The smaller festivals that have sprung up across the UK have become a crucial part of the musical ecosystem in recent years. Festivals in provincial towns, often supported by local councils, rarely attract the buzziest young artists. But the biggest secondary festivals – such as Victorious in Portsmouth, the Neighbourhood Weekender in Warrington, Hit the North in Newcastle, offer current bands […]
The band says they blend alternative rock, shoegaze and trip-hop to create a sound that's both heavy and smooth, and PopMatters hears "the Cure at their heaviest" with "brilliant, cathartic drive of My Bloody Valentine". Palm Haze's album 'Rêve Bleu' comes out August 30.
Former Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst has a new movie, and a trailer for it, starring John Travolta as a fan-turned-stalker, has been released (watch below). Travolta called working with Durst on 'The Fanatic' “maybe my favourite experience I’ve had... He allowed me to create a character that no one else would allow”, NME reports. The film […]
Cassette sales continued to rise in the UK in the first half of 2019 - 35,000 cassette sales were recorded between January and June, which is almost double the numbers sold in the same six-month period last year. However, cassette sales account for only 0.2% of album sales, against the 12% recorded with vinyl. The […]
“When you would see them onstage, it was like seeing Bugs Bunny in person," famous fan Billy Bob Thornton says in the trailer of new documentary titled 'That Little Ol’ Band From Texas' about ZZ Top (watch below). The film includes interviews with all three members of the band - Billy Gibbons, Frank Beard and Dusty Hill, […]
The O'Keefe Music Foundation united a group of kid musicians, including an 8-year-old singer, to play a version of Slipknot's 'The Devil in I'. The rest of the group is comprised of teenagers who execute a stunningly accurate take on the song, laying down a heavy foundation for youngster Taylor Campbell, who expresses angst with […]
The term “world music” has become toxic, so a new word for this monthly planet-spanning roundup, however reductive, is needed - the Guardian writes in en excellent article about the music from around the globe (apart from pop music coming mostly from Europe and America). Womad festival has also stopped using the term, and Pete […]
Apple Music announced DJ Khaled as the streaming service's first artist in residence. Every month, Khaled will create and executive produce special editions of some of the platform's most successful playlists, and for starters he has unveiled the Office DJ Khaled playlist which is a fresh version of Apple Music's Office DJ. The collection features […]
Mark Beaumont in his latest NME column writes about how he thinks Snow Patrol's 'Chasing Cars' (the most played song on UK radio this century) is shallow and empty, but there's no need to read about what he dislikes, especially when there's a text about what he does like. The latter being the latest Flaming […]
US rapper has been granted a new trial on drugs and weapons charges that date back to his teenage years after a long legal battle. Three judges in Pennsylvania ruled there were credibility issues with his original trial in 2008. Meek Mill, who was jailed in 2017 for a minor probation violation, now campaigns for […]
"Emily Sprague recorded 'Emily Alone' about a year after she moved to Los Angeles. When Sprague moved, her mother had just died, and she’d just ended a serious relationship. That’s three life milestones — the death of a parent, a major breakup, a cross-country move — all piled on top of one another. Any one of those […]
ASAP Rocky has been charged with assault causing actual bodily harm in Sweden and will remain in custody until a trial takes place. The rapper, real name Rakim Mayers, was arrested in Stockholm in early July. His arrest followed a fight that was captured on video, with ASAP claiming he had acted in self-defence against […]
Brooklyn Vegan presents the newest songs published this week, and there's a few that stand out - Beyonce's 'Mood 4 Eva' with Jay-z and Childish Gambino, the most upbeat song from 'The Lion King: The Gift'; Adam Green's 'Cheating on a Stranger' with Florence Welch, "a gorgeous, lush track"; and King Princess' soulful and groovy […]
The five-piece from Glasgow play tech-metal, and their vocalist Jamie McLees lists five reasons why we should like his band: the first British heavy band to be signed to Hopeless Records (home to Avenged Sevenfold and All Time Low) in their 25-year history; they’re fearless, "gloom is our home... It’s a space that’s the worst […]
Tape conversation between Live Nation president of U.S. concerts, Bob Roux, and longtime Metallica associate Tony DiCioccio revealed that they conspired to place up to 88,000 concert tickets directly on the resale market. Billboard reports the recording was made in February 2017, shortly before Metallica launched their WorldWired tour in North America. Metallica wasn't the only […]
"It's completely changed me as a person. I'm not this angry little kid anymore" - a former prisoner Aaron, who was in prison last year, tells BBC, and this last weekend he was one of a group of ex-inmates to perform at Latitude Festival. The noble project was started by InHouse Records, UK's first record […]
Catchy, smart, delicious, anthemic country gold - big words from Rolling Stone about The Highwomen's first single 'Redesigning Women' (watch below). It's an all-female country supergroup - Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, Amanda Shires, and Natalie Hemby - that is ready to challenge Nashville and country radio’s gender barriers with their self-titled debut LP, Rolling Stone […]
"'Nighttime Stories' is a solid record from a unique band. Purely instrumental records may be difficult to pull off, but Pelican has more than enough brains and brawn to show how well it can be done" - PopMatters says about first new album by the Chicago post-metal quartet in six years. Listen to album at BandCamp.
