"Many instruments have defined many musical movements over the years, but there's one that's played a pivotal role in almost every one: The human voice" - 12tone introduces his latest video. "The way a singer uses their voice is one of the clearest ways of shaping a musical identity. Despite its clear significance, though, or perhaps because of it, the voice is notoriously hard to analyze" - the music theorist tries anyway.
Tori Amos ran down the songs and albums that formed the contours of her life, at Pitchfork. Plenty of different music - Aphex Twin ("coming from a brain that thinks differently than the rest of us"), Radiohead ("It was this explosion that changed the terrain sonically"), Mary Hopkin ("the most beautiful, whimsical thing"), Adele ("like a meteor had crashed in through the atmosphere"), Tracy Chapman ("It woke me up and took me back to my 5-year-old self, who was creating from a pure place of intention of music being magic, as a place where we could walk into and feel many different things").
Radiohead have shared 'Follow Me Around', one of the more anticipated tracks featured on their new archival collection, 'KID A MNESIA'. The 'OK Computer'-era song has popped up in various forms since its initial composition in 1997, but today marks the first time a proper studio version has been released. Radiohead have also premiered a video for the song starring actor Guy Pearce.
A few interesting questions answered by the music theorist Adam Neely in his latest video post:
Is Adele’s Easy on me microtonal?
Who is the better bass player, Homer Simpson or Adam Neely?
How to prioritize creativity over theory?
What’s a spread triad?
"Paul McCartney is not an easy man to impress, but a little over four hours into the 2021 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony — which saw surprise appearances from Dave Chappelle, Eminem, and Jennifer Lopez, along with incredible performances by Taylor Swift, LL Cool J, Carole King, Jennifer Hudson, Christina Aguilera and the Go-Go’s — he genuinely seemed a little awestruck when he stepped onto the stage to induct the Foo Fighters" - Rolling Stone starts its piece about last night's Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Read it in full - here.
Great Bill Maher on words-redefining: "The words 'victim' and 'survivor' have traveled a long way from their original usage. The baby from the Nirvana album says he's a victim. He's suing Nirvana for lifelong damages. I never thought I'd have to say this to a baby, but stop being such a fucking baby. You're not a victim. There's no reason you can't have a normal, happy life just because people look at you and think, 'baby penis'".
An interesting conversation with Patti Smith in the Guardian. She isn't really optimistic about the current times: “It’s a terrible epidemic in the 21st century, and it got magnified in the period that Trump was elected and it’s really gone viral. These are the most complex times, partly because of social media and misinformation. Everything becomes a political question. People wouldn’t even get vaccines or wear masks because it became a political stance … and then they get sick and really regret that they didn’t take the time or it didn’t open their mind to the situation. I don’t know what the answer is, except that we just have to fight for what is right”. Still, she loves being alive now: "I’ve lived so many lives, and they were all good. I can look back and see what I’ve gained, how I’ve evolved. Whether it was sorrowful times or turbulent times, they all formed me. So what’s my favourite period? Right now. I’m alive”.
“Inside a song, you are neither here nor there, a liminal feeling that evokes so much of our time in life languishing in the middle. Call it meta-heartland rock” - Pitchfork writes about their lates Best New Music choice, The War on Drugs’ ‘I Don’t Live Here Anymore’. Mojo insists it’s a “calm space amid a world in collapse”, whereas NME points out “there’s magic everywhere you look on this triumph of an album”.
“‘Hushed And Grim’ is a mood. It’s about grief, about guilt, about all those fun feelings. It’s awful seeing your friend suffer like that and knowing there’s nothing that you can do. If you know, you know” - Matodon drummer Brann Dailor talks about band’s latest album, which deals with death of their manager and close friend Nick John. Their previous albums were also inspired by death of close people. This one seems special: “Writing and recording this record was like grief counselling for me: started out feeling horrific, came out feeling fantastic” - bassist Troy Sanders says to Kerang!
Carl Palmer, the only living member of Emerson, Lake & Palmer will reunite the trio, possibly late next year using previously unseen footage of the band at London’s Royal Albert Hall in 1992, Rolling Stone reports. Palmer is planning to drum live alongside those unearthed split-screen clips of Emerson and Lake. “It will look authentic, it will look real, and it will be in sync. And it’ll be something better than a hologram” - Palmer insists.
