A British couple traveled 30,000 kilometers around Europe in an old motorhome, recording love songs in their mobile studio for their Oh Europe project, Guardian reports. They recorded 731 love songs – Kiss song 'I Was Made for Lovin’ You' was sung by a seven-year-old Greek boy, a British man who only sings at karaoke […]
Paul Rudd paid visit to Jimmy Fallon, but instead of talking about Rudd's new 'Avengers' movie, they made a parody of Dead or Alive's ’80s classic 'You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)'. Watch it here.
He says it's “a return to my solo recordings featuring character-driven songs and sweeping, cinematic orchestral arrangements”, but it's really just a lovely song. 'Hello Sunshine' is the first single from his upcoming album 'Western Stars', his first new record in five years, out June 14, Pitchfork reports. Watch the accompanying video here.
Ishmael Ensemble's debut album 'A State Of Flow' comes out next week. Guardian says it's "pitched somewhere between astral jazz, burbling electronica, trippy minimalism, psychedelic dub and 20 years of club culture". Listen to song 'Lapwing' here, or an awesome live performance here.
TheGrio website sat down with prominent Black men in the entertainment industry to discuss how Nipsey Hussle inspired the community and music industry as a whole and what steps need to take place to continue the work amid such tragedy. Watch the 34-minute conversation here.
Guardian has a beautiful interview with Peter Doherty, who is still alive, and still on heroin. He's 40 now, and has an album out - 'Peter Doherty and the Puta Madres'. But, it's his life what they talk about, not music. Why is he still on heroin? - "Because my brain thinks I enjoy it. […]
Taylor Swift published a new video today, and it has been watched more than 29 million times in 17 hours after being released. That makes it the fastest music video in history to reach more than 10 million views - reaching the milestone in just 2 hours. BBC lists all the references in the new […]
Riot grrrl legends Bikini Kill played their first show in 22 years last night (April 25) performing 27 songs at Hollywood Palladium. NME collected a few fan-shot footages of several songs.
"'Designer' is Harding’s third album, and like the two that preceded it, it’s absolutely gorgeous, at least on a surface level. Her music rests on delicate little details: lightly strummed acoustic guitars, brushed cymbals, softly tapped bongos and xylophones, piano lines that move like ripples across a lake’s surface... Every song has a subtle groove, […]
"The album is a perfectly curated, succinct, and poignant picture of being a woman, and its effectiveness is a result of the full three years she took to perfect it" Consequence of Sound reviews third album by American r'n'b singer Lizzo. 'Cuz I Love You' is "purposefully compact, genre-blending, unifying, reaffirming, devoid of corniness... Lizzo […]
You rarely see a face depicted in Michael Stipe's photo book, instead Stipe shoots hands, arms, the backs of heads. “I didn’t even realise that until the book came out”, he says, “It might be a built-in shyness, although bringing a camera up automatically alters the experience of being with another person. I might have […]
BBC has a lovely article about a busker Lazarus from Malawian city of Lilongwe who, by pure luck, made his first album. He was filmed with a phone by an English tourist in Lilongwe, and that recording made it's way to Johan Hugo, a Swedish-born, London-based musician who found Lazarus through an acquaintance. A makeshift […]
Madonna has released a music video for 'Medellín', the lead single for her new album 'Madame X', and with it comes her new eye-patched alter-ego (watch the video here). It all started with her moving to Lisbon: "My son wants to be a professional soccer player and he was never going to have the highest […]
"The simplest songs are often the best, the most relatable and reachable" - PopMatters says about 'Love Lies Bleeding', a song by Rose of the West, Wisconsin-based outfit that released its self-titled debut on 5 April (listen to it here). "The song challenges our basic notions about pop music while giving us hope for the […]
Laurel Canyon was a centre of counterculture activity in the mid-late 1960s and early 1970s - it was home to Frank Zappa, Jim Morrison, The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, The Eagles, Love, Neil Young, The Monkees - and it is the subject of new documentary 'Echo in the Canyon'. It features in-depth interviews with many of […]
Stereogum has some strong words about Kanye West's VIP Sunday Service shows that he has been doing since January, and which he has now brought to Coachella: "If he can convince people to buy $50 socks, maybe he can also convince enough to pay tithes to his church, where his cult of fans can become […]
Prince's estate is about to release a new 15 track album, featuring the original versions of the iconic hits that he wrote for other artists. The 'Originals' spans the period from 1981 and 1991 and includes his original takes on Sheila E.’s ‘The Glamorous Life’, the Bangles’ ‘Manic Monday’, Kenny Rogers’ ‘You’re My Love’, and […]
