Neil Young has confirmed that Pono - his audio service which will provide listeners with downloads of high-resolution songs made to sound like their initial recordings - will finally launch next year.
In a post on his Facebook page yesterday [September 5], Young wrote, "I’m very happy to bring yo...
Neil Young has confirmed that Pono – his audio service which will provide listeners with downloads of high-resolution songs made to sound like their initial recordings – will finally launch next year.
In a post on his Facebook page yesterday [September 5], Young wrote, “I’m very happy to bring you some good news. All of us at Team PONO have been focused on getting everything right for our early 2014 launch of Pono.
“The simplest way to describe what we’ve accomplished is that we’ve liberated the music of the artist from the digital file and restored it to its original artistic quality – as it was in the studio. So it has primal power.
“Hearing PONO for the first time is like that first blast of daylight when you leave a movie theater on a sun-filled day. It takes you a second to adjust. Then you enter a bright reality, of wonderfully rendered detail.”
For the project, designed an an alternative to the compressed sound quality of traditional MP3s, Young has already struck a deal with his own label, Warner Music Group, and is reportedly also in talks with Universal Music Group and Sony Music about contributing remastered versions of their catalogues to Pono’s online library of songs.
Arcade Fire will be premiering their new track "Reflektor" on Monday of next week.
Director Anton Corbijn told The Daily Beast that the band will be unveiling the video for the song on the evening of September 9, saying: "I'm working on a really great song at the moment: Arcade Fire's new single. T...
Arcade Fire will be premiering their new track “Reflektor” on Monday of next week.
Director Anton Corbijn told The Daily Beast that the band will be unveiling the video for the song on the evening of September 9, saying: “I’m working on a really great song at the moment: Arcade Fire’s new single. The song is called ‘Reflektor’ and you’ll be able to see it Monday evening.”
When asked for more details about the video, he added: “I can’t say much more than that, because it’s all a surprise. You’ll have to watch the TV Monday evening.”
This news follows the cryptic trailer titled ‘Reflektor 9/9/9‘, which was posted online yesterday (September 4). The band stated that they would reveal something at 9pm on September 9 with the video again confirming the time and date to viewers. They have previously confirmed they will release a new album on October 29 by replying to a fan on Twitter who wrote “you’re my favourite”.
From the archives, our cover feature from Uncut’s March 2005 issue (Take 94). Brian May and others talk us through Queen's incredible story, right up to their controversial team-up with Paul Rodgers. Words: Jon Wilde / Additional reporting: Nigel Williamson
________________
Queen
Halloween,...
From the archives, our cover feature from Uncut’s March 2005 issue (Take 94). Brian May and others talk us through Queen’s incredible story, right up to their controversial team-up with Paul Rodgers. Words: Jon Wilde / Additional reporting: Nigel Williamson
________________
Queen
Halloween, 1978. Queen are preparing to party on a scale far beyond what might be considered practical, plausible or remotely possible. “Excess all areas” is their credo. Indeed, singer Freddie Mercury lays fair claim to coining the phrase.
On the back of “Bohemian Rhapsody” and subsequent albums (A Night At The Opera, A Day At The Races, News Of The World), Queen have become just about the biggest band on the planet. Not only are they insanely popular, but they’re absurdly wealthy and immoderate: “The Cecil B DeMille of rock,” as Mercury proclaimed.
Mercury has established himself as the ringmaster of Queen’s famed social gatherings. Every one of these is a no-expense-spared Freddie Mercury Production. And, he decides, the launch party for new album Jazz will be the most outrageous in history.
A budget of £200,000 has been decided upon, then conveniently forgotten after Mercury declares: “Fuck the cost, darlings, let us live a little.” A venue has been chosen – The Fairmont, an elegant hotel in the French Quarter of New Orleans. A guest list of 500 has been drawn up, including rock and movie stars, friends and loyal journalists. The food and drink is ordered – oysters, lobsters, the world’s finest caviar, vats of Cristal. All that’s left to organise is the entertainment.
According to Bob Gibson, the LA-based publicist in charge of the evening’s festivities: “Freddie decided that he wanted to bring in a lot of street people to liven things up. I was instructed to find anyone vaguely offbeat who might bring a little, ahem, colour to proceedings.”