New York Mayor Bill De Blasio has declared a heat emergency, consequently music fest in the city were canceled. OZY Fest is canceled, as is Saturday of PInknic, as well as Coney Island Music Festival, Brooklyn Vegan reports.
"Good time, a good time / We gonna have a time" - the very first lyrics on South Carolina Ranky Tanky's title song, and album's leitmotif. PopMatters puts it simply: "Life can be rough, but it is essential to create your own good times".
Beyonce sang, 'The Lion King' is coming, so - a perfect reason for Guardian to make a list of Disney's 30 greatest songs. It goes from 'Little April Shower' ('Bambi', 1942) to 'When You Wish Upon a Star' ('Pinocchio', 1940), with newer music in between...
Outkast's André 3000 will star in a new 10-part series 'Dispatches From Elsewhere', with the drama series following “a group of people who stumble onto a puzzle hiding behind everyday life and discover an ever-deepening mystery”, Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. In other music/TV related news, All Hip Hop reports Alicia Keys has partnered with the production […]
It's hard to listen to, raw and sometimes vulgar in language, very serious, and - worth listening to, ambitious and thought through. Not everybody is going to like it, but everybody should listen to it, as there is beauty behind it's brutality. The Quietus says "it is an album of baroque intensity and gothic flamboyance […]
Of the 16 singles that made the top of the US chart in the first half of 1979, only three were not disco tracks. The previous year, disco singles had been No 1 for 37 weeks out of 52. Than, on July 12 the Disco Demolition Night happened - after that, radio stations that had switched […]
55.000 people attended Metallica's concert at Kantolan Tapahtumapuisto on Tuesday night, and that number made it the biggest concert ever in the country of Finland, Loudwire reports. Finland's entire population is 5.503 million, which means that one percept of the population, or every hundredth Finn, was watching Metallica play that evening. Continuing their tradition of […]
Melbourne’s DJ has been receiving growing international acclaim for his genre-busting club experiments, and his latest mix is a deep, rhythmic blend of bass-heavy sounds that spans the global dance continuum and explores its darkest corners. His melting of Middle Eastern percussion into contemporary club structures is mind-altering, Fact Magazine says. Listen to it on […]
"Maxo’s father serves as both a muse and foil, popping up throughout the record as both a character and a presence" Pitchfork says in their review of Texan's rapper Maxo Kream new album 'Brandon Banks', named after his father. "Mirroring the album cover, a collage of their faces, Maxo builds stories around their points of […]
Listening to the "world's most relaxing song" before an operation is as good at calming patients' nerves as medication, University of Pennsylvania researchers wrote in BMJ journal. The song 'Weightless' by UK band Marconi Union for three minutes (below), written to reduce anxiety, blood pressure and heart rate, performed as well as a sedative in […]
Brian Eno conceptualized a new approach to music through dedicated use of tape loops and sampling, smuggling ideas previously offered by the avant-garde into the pop/rock lexicon, eventually breaking free to codify the ambient music genre and presage music created by algorithms and apps with generative music, Exclaim says in their context-article about Eno.
'Ode To Joy' is Wilco's 11th studio album, it will see release October 4, and it is said to encourage the act of finding joy in a dark political climate, featuring tracks that frontman Jeff Tweedy characterizes as "really big, big folk songs, these monolithic, brutal structures that these delicate feelings are hung on", Exclaim reports. The […]
The John Lennon Estate has released a never-before-seen video of John Lennon and Yoko Ono rehearsing 'Give Peace a Chance', just days before they premiered the song in May of 1969, Spin reports. The restored video shows the artists side-by-side in another bed, at the Sheraton Oceanus Hotel in the Bahamas. Lennon mumbles most of the song unintelligibly - "Everybody’s talking about revolution, masturbation, hasturbation, constipation … uh … rasturbation, cake, chocolate cake … uh… fake, cake, glasses, passes”, apart from the chorus. The release is part of a massive new box set 'John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band – The Ultimate Collection' commemorating the 50th anniversary of the famous Bed-In for Peace, due April 23.
Mick Jagger and Dave Grohl have just released their first song together, a lockdown-themed number 'Eazy Sleazy' written by Jagger and performed by both the rock stars. The Rolling Stone says to the Consequence it's the only song he's written on the subject of lockdown, in a "semi-humorous way", just like the lyric “Shooting the vaccine/ Bill Gates is in my bloodstream/ It’s mind control".
