This song brings to question the process in which economic value is prescribed to cultural artifacts, how that value is exploited through storing them in high security storage facilities (like the Geneva Freeport) to avoid paying taxes, and how it all seems so antithetical to why most artists create their work in the first place […]
British punk band Killdren have been kicked out of Glastonbury after criticism of their song 'Kill Tory Scum', which includes the lyric: "Tory genocide is the perfect outcome". The two-piece rave-punk band defended the song as a "crude" satire, and have accused Glastonbury of "buckling under pressure from the right-wing media". The band explains the […]
German industrials Rammstein's new album debuted at No. 1 in 14 different countries, and sold 270,000 units. The band's seventh studio album 'Rammstein' reached the top of the charts in Germany, Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Portugal, Poland, Russia, Switzerland, Austria and Canada. Loudwire...
Primavera Sound has officially announced that its first ever US event will be taking place in Los Angeles next year. Co-produced by Live Nation, Primavera Sound Los Angeles will be held 9/19-20 at the Los Angeles State Historic Park, and it’ll coincide with the 20th anniversary of the original Barcelona fest, Stereogum reports. Pavement are […]
Freddie Gibbs rides a horse, bathes in a mountain spring, hangs out with zebras, and clowns various farm workers in his new and funny video 'Crime Pays'. The song is produced by Madlib and is coming on album 'Bandana', out later this year.
From golden locks to curls, Loudwire chose 15 rockers with the greatest hair, with variety of hair-dos, except of - no hair (they opted out of the hair party 🙂 ).
Last week country princess Miley Cyrus published 'She Is Coming', first out of three EPs - 'She Is Here' and 'She Is Everything' coming this year, that will make up her seventh studio album 'She Is Miley Cyrus'. Guardian writes quite fondly about it - "rather than seeking a new identity to disappear into, this […]
Stereogum made a big job for us - they went through metal albums published in May and picked out 10 that stand out the most. What they recommend is: Chicago atmospheric dark metal Varaha, New York noise-math metal The Austerity Program, post-metal Sleepwalker, death metal Nocturnus AD, Canadian death-metal Tomb Mold, atmospheric black metal Falls […]
The Beastie Boys‘ fourth album, 'Ill Communication', was released 25 years ago, with singles such as 'Sabotage' and 'Sure Shot'. Music writer Nathan Brackett made a documentary short, 'Still Ill', showing the evolution of the band to that point, about how Beastie Boys made it, and what did owning their studio mean to making the album (watch […]
Tal Wilkenfeld is a bassist and singer/songwriter who has performed with Jeff Beck, Prince, Eric Clapton, Herbie Hancock, Mick Jagger and Leonard Cohen for more than a decade, and this year she published her vocal debut album. Playing with all these musicians learned her to "just stick with your own instincts and intuition", she tells […]
"The 'Soul Explosion' compilation is a sheer delight, capturing a revitalized label both free of a parent company and effortlessly moving with the times. [It] is the sound of Memphis soul on the cusp of a new age" - PopMatters loves Stax Records' new two-LP compilation detailing "that daring, exhilarating period in soul music".
A pop song should come in at between two and three minutes - 'We Will Rock You' comes in at a stupendously slender 2min 2sec. It leaves you wanting more, and that’s precisely what the perfect number is supposed to do, Guardian writers says, and gives a few other examples.