Lost live recordings of a Bob Marley gig have been found in a London hotel basement and are now heading to auction. The 10 analog tapes, which were found by chance after spending 40 years in a damp hotel cellar in a hotel in Little Venice, west London, suffered water damage and mold. However, they […]
'Defying Gravity' is a new memoir by Sex Pistols' friend Jordan Mooney, and it follows punk’s rapid rise and fall, as well as Jordan's own evolution from keen ballet student to the Boudicca of new wave to a veterinary nurse. But, in 1976, as she tells the Guardian - “Men were confused by me. They […]
Sony Pictures has won a bidding war for the movie rights to a new Broadway musical featuring Britney Spears' hit songs, Deadline reports. The stage version of 'Once Upon a One More Time' premiers in autumn, but the hype surrounding the show has already piqued the interests of movie executives. The fantasy musical imagines Cinderella, […]
Guardian visited California prison in Lancaster to speak to inmates about "healing and justice", and, in the wake of Nipsey Hussle's murder, about gang violence. Recently, rival gang members in LA and inside prisons appeared to have united around Hussle’s death and discussed whether the tragedy could lead to a long-term “ceasefire”, an end to […]
The indie bands of the Chinese capital have their own raw, distinctive sound, partly because they are so isolated from the rest of the rock'n'roll world - BBC reports from Beijing. Like Sydney's music scene in the 1980s, Beijing's creativity has been accentuated by being further away and less visited. The sound itself is raw, […]
"'Oh My God' is an album of seeking and discovering, of affirming and negating, loss and redemption, of musical and spiritual exploration, tribute and invention, and often of running to stand still in an act of extended meditation. This ambition is both exhilarating and enervating and not everything works, but it is impossible not to […]
There’s a subtle movement in songwriting now, expressed by Kacey Musgraves and Sharon van Etten and even Taylor Swift: writing from a place of happiness is more creative than mining the classic bad guy motif - Guardian says in their interview with liberal-country singer who won a Grammy for her latest album 'Golden Hour'. Musgraves […]
If an album isn't that good, there's no point in singling out text about it... unless the text itself is so good, and it makes a good point. That's the case with NME's review of Beyonce's live album 'Lemonade'. They think it isn't really much, but reading their review is a pleasure. Here's a snippet: […]
827,000 vinyl albums were sold in the U.S. in the week of Record Store Day, a record for the Record Store Day week and the third-largest sales week for vinyl albums since Nielsen Music started tracking sales in 1991. The only two larger weeks for vinyl album sales overall were logged during the Christmas season […]
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary added Eminem's definition of the word "stan", a derivative of his 2000 song, Pitchfork reports. In Webster it appears as both a noun - "an extremely or excessively enthusiastic and devoted fan”, and a verb - “to exhibit fandom to an extreme or excessive degree” or “to be an extremely devoted and […]
Shortparis is a Russian indie band with members from Siberia and St. Petersburg, and, according to the Quietus, they are following in Sergey Kuryokhin's legacy of provocative performance art - "ambitious, bombastic, incredibly pretentious, erotic, thrilling, impossible to pin down, vaguely deviant, fun to dance to and full of revolutionary potential". In tQ interview the […]
Filmmaker and photographer Jerry Schatzberg published a handsome new photography book, 'Dylan By Schatzberg', which inspired Stereogum to reach out to a number of photographers who have worked with Dylan over the years to ask for the stories behind the images, from the iconic blurry one, to the unusual one where Dylan is - a-smiling...
"Michael O’Neill has pretty much been a ‘those who know, know’ sorta figure, but word of mouth isn’t enough for an album this good" - the Quietus reviews debut album by Mancunian alt-rapper Michael O’Neill. "Sam Weaver, O’Neill himself and electroacoustic musician Danny Saul have combined for something that’ll likely need several listens before you […]
"Twitter shaman Jack Dorsey’s recent acquisition of Jay-Z’s streaming service, Tidal, by his company, Square points to something that is bubbling up in the business right now that is still early, but ultimately will build into a huge, new movement of massively monetizing direct artist-fan connection and engagement" - Peter Csathy writes in his CoS editorial, adding - "Just think of the virtual/tangible 'combo package' possibilities – where passionate superfans happily pay premium prices to support and get ever-closer to the artists they love in all modes of engagement".
