John Myrtle is so sweetly nostalgic in 'Get Her Off My Mind'; Manchester Orchestra share a new song, dancey 'Bed Head', what remains the same is that great Hull's vocal; Gojira share proggy, melodic and mat0hy 'Born For One Thing'; Arab Strap, who obviously miss nightly activities, share clubby 'Here Comes Comus!', accompanied by a slightly shocking video.

Guardian made a nice little survey among artists and its writers about descriptions of night-clubs in art. Róisín Murphy chose the party scene in Paolo Sorrentino’s 'The Great Beauty', as well as Elaine Constantine's 'Northern Soul' which turned out well because the director taught the teenagers in the movie how to dance. The G's film critic Peter Bradshaw chose the sex/nightclub scene from 'Mektoub, My Love' by Abdellatif Kechiche. Music critic Alexis Petridis thinks that the one is the description of "the feeling of chemically enhanced, musically driven transcendence" from 'The Sparsholt Affair' novel by Alan Hollinghurst.

Named after a variety of bee-attracting orchid, Apifera create free, improvisatory, and live sound, combining jazz, psychedelia, and electronics. They recently released their debut album 'Overstand' for Stones Throw, with influences ranging from folk music, classical music and transcendental jazz. Their recent live tape shows them more in electronic mode.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds have announced a charity prize draw with the goal of raising £200,000 to support their tour crew. They've collected over 100 prizes, including The Bad Seeds' own signed instruments, a limited edition art print of Nick Cave, deluxe album copies, show tickets, gift vouchers, and much more. To participate in the draw, fans can purchase tickets until March 12. Winning tickets will be drawn at random, and each winning ticket will grant the winner a random lot out of the 100+ prizes. There's also an option to donate without entering the prize draw. They have already collected over £78,000.

Pioneering Jamaican reggae vocalist and dancehall innovator, credited for pioneering the vocal style known as "toasting", U-Roy, has died at the age of 78. U-Roy is credited for pioneering “toasting,” the vocal style in which a performer talks or chants, usually in a monotone melody, over a reggae or dancehall beat, Loop Jamaica reports.

"Paid memberships - the decades-old model in which fans contribute a regular fee directly to their favourite creator or brand in exchange for exclusive content and experiences - are back in vogue in the music industry" - Cherie Hu writes in DJ Mag about the lifesaver of electronic musicians in lockdown - Patreon. In the seven years since it launched, "Patreon has facilitated total membership transactions of over $1 billion between 6 million fans and 200,000 creators, half of which launched their respective pages in the last six months. The music category has grown by 200% over the past half-year (by the number of creator pages), making music one of the top two categories on Patreon for the first time in the company’s history".

"I think that it's a good thing that you can be destructive in music without fucking things up too much. Whereas if you're destructive in the kitchen, you're just going to make yourself sad, because it'll taste terrible" - Sam Pillay of Virginia Wing told the Quietus about their chaotic new album. TheQ says that tracks on 'private LIFE' often feel like "performers stumbling groggily on stage, elegantly shooting themselves in the foot, then somehow pirouetting off, perfectly choreographed, in unison... It's paradoxically both chaotic and comforting, mirroring the way everyday life carries on during crises, wrestling just a little bit of order away from entropy".

Rick Ross performed a part gangsta-rap, part gospel, part funk concert for NPR's Tiny Desk. It took place in the gallery space of Miami artist Rich B Caliente, and it was just the second time Ross has performed with a live band.

"With haunting serenity, there is a flitting consciousness to the these brief, nightmarish lullabies that leaves you transfixed within a realm of broken intimacy" - Secret Meeting writes in a review of debut EP by New York singer-songwriter Maria BC. They are classical training as a mezzo-soprano, but their voice, hushed in pop melodies, seems to reach only a portion of what might next from them. Promising...

