Daniel Vangarde is an artist, writer, and producer behind an array of releases that range from the wildly obscure to the instantly familiar, like Ottawan's 'D.I.S.C.O'. Vangarde had retired from music years ago, relocating to a remote fishing village in northern Brazil, after losing interest in music. However, at the age of 75, he is having a career-spanning compilation released. Because Music was keen to release the compilation, partly due to the success of his son, Thomas Bangalter, until recently one half of Daft Punk. Alexis Petridis brings the exciting story.

"Music is now so abundant as to be completely overwhelming in its availability, and that listeners, faced with everything at once, are increasingly playing it safe and sticking with the tried-and-tested" - Guardian's Alexis Petridis writes exploring the supposed disappearance of music discovery. He believes getting music placed on a TV show, film, advertisement or TikTok video can help. However "music discovery and consumption in 2022 is a weird, confounding, counterintuitive and strangely fascinating place, where the traditional ways of doing things have been completely overturned, but it isn’t entirely clear what’s replaced them".

"Now what do we do to find a way to really resist the stuff that is destroying the planet, that’s causing working people’s lives to be worse than their parents’ were? Poverty and hunger kill more people than anything else on the planet and they are human-made problems. Those are the things that we need to be digging into, rather than being sidetracked by this carnival barker bullshit" - Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello said in a Guardian interview. When asked about the events of 6 January he said "we came within a baby’s breath of a fascist coup in this country", adding "interestingly, one of my dreams has always been to storm the Capitol, but not with a bunch of all-white, rightwing terrorists, you know? The ugliest part about it is how they have co-opted the idea of standing against the Man, at least in the US".

"A dense, kaleidoscopic album that might take a lot of time to fully unpick" - Alexis Petridis reviews 'Call Me If You Get Lost' by the California rapper (gave if 5 of 5 stars). Vulture likes "gorgeous sonics, well-placed samples, and entertaining sparring with guests rappers and singers", whereas Stereogum says Tyler, Creator has "given the genre one of its most vital adoring tributes in recent memory". Consequence says simply 'Call Me...' "might be the best hip-hop album of 2021".

"Listening to 'Blue Weekend', you’re struck by an appealing sense of everything clicking into place" - Alexis Petridis writes reviewing the third album by the London indie-rock quartet Wolf Alice (gave if 5 of 5 stars). Brooklyn Vegan writer Erin Christie says "the trance I surrendered to is directly emblematic of the power of a band like Wolf Alice: they completely take your brain hostage as you enter their world". NME hears a "stone-cold masterpiece that further cements their place at the very peak of British music", whereas Sputnik Music calls it "one of those albums that qualifies as an event". 

A great article by Alexis Petridis about Pino Palladino, one of the world’s most celebrated bass players who has worked with Adele, Elton John, the Who, D’Angelo, Ed Sheeran, and many more, who is releasing his first solo album, a collaboration with Blake Mills. Welsh musician lives in California now - "Film and music studios are considered essential to the economy here – you’ve got to love that, right?. Mind you, that’s better than Britain telling you if you’re a musician or an artist you might have to look for a new job".

"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.

Both the NME and Guardian's Alexis Petridis expect British-Gambian rapper Pa Salieu to be the next UK star. He combines afroswing, dancehall and UK road-rap, in "refreshingly original and inventive" way, very clubby, yet dark. Petridis calls Pa Salieu "Britain’s hottest new rapper", and his debut mixtape "smart, original, raw".

"The design of Eilish’s live stage not only exceeded expectations; it provided effects that would be nearly impossible to pull off at an in-person concert" - CoS writes in a review of Billie Eilish's online show 'Where Do We Go? The Livestream'. Guardian's Alexis Petridis said it was "both striking and entertaining".

Guardian critics admit mistakes they made years ago reviewing music, that they now realize is waaay better than they originally thought. Alexis Petridis misjudged Daft Punk's 'Discovery' - "my review, on the other hand, has not aged so well", while Phil Harrison had a Slayer-revelation - "As a teen Smiths obsessive, I had been a bit of a snob about metal’s neck-breaking, big-shorted charms. That lasted until my late 30s, when I accidentally encountered Slayer at a festival. Within moments of their first howled, blasted, faster-than-hardcore notes, I was like: 'Holy mother of SATAN, this is incredible. Why did nobody tell me!?'".