"You can’t easily eradicate Jackson from history: too many people have too much of their lives bound up with his music. And perhaps you shouldn’t. Perhaps it is all right that his music continues to be heard, so long as it comes with a caveat: that it reminds us great art can be made by […]
"It’s fired-up, it sounds more pointed and intentional and it makes you sit up and take notice of the intensely layered compositions that [Meg] Duffy has made... Duffy co-produced it with Brad Cook at April Base, the center for Justin Vernon’s coterie of musicians... Duffy has found themselves in a line of modern musicians that […]
The organiser of Womad has said the world music festival is struggling to book artists because many fear they might have difficulties entering the country due to Brexit, Guardian reports. “Lots of artists are finding they can get to Europe but fear taking the next step to the UK, particularly if there is there is […]
Sharing the chords and lyrics to their new single ‘Free At Last’ a good few weeks before anyone had heard it, Canadian punks PUP challenged their followers to cover the song in whatever style they saw fit. Completely unaware of how the ‘real’ track would go, fans were left entirely to their own devices. They […]
British music festival Glastonbury is banning plastic bottles in a bid to stem the tide of waste - they will not sell single-use plastic water bottles this year owing to concerns about their impact on the environment. In 2017, visitors to the festival got through 1.3m plastic bottles. Festivalgoers have also been urged to carry […]
PopMatters' new edition of Brits in Hot Weather, where they showcase five songs from five British artists, presents edgy electropop from Elephant Trees, Afrobeat-tinged house from DJ Chillz, haunting dream pop from Dream Reporter, soulful house from Szjerdene, and the ambient soundscapes of Gagarin.
Why are promoters hiking their ticket prices up so much, and how much do the artists have a say in setting ticket prices? - NME asks after The Who announced they will charge 200 pounds for better tickets for their Wembley concert. Gideon Gottfried from Pollstar points out that artists rarely make money from albums […]
Ukraine's Eurovision entrant Maruv, has been dropped from european song contest in a row related to tensions between her country and Russia. Maruv's song, 'Siren Song', won a public vote on Saturday, but the singer later fell out with the country's national broadcaster (here her performance of the song). She was given 24 hours to […]
American r'n'b star Drake is the world’s best-selling recording artist of 2018, global recording industry trade organization IFPI has announced. Drake is the only artist to hold this title more than once, with his first being in 2016. Released in June of last year, his fifth album 'Scorpion' and songs from it broke multiple streaming […]
Guardian's Rhik Samadder got proper upset by post-Oscar comments about Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper's "secret love". "When did we lose all desire to distinguish between art and life? Why do we want to own celebrities’ souls, imprisoned in hashtags and gifs and gossip, regardless of the human fallout?... We should recognise that #friendshipgoals and […]
California punk veterans Bad Religion will release a new album, 'Age of Unreason', on May 3rd, which will be their 17th, and first in six years. The band tackles current social and political issues - “Today, these values of truth, freedom, equality, tolerance, and science are in real danger. This record is our response”, their […]
The leader and singer of british synth pop stars Talk Talk, Mark Hollis has died. Guardian published the nicest obituary: "He was an artist with a completely singular and uncompromising musical vision that would eventually spawn an entire musical sub-genre... The music mapped out a new territory somewhere between avant-garde rock, jazz, modern classical and […]
R Kelly was released on bail on monday, after a 47-year-old woman from suburban Chicago, allegedly a friend of his, posted the bail — 10% of the $1 million bond set by a judge. Since his arrest on Friday, Kelly struggled to come up with the funds to cover his bail. His lawyer, Steve Greenberg, […]
"Intimate songwriting on delicate subjects intersects with bone-chilling horror—is the hallmark of Spelling’s short music career so far... Tia Cabral’s second album ['Mazy Fly'] retains the great mysticism of her songwriting. The unsettling synth textures and soundscapes fly around her soulful voice" - Pitchfork. Listen to 'Haunted Water' here.
