Scott Walker, one of the most enigmatic and influential figures in rock history, has died at the age of 76. The star, whose songs included The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore and Joanna, influenced many - Radiohead, David Bowie, Jarvis Cocker, Arctic Monkeys, The Divine Comedy, to name just a few. He found fame as […]
Leicester band Easy Life is the latest choice in NME's segment What’s Your Band Called, Mate?. The band describes their sound as "your favourite old jazz record mixed with the dirty wonders of modern production techniques. Shit bangs”. Apparently they like weed alot. Listen to their song 'Nightmares' here.
Juice WRLD’s 'Death Race for Love' sold 74,000 equivalent album units in the week ending March 21 in USA and spends a second straight week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. Billboard...
The EU is on the verge of adopting a law that will significantly improve the ability of the creative community to secure fair deals for the use of their work by user-uploaded content services such as YouTube. This legislation, namely article 13 of the proposed copyright directive, would fix a fundamental flaw in the music […]
"Yanya, on her debut album, has shocked her desolate confrontations into some of the most adventurous pop-rock crucibles since Mitski’s 'Puberty 2'. They are catalysts for communal outpouring that spark with adrenaline and anxiety, a mixture of the raw and the refined, her guitar fuzz mingling with tinselly synth glitter and the bluesy disaffection of […]
"He was eight when he got his first smartphone: an iPhone 5c in beaming lime green. He was 10 when his impromptu breakdance at a high school basketball game in Florida went viral. Now, at the grand old age of 12, Seth Vangeldren finds himself juggling marketing contracts in six-figure territory with some of the […]
Psych-rockers unveiled a brand new single - 'Patience', which marks Tame Impala’s first new music since 2015’s 'Currents'. It serves as the first preview of Tame Impala’s upcoming fourth LP, it's just that nobody, including band's leader Kevin Parker, knows when it will come out: “I like to think that the album is its own […]
Streaming services are becoming distributors and, in some cases, record labels. Record labels are becoming streaming services and, in some cases, talent management companies. Talent management companies are becoming record labels, while distributors are having a go at becoming managers - Rolling Stone analyses what's going on in today's music business.
"Her fourth album, 'No Words Left', is her starkest, filled with lyrics about uncertainty and isolation, and yet her most striking, conveying the strongest sense of her artistic identity yet. This time, Rose’s candid, searching songwriting is the focus, buoyed by soft piano, gentle acoustic fingerpicking and subtly deployed strings and brass" - Guardian writes, […]
Cardi B has filed to trademark her signature catchphrase “Okurrr”, and plans to use it for her upcoming merch line, which will include “cups and posters”. Last year, Cardi described the sound as a “cold pigeon in New York City” to Jimmy Fallon. The Blast...
'We’re Still Here' shows the former Journey frontman driving around Los Angeles and thinking about the past. Neither song nor the video are special really, but there's a nice guy feeling to the song and to the video as well, so for 3 minutes and 56 seconds of "niceguyishness" go here. Rolling Stone...
Bands from around the world are celebrating 50 years of heavy metal at the inaugural World Metal Congress in London. Organizers say heavy metal is one of the most successful cultural exports coming from UK and want to preserve it. For their first congress they're bringing in metal bands from Syria, Indonesia, Botsvana, and Nepal […]
Late singer's estate has provided the media with a 24-page working PowerPoint document, that questions the credibility of documentary film 'Leaving Neverland' and James Safechuck and Wade Robson, two men who accuse Jackson for molesting them when they were children. The document details what the estate says are dozens of examples in the documentary of […]
"His use of musical forms so closely associated with some of Turkey's most radical political changes in recent memory show just how seriously he takes his role. The fact that every track also has such exciting musical color makes it that much more enticing to join the revolution" - PopMatters picks out Umut Adan's new […]
"Everyone knows loss in one way or another. This song is about that. I’d never sat with anyone as they died before, and it had an effect on me... But there’s wildness and beauty in it as well, and a deep honouring, that became the beginnings of this song" - frontman Marcus Mumford said about […]
The annual party Bang Face Weekender, held last weekend and featuring 5,000 people in a Pontins camp in Southport, Merseyside, has grown to become one the most vibrant and passionate subcultural events in the UK since its inception in 2003. You won’t get away with wearing a drab black techno wardrobe: punters, who are known […]
'Murder in the Front Row: The San Francisco Bay Area Thrash Metal Story' is a documentary about Bay Area thrash scene and includes over 50 interviews with principle members of Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, Anthrax, Exodus, Testament, Death Angel and plenty more. Watch the first official trailer here. Loudwire...
