Florence + The Machine singer said she feels comfortable when she's making music but the idea of being a prominent figure in the public eye is "corrosive" and "very bad" for her. She said: "I have this happy delusion that I am not famous. To protect my sanity, I decided a while ago that I am not […]
London gallery for contemporary art on July 12 is opening Sweet Harmony: Rave Today, a retrospective exhibition that “will recapture the new world that emerged from the acid house scene and narrates the ascendancy of rave culture with the youth of today”. Saatchi rave exhibition will feature multimedia installations, audiovisual works and photo galleries, including […]
Keith Urban, Niall Horan, Bette Midler, Def Leppard, Gene Simmons, Indigo Girls are celebrating the United States women’s soccer team winning its fourth FIFA Women's World Cup title. "My heart is exploding with pride at the women’s #WorldCup news. it used to be that men’s baseball and history exploded upwards together. now...watch" - Amanda Palmer […]
Influential Brazilian singer and composer João Gilberto was known best as a pioneer of the bossa nova genre, which found international popularity in the 1960s, Huffington Post reports. Gilberto's style - mixing traditional samba music with modern jazz influences - inspired bossa nova, or new trend, with many other artists after him. His versions of […]
Billie Eilish, Lewis Capaldi and Sheryl Crow are among the Glastonbury stars to give T-shirt to Oxfam in support of a campaign against "throwaway fashion", and with the aim of encouraging fans to buy second-hand fashion. The Cure's frontman Robert Smith gave a Disintegration Era shirt, worn in 1989, Kylie Minogue donated a sun visor, Johnny […]
Behemoth frontman Nergal, not an easy person to surprise, was blown away by what went down during band's set at Roskilde Festival over the weekend in Denmark. Nergal shared video on Instagram of festival crowd at Behemoth show, showing a couple that has engaged in oral sex for a “good 5-10 minutes”, whit the guy […]
From club session, through ambient soothers to vinyl-only obscurities, Fact Magazine made a list of "must-hear mixes of the last 30 days". There's Jubilee’s Miami take on Pride, DJ Marcelle’s three-turntable magic, an old-fashioned mixtape from Boards of Canada, Brian Eno in political storytelling mode, a fast and flamboyant Essential Mix by the seminal French […]
103 musicians, actors, and writers have signed an open letter supporting Talib Kweli in his row with a German festival. American rapper was removed from Dusseldorf's upcoming Open Source Festival, which kicks off July 12, after he refused to denounce a pro-Palestine campaign. The organizers dropped the legendary rap star/activist for reportedly failing to distance […]
Metallica played recently in Manchester, and during their anthemic song 'Master of Puppets' it was pouring rain, with the band enjoying the atmosphere, especially Lars Ulrich who had raindrops jumping back from his drum kit (watch below). It's not actually dangerous, the rain and the numerous cables...
William Parker is a Bronx-born bassist and composer, and in Brooklyn's ShapeShifter Lab in 2017 he performed with his small band In Order To Survive. That show is out now, and Guardian chose it as their jazz album of the month because - it's "pithily inviting, contemporary and always welcome". Listen to a couple of songs […]
More than five million people tune in each week to watch BBC One's drama Gentleman Jack about the eventful life of 19th Century landowner Anne Lister and her secret female lover, as BBC reports. The programme ends with song of the same name by female folk duo O'Hooley & Tidow. The song first appeared on […]
"Their minimal, shouty post-punk and grunge-tinted rock songs would fall flat if they weren’t performed with discernible gusto or infused with as much simmering rage or relatable sulk" - Paste Magazine says about Vancouver punk band Necking's debut album 'Cut Your Teeth'. Exclaim likes the 22-minute album because of "demolition derby of turbulent, sharp-tongued rock". […]
"She moved into people’s houses because they liked the idea of having Nico in the spare room, but then they would say the kids were scared of her, so she got a flat" - Phil Jones tells the Guardian about Nico, model and a singer, who spent the 1980s in Manchester, where a new show […]
Fact Magazine likes electronic music, pop music with style, and hip-hop with substance, which is exactly to be found on their list of best 25 albums from April to July. Not all the names on the list are that well-known, which is the most worthy thing about it - finding out good music not many […]
It's because it's so unexpecting, and turned out to be quite funny, which is why it is so great. CoS says "the cover is an unexpectedly jazzy synthpop rendition", which is true, but, simply put, they were just having the best of times. Listen below.