“Whenever my band upload a new video, there will always be comments on how I look, people debating if they would have sex with me. I never see comments of this shallow nature directed to the three men in Svalbard. Ever. They get treated as musicians, I don't. I get treated as a sex object” - Svalbard’s Serena Cherry makes a perfect point in Loudwire’s article about double standards in rock music, which leads, of course, to sexism.
The co-founder and the guitarist of the Stockholm post-punk band Viagra Boys, has died aged 47. Representatives of the band shared this lovely note with Pitchfork: “Benjamin or “Benis” as we knew him, spread laughter and happiness wherever he went and we will cherish the memories we have of touring the world together. Benjamin, we love you with all of our hearts and Viagra Boys would have been nothing without you. This planet just lost one the good ones”.
Pitchfork got inspired by the latest Ed Sheeran video and published an essay about gory aesthetics in pop music: "This stylized imagery, heinous and perversely hilarious, was once foreign to the purview of chart-topping pop stars. For years it was weaponized by hard rock and experimental artists who sought similar extremes in their music. Dating back to the late ’60s, metal and its spawn of heavier subgenres have long been the cradle of horrific stimuli—all on some Satanic mission to corrupt the American teen, as the Christian right often argued. But in the past 13 years, the gruesome and gory has been liberated from that stronghold and embraced by the status quo".
Metallica have offered their band wisdom via MasterClass, as the first band to give a class on the streaming platform. In the course, they teach strategies for growing and staying together as a band, how to collaborate creatively, and develop and maintain a relationship with an audience, among other topics. The importance of communication is key - the band members point out.
A new study by Surfshark examined a variety of music sites to find which are the most invasive when it comes to tracking us online. They also looked at the safest. On Bandcamp five trackers were found. Rolling Stone on the other side 69 trackers were found.
"I used to hate Phish" - Brad Nelson starts his Pitchfork essay about the jam band. "Their music is inherently uncool, like the washed-up refuse of classic rock, prog, and whatever you want to call what Zappa did fused into hideous sound sculpture. It rejects whatever you think of as tasteful or intelligent or even humorous. Lyrics are nonsensical, silly, and/or corny, with few exceptions. The members of the band are aggressively unbeautiful singers, especially when they attempt to harmonize". It all started to change in the pandemic, the author looks back.
"At a time when it feels like anybody can stream anything, any time, anywhere, it can be easy to neglect the importance of location. But with global streaming experiencing tremendous year-over-year growth, local markets are becoming increasingly viable and offer important opportunities – and challenges – for anyone working in the music industries" - Ryan Blakeley, a Ph.D. in Musicology candidate, writes in his MBW op/ed. "Whether you’re an artist, running a record label, or working at a music streaming service, you can’t afford to overlook local markets and cultures. Locality shapes what we listen to, how we listen to it, and even who we are. It may seem paradoxical, but regionality is just as important – if not more important – in the current age of global streaming".
John Hinckley Jr., the would-be assassin of former American President Ronald Reagan, complained about alleged unpaid royalties for a song he says he "co-wrote" with the band Devo. Hinckley wrote a poem as an obsessive verse written to actress Jodie Foster, who Hinckley had been stalking and hoped to impress by assassinating Reagan. Devo's Gerald V. Casale said that DEVO was "blown away by the poetic sociopathy" of Hinckley's poetry and used a few of his verses in their song 'I Desire'. It seems he got at least $610 in royalties so far. Newsweek brings the crazy story.
The all-women band Yemberzal come from Kashmir, they play their distinctly traditional Sufiyana music at home and recording their sessions on their mobile phones. However, they can't reach anybody with it, as Vice reports. In August 2019, the Indian government revoked a 1948 UN resolution that gave Jammu and Kashmir autonomy as the only Muslim-majority state in India, and started one of the longest internet bans in history.
Music creation platform Splice and SoundCloud have joined forces to launch a new emerging artist program called, Nova, open to unsigned Splice and SoundCloud creators, MBW reports. The partnership starts with a series of contests across the Splice and SoundCloud communities with the winners of the first Nova Contest getting the production of their own Splice Sounds pack. Splice is set to release twelve Nova Artist Packs, collections of signature sounds, loops, and samples, starting January 2022.
"With its signature groovy percussion, autotune-heavy vocals, and catchy hooks, Afrobeats is finding audiences far beyond Nigeria’s shores. Stars perform at global music festivals, and American musicians sampling their work have introduced African artists to an ever widening audience" - Quartz begins its introduction of Afrobeats. "Much of Afrobeats’ growing appeal is driven by Nigeria’s vast diaspora, but beyond that, social media, YouTube, and global streaming sites like Spotify are ensuring that it’s easier than ever to discover—and become a fan of—Nigerian music".