'Bohemian Rhapsody', the authorised biopic of Queen and Freddie Mercury, won record four Oscars last night, including best actor for Rami Malek, who won rave reviews for playing the late singer. Lady Gaga was among the winners for the best original song prize for 'Shallow' from 'A Star Is Born' after performing an impassioned duet […]
With it's numerous subgenres and releases, it's not easy to keep track of metal releases. PopMatters helps out by picking out a number of exciting releases (wich audio). This february it's 16 metal albums, of various subgenres - prog, doom, sludge, trash, psychedelia etc.
American folk singer Joan Baez is on her farewell tour Fare Thee Well performing what is expected to be her last album, 'Whistle Down the Wind'. Why so many lasts? "I’m phasing out and wanted to choose something to bookend my first album. The first [album] was a traditional folk song – the girl lost […]
The first 30 years of my life were fiercely and exclusively collaborative, I’d never done anything on my own before, and then I started learning how to do things on my own, and I realized it’s a very different mindset. So I got used to that dynamic, wrote a bunch of stuff, and I tried […]
The organizers of the Paris 2024 Olympics have proposed breakdancing as one of the new olympic sports - others that are being considered for inclusion are surfing, climbing, and skateboarding, which are already slated to make their Olympics debut the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Breakdancing was a part of the program at the 2018 Youth […]
R Kelly has been charged with 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, at least nine of which involve minors. He has never been convicted and has previously denied other allegations. An arrest warrant was issued, and the 52-year-old turned himself in to police in Chicago later on Friday. His lawyer says he is "shell-shocked". […]
"From beginning to end, the band makes sure to offer a variety of exciting compositions, maintaining their iconic doom core, while providing enough dynamic instrumentation to keep their material consistently engaging" - Consequence of Sound.
The Oscars are coming, so Pitchfork made a list of 50 greatest original compositions for film. It goes from 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' to 'Blade Runner', with quite a diverse choice in between.
"Much like with Louis CK, R. Kelly and Woody Allen, it’s now easy to see how Ryan Adams used his art as a sort of staging ground for the power-wielding abuses and transgressions in his personal life. The singer’s finely-tuned performance of emotional neediness was part and parcel with the pattern of manipulation and alleged […]
Bethel Woods Music and Culture Festival is taking place on the same dates and at the same site as Woodstock 50 years ago. It's August 15th-18th, Ringo Starr and the Edgar Winter Band will perform Friday, August 16th, while Santana and The Doobie Brothers are scheduled for Saturday the 17th. Official Woodstock event organised by […]
British director Dexter Fletcher (who famously completed 'Bohemian Rhapsody' after Bryan Singer’s departure) made a new movie biography - 'Rocketman', about Elton John. Where the Queen biopic largely kept itself rooted in reality, the first full-length trailer of 'Rocketman' shows off a more fanciful side, which fits the birth of John’s evolution from a gifted […]
"Four black female banjo players wrestling with gender, race, slavery, sexual assault and the domination of the male gaze might make an admirable-if-arduous prospect, but this new collaboration proves by turns a proud, devastating, authoritative album made for our bewildering times" - Guardian reviews Our Native Daughters' album 'Songs of Our Native Daughters'. "Rhiannon Giddens, […]
Beyonce and Jay-Z posed in front of a portrait of Meghan Markle wearing a crown as they accepted the Brit Award for best international group. Writing on Instagram, Beyonce said: "In honour of Black History Month, we bow down to one of our Melanated Monas. "It’s no stretch to interpret the display as a show of […]
Peter Tork, singer, bassist and co-founder of The Monkees, has died at the age of 77. Initially conceived as America’s answer to The Beatles, The Monkees were assembled by television producers specifically for a television series, which aired from 1966 to 1968. However, the band’s popularity would ultimately grow far beyond the small screen; members […]
Three times as many male as female pop stars appeared on last year's biggest hit singles - ninety-one men or all-male groups were credited on the british Official Chart Company's top 100 most popular songs of 2018 - compared with 30 female acts. Thirteen of the most popular 100 songs of 2018 were credited only […]
Consequence of Sound recommends Australian rock-country singer-songwriter Julia Jackson's new album 'Crushing'. It is about "rediscovering what about herself she may have buried during a long-term relationship, without erasing the experiences that it created", a "reckoning with one’s mysterious and daunting personal potential than a reflection on someone else. Each track, in one way or […]
An amusing article in the Quietus about 'Nick Cave's Bar', a new book by Aug Stone about a bar in Berlin in the 1980s which was a "home from home" for many creative people - musicians, filmmakers, painters, poets, and punks. Risiko stood at 48 Yorckstraße in West Berlin, on the border between the Kreuzberg and Wilmersdorf-Schöneberg sections of the city. It wasn't really Nick Cave's bar (although some in Europe did call it that back then), but Blixa Bargeld bartended at Risiko during Einstürzende Neubauten’s early years, and Cave would come to visit it with the rest of The Birthday Party.