These include a man who specialises in biting the heads off live chickens and a woman who, for a price somewhere within knocking distance of $100,000, offers to decapitate herself with a chainsaw.
Not for nothing does the party become known as Saturday Night In Sodom. As they enter the hotel, guests are greeted by a troupe of hermaphrodite dwarves serving cocaine from trays strapped to their heads; the coke has been specially imported from Bolivia and quality-checked by Mercury.
Fortified by “lines of marching powder as long and as thick as your grandmother’s arm”, the guests are free to choose from a menu of exotic diversions. The hotel ballrooms, made up to resemble labyrinthine jungle swamps, are swarming with magicians, Zulu tribesmen, contortionists, fire-eaters, drag queens and transsexual strippers. Drinks are served by naked waiters and waitresses who politely request that any tips are placed not on trays but in bodily crevices. Naked dancers cavort in bamboo cages suspended from ballroom ceilings. Nude models of both sexes wrestle in huge baths of shimmering, uncooked liver, while 300lb Samoan women lounge on banquet tables, smoking cigarettes from various orifices. As a bonus, visitors to the hotel’s grand marble bathrooms are orally serviced by prostitutes of both sexes.
“Most hotels offer their guests room service,” quips a passing Mercury. “This one offers them lip service.”
Justin Vernon explains that Volcano Choir are “here to stay” in the new issue of Uncut, dated October 2013 and out now.
Vernon, better known under his solo alias Bon Iver, is keen to dismiss any ideas people have of the collective, also featuring Collections Of Colonies Of Bees, as a side-pro...
Justin Vernon explains that Volcano Choir are “here to stay” in the new issue of Uncut, dated October 2013 and out now.
Vernon, better known under his solo alias Bon Iver, is keen to dismiss any ideas people have of the collective, also featuring Collections Of Colonies Of Bees, as a side-project.
“It’s been shaping more than anything I’ve done,” he says, “emotionally and [in terms of] reflection and reacting. I don’t think I’ve ever sung like this before.
“It was challenging, but it revealed itself to me, and it was because of these guys. It’s here to stay.”
Vernon has recently wound down Bon Iver for the time being, suggesting that he may not even work under the name in the future.
Mumford & Sons' Marcus Mumford and The Vaccines' vocalist Justin Young have recorded a session together, covering songs by both Bob Dylan and Neil Young.
The two frontmen teamed up for the Daytrotter website over the weekend. Mumford and Young laid down two tracks, both of them cover versions; Neil Young's 'Like A Hurricane' and Bob Dylan's 'Don't Think Twice, It's Alright'. The results of the late night recording session are expected to be aired on the site in October.
Of the collaboration, Daytrotter founder Sean Moeller told NME: "It was about 2am in Troy, Ohio, Saturday night, when Marcus plucked Justin out of the waterpark pool on the Stopover grounds – the afterparty was raging 'til 4 am there - to come on up to the un-airconditioned Troy High School auditorium to record 'Don't Think Twice, It's Alright' and 'Like A Hurricane', learning them on the spot, while we, along with the exhausted superintendent of the school and his family looked on from the back row. Then we all went to the after-afterparty, smoked cigars, and got twice as smashed at The Leaf & Vine, in a ghostly town square."
The session took place following Mumford & Sons' Stopover event in Troy. The Vaccines are currently on the road with the band. Both play Guthrie, Oklahoma this weekend (September 6-7), alongside Haim, Alabama Shakes, Willy Mason, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and more, and the following weekend (September 13-14), they will be joined by Fun, The Walkmen and others in St Augustine, Florida.
Mumford & Sons’ Marcus Mumford and The Vaccines’ vocalist Justin Young have recorded a session together, covering songs by both Bob Dylan and Neil Young.
The two frontmen teamed up for the Daytrotter website over the weekend. Mumford and Young laid down two tracks, both of them cover versions; Neil Young’s ‘Like A Hurricane’ and Bob Dylan’s ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’. The results of the late night recording session are expected to be aired on the site in October.
Of the collaboration, Daytrotter founder Sean Moeller told NME: “It was about 2am in Troy, Ohio, Saturday night, when Marcus plucked Justin out of the waterpark pool on the Stopover grounds – the afterparty was raging ’til 4 am there – to come on up to the un-airconditioned Troy High School auditorium to record ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’ and ‘Like A Hurricane’, learning them on the spot, while we, along with the exhausted superintendent of the school and his family looked on from the back row. Then we all went to the after-afterparty, smoked cigars, and got twice as smashed at The Leaf & Vine, in a ghostly town square.”
