 2008 album 'Fearless', titled 'Fearless (Taylor’s Version)' scores the biggest week of 2021 for any album with 291,000 equivalent albums. She's the first woman with three new No. 1 albums in less than a year - in August 'Folklore' debuted at No. 1 with 846,000 units, while 'Evermore' arrived at No. 1 in December with 329,000 units. 'Fearless (Taylor’s Version)' is the only No. 1 album of its kind: a re-recording of an artist’s (own or another’s) previously released album. Album sales of 'Fearless (Taylor's Version)' comprise 179,000, making it the top-selling album of the week. The three largest weeks for an album in the last eight months all Belong to Swift. She is also the first woman with three new No. 1 albums in less than a year. Swift also becomes the first woman in the 65-year history of the chart with three new No. 1s in less than 12 months; Donna Summer held that record since 1979/1980.
"I no longer have any need for drugs, the Maharishi or the Beatles. I am myself and I know why" - John Lennon has said at the time when his 'John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band' coming out, which was also when he was going through then-fashionable but now-discredited “primal scream” psychotherapy technique. The new technique was the work of psychotherapist Arthur Janov who believed that unlocking repressed childhood pain required a physical release - maybe even screaming. GQ brings the story of the cult-like therapy and its connection to the album (deluxe edition came out last week).
