Last weekend NTS Radio and Warp Records celebrated three decades of great electro label, with some of the Warp's biggest names debuting new music - Autechre revealed two hours of unreleased material from ’89-93, Boards of Canada contributed a two-hour mix of new and unreleased material, Kelela sang over various retro Warp productions, Death Grips […]
Manchester Orchestra have covered Frightened Rabbit's song 'My Backward Walk', and it'll come out on a tribute album 'Tiny Changes: A Celebration of The Midnight Organ Fight', an album of covers of songs from the band's classic album (listen to Man-Orchestra version below). The album is coming out July 12, and it also includes covers […]
Don Henley said the Eagles would never play live again, after Glenn Frey died in 2016, but on Sunday, the Californian rockers were back at Wembley Stadium, opening the UK leg of their world tour. It did happen, after all, with helping hand from Frey's 25-year-old son Deacon. BBC was there to see it happen.
At the start of his career with the Birthday Party, Nick Cave's fans were trying to set him on fire or to piss on his bassist, and the fans themselves were leaving B'Party's shows with bloodied heads. On his latest 'Conversations With...' tour Cave is - talking to his fans, answering their questions, in an […]
Madonna has earned her ninth No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 albums chart with 'Madame X', her 14th studio album. It was released on Friday, June 14, and moved 95,000 equivalent album units in the first week of its release. Of that total, a whopping 90,000 represent traditional album sales. Billboard...
The supergroup Prophets of Rage - featuring members of Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy, and Cypress Hill - have released a new song, Blabbermouth reports. 'Made With Hate' is their first new track since last summer, and an album will follow - "we're growing and we're creating and we're going in a new territory […]
Atlanta rapper Jeezy partnered with Figgers Communications to launch F3 cellular phone, and F-Buds earpods. Why? "To give people more access to handheld technology at an affordable price". F3 retails for $449, and the F-Buds earpods for $49. Figgers 3 is the first 5G smartphone made in America (manufacturing is based out of Florida), it comes […]
Cardi received two BET awards - for best female hip-hop artist, and album of the year for 'Invasion of Privacy', and Nipsey Hussle was named best male hip-hop artist, and also given a special humanitarian award, to acknowledge the work he had done on social mobility in the city (artist paid special tribute to Hussle). […]
"Moves buoyantly alongside bouncy instrumentation, determined to get somewhere, but willing to enjoy the journey along the way. And what a beautiful sounding journey it is" - Exclaim loves the second album by LA-based singer-songwriter Bedouine (born in Syria, raised in Saudi Arabia, hence the name). Variety compares her to Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake and […]
Berlin-based five-piece classical electronic band Brandt Brauer Frick are the latest subject of Fact Magazine's segment Against the Clock where a band makes a song in no more then ten minutes. This edition on ATC was one of their most ambitious - with grand piano and a trombone - and it resulted in a modern […]
Whole lotta praise for Black Midi's debut album: "An experimental, genre-less and extremely noisy sound to exceptional results. Beyond weird... a legitimate one of a kind record... a masterpiece" - Paste Magazine. "Their determination to not bend to conventional song structure makes 'Schlagenheim' an engaging piece of work that will reveal its true nature over […]
'Infest the Rat’s Next' will be the King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard's 15th album in 7 years, and this is what band's frontman Stu Mackenzie says how it all started: “ “In fourth grade there was an older kid who was into Rammstein. I made friends with him and we put together a performance […]
"The show was a triumph for the World’s Greatest Rock & Roll Band, with Mick prancing all over the stadium in prime hip-shaking, troubadour-trapping fight mode" - Rolling Stone says of the first Rolling Stones show in a year, and a first since Mick Jagger underwent surgery in April to replace a heart valve. "Good […]
Prince's songs 'Manic Monday', 'The Glamorous Life', and 'Nothing Compares 2 U' made other artists famous (The Bangles, Sheila E., Sinead O'Connor), and Warner showed us this week how they sounded like at the start (quite similar to quite different). "Indisputably the best and the most accessible album to come from Prince’s vault yet... It’s […]
David Gilmour’s 1969 Black Fender Stratocaster went for $3,975,000 at an auction at Christie's in New York, which broke the world record for most expensive guitar sold at an auction. The famed guitar was used on most of Pink Floyd’s albums throughout the ’70s. It was originally estimated at $100-150,000. There were over 120 guitars […]
"Instead of pressuring themselves to explore totally new sonic territory, the five core members of Hot Chip deepen their existing sound, going down rather than out. The lush production of the album, in conjunction with the emphasis on positivity in the lyrics, creates an enveloping musical and emotional atmosphere" - PopMatters says of the new […]
Yesterday it was sexually inappropriate, today it's "a culturally significant image", which it really is. A good move, Facebook! Social media also revealed that it would now consider the newsworthiness or importance of the subject matter in the future, when deciding whether to allow posts containing similar images, Ultimate Classic Rock reports.