The session took place following Mumford & Sons’ Stopover event in Troy. The Vaccines are currently on the road with the band. Both play Guthrie, Oklahoma this weekend (September 6-7), alongside Haim, Alabama Shakes, Willy Mason, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and more, and the following weekend (September 13-14), they will be joined by Fun, The Walkmen and others in St Augustine, Florida.
Noel Gallagher aimed a jibe at Foreign Secretary William Hague from the stage at the GQ Men Of The Year Awards in London last night (September 4) – scroll down to watch a clip.
Appearing on stage to collect his Icon prize, Gallagher told the audience: "Welcome to the Tory party conference, by t...
Noel Gallagher aimed a jibe at Foreign Secretary William Hague from the stage at the GQ Men Of The Year Awards in London last night (September 4) – scroll down to watch a clip.
Appearing on stage to collect his Icon prize, Gallagher told the audience: “Welcome to the Tory party conference, by the way. Nice to see the Foreign Secretary here with all the shit going on in the world that he should be sorting out. Good for you.”
Meanwhile, during an interview with GQ at the bash, Gallagher called out Rihanna for travelling with a large entourage, comparing the pop singer’s crew to a “fucking small army”. The former Oasis man ran into Rihanna’s sizeable team of advisers and assistants when the two artists were on the same bill at the Holmenkollen Sommerfestival in Oslo, Norway last year (2012).
“I don’t have an entourage, and when I do it’s pathetic. Never more than two people,” Gallagher said. “I was at a festival in Norway and Rihanna’s just arrived with a hundred people. Fucking small army. And I had to go into this room, which was all just racks of clothing and stuff that designers and punters had brought to give to Rihanna. And they all had these cards in front of them, saying: ‘Dear Rihanna, we are such huge fans, please accept this $90,000 handbag from whoever and whoever’.”
Continuing, Gallagher revealed that paying a visit to Rihanna’s room of gifts inspired him to lavish the singer with a present too. “And I’m reading all these cards as I’m waiting to go in,” he recalled, “so I went back to my dressing room and got the little bowl of Cadbury’s Sensations and left it there on her table with a card saying ‘Dear Rihanna, please accept these chocolates on behalf of Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds’. And she took them. She fucking took them.”
Gallagher was presented with the Icon prize at last night’s GQ Men Of The Year Awards, where other winners included Arctic Monkeys, Lou Reed, Elton John and The Who’s Roger Daltrey.
Jack White has been named as the honorary dean of the Fermatta Music Academy in Mexico City.
White made a guest appearance to accept the accolade on August 22, giving a speech about his family and music life. The former White Stripes and Raconteurs frontman is the first artist to be given an hono...
Jack White has been named as the honorary dean of the Fermatta Music Academy in Mexico City.
White made a guest appearance to accept the accolade on August 22, giving a speech about his family and music life. The former White Stripes and Raconteurs frontman is the first artist to be given an honourary title in the history of the Mexican music academy and was given his award by singer-songwriter Elan.
Rolling Stone reports that during White’s speech he said, “The sense of being a musician is making art, and I do not care whether it is solo or as part of a collective project. At all times, I seek to express myself, and different circumstances of my life could also become multiple creative and stylistic channels.” White was also given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the ceremony.
Meanwhile, country singer Loretta Lynn has revealed that she wants to make another album with Jack White following her 2004 album ‘Van Lear Rose’, which became the highest-charting LP of her career on the US albums chart, peaking at Number 24, and went on to win a pair of Grammy Awards.
“I think I’m going to go after Jack White and give him another call to do another album,” Lynn said in a new interview this week. The singer, now 81, also revealed that she has numerous other projects in the works including a Christmas album and a religious album.
White is currently working on new songs with his band The Dead Weather, a tweet from his Third Man Records label revealed last week (August 29). The band are currently holed up in the Third Man studio in Nashville.
The Dead Weather is made up of White, The Kills’ Alison Mosshart, Dean Fertita of Queens Of The Stone Age and Jack Lawrence of The Greenhornes and The Raconteurs. They released their debut album, ‘Horehound’, in 2009 and followed it in 2010 with ‘Sea of Cowards’.