YoungBoy Never Broke Again was released from Louisiana jail today after seven months behind bars, Rolling Stone reports. Federal prosecutors on his pending California gun case agreed to the terms of the $1.5 million bail and home detention ordered in his separate Baton Rouge gun case by a federal judge last week. The bail with strict house arrest includes a GPS monitor.
Guardian celebrates the 20th birthday of the iPod: "In October 2001, the music industry was riven by piracy and had no idea how to solve it. Enter Steve Jobs, whose new device created a digital music market – and made Apple into a titan".
Some Romantic-era opera listeners felt that their own listening practices could be just as emotionally true as the art itself. These listeners didn’t want to be stuffed shirts snarking over the music reviews: they wanted to fall in love with the music, be the music, be the characters, be the singers, and be enflamed by opera to the depths of their souls - Lit Hub writes introducing Dr. Anna Fishzon’s eye-opening book 'Fandom, Authenticity, and Opera: Mad Acts and Letter Scenes in Fin-de-Siècle Russia' which concentrates on 19th-century Russian opera society but illuminates trends in opera and art all over Europe. "Fishzon tells amazing stories of 19th-century fans who wrote scary fan letters to opera stars and stood in ticket lines for days, till they fainted... Critics said that the new fans were vulgar, hysterical, immature, and ignorant".
The Quietus presents a new book about hip hop’s relation to reality TV, 'Who Got the Camera? A History of Rap and Reality' by Eric Harvey. "Harvey’s central idea, borrowed from French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, that reality rap be understood as a 'hyper-reality'. By this phrase Baudrillard had in mind a world where spectacle and reality become indivisible, where media presentations of the Gulf War or of King’s beating, for instance, overwhelm any actual event. It’s an idea that serves Harvey’s understanding of the King tape, rap music, and reality TV, insofar as all amount to instances where reality and its representation become more or less indiscernible".
All Music looks for obvious clues for the rise of popularity of EPs: "By releasing an EP in a shorter amount of time, artists are able to offer a steady stream of releases to keep the interest of fans... Money also has a substantial influence on why EPs have become more popular, and the consistent release of EPs in-between album projects generates a more reliable income for artists... It is also significantly cheaper for newer artists to drop an EP instead of putting in double the resources and time to produce a debut album". All Music also selects a few outstanding ones.
Aeon Station share a self-appreciating track 'Leaves' about "learning self-love, finding your voice, and setting on a path for a chance at something better"; Alfa Mist moves smoothly through the night with 'Bumper Cars'; Obongjayar delivers some hard-hitting hip-hop on 'Message in a Hammer'; Jerry Cantrell shares an alt-rock ballad 'Siren Song'.
Major music streamers Spotify, Amazon, and Pandora have filed to the US Copyright Royalty Board recommending a significant reduction in royalty rates over the 2018–2022 period. The three platforms have proposed lowering the rate to pre-2008 levels, with headline rates close to 10.5%. Consequence reports on the sensitive issue.
Adele has gone back to number one in the UK with her new single 'Easy On Me', scoring the biggest chart figures for almost five years - she had a record 24 million streams in the UK in its first week as well as 23,500 downloads. That is equivalent to 217,300 sales - the highest since Ed Sheeran's 'Shape of You' in January 2017, UK Official Charts reports. In the album chart, Coldplay's 'Music of the Spheres' became the fastest-selling record of the year so far, with 101,000 chart sales, Charts reports.
A lucrative new market is emerging for music designed for therapeutic trips using ketamine, psilocybin, MDMA and other psychotropic drugs. “There’s some amazing synergy between technology and these medicines that wasn’t possible until quite recently. And it seems to be really powerful” - music producer Jon Hopkins tells party-and-drugs chronicler Michelle Lhooq for her interesting Guardian article about music and trips.
UK rapper slowthai has shared his new single 'Selfish', and has announced his third studio album, UGLY (an acronym for “U Gotta Love Yourself”), set for release in March. The chaotic, propulsive 'Selfish' features strong drums and guitar. To promote the new track, Slowthai has live-streamed himself hanging out in a custom-built room fitted with floor-to-ceiling two-way mirrors. Watch the video of the track below.