Warp Records took over both of NTS Radio's live streams today for 100 hours of broadcasts marking the label's 30th anniversary. Quite a treasure is on schedule: a "mysterious" two-hour mix by Boards Of Canada, recording of Aphex Twin's 2012 performance at London's Barbican Hall, Brian Eno's collaboration with protest group Extinction Rebellion, previously unheard […]
Moken is a Detroit-based afro-pop balladeer from Cameroon, with a recognizable deep baritone voice, and 'Machine Man' is his new song - "an exciting piece for the brilliantly unpredictable repertoire of the utterly unparalleled Moken" (PopMatters). Simply put, it's strange but pleasant. 'Machine Man' is out 8 August on album 'Missing Chapters'.
"This quintet finds cross-cultural influences from traditional Korean music, post-rock, and atmospheric metal... The result is a project that interweaves diasporic influences just as heterophony interweaves distinct melodies" - PopMatters says in it's review of third album by Korean avant-rock band Jambinai (8 of 10 stars). Interesting and fun to listen music, in any case...
Danish indie-electronic producer Trentemøller shared with CoS how he made his song 'In The Garden'. First came the melody - he has a rule that says if he can remember a melody or chord progression the day after he came up with it, it’s worth working further on. This one stuck. Inspiration for the track […]
PopMatters has a great and an easy to read article about punk and industrial, the same starting points both genres had, and the different methods they used to make similar messages: "It is difficult to understand the past 40-plus years of industrial music without also recognizing its un-identical twin sibling of punk over that same […]
"Let it burn and let it all fall" - Sudanese musician MaMan says about his new song, made after the Khartoum massacre when military put a violent end to month lond protests in Sudan. Demonstrations have subsided since and the authorities shut down the internet to stop protesters mobilising. The BBC talked to MaMan about […]
"The loss of even a single piece of archived material is heartbreaking" - sir Lucian Grainge said in an email to staff, a week after it was revealed that Universal Music's archive had been devastated by fire. The company's boss has described the losses as "painful", and, 11 years after the fire happened, shared a […]
The Quietus explores Madlib through his music, with ten key releases in a vast and varied career, from free-jazzy to straight hip-hop stuff he did (next week he releases 'Bandana', a collaborative album with Freddie Gibbs) . The California producer says how he was "the strange kid" when he was a teenager living in a […]
American band Mannequin Pussy went from hard and fast punk on their first album 'Gypsy Pervert' (2014) to playing punk-rock on their newest, 'Patience', out this week on Epitaph. Stereogum chose it for their newest Album of the Week because it's "the band’s most technically ambitious and dynamic album to date. 'Patience' is Mannequin Pussy, full-optimized".
“The phone tracking, and listening in and everything and all the hacking. I don’t need it” Glenn Danzig explained on radio show Full Metal Jackie's why he doesn't own a smartphone. He added that he didn't really want a flip phone either - "I don’t want people to get in touch with me when I’m […]
The album marked another radical shift in direction for Miles Davis, enlisting musicians from across the funk and soul spectrum. It was even due to feature vocalists Al Jarreau and Chaka Khan. The finished edition now also features new vocals recorded by Lalah Hathaway and Ledisi. It's coming out in September, the Vinyl Factory reports.
French DJ and producer Philippe Zdar has died after accidentally falling from a building in Paris, CNN reports. Media put his age between 50 and 52. Zdar, born Philippe Cerboneschi, had produced tracks for the French rapper MC Solaar before founding the dance music duo Cassius in 1989. He also produced records for Cut Copy, […]
London based experimental pop artist Lafawndah has co-directed the music video for her track ‘Daddy', and in the video her mother Zohreh dances flamenco (watch it below). She made the video in collaboration with director Claire Arnold, it's inspired by the films of Carlos Saura, and Lafawndah says that "probably like most mother-daughter relationships, the […]
Factory New is a "virtual" record label with a roster comprised exclusively of virtual artists. Their first ‘signing’ is AI-powered robot rapper, FN Meka, who has 9 million followers (and over a billion views) on TikTok, MBW reports. FN Meka is voiced by a human, but everything else about him – from his lyrics to the chords and tempo underpinning his music – is based on AI. Anthony Martini, co-founder of FN, asks himself quite sensibly - “what is an ‘artist’ today? Think about the biggest stars in the world. How many of them are just vessels for commercial endeavors?”.
Acts of all levels use Bandcamp, but it has particularly suited working- and middle-class artists with few resources simply looking to make a decent living off their work, filling a void that has become more pronounced as the music industry has gone digital - Billboard writes about the beloved streaming service. They proved this in the last year with Bandcamp Fridays, when Bandcamp waives its cut of sales - 15% of digital, 10% of physical - and passes along all revenue to artists. With this initiative, Bandcamp directed $48.3 million toward artists and labels from over 800,000 customers, and that’s on top of the $148 million it has paid out from normal sales during that time frame. To date - Bandcamp was started in 2007 - it has paid out over $702 million to hundreds of thousands of artists and more than 9,000 labels that can receive the money relatively quickly.