Well, this is just the sweetest thing - the 3foot Person Festival is held at Hylands Park in Chelmsford in England, it offers music and dancing, and a lot of bubbles, none of which is coming from alcohol. It's aimed at children under five, so the bubbles are soapy, and friends that keep festival-goers company […]
Guardian picked out the best 20 Australian songs for the month of July, a good starting point for discovery. Some of those are these: a world-beating tune 'Ready' by Montaigne, funkyish Black Eyed Peas tune 'In Control' by Baker Boy, indie bubblegum pop 'Backseat' by Ali Barter, psych rock 'I’ll Try Anything' by Pluto Jonze, […]
Kanye West has been holding weekly concerts, which he calls Sunday Service, since January, and now he's going a step further, as The Sun reports - he is going to establish his own religious organisation. He has reportedly bought a plot of land near his home in Los Angeles where he intends to build "temporary […]
“I’ve never been in a band that’s felt as connected to their fans as Spiritbox is. With Spiritbox and our fans, it’s been like love at first sight. This band makes me feel like I’m 16 again" - band's singer Courtney LaPlante says in an interview with the Loudwire. LaPlante and her husband, guitarist Michael Stringer, […]
RUI HO is Berlin based Chinese artist making electronic music that combines modern club music with traditional Chinese sounds. Her new EP 'In Pursuit of the Sun 逐日' sees the producer exploring the classical Chinese text of the Shan-hai Ching through the lens of hardcore, trance and jungle, Fact Magazine reports. Listen to the EP […]
Nicki Minaj will perform in Saudi Arabia at the Jeddah World Fest on 18 July, as the ultraconservative kingdom sheds decades of restrictions on entertainment. Minaj is known for her provocative style, her lyrics are often laced with profanities, and her videos show her half, of more-than-half naked. In a tweet commenting on Minaj in […]
"A document of cranking up the distortion pedals and bashing away in melodious fashion" - Stereogum says of their latest Album of the Week pick, third album by Columbus, Ohio indie-rock trio Van Dale. "The perfect American alternative album - When the Horn Blows reviews.
In Revenge of the She-Punks, “punk professor” Vivien Goldman examines female space in music and how it has evolved. In her book she attempts to "amplify female voices across cultures, continents and generations and to understand the relationship between genre and gender, all the while showing how oppression and hard-won freedoms have yielded some of the […]
Rolling Stone has unveiled five new daily interactive charts tracking music consumption in the U.S - Top 100 Songs, Top 200 Albums, Artists 500, Trending 25 for new songs seeing the biggest gains in popularity every week and Breakthrough 25 for rising artists who have never appeared on the Artist 500 chart. The five charts will update on […]
“I walked off stage and the security guards took me back down and it was just amazing. The way security brought me back down was in front of everyone and I was walking past people who were screaming my name. I had the best time of my life” - fifteen-year-old Alex Mann tells Guardian about […]
Alessandro Cortini, Nine Inch Nails keyboard player, will debut on Mute this summer with a new album, 'Volume Massimo', that “combines his fondness for melody with the rigour of experimental practice” over eight tracks, as Fact Magazine reports. It arrives on September 27, and judging by the tracklist, there's plenty of love, albeit bitter - 'Amore […]
Maynard James Keenan of Tool is an upcoming guest on AXS TV’s series Rock and Roll Road Trip, hosted by former Van Halen singer Sammy Hagar. In a pre-release clip from the episode, Hagar asks Maynard about how he comes up with the rhythms and time signatures in Tool songs (“6/8, or 6, 7/9 or […]
On his headlining set at Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury Stormzy appeared with a customized stab-proof vest made by the elusive graffiti artist Banksy, a work of art set perfectly in the moment, and the one that makes sense only then and there. "It added a punch of visual tension to his verbal mash-up of modern […]
Metal, hardcore, punk, and dark folk bands got together for compilation 'Riffs for Reproductive Justice', that’s raising money for the National Network of Abortion Funds and the Yellowhammer Fund, as Brooklyn Vegan reports. The compilation features contributions from Thou, Hether Fortune, Emma Ruth Rundle, Ithaca, Woe, Redbait, and more. Listen to the full 33-song collection […]
It's mostly albums we wrote about, some we didn't, but it's all albums worth checking out. PopMatters made it easier with links to Bandcamp and YouTube profiles/videos.
A great read in the Guardian - Canadian novelist remembers what Laurie Anderson's debut album was and what it had meant when it first came out. It's being reissued on vinyl this week. "As the 20th century has morphed into the 21st, as the consequences of the destruction of the natural world have become devastatingly clear, as analogue has been superseded by digital, as the possibilities for surveillance have increased a hundredfold, and as the ruthless hive mind of the Borg has been approximated through online media, Anderson’s anxious and unsettling probings have taken on an aura of the prophetic. Do you want to be a human being any more? Are you one now? What even is that? Or should you just allow yourself to be held in the long electronic petrochemical arms of your false mother?".
Sorry share their new EP, including the moody 'Don't Be Scared'; Cigar Cigarette teamed up with MOTHERMARY for an industrial cover of Cyndi Lauper's 'Time After Time'; Beachy Head, the new group featuring members of Slowdive, Casket Girls, and Flaming Lips, share slow and psychedelic 'All Gone'; Du Blonde shared anthemic single - 'All The Way'; Paris-based artist Poté presents his debut album with 'Young Lies', featuring Damon Albarn; Detroit rapper Bruiser Wolf shares a jazz/funky 'Syndicate' from his latest album; Mark Mallman shares sad happy song 'For Love I Will Let Love Go'; St. Lenox tackles religion from a not-so-particularly-religious point in 'Deliverance'.