American singer-songwriter Todd Rundgren has embarked on a virtual tour of 25 American cities which is broadcast from the same Chicago stage, but geo-targeted to different regional markets, Variety reports. Shows come with visual cues saluting the would-be host towns and multiple shout-outs to the virtually targeted city. The focus is on making each show a unique event, with a virtual perimeter that will restrict viewing of a particular show to audience members who live there. Prior to shows, there’s the sound of murmuring people looking for their seats, and for every city on the video wall behind the band there'll be a picture of the actual proscenium stage. This virtual tour runs February through March. Tickets go for $35.

Spotify, Apple, Amazon, YouTube, Pandora and 15 other digital service providers paid out a total of $424.38 million to the Mechanical Licensing Collective in accrued historical unmatched royalties, Forbes reports. It's 10 years of royalties DSPs have collected but couldn't match countless songs to their writers and publishers, so they just - sat on that half a billion dollars. In addition to their payments, the DSPs also delivered more than 1,800 data files, which contain in excess of 1.3 terabytes and 9 billion lines of data. The MLC is now reviewing and analyzing the data in order to find and pay the proper copyright owners.

A great article in Stuff about Rebecca Black who went through ten years of recovering after her song 'Friday' brought her unwanted attention as "the worst song/video ever" (she was 13 at the time of the song). She says "It's not normal for a person - for a kid, especially - to have the entire world make fun of them and then just laugh along with it... What it did was dehumanise me even more into some version of a spectacle because none of that is real". She was also bullied in school, started with home-schooling, and it took her years before she dared to make music again.

Dr. Cornel West talked to Beatport about the origination of house and techno by African American creators, going into the philosophy of black music. West argues it is a vessel to travel through time and be connected with time and space. He also discusses the hijacking of music made by black people.

A great Twitter thread about Black British documentaries, including 'Sounds of the West' about Bristol jungle and drum'n'bass scene, 'Broken Glass' about Manchester breakdancing scene, 'Champion Sound' about reggae sound systems in Coventry, Goldie documentary etc.

DJ Mag describes what have the UK night clubs been up to in lockdown. Sneaky Petes, Edinburgh - reopened as a pizza bar; Printworks, London - hosted production projects and live-streams; Studio 338, London - transformed into a food bank; Invisible Wind Factory, Liverpool - used as a COVID-19 testing centre; Fabric, London - has been reflecting and “identified lots of little details and some larger improvements"...

Italian progressive metal band Benthos shares ephemeral 'Debris // Essence'; Maria BC shares 'Adelaide' from their minimal synth-pop debut EP; For Your Health share melodic punk screamo 'Push the Fucking Rock Sissy'; Debby Friday shares her banging pop song 'Runnin''; Spectral Wound share their melodic black metal assault 'Frigid and Spellbound'.

DaBaby shared some family clips on his social media unveling how he charged $5,000 for a feature in January 2019. In the meantime, his price went up 40 times over - "From 5k a verse to 300k", XXL reports.

A lovely text by Mark Richardson about how music that old people had listened to in the past affects them when they're old. He played his father one of his favourite songs from his youth: "He smiled at first and sang along for a moment, and then his face went blank. It seemed as if he were pulling away from the present, letting the sound bypass his consciousness and arrive at some far reach of his brain, a place where it had been printed a half-century ago and then left alone".

20-year-old Polish guitar virtuoso Marcin Patrzalek has gone viral for his cover of Led Zeppelin’s 'Kashmir' in his distinctive percussive finger-picking style. Marcin recorded the video in a parking garage, as he plays the guitar and drum parts of the beginning of the famous song.

In an amazing turn of concepts, audio archivist Luke Owen has released a compilation of not the music, but the commercials played between the songs on pirate radios. The great Simon Reynolds says "these pirate adverts are joyous mementoes of enterprising fun, young people grabbing good times at the outer edge of the law". 'London Pirate Radio Adverts 1984-1993' Vol 1 is available digitally at a name-your-price rate and for £7.50 as a limited-edition cassette tape.