Guardian writes about an incident in China where a woman was told to remove her dramatic makeup before boarding the subway in Guangzhou, apparently for fear of distressing other passengers. The response? Thousands of goths posted photos on the Chinese social media site Weibo of themselves with wild hair and blacked-out eyes in protest – […]
Maroon 5's hit 'Girls Like You' featuring Cardi B skyrocketed in popularity, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the video surpassed 2 billion YouTube views in less than 10 months. "I have two young daughters, and to think about them being mistreated at all — ever — made my blood boil" - […]
R. Kelly has asked a judge to let him travel to the Middle East to perform several concerts, according to a new court filing that said he has struggled to get work in the U.S. since his February arrest on sex abuse charges. The R&B singer hopes to do up to five concerts next month […]
"They fill the stage with noise, overwhelming grooves, songs constricting and then exploding around you. It’s one of those sounds that you think you can trace to a certain collection of antecedents, and yet sounds unlike anything anyone else is up to" - Stereogum says about London quartet Black Midi in their Band to Watch […]
Jenny Lewis is releasing her fourth album ‘On The Line’ on March 22 and it features Ryan Adams, who co-produced the record too. Lewis says she was thinking on not releasing in, since Adams was accused of sexual misconduct in the meantime, "but ultimately it’s my record. They’re my songs and this is a piece […]
Jay-Z-'s 2001 album, 'The Blueprint', is among the latest 25 selections for the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress, together with Curtis Mayfield's 'Super Fly', Cyndi Lauper's 'She's So Unusual', and 'The Best of Schoolhouse Rock'. Only seven other rap recordings have earned recognition by the National Recording Preservation Board - Gil Scott-Heron's […]
A nice list: Ariana Grande, Childish Gambino, Twenty One Pilots, The Strokes, J Balvin, Lil Wayne, The Chainsmokers, Meek Mill, Gary Clark Jr., Flume, Tame Impala, Janelle Monáe, Rosalía, Tenacious D, Yaeji, Slash, Gunna, Lil Baby, Lil Skies, Madeon, H.E.R., Hozier, 21 Savage, Death Cab For Cutie, The Revivalists, Maggie Rogers, co-founder Perry Farrell's Kind […]
"Norwegian quartet Pom Poko's debut 'Birthday' is a stunning, mind-blowing mix of monster riffs and sweet melodies... Pom Poko is a band that refuses to make predictable choices. Their music contains no clean lines or pat conclusions. 'Birthday' is an audacious debut album that is as messy and comforting as an unmade bed" - PopMatters. […]
Grimes has officially announced her upcoming album - the LP is titled 'Miss_Anthropocene' and Grimes described it on an Instagram post as “a concept album about the anthropomorphic goddess of climate Change.” “Each song will be a different embodiment of human extinction as depicted through a Pop star Demonology,” Grimes continued. No release date yet. […]
BBC Radio 3 announced elimination of two jazz shows, the long-running experimental music program 'Late Junction' going from three nights to one, and a world music program getting its run time cut in half, after which more than 500 figures from the music world have now signed an open letter, protesting the changes in the […]
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, the songwriting duo who originally wrote 'My Favorite Things' for the movie 'The Sound of Music', control 90 percent of the songwriting royalties to Ariana Grande’s '7 rings', which channels the melody from the musical. As a result of the deal, Concord, the publishing company who owns Rodgers and […]
The Woodstock 50 anniversary festival has announced a massive list of headliners including Jay-Z, Chance the Rapper, Dead & Company, The Killers, The Black Keys, Miley Cyrus, Robert Plant, Santana, Janelle Monae and more at the event running Aug. 16-18. Also joining the Watkins Glen, New York, festival billing are Halsey and The Raconteurs, The […]
'Shadows and Light', sort of melancholic, dramatic, goth-rock song by Saudade, a super-group fronted by Deftones' Chino Moreno and singer Chelsea Wolfe. It is a first new Saudade song in three years. Apart from the two, other Saudade member are guitarist Dr. Know (Bad Brains), keyboardist John Medeski (Medeski, Martin & Wood), ††† bassist Chuck […]
'The United States vs. Billie Holiday' comes down to what one single song does to the life of the singer, to the society, and the system. LA Times recalls what really happened when federal officers prosecuted Billie Holiday because of the song about a lynching in the American South - the powerful 'Strange Fruit', with the excuse of fighting against the drugs. Critics don't really like the movie.
