"'When I Wake Up's soulful sprawl through the working class experience is tethered to familiar frustrations, and vulnerable at every turn. The production, helmed by Sabre himself, is a decorous fusion of 1960s-sourced percussion, elegantly plucked strings, and 1990s hip-hop, sufficiently temperate for his trademark Irish lilt to take centre stage... Sabre's seasoned vocals are […]
A poll of more than 1,000 heads, teachers, music service managers and instrumental teachers in UK schools suggests that while music education has improved in some areas in the late 8 years, there is patchy provision nationwide. Some 97% of classroom music teachers lacked confidence in the government’s handling of it. The report by Musicians' […]
Saudi Arabian singer-producer MSYLMA takes in pre-Islamic and Quranic poetry and culture and melds them with industrial music, dubstep, techno, grime... MSYLMA’s voice drips with sadness, anger, despair and hope, each line delivered in a wash of reverb and echo to make matters all the more otherworldly - the Quietus recommends. Listen to his song […]
25 years after Kurt Cobain's death, Rolling Stone counts down the 50 greatest grunge albums, from multi-platinum classics to underground essentials.
"These pieces are thick with luscious texture and assembled with a symphonic sweep, building from barely audible scrapes and clicks to epic climaxes large enough to blot out the sun. Each of the four tracks has its own dramatic arc, some subtle and some utterly titanic, and the record as a whole has a cumulative […]
The eccentric auteur has filmed a feature-length zombie comedy 'The Dead Don’t Die', which boasts one hell of a cast, including musicians Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, RZA and Selena Gomez, as well as actors Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Chloe Sevigny, Tilda Swinton, and Steve Buscemi. Brothers Coen-ish movie comes to theatres in june. Consequence of […]
At least 19 people suffered injuries at Monday's vigil for murdered rapper Nipsey Hussle, as crowds tried to rush away. Footage from the scene shows mourners suddenly breaking and running from the scene. It is unclear what triggered the incident. Police say reports that shots were fired appear not to be accurate (Hollywood Reporter). In […]
Scientist have found that Skrillex's music is effective in deterring mosquitoes, specifically his track 'Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites'. Sound is "crucial for reproduction, survival, and population maintenance of many animals," says a team of international scientists who subjected adults of the species Aedes aegypti, known as the yellow fever mosquito, to electronic music to […]
Most critics like it... "A brave and fortuitous debut album from the LA teen, capturing the hopes, fears and vulnerabilities of an entire generation. The genius in this record is its unaffected relatability" - Clash Music. "Showcases a bold artistic vision and a willingness to move beyond the boundaries of pop conventions" - Exclaim. " […]
"His introspective, unhurried flows were taking him into rap’s elite, but it was his activism and community engagement that truly marked out the murdered rapper" - Guardian writes in their obituary to murdered rapper Nipsey Hussle, who was shot to death Sunday afternoon outside his LA Marathon Clothing store.
The Cure were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame at an induction ceremony at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on saturday night, and Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor gave an introduction speech about growing up in small-town America and hearing the Cure for the first time: "It was like this music was […]
Michael Jackson’s second child Paris and her boyfriend, Gabriel Glenn, played their first public show as the Soundflowers at The Mint in Los Angeles on Saturday night, but the songs were very different from what her father used to play. The Soundflowers deal in delicate, earnest folk-rock, they also dress the part, taking to the […]
George Clooney called for a boycott of hotels owned by the Sultan of Brunei after the country passed a law that would allow stoning LGBTQ people to death. "On this particular April 3rd the nation of Brunei will begin stoning and whipping to death any of its citizens that are proved to be gay," Clooney […]
Billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has established his own record label Emo G Records,, and dropped his first single. 'RIP Harambe' is the first single from Emo G, which Musk describes in a series of tweets by noting “This might be my finest work”. The rap single is about the 17-year-old, 440-pound gorilla known […]
The Quietus picked out six albums from the month of march, including one of their favourite bands, These New Puritans' 'Inside the Rose', British art-rockers' first since 2013. Leyland James Kirby is also one one of their favourites, he published the album 'Everywhere at the end of time – Stage 6' with his band The […]
Los Angeles rapper Nipsey Hussle has been shot dead outside his clothing shop Marathon Clothing in South Los Angeles. The 33-year-old was shot a number of times, two other people were wounded in the shooting outside. Nipsey Hussle's album 'Victory Lap' received a nomination for best rap album at this year's Grammy Awards (SOHH). Stars […]
Canadian rapper NAV debuted at the top of Billboard 200 chart with his album 'Bad Habits', which was sold in 82,000 equivalent album units in the week ending March 28. It's NAV's second album and the first one to top the American sales chart, Billboard reports. Listen to his song 'Price on my Head' here.