The music streaming giant has stepped into music listening hardware business - Spotify is launching a smart device for the car called the Car Thing. The new voice-controlled device, which only works with a Spotify Premium account, will let users say “Hey Spotify” to ask for a song, album, artist, playlist, station, or podcast. It also features a dial to browse, select, play and pause content, a 4″ touchscreen and four preset buttons for shortcuts to user's favorite artists, playlists, stations, and podcasts. The device connects to Spotify’s app on a smartphone and connects to the car stereo via Bluetooth, AUX or USB cable, TechCrunch reports. Initially available for select US users, the new gadget’s anticipated retail price is $79.99, but is available at no cost for a limited time for those select users, with SPOT only charging $6.99 postage.
Recorded in a matter of days in a Chicago backyard, 'NOW' joins together three essential Black American genres - jazz, gospel and hip-hop - made with the goal of getting together to commune and make art. "The feel is that of a live prayer-meets-politics meeting... The overall experience is restorative and uplifting" - All About Jazz reviews the new album by multi-talented composer, musician, educator, and visual artist Damon Locks and his impressive collective Black Monument Ensemble. Stereogum describes ''NOW' as "a sweaty, roiling piece of music, answered by vocalists who are tracing pathways from grief to ecstasy... Dense with ideas and sounds", while Pitchfork praises "grand and luminous statement" made by it.
"Lil Nas X used one of America’s most reliable engines for cultural outrage to his advantage: the conservative media ecosystem... With the 'Montero' video, Nas affirmed his personal identity as one of vanishingly few out gay rappers by expressing himself as flamboyantly and unabashedly as possible. He actively courted the controversy, measuring his success by the outrage and teeth-gnashing of his opponents - an approach straight out of the conservative culture-war playbook" - Politico analyses how the rapper turned the weapons against the shooter. He was prepared for this social-media battle - "for years as a teenager, Nas operated a popular Twitter account that reposted and repurposed viral content... He understands all too well that in 2021, there may be no quicker way to pump oxygen into a brand than to let partisan politics do it for you".
Phoebe Bridgers’ guitar that she smashed against an amplifier on Saturday Night Live in February, was sold for a shocking $101,500 in a GLAAD auction, Loudwire reports. Bridgers, who identifies as bisexual, was nominated for outstanding breakthrough music artist for Thursday’s GLAAD Music Awards. The winner was the upstart rapper Chika. Bids for the guitar had remained in the low five figures in the days leading up to the auction’s close, but the price went up in a bidding frenzy Sunday, the last day of the auction. Jason Isbell has said the guitar was worth around $85, before it got smashed, which means the price went up 1,200-fold after Bridgers had smashed it.
Taylor Swift released 'Fearless (Taylor's Version)', a much-anticipated re-record of her 2008 pop breakthrough album. Since 2016, Wheatus have been working on a painstaking re-record of their 2000 debut. KISS, Blondie, DMX, Frank Sinatra and many more have made re-records of their biggest hits for their hits albums. Pre-Beatles rock artists, from '57 to '63, the 90 percent majority of them must have re-recorded their hits at some point or another in the last half century - as Andy Zax, a music producer specializing in historical and archival releases, assesses. In general, NPR puts it simply, the reasons for these re-records are simple: financial control and creative ownership.
Streams of DMX’s catalog of songs increased 928% in the United States in the days following his death - his tracks garnered 75.7 million on-demand streams (audio and video combined) on April 9 and 10, a nine-fold increase compared to the 7.36 million they earned on April 7 and 8. In terms of music sales, DMX’s collected songs and albums sold 101,000 copies on April 9-11 – up 1,036% compared to the 9,000 they sold on April 6-8.
Diddy wrote an open letter to highlight the low advertising revenue his network REVOLT gets from General Motors and how it reflects an inequity for Black-owned media companies. "In 2019, brands spent $239 billion on advertising. Less than 1% of that was invested in Black-owned media companies. Out of the roughly $3 billion General Motors spent on advertising, we estimate only $10 million was invested in Black-owned media... It’s disrespectful that the same community that represents 14% of the population and spends over $1.4 trillion annually is still the most economically undervalued and underserved at every level... Corporations like General Motors have exploited our culture, undermined our power, and excluded Black entrepreneurs from participating in the value created by Black consumers... We demand that Corporate America reinvest an equitable percentage of what you take from our community back into our community". His letter has gotten mixed reviews.
Jim Ward of the At The Drive-In, delivers a positive message "to die a better man" on 'Paper Fish', with help from friends, members of Incubus and Thursday; Keen Dreams share dream pop song 'Pinks & Reds'; Trade Wind shares atmospheric indie rock 'Die! Die! Die!' together with a morbid video; Mina Tindle shares a pretty live version of 'Give A Little Love'.