A recent study showed how different types of music - metal, classical, pop and hip-hop - affect drivers, with the results suggesting that metal could push motorists to the extremes (they tried with Slipknot's '(sic)'). Classical music was no better - it relaxes the driver to the point of sleepiness (it was Bach). Meanwhile, pop […]
The young adult book 'Me & Mr. Cigar' arrives on January 14, 2020 via Soho Teen, and it tells the story of 17-year-old Oscar Lester and his dog, Mr. Cigar. The synopsis explains: “As for Oscar's older sister, Rachel...she fled Texas after Mr. Cigar bit off her left hand. Oscar was 12. But he alone […]
"The sound is resolutely American in style and in sound... This pair inhabits these songs so joyfully and effortlessly that anyone begrudging them is to be pitied... This is a direct record to bathe in, full of vivid light and air" - Guardian says about it's latest choice for their Folk Album of the Month […]
“I’m ashamed of my country for what it has done. It’s torn people apart" Elton John said on his concert in Verona on his last ever world tour. He continued: “I’m sick to death of politicians, especially British politicians. I am sick to death of Brexit. I am a European. I am not a stupid, […]
Rob Halford, frontman of power metalers Judas Priest, kicked a cellphone out of fan's hand at a recent concert, saying later on: "The facts are we love our fans and you can film us all you like and watch our show on your phone rather than in the flesh. However if you physically interfere with […]
the enigmatic and anachronistic singer-songwriter Leon Redbone has died, aged 127 or 69, depending on whether you believe his family's press release or Entertainment Weekly. Redbone purposefully obfuscated his personal biography, trying to seem like a figure stuck out of time. Redbone has released 13 studio albums and five live albums, he was a fixture […]
The music industry now is a "totally different playing field" then 10 years ago, with less character, Katy Perry told The Sun, while releasing s new video 'Never Really Over'. So, this is how she sees music today: "I feel a little bit like 2008 was a time, and now 2019 is a totally different […]
Apple is to replace its iTunes download service - the tech company will announce that three separate apps for music, TV and podcasts will take place of iTunes, Bloomberg reported ahead of Apple's conference on Monday. iTunes has been the way Apple users listen to music, watch movies and TV shows, hear podcasts, and manage […]
"All the tenets of grime are still there — the jittery drums, the minor-key synthetic melodies, the choppy tension... While Skepta still raps with speed and precision, he does it with a sense of discipline and authority that feels new" - Stereogum writes about their latest choice for Album of the Week, Skepta's fifth studio […]
Swedish singer Jonna Lee thought she was gonna lose her voice, due to medical issues, so she was hastily making her album, and asked fans to crowdfund her tour. They funded it in five days (she expected it would last a month), and when she returned from the tour she was inspired to write a […]
"Our focus is teamwork. We meet with the producers and songwriters, and we create daily content, selecting the best material" - Fabrizio Moreira, the head of Secret Hits, tells Billboard about their new project - a platform that combines the intuition of new talent and producers with songwriters. Launched in August 2018, within Brooklyn-based record […]
Luke Sutherland has played with Long Fin Killie, Mogwai, Hauschka, and with his new project Rev Magnetic has a debut album out, his first new music in thirteen years. 'Versus Universe', the Quietus says, is "loud: a maximalist, stylistically-kaleidoscopic shoegaze album, leavened with trap hi-hats, 808s, vocoder, found sound, violins and trumpets... Spins the dial […]
Guardian has a great article about Morrissey, and his transformation from a hero to misfits and outsiders to far-right supporter - "What a tragedy it is that a man who once seemed so uniquely placed to offer solace to people during their loneliest and most difficult moments has turned into this – a supporter of […]
Loudwire makes a very good point with an article about metal musicians playing very different music from their metal origins. Examples are funnily convincing: Adam 'Nergal' Darski from death-metal band Behemoth has a country side-project, Jonathan Davis on Korn has a world-music solo career, Anders Bjorler from At The Gates and Dick Lovgren from Meshuggah […]
"They are joyful in their sound and in their energy, and the sparingly but deftly used brass underscores this well. They have made a beautiful confectionary, but one made with rigour, skill, and care" - the Quietus review new album by Scottish guitar pop duo Sacred Paws.
The Quietus prefers avantguard electro and hip hop, and modern metal. Aseethe is the letter. 'Throes' is third album by doom/drone metalers from Iowa, and that geography you can hear on the album - "there are more than a few moments here that call to mind this indelible memory of the plains: extended drone passages […]
Blondie's frontwoman Debbie Harry on October 1 will publish her new autobiography 'Face It' that will recount Blondie’s rise in New York, when the band found a pop spot somewhere between punk and disco. The biography features Harry's essays, interviews with rock journalist Sylvie Simmons, rare photos, original illustrations, and an introduction from Harry’s bandmate […]
Brooklyn Vegas has the best selection of new songs this week. They've assembled quite a diverse bunch, there are: Metronomy with a spacey-rock song, lo-fi rock Palehound, Damon Albarn's funk collective Africa Express, Cross Record with ambient-rock song, indie-rockers Crumb, garage punks Plague Vendor, singer-songwriter Daughter of Swords, goth-metalheads Pinkish Black, psychedelic rock by Psychedelic […]
UK artists are already turning down shows and tours in parts of Europe for later this year and early next, as they have become unviable due to increased cost and bureaucracy - CEO of the Featured Artists Coalition David Martin told NME about post-Brexit tours of British acts in the EU. John Robb of Goldblade and The Membranes says now it's "just chaos in a vacuum. If we knew what we were working with then we could either pay, work a way round it or just choose not to go. At the moment, we have no idea what the options will be”. Things might be moving in the right direction, as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Parliament that music "is a massively important part of the economy" adding "we must fix it", the "it" being current system of touring rules, NME reports.
