News

Black Sabbath have announced an intimate show for next month. The band, who will headline this summer's Download Festival along with The Prodigy and Metallica over the weekend of June 8-10, will play a small show at Birmingham's O2 Academy on May 19 to warm up for the festival. The show will be the metal legends' first since they reunited with their original line-up late last year and may see them preview some of the new material they have spent the last nine months working on.

Primal Scream have announced My Bloody Valentine's Debbie Googe as their new touring bass player. Googe, who was a founding member of My Bloody Valentine and also a member of Showpony and the Bikini Mutants, will join the band's live line-up for the foreseeable future. She replaces Gary 'Mani' Mountfield in the band's line-up. Mountfield left to rejoin The Stone Roses for their reunion tour late last year.

Bob Dylan will be rewarded with a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor given by the United States, according to a report in the New York Times. The White House said in a statement that President Obama had named 13 recipients of the medal, which is granted to “individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”

Radiohead's Thom Yorke and producer Nigel Godrich debuted new songs from their Atoms For Peace supergroup during their DJ set at an LA club on Friday [April 27]. The duo, who play in the band alongside Red Hot Chili Peppers' Flea, Joey Waronker and Mauro Refosco, played the new songs during their set at Transmission LA: AV Club, a free 17-day music and visual arts festival series at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, curated by the Beastie Boys’ Mike D.

Paul Simon has insisted that he was no regrets over the recording of his album Graceland in South Africa. Simon was widely criticised for travelling to the country and making the 1986 with South African musicians, for effectively breaking the cultural boycott of the country due to its racist Apartheid regime.

The trailer for Nick Cave's new project Lawless has emerged online - scroll down and click below to watch it.

Levon Helm, the former Band drummer who died from cancer last Thursday [April 19], is to be buried next to his former band mate, Rick Danko. Last night [April 26], 2,000 mourners attended a wake for Helm at his Woodstock home, according to Associated Press. Helm's closed casket, in the second-floor studio of the barn where Helm hosted his Midnight Rambles, was surrounded by flowers and flanked by his drum kit and a piano.

Vampire Weekend have confirmed to Rolling Stone that they're working on the follow-up to their 2011 album, Contra. "We've started many songs," bassist Chris Baio told Rolling Stone. "Obviously we haven't been rushing it. We take it very seriously. We'll be incredibly psyched to share it with the world when it's done." Released in January, 2011, Contra reached No 3 in the UK album charts and No 1 on the Billboard 200 chart in America.

Gregg Allman is to undergo diagnostic cardiac testing at a clinic in Jacksonsville, Florida to ascertain whether he needs additional care after a recent hernia operation, reports Rolling Stone. The tests will mean Allman must delay his forthcoming American publicity tour for his memoir, My Cross To Bear.

The Gaslight Anthem have announced the release of "45", the first track to be taken from the band's fourth album, Handwritten. The song will receive its world premiere on Monday April 30 on BBC Radio 1 at 7.30pm (BST) as DJ Zane Lowe's Hottest Record in the World. Speaking about the new album, frontman Brian Fallon has previously described the songs from 'Handwritten' as "pretty personal and pretty aggressive". The album does not have a scheduled release date as yet.