Of all the guitarists associated with the Takoma School, it’s hard to think of one who imbued folk music with quite as much mystical portent as Robbie Basho. 1978’s “Visions Of The Country”, his tenth album, is a fantastic case in point: “I would paint for you a portrait of North America as a beautiful woman,” he wrote in the original sleevenotes, “when she was young and untamed.”
Consequently, Basho turns a suite about the American West into a courtly romance; imagine John Renbourn drawing on Native American myth rather than old English legend, perhaps. Visions… has been long out of print, thanks in part to it having been struck out of the catalogue of its original label, Windham Hill, deemed too spirited for the New Age brand. Now, though, it’s revealed as one of Basho’s masterpieces, up there with a personal favourite, “Venus In Cancer” (1969).
Alongside the lyrical 6 and 12-string solo pieces (“Elk Dreamer’s Lament” is terrific), there are rare piano etudes, while his reverberant, often-criticised voice has echoes of Tim Buckley on “Blue Crystal Fire”, especially. During “Leaf In The Wind”, Basho also reveals himself to be a highly accomplished whistler.
The third solo album by Californian guitarist Danny Paul Grody arrives, serendipitously, around the same time as the Basho reissue. Grody, formerly of post-rockers Tarentel, is very much one of those guitar soli in the Basho mould, who pushes his music away from Primitive American tradition and towards something more meditative. James Blackshaw is perhaps his most obvious 12-string contemporary, but Grody moves further still into ambient and minimalist zones. Subtle electronic drones seem to increase as the album progresses, situating his music as close to an experimental duo like Mountains as that of the new-school Takoma kids.
Brooklyn-based guitarist Steve Gunn, meanwhile, is on a hot streak this year. After an exquisite solo set (“Time Off”), and a mellow collaboration with Hiss Golden Messenger (“Golden Gunn”, on the same label as the Grody album, Three Lobed Recordings), “Cat Mask At Huggie Temple” is more exploratory, moving back into the blues-raga territory of his two Gunn-Truscinski Duo albums. The collective responsible is called Desert Heat and, alongside Gunn, John Truscinski returns on drums, again playing Billy Higgins to Gunn’s Sandy Bull.
These two long jams are given added heft, though, with the addition of Cian Nugent, an Irishman who’s recently shifted from acoustic fingerpicking to a more psychedelic, electric style. Further evidence, perhaps – alongside forthcoming albums from Chris Forsyth and from Nugent with his own band, The Cosmos - that the prevailing underground fashion is for onetime John Fahey acolytes to plug in, without sacrificing intricacy and nuance.
Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey
Of all the guitarists associated with the Takoma School, it’s hard to think of one who imbued folk music with quite as much mystical portent as Robbie Basho. 1978’s “Visions Of The Country”, his tenth album, is a fantastic case in point: “I would paint for you a portrait of North America as a beautiful woman,” he wrote in the original sleevenotes, “when she was young and untamed.”
Consequently, Basho turns a suite about the American West into a courtly romance; imagine John Renbourn drawing on Native American myth rather than old English legend, perhaps. Visions… has been long out of print, thanks in part to it having been struck out of the catalogue of its original label, Windham Hill, deemed too spirited for the New Age brand. Now, though, it’s revealed as one of Basho’s masterpieces, up there with a personal favourite, “Venus In Cancer” (1969).
Alongside the lyrical 6 and 12-string solo pieces (“Elk Dreamer’s Lament” is terrific), there are rare piano etudes, while his reverberant, often-criticised voice has echoes of Tim Buckley on “Blue Crystal Fire”, especially. During “Leaf In The Wind”, Basho also reveals himself to be a highly accomplished whistler.
The third solo album by Californian guitarist Danny Paul Grody arrives, serendipitously, around the same time as the Basho reissue. Grody, formerly of post-rockers Tarentel, is very much one of those guitar soli in the Basho mould, who pushes his music away from Primitive American tradition and towards something more meditative. James Blackshaw is perhaps his most obvious 12-string contemporary, but Grody moves further still into ambient and minimalist zones. Subtle electronic drones seem to increase as the album progresses, situating his music as close to an experimental duo like Mountains as that of the new-school Takoma kids.
Brooklyn-based guitarist Steve