Catalytic Sound, a cooperative organization comprising 30 avant-garde instrumentalists and composers, launched their own streaming platform Catalytic Soundstream. It charges listeners $10 per month for between 100 and 150 albums available at any given time and new ones swapped in and out every day, including records by out-jazz and free improv luminaries live Joe McPhee, Tomeka Reid, Tashi Dorji, Ikue Mori, claire rousay, Chris Corsano, and Luke Stewart. The majority of the albums include a note from one of the partners, Pitchfork reports.
Recreational marijuana will be legalised in New York state, after officials finalised a deal to permit casual usage and possession of the drug, the New York Times reports. The deal will “allow delivery of the drug and permit club-like lounges or ‘consumption sites’ where marijuana, but not alcohol, could be consumed”. Individuals will also be permitted to legally grow up to six marijuana plants at home for personal use.
Queen have officially moved 10 million units in streaming and track sales of their anthem 'Bohemian Rhapsody' in the US, making them the first UK band to be RIAA-certified diamond, Blabbermouth reports. 'Bohemian Rhapsody' also recently became the most-streamed song from the 20th century, surpassing a collective 1.6 billion streams globally across all major streaming services.
Now Orleans pianist and composer Jon Batiste, also the musical host of 'Late Show with Stephen Colbert', describes how he made his empowering song 'We Are' at the latest episode of Song Exploder. Batiste talks about "how he drew from his roots, at a very personal level — and at a cultural, historical level — and wove all of it into the song".
Demi Lovato had a wellness coach, dietician, nutritionist and therapist to keep her thin, Taylor Swift starved herself and excessively exercised to keep her body shape, Elton John suffered from bulimia, Zayn went for days without eating while feeling a lack of control over his life during his time in One Direction. In general, as Guardian reports, 32% musicians had experienced an eating disorder in their lifetime, while it affects 1.9% to 5.1% of the British population. Pop and R&B singer JoJo goes to the root of the problem - "the music industry is very unpredictable, so I think when you are able to control some aspect of your life – the way you eat, the way you look – then you feel you’re more in control”. Irish singer-songwriter James Vincent McMorrow echoes this sentiment - “When I can control the outcome of a situation, I feel good. And when I can’t, I feel terrible, and that manifests itself in how I see myself in the mirror”.
Label and publisher BMG and investment firm KKR announced a partnership to fund acquisitions of major recorded music and publishing catalogs, establishing yet another player in the gold rush for music’s biggest song collections, Music Business Worldwide reports. KKR currently manages global assets with a combined worth over $230 billion. KKR partner Nat Zilkha tells Rolling Stone the companies are prepared to spend into the billions.
Britney Spears’ attorney Samuel D Ingham III has requested that her father, Jamie Spears, be permanently removed from overseeing her personal affairs, according to Variety. Attorney asked that the singer’s temporary care manager, Jodi Montgomery, be permanently installed as her sole conservator. At the same time Spears’ petition notes that she “expressly reserves the right to petition for termination of this conservatorship”.
World's second largest concert promoter has begun bringing back part-time and full-time employees who had been furloughed or saw their hours reduced during the pandemic with the first phase of employees returning April 1, Billboard reports. The second phase of AEG's rehiring involves full time employees who were moved to part time status. Those employees will be returned to full time status starting April 1 with the process expected to be completed by June 1. The third and final tier involves employees that were furloughed during the pandemic and are now expected to return to work full-time in the fall. AEG's main competitor Live Nation plans to begin staffing up as capacity restrictions are lifted on venues owned or leased by the company.
75% of Britons have turned to a musical instrument during lockdown, a research from Yamaha has revealed. Other research found UK sales of instruments and music equipment have risen by 80% during lockdown. Guardian talked to dozens of new musicians, with 67-year-old retired infant teacher Liz saying - “I had never had the slightest desire to play an instrument before but it is magical. I prop up my iPad, secured with a bit of Blu-Tack, so my teacher can see and hear me, and it is a glorious experience. I would never have done this without the lockdown”.