An amazing story told in Jonathan Sutak's new documentary 'Dons of Disco' about the 1980s Italian pop star Den Harrow. There was however no Den Harrow (the name itself is a joke on Italian word “denaro”, money) - the face of the singer was Stefano Zandri, charismatic young Italian, who didn't speak any English so the producers Roberto Turatti and Miki Chieregato hired a Swiss-American singer Tom Hooker to do the singing parts (without the public knowing it). When Hooker quit the act and music, the Den Harrow character continued, with other singers recording the voice. New Yorker writes in a review that "Sutak tells this amazing story with an admirable directness and simplicity; he avoids the sense of documentary convention and seems to be following the urgency of his own sense of wonder".
More than 100 Italian artists staged a silent protest L'Ultimo Concerto last Saturday to raise awareness for the struggling live music industry. Italian musicians came to the venues and prepared everything just like for a normal show - with their instruments and sound-checks and all - and then just stood still in silence.
Indie-rock foursome Cloud Nothings were touring eight months a year, so when the pandemic had shut it all down, they started releasing all the music they could. They set up a Netflix-like subscription service on Bandcamp where fans could access exclusive projects recorded in the past year, releasing dozens of live recordings, and making several full-length albums. Band's frontman Dylan Baldi was pleasantly surprised by the response, as he's told The Ringer: "If you keep providing good, interesting things that you would want as a fan of a band or a fan of music, people will respond to it".
Spanish rapper Valtònyc, originally from Mallorca, was sentenced to three and a half years in jail after being convicted of slander, Lèse-majesté, and glorifying terrorism in his lyrics. A day before his arrest in May 2018 he fled to Belgium. Recently, another Spanish rapper, Pablo Hasél, was arrested while also practicing his freedom of speech. Valtònyc looks back on his sentence: "It seemed like a joke – almost four years in jail for a song. But it wasn’t: there are 18 rappers in Spain facing jail for similar charges".
Cave and Ellis' new album 'Carnage' comes out as a slightly more structured jam session, and critics really appreciate it. Alexis Petridis argues that "Cave and Ellis’s musical approach is still vividly alive, the dense, constantly shifting sound complementing the richness of Cave’s writing now". Pitchfork appreciates the lyricism of if - "As ever, Cave uses overtly religious imagery in ways both subversive and devout". Guardian's Kitty Empire loves the "immense grief and vast love" of the album, whereas Clash Music hears 'Carnage' as something "both beautiful and visceral, tender and blood-thirsty, wholly terrifying and completely absorbing".
Reggae pioneer Neville "Bunny Wailer" Livingston, has died at the age of 73 at a hospital in Kingston, Jamaica, the Jamaica Observer reports. Wailer, whose real name was Neville Livingston, was a founding member of the Wailers, which also included Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. Wailer eventually left The Wailers in 1973 to find success as a solo artist, also winning three Grammys.
Music producer 3LAU has sold a collection of 33 different non-fungible tokens for a total of $11.7m, Business Insider reports. The collection includes special edition physical vinyl, unreleased music and unique experiences such as a custom song with the winner’s creative direction, which was won by the top bidder for $3,666,666. NFTs are digital representations of art (visual, audio, etc.) where ownership is tracked and verified on the blockchain. Sales in music-related NFTs this weekend alone – which included Grimes selling her WarNymph digital art collection for $5.8m – amounted to $18.6m, which is 80% of all music NFT sales combined over the nine months.
SoundCloud is introducing what it calls “fan-powered royalties” – its own branding of the user-centric royalties model – which it says will mean each SoundCloud listener’s subscription or advertising revenue is distributed among the artists that they listen to, rather than their plays being pooled, MBW reports. “Fan-powered” royalties will launch on SoundCloud on April 1, the platform suggests the move will “benefit rising independent artists with loyal fans”, and cites two independent artists currently operating on SoundCloud – Chevy and Vincent. Chevy currently has 12,700 followers on SoundCloud, Vincent has 124,000. By switching these artists to a “fan powered” model and away from ‘pro rata’, based on their recent playcounts on SoundCloud, the service estimates that Chevy’s monthly royalties will grow 217%, while Vincent’s will multiply by five, up from $120 to $600. Fingers crossed!
"I’ve never been a careerist, especially in music. It’s always been something I live and breathe with my family. Maybe it’s also a combination of a fear of failure, or not wanting to commit myself fully because I don’t want to ruin the thing that I enjoy most in life" - Cassandra Jenkins tells in a Pitchfork interview about her latest album 'An Overview on Phenomenal Nature'. She adds: "It’s part of my mental health practice to make sure I’m always learning about other things and not getting absorbed in the narcissistic act of putting out my own music. This record is a great example. I really didn’t think anyone was gonna hear it. But I loved making it, and it really carried me through a difficult period in my life".