A great and fun story about creativity, putting yourself in somebody else's shoes, and having fun on the way. Son, John Mayer first released a snippet of his new song 'Use Me'. British musician Mary Spender just couldn't wait to the finished song, so she just finished it herself in John Mayer style. YouTube musicologist and jazz music bassist Adam Neely wanted to add his touch to it, so he reharmonized the version Spender wrote, explaining, of course, on the way, the whys and the hows. Great fun!
Toronto organization Over the Bridge has created “new” Nirvana, Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix, Doors songs using artificial-intelligence software to approximate their songwriting, Rolling Stone reports. In "new" Nirvana case, everything other than the vocals - the work of Nirvana tribute band frontman Eric Hogan - from the turns of phrase to the reckless guitar performance, is the work of computers. The tune, titled 'Drowned in the Sun', is part of Lost Tapes of the 27 Club, a project featuring songs written and mostly performed by machines in the styles of other musicians who died at 27: Cobain, Jimi Hendrix ('You're Gonna Kill Me'), Jim Morrison ('The Roads Are Alive'), and Amy Winehouse ('Man I Know'). Each track is the result of AI programs analyzing up to 30 songs by each artist and granularly studying the tracks’ vocal melodies, chord changes, guitar riffs and solos, drum patterns, and lyrics to guess what their “new” compositions would sound like. Over the Bridge helps members of the music industry struggling with mental illness.
Scooter Braun has sold the entirety of his Ithaca Holdings to South Korea’s HYBE, formerly known as Big Hit Entertainment, and the home of K-pop superstar BTS. A regulatory filing in Korea shows that HYBE has agreed to pay a total of $1.05 billion for Ithaca, Music Business Worldwide reports. This deal brings together a range of services including management, label services and publishing for global artists BTS, TXT, SEVENTEEN, NU’EST, GFRIEND, ENHYPEN, ZICO, Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, J Balvin, Demi Lovato, Thomas Rhett, Florida Georgia Line, Lady A and more.
Spanish singer-songwriter and rapper C. Tangana makes a detour on his newest album 'El Madrileño - on his third long-playing release the Madridian adds flamenco and folk elements to his hip-hop. He didn't do it alone - twelve out of fourteen tracks are a collaboration with other renowned artists from many countries and ages. Speaking to Rolling Stone he said - "it can please anyone in the world and you don’t have to be very intellectual for something to surprise you at a sound level".
"The Alchemist creates a gorgeous soundscape that sounds like it pulls from warped jazz and soul samples, psych-rock guitar, trippy film scores, and more... woods and ELUCID have responded to that by rapping in a way that's just a little harder and more direct" - Brooklyn Vegan writes in praise of the collaborative album by New York rap duo and California producer. Stereogum goes into the metaphysics of the album: "It’s still about power and control and the way systems are rigged to continue use people as batteries".
"One of the most immersive novels I’ve ever read….This is a thrilling work of polyphony—a first novel, that reads like the work of an old hand” - Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote about debut novel by Dawnie Walton 'The Final Revival of Opal & Nev'. It's about the meteoric rise and break-up of a fictional 1970s rock duo, which made Washington Post reviewer to write - "at times, I held my breath, wondering if the novel could sustain its tightrope act — balancing its array of voices, its fictional history with actual history". Kirkus reviews writer praises the "intelligently executed love letter to Black female empowerment and the world of rock music".
“A lot of young Black kids don’t have healthy outlets, writing has become mine. It’s beautiful to take tremendous pain and turn it into something powerful” - LA-based rapper and producer Navy Blue says in an extensive Pitchfork interview. He released his first two albums in 2020, and the reaction of his fans is what makes a difference to him: "What really touches me is just how many people are touched by the music. The messages I get talking about 'I felt this too' are priceless to me. That’s when I realized what I’m doing is special because that means more to me than making money off of it. Of course, being able to take care of people and buy nice things is great. But you need to be able to help yourself while also helping other people. Being honest in my music is how I learned to love myself".
Coldplay, HAIM, Michael Kiwanuka, Damon Albarn, Kano, Idles Wolf Alice, will perform at a Glastonbury ticketed livestream event on May 22, Music Ally reports. Performances will take place at various festival landmarks, and sets will broadcast as part of a five-to-six hour production directed by Paul Dugdale. The four airings have been staggered for different timezones - at 7 p.m. in BST, EDT, PDT, and AEST. Tickets cost £20 from WorthyFarm.live, the capacity is unlimited, with funds supporting the festival and its charities. Performers waived their fees. On the other side of the Atlantic, and a few months later everything is happening old-school way. Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival will return to Manchester, Tennessee, from September 2-5, 2021, with Grand Ole Opry, Megan Thee Stallion, Foo Fighters, Tame Impala, Lizzo, the Creator, and Lana Del Rey headlining, according to NPR.