'80s pop and heavy metal are the best musical genres for lowering blood pressure and heart rate, Metal Sucks reports on a recent Istanbul study. The study recruited 1,540 adults, ranging in age from 18 to 65, for a series of mental stress tests while listening to music. The '80s pop playlist prompted a blood pressure drop in 96 percent of respondents and a heart rate reduction of 36 percent. A mix of metal classics elicited a decrease in blood pressure among 89 percent of those studied and a reduction in heart rate in 18 percent of the listeners.

Guardian presents the music scene that has merged from Nordic culture and traditions, via dark and ambient folk, played on ancient string and horn instruments, as well as animal hide drums. Some of the musicians are Heilung who play with human bones, Wardruna who chose burial mounds to record their music, a Danish lady Myrkur who turned from black-metal to Danish sagas.

10-year-old sensation Nandi Bushell released s drum cover of The Who classic 'My Generation' describing it as - "one of the most difficult covers I have ever made. I think this song really suits my style. Fast, Fun and Rocking with a Punk edge!”. Apart from showing talent and plenty of practice in the video, she’s a bundle of energy and joy behind the kit.

Anti-riot police have arrested Spanish rapper Pablo Hasél who barricaded himself with dozens of his supporters in a university, BBC reports. The rapper was escorted by riot police out of Lleida University's rectorate building, in the northeastern Catalonia region, where he and over 50 supporters had locked themselves in since mid-Monday. Hasél has been sentenced to 9 months in prison for glorifying terrorism and slandering the crown and state institutions over tweets and lyrics that attacked the monarchy and police.

'Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell' docu on the life and career of The Notorious B.I.G. is officially coming to Netflix on March 1, and the streaming service unveiled the first trailer. The documentary is executive produced by the late rapper's mother Voletta Wallace and his friend and collaborator Diddy, both contributing candid interviews to the film.

Quick coronavirus testing could enable nightclubs and theatres to reopen, British premier Boris Johnson said, according to Daily Mail. The PM said "rapid" lateral flow tests "in combination with vaccination, will probably be the route forward", could be used by "those parts of the economy we couldn't get open last year". Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said the government would rely on rapid testing and "making people access their own personal vaccination records" on the NHS app, rather than issuing vaccine passports.

Iced Earth singer Stu Block and bassist Luke Appleton have quit the band following founding member Jon Schaffer's arrest for his involvement in the Washington DC riot on January 6, Loudwire reports. "It’s the best decision in many ways for my personal/ professional growth going forward. Time to move on, heal and prosper" - Block wrote on Facebook. Schaffer is in federal custody facing six counts related to the January 6 incident, including "engaging in an act of physical violence in a Capitol building".

Johnny Pacheco, the legendary bandleader who cofounded Fania Records in the 1960s and became one of the leading architects of salsa, has died aged 85, NPR reports. Pacheco found success recording with his band Pacheco y Su Charanga, and also sparked a musical revolution when, in 1964, he met Jerry Masucci and together, they founded Fania Records. Fania soon became known as the Latin Motown, home to superstars like Celia Cruz, Cheo Feliciano and Héctor Lavoe, and the breeding ground for seminal artists in the genre of music that would come to be known as “salsa”, a collision of traditional Cuban song and pan-Latin rhythms with American jazz and funk.

"Cowpunk is a reaction against conventional country, yet embodies some of its distant and deepest traits; likewise, it is also a reaction against punk, yet manifests as one of its purest expressions" - PopMatters writes about the common ground the two seemingly distant genres have found some 40 years ago.

British pianist Joseph Middleton describes the hassle he would have to go through to play a recital in Spain: "Even though I would only spend 24 hours there, my agent would be required to work on a raft of extra paperwork, my accountant to furnish me with documents giving proof of income, and my bank would need to provide me with recent certified bank statements (no pesky home printouts here, thank you). My passport would need to be submitted to the Spanish embassy and held there until the visa was processed, causing problems for when I had to travel for other work". And it's an expensive hassle as well - £600 just for visa costs.