Singer, songwriter, and guitar player for influential New York band Television, Tom Verlaine has died aged 73 after a "brief illness", the New York Times reports. Verlaine shaped the sound of rock and punk music in the 1970s and beyond, applying a poetic flair and serious musicianship to the rougher edges of the wider movement. After Television broke up in 1978, Verlaine embarked on an extensive solo career that saw him release ten albums across the ensuing decades, exploring a variety of musical themes that generally get tossed together under the label “post-punk. Television's first album 'Marquee Moon', released in 1977, is one of the most critically heralded punk/post-punk albums of all time.
Belgian Tomorrowland has been voted world’s No. 1 festival in the DJ Mag Top 100 Festivals poll 2022, with over 100,000 verified votes counted. "Since launching in 2005, Belgium's Tomorrowland festival has pushed the boundaries of production, imagination and curation", DJ Mag argues, adding "the flagship event expanded from two to three weekends in July 2022 for 'The Reflection of Love', welcoming 600,000 visitors from 200 countries, and hosted its Winter edition in L'Alpe d'Huez in France".
The top 10 festivals on DJ Mag's list are:
"I think art is the best medium for this awareness. Art comes from the heart, the pain and the suffering. I know that’s the case for me and other artists doing amazing work right now. The truth of my work is what is happening in Iran right now. I am just mirroring it" - Iranian rapper Säye Skye says in a Mix Mag interview about using revolutionary rap in the current protests in Iran. "The regime takes these mediums, and deals with them, very seriously. They know that having a podium and speaking the truth of the people can resonate with society, it can unite communities and that’s what they are afraid of. For the past 40 years the regime has been trying to diminish the power and value of art."
Thomas Bangalter, known for being one half of Daft Punk, has announced his first full-length record since the duo split in 2021. The album titled ‘Mythologies’ was originally made for the ballet of the same name choreographed by Angelin Preljocaj and premiered at the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine. Set for release April 7, the album includes 23 tracks which “embrace the history of orchestral ballet music”. The announcement states that over the last thirty years Bangalter has "explored the world of technology" with electronic music and sees him now exploring “humankind” in this album with him quoting ancient and modern myths.
Ísadóra Bjarkardóttir Barney has released her debut solo music as part of an Icelandic grassroots arts compilation ‘DRULLUMALL 4’. The compilation is made up of tracks from Icelandic artists, with Björk's daughter sharing a soulful track ‘bergmál’.
The second season of 'BMF', a television drama series inspired by the true story of a drug-dealing family and a record label, has premiered, following the story of taking the business nationwide. Season one introduced brothers Demetrius “Big Meech” Flenory and Terry “Southwest T” Flenory, who were dealing cocaine together in high school in the 1980s, and eventually went on to run the Black Mafia Family, one of the largest drug empires in the USA. In 2005 the authorities eventually caught up with the pair and arrested them. By the early 2000s Demetrius had also founded BMF Entertainment – a hip-hop music titan that included a record label, promotion agency and magazine. It represented Bleu Da Vinci and associated themselves with artists including Diddy, T.I., and Jay-Z. Complex presents the characters from season two.
Music critic and publicist Simon Reynolds gave ChatGPT an assignment - to write an essay in the style of music critic Simon Reynolds that expresses skeptical views about A.I. taking over the role of the music critic. It was done in seconds, Reynolds writes impressed. "The argument itself struck me as averagely intelligent, making entry-level points about how A.I.-generated prose is necessarily deficient in empathy and nuance, and how it would lack the unique and personal perspective of a human critic". The style, or the "voice" of the A.I. was "earnest, plodding, attuned to bland generalities rather than arresting specifics, and irritatingly fair-minded. Not promising attributes for a critic!"
Kali Malone’s new album 'Does Spring Hide Its Joy' lasts three hours consisting solely of Malone on sine-wave oscillators, Stephen O’Malley of Sunn O))) on guitar and Lucy Railton on cello. The critics insist the album is powerful and demands total surrender. Pitchfork connects it to the pandemic and the future: "There’s something utopian about music driven by an attention to understanding those around you, music that pushes listeners to expand their understanding of how time is experienced and demarcated. In a period of upheaval, letting go of expectations of how things should be, beginning with how music should move or present itself, can be a powerful step toward reimagining the future."
First Floor takes a closer look at the current hype around Latin sounds and rhythms within the wider electronic music world. It examines how these flare-ups of interest have historically been not only fleeting, but shallow, playing into stereotypes and misinformed notions of what constitutes “authentic” Latin culture while also doing little to concretely benefit artists and scenes located in Latin America.