Nigerien desert blues guitarist Mdou Moctar this week published his new album 'Ilana: The Creator', with PM giving it 9 of 10 stars: "On it, Moctar goes all in on energy, lets loose tidal waves of melody, and shreds on electric guitar as only he can.. For the first time on a studio album, it […]
Today’s teens are discovering songs in the background of YouTube videos – creating a new breed of superstars unknown to adults, such as Clairo, Khai Dreams, Beabadoobee, Girl in Red, Oohyo, Mxmtoon, Eli, Sundial and Conan Gray. For want of a better name, you might call it underground bedroom pop, an alternate musical universe that […]
Dance music played out for the hundreds of fans who flocked to the town of Braintree, England for the funeral of Keith Flint, former frontman of the Prodigy, and the people danced - watch a short video here. Flint's bandmates called on fans to "raise the roof for Keef", so they made a one-off festival […]
“These are all upbeat rockers. They’re all pretty rich rock songs with big choruses. It’s all material that we can see being played in a club with people dancing" Interpol frontman Paul Banks said about band's new EP 'Fine Mess' coming out in may, in time for festive season. As for the lyrics of the […]
Iceland government have charged Sigur Rós with tax evasion - four member of the rock band stand accused of misreporting figures on their returns between 2011 and 2014, with the group allegedly dodging a total of 151 million Icelandic Krona (or $1.2 million dollars) in taxes. The charges claim that frontman Jónsi Birgisson evaded around […]
Fans stayed up until midnight Friday waiting for Billie Eilish's debut album 'When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?' to come out. "They laughed, they mostly cried, and they spread the word with an array of memes and hilarious insights" Billboard reports. She just put out a new video as well - 'Bad […]
American DJ John Corbett has a book out, 'Pick Up the Pieces: Excursions in Seventies Music' about a decade of pop music. Pop Matters took out two chapters, about Kraftwerk and The Clash: "Two unemotional men making sounds with machines. Clean, logical, workmanlike, mechanical, disinterested, mechanistisch, German: no sweat", "In the long run, to me […]
Motown has released Marvin Gaye's 'You’re the Man', the scrapped follow-up to Gaye’s seminal 1971 album 'What’s Going On' - its explicitly political bent prompted Motown to pull promotion, pressure radio stations to remove the title song from playlists, and ultimately stash the whole planned LP. Guardian's critic Alexis Petridis doesn't really like it that […]
Beth Gibbons has released a collaborative album with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra performing Henryk Górecki’s 1976 piece 'Symphony No. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs)'. Their original live performance took place in 2014 in Warsaw and was conducted by Krzysztof Penderecki, considered one of Poland’s greatest composers and pas collaborator of Aphex Twin and […]
Kikagaku Moyo are a Japanese psychedelic band from Tokyo and since 2015 they run a label Guruguru Brain, based in Amsterdam and dedicated to highlighting the best of the Asian underground. By now, they have published 19 releases spanning continents and styles, and will be publishing their 20th this year. "Their existing output has already […]
Stephen Fitzpatrick, 24, and Audun Laading, 25, of Liverpool band Her's, and their tour manager Trevor Engelbrektson, died while travelling to a gig in California on Wednesday. The label described them as "one of the UK's most loved up and coming bands". The duo had recently released their debut album (BBC). Listen to their song […]
American pop singer Billie Eilish published her first album 'When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go' today, so NME had her pick five of her favourite new artists. She chose british rapper Crooks, american r'n'b singers Tierra Whack and Kiah Victoria, Florida rapper Dominic Fike, and, khm, Billie Eilish (well, if she doesn't […]
The music that the Austin-based artist makes moves slow and circular, content to unfold incrementally... It glides along, guided by watery guitars and a pitter-patter of drums that sound like rain on a windowpane. It shifts from sunshine to twilight and back again - Stereogum says about Christelle Bofale's debut EP 'Swim Team'. Listen to […]
The original Turntable.fm site - shuttered in 2013, is back up and running, but there’s also Turntable.org, which will reportedly be launching in beta this April, the Verge reports. Turntable.fm lets users create a virtual room, then select what music they want to play for anyone listening; the song selection is currently limited to what’s available on YouTube. Turntable.org, the new version, mentions there will be a subscription fee.
Henry Goldrich was the man behind the music - literally, since he was the owner of Manny's Music store in New York. There, he had sold Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton their first wah-wah pedals, as well as other pieces of equipment to numerous musicians - David Gilmour, Pete Townsend, Sting, James Taylor, members of Lovin' Spoonful - helping them define their sound. The New York Times tells the nice story of the "gear guru to rock stars" who recently died.