“We wanted to try something completely different. After the first album we had written songs already trying to set in place a new direction but when COVID hit it gave us even more of an opportunity, individually, to further go down rabbit holes" - Black Midi’s singer and guitarist Geordie Greep tells the Quietus about band's new album 'Cavalcade' (out May 28). “The songs now have proper chord sequences and there's actually melody” - Greep adds. Also, there are a lot more instruments heard on the record too - violin, cello, saxophone, piano, bouzoukis, a late 19th Century zither called a Marxophone, flute, lap steel, synths, and even a wok that the band started using a violin bow on. Still, it's the same mission statement: "to make really theatrical, cinematic, expansive albums”.
British label behind the xx, FKA twigs, Arlo Parks, Sampha, and many more, has changed its name from Young Turks to just Young, as Uproxx reports. Founder Caius Pawson explained that, when he named the label after a Rod Stewart song in 2005, he had been “unaware of the deeper history of the term.… and that the Young Turks were a group who carried out the Armenian Genocide”. The label will also donate an undisclosed sum to the Armenian Institute in London.
Ja Rule has teamed up with photographer Trevor DeHaas to sell the infamous cheese sandwich tweet from the ill-fated Fyre Festival as an NFT (non-fungible token), for an estimated price of $80,000. Tickets for the luxurious festival in the Bahamas ranged from between $4,000 to $12,000, however, the audiences that reached the island only got - the meagre snack. The Flipkick listing describes the tweet as a “Meme. Cultural touchstone. Cheese sandwich... The most iconic image from 2017’s most famous debacle". All proceeds are going towards the medical expenses for DeHaas’ daily dialysis and kidney transplant. Ja Rule recently sold his Fyre Festival logo oil painting in NFT for $122,000.
A great article by Alexis Petridis about Pino Palladino, one of the world’s most celebrated bass players who has worked with Adele, Elton John, the Who, D’Angelo, Ed Sheeran, and many more, who is releasing his first solo album, a collaboration with Blake Mills. Welsh musician lives in California now - "Film and music studios are considered essential to the economy here – you’ve got to love that, right?. Mind you, that’s better than Britain telling you if you’re a musician or an artist you might have to look for a new job".
The Foo Fighters leader has announced 'The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music', a memoir made as a spinoff from his pandemic Instagram account, @davestruestories, through which he shares tales from his music career. Grohl emphasizes that he wrote the book himself, without a ghostwriter. In the YouTube player below, hear an 11-minute extract from the book, narrated by Grohl himself. The book, due out October 5 through Dey Street Books, is available to pre-order from the newly launched website davegrohlstoryteller.com.
"Listening is one of the hardest things for a musician to do. ‘Cause once you’ve achieved some things, you think you know it all. But you don’t know shit. So keeping your ears open and your mind open is the most important thing. Listen to others and then you’ll get better" - Mike Patton said in a Forbes interview, talking about the newest Tomahawk record. He also named a few artists he saw reinventing himself through their career: "I will say Tom Waits for sure has been one of those guys that jumps off always. And he catches another one. Nick Cave, another guy. I mean the guy can barely even sing. But he’s making amazing music and really, it’s compelling. And it’s orchestrated in a great way. I should say Bjork, too. Bjork really did that. I saw her grow up as a kid and then become whatever the hell she is now". Invisible Oranges recently made a Patton profile, going into his numerous projects.
Country rockers Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson are the latest to be cast for Martin Scorsese’s upcoming film 'Killers of the Flower Moon', Deadline reports. Jesse Plemons would take on the lead role, next to Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio. 'Killers of the Flower Moon' follows FBI agent Tom White (Plemons) as he tries to solve the serial murders of members of the Osage Nation over oil rights. A prominent local cattleman named William Hale (De Niro) and his cousin Ernest Burkhart (DiCaprio) were among those implicated in the murders. Isbell will make his feature film debut as Bill Smith, an adversary of Burkhart, while Simpson portrays the infamous rodeo champion and bootlegger Henry Grammer.
"Taking from ambient, soundtrack, harsh noise, jazz, and a host of other types of music, 夢遊病者 simply does not care about fitting into one specific mold" as they "craft something indistinguishable from anything else" - Brooklyn Vegan writes in awe of this extraordinary debut album by the anonymous international avant-garde metal trio. The band as an entity is also quite fluid - their early Bandcamp releases credit them as a Russian/ Japanese/American entity, they use Chinese characters for their name (Sleepwalker in English), the title of the album 'Noč Na Krayu Sveta' is in Slovenian, while the band members are named as PBV, NN, and KJM.