Fast Company chooses 10 companies that are changing the face of the music industry. They are: Neon16 - a talent incubator and music label for Latin music, BeatStars - an online marketplace for producers to sell their beats to artists, Royalty Exchange - a marketplace allowing artists who are earning royalties to sell them to investors during online auctions, Audiomack - a music streaming and discovering platform aiming at Africa, Stem - a music distribution platform making it easier to artists, as well as Verzuz, Parkwood Entertainment, Harmonix, Bandcamp, and Dolby.
"A gentle, reflective album that includes songs about education, poverty and righteous conduct, providing indirect commentary on Mali’s parlous political situation" - Guardian writes in praise of Anansy Cissé's new album 'Anoura'. Written after a run-in with an armed thug, Mali guitarist's album offers a positive message in these songs of love, respect and hope for better times ahead. Roots World appreciates how "in keeping with much Malian music the percussion is minimal and understated, allowing the melodic rhythmic patterns to work across each other uncluttered and for all its tonal variety there is a fine sense of space pervading this album".
In Frankfurt, people can order a classical concert to their door with the musicians from the Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra cycling to the audience's doors. The concerts last up to 10 minutes and are free, but donations are welcome.
NASA released "the first acoustic recording of laser impacts on a rock target on Mars". The short audio sequence features the sound of 30 impacts, recorded by a microphone on the rover, CNet reports. The Quietus explains how Mars, like the few other outer space events audible within our limited hearing range, is mostly silent, and how actually do the sounds we hear come to be heard by us.
Belgium inventor Lou Ottens, who led the project of developing a cassette tape, has died at the age of 94, NPR reports. He was the head of product development at Philips’s electronics factory in Hasselt, Belgium in early 1960s when he told his team to develop an audio device that was smaller, cheaper and easier to use than the reel-to-reel tape recorder because that one was to much of a hassle. As a result, they invented the cassette tape, which went on to be sold in billions. Ottens spearheaded another advance in electronics, working on a Philips team that jointly introduced the compact disc with Sony in 1982.
Radio has become an increasingly vital source of community and comfort for its listeners - DJ Mag argues in an interesting article about the old medium. The audience has grown substantially - much-loved independent station NTS' listener numbers have grown from 1.5 million monthly listeners in 2019 to 2.5 million a year later. A similar trend is seen in other stations, which also proves that the radio is being listened to not only in the car.
An interesting if somewhat controversial thought by music manager Lucas Keller in Out Magazine: “I think we’re seeing the death of the artist. Songs are fully alive. I think we’re hitting a point in time where it’s going to be more and more difficult to have follow-up hits for an artist. I see it happening. There’s so much music. There are so many songs. People listen to playlists and just because they fall in love with the song doesn’t mean [they fall in love with the artist]". Keller represents some of the most successful artists, songwriters, and DJs in the world.
A great read in the Music Journalism Insider about rock fanzines from the late period of the Soviet Union, from 1977 to 1991, written by Russian academic Kat Ganskaya. Roxy from Leningrad (St Petersburg today) was the first big fanzine, Zerkalo (The Mirror) from Moscow followed, founded by Artemiy Troitsky, the first DJ in the USSR and one of the founding fathers of music journalism in the Russian language. One of the bigger fanzines was Kontrkultura (Counterculture), which can also be read as "counter the cult of UR".
American media are looking into clues about future performances after watching Patti Smith perform at the Brooklyn Museum Beaux-Arts. Rolling Stone was there with other 50-ish people: "We’ve forgotten how to have a good time with each other. It’s going to take time to figure out what makes sense for each individual, how to enjoy being alive together again. But this was a start". Smith's show was a part of NY PopsUp, a series of over 300 performances spread across the state and five boroughs over 100 days. Pitchfork saw it as a move forward: "If NY PopsUp is meant to initiate the baby steps needed to inch our way back to a normal and robust music scene, it seemed like a productive rehearsal for both audience and performer".