"It is rare to find an album that is so much more than just music and even rarer to find Black Metal that ventures as wide as Spire do so to be in a position whereby both happen at the same time and work so brilliantly is not only refreshing but also extremely enjoyable" - Rock N' Load writes in a review of Australian band's second full length. Grizzly Butts appreciates the sonics of the album: "Spire aren’t yet demanding hard rock hooks or hand-holding rhythmic statements to cling to but they have presented a welcoming, frightfully deep chasm of somewhat original vocal applications that characterize mildly dissonant, epic black/death metal architecture".
Across the course of this year, approximately 22 million tracks will be added to Spotify’s catalog, which is approximately 60,000 tracks per day, meaning a new track is uploaded to its platform every 1.4 seconds, Music Business Worldwide reports. Spotify confirmed in November last year that its platform played host to around 70 million tracks.
"Athens was key in taking this punk idea that anybody can play and showing that anybody can do it anywhere. I think that Athens is the place that makes it clear—mostly through the career of R.E.M. but not entirely—that you can make music that reaches an underground or even a mainstream national audience anywhere. And that these kinds of cultural transformations and bohemian cultures we think of as really only occurring in certain urban spaces can actually flourish anywhere" - author Grace Elizabeth Hale tells in Please Kill Me interview about her latest book 'Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture'.
A nice tribute at the NPR to the 500,000 Americans that have died from Covid-19 - the National radio presents live stories of some of the victims and their favourite songs. Check out the sad collection - here.
Bobby Shmurda was freed from prison on Tuesday after he spent six years there on illegal firearm and conspiracy charges. While he was still in prison, Complex released a short documentary questioning whether his success in the music business led to his current incarceration. Hip-hop police's chief also suggested he should have turned his back on his friends when he reached fame
A great read in the Quietus about the legendary singer-songwriter Jake Thackray: "When an attempt is made by the artist to self-mythologise or distance themselves from biography, a la Tom Waits or Frida Kahlo, I see it as becoming part of the work. For someone who worked so hard to distance himself from attention, it seems fitting to give a summation of Jake Thackray’s music through his life. Indeed, his work often ended up echoing or anticipating what he later became".
"The style Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo minted on their 1997 debut album Homework – house music heavy on the filter effect, which involved the bass or treble on the track gradually fading in and out, mimicking a DJ playing with the equalisation on a mixer; drums treated with sidechain compression, so that the beats appeared to punch through the sound, causing everything else on the track to momentarily recede – is now part of pop’s lingua franca" - Guardian's Alexis Petridis argues in his article.
Lovely and sad The Natvral's 'New Moon' is about when love just isn't enough; nasimiYu steps into big-sounding R'n'B territory with 'Watercolor'; Visionist share a dark industrial pop 'Form'; J.I.D. raps about the syphilis experiment at the American south on 'Skegee'.
A thought-provoking article in Loudwire about the age rock musicians were at when they wrote their classic albums/songs. All Black Sabbath members were at the age of 20/21 when they wrote their debut, Kurt Cobain was 23 in 1990 when he wrote Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', as old as equally left-handed Jimi Hendrix was when he wrote 'Are You Experienced'. Metallica were 21, 22, and 23 when they wrote their masterpiece 'Master of Puppets', while Silverchair members, at the time of their multiplatinum debut 'Frogstomp', were just children - 14 years old!