The next release by the acclaimed Berlin-based label Habibi Funk, dedicated to music from the Arabic-speaking world, will be a compilation of recordings by renowned Lebanese musician Rogér Fakhr. 'Fine Anyway' is released on April 9, which will be this 1970s musician's widespread release and promotion, as the Quietus points out. Guardian has recently described the quest Habibi Punk's boss Jannis Stürtz has gone through to find the Arabic music he wanted to re-release.
St Vincent looks inside her family with her new album made while her father was getting out of prison (spent 9 years there for $43 million stock fraud), 'Pay Your Way In Pain' is the first glimpse into it; Duendita brings soul to a jazz band with 'Open Eyes'; steel pan player Fimber Bravo announces his new album with an afrobeat banger 'Hiyah Man'; 'Flock' is the stand-out track from Jane Weaver's new eclectic psych-pop album of the same name; this is just lovely - Suede's Brett Anderson and Nadine Shah cover Mercury Rev's 'Holes' with help from Paraorchestra, the world's first large-scale integrated virtuoso ensemble of professional disabled and non-disabled musicians; Maple Glider presents her great voice on 'Good Thing'; Julianknxx shares his activist hip-hop poetry on 'Basement'.
Producer, DJ and songwriter Laura Bettinson wants, well, basically, her life back: "The best nightclubs provide safe spaces for people from all walks of life. Nights out are when lifelong memories are made (or lost) and bonds formed with friends and strangers alike. The transference of energy on a packed, sweaty dancefloor is unlike anything else. On the best nights, everyone in the crowd is under the DJ’s command, their song selections determining a communal journey. This is why the concept of a socially distanced club night, which removes such spontaneity and physicality, just doesn’t work".
"I look at Rage and go, like, 'Fuck, we rely on an audience.' You go to Rage shows to see the audience as much as to see the band, and we need that. We're one of those bands that need that" - Rage Against the Machine bassist Tim Commerford told TooFab. He added - "We'll never be one of these sellouts that's gonna go play a drive-in show or play a venue that holds a hundred thousand people and there's only ten thousand people there. That's bullshit. Rage will never do that. It's not a good show unless the audience is going off too. It's gotta be a shared experience". In other RATM-related news, band's guitarist Tom Morello recently discussed his friendship with Ted Nugent, "known in the world" as "this right-wing caricature", as opposed to "the guy who shredded on 'Cat Scratch Fever'". They're friends because “It’s going to be things that Tom Morello and Ted Nugent have in common. I went down this long list: free speech advocates, love of rock & roll, respect for black artists who’ve created rock and roll. And the second, was things Ted Nugent taught an adolescent Tom Morello about sex”.
Poly Styrene was the frontwoman of influential UK band X-Ray Spex, the first woman of color to front a successful UK rock band, getting into punk which "she helped to define and energise", as Peter Bradshaw argues. A new "riveting and valuable documentary" about her life, 'Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché', co-directed by her daughter Celeste Bell, is out now. "There was something authentically heroic about Poly Styrene", Bradshaw adds (gives the docu 4 stars).
The movie 'Shoplifters of the World' is based on a (maybe) actual life incident from 1987 when an impassioned Smiths fan takes a local radio DJ hostage at gunpoint and forces him to play nothing but Smiths tracks for a night. The movie is coming out on March 26, starring Ellar Coltrane ('Boyhood') as the radio station hijacker and Joe Manganiello ('True Blood') as the radio station DJ.
K-pop stars BTS have been named the best-selling artists of 2020 by the IFPI, the organisation that represents the global recorded music industry, Forbes reports. The seven South Koreans are the first non-Western act to win, and the first whose songs are not predominantly sung in English. The boyband beat Taylor Swift (an American), who took the crown last year, into second place. Drake came third, with The Weeknd fourth (both are Canadian) and Billie Eilish at number five (she's an American). The award is calculated according to an artist or group's worldwide sales, downloads and streams, covering their whole body of work.
Germany’s revenues from physical music sales and streaming grew 9% year-on-year to €1.79 billion in 2020, Music Business Worldwide reports. A good portion of 71.5% of revenues came from digital music, growing 24.6% in a year, from €1.13bn to €1.27bn. CD sales in the market fell 18% YoY, remaining the second-strongest format in the German recorded market with a 21.6% share of sales in 2020. totalling €387m. Vinyl revenues grew 24.7% YoY to €99m, and had an overall market share of 5.5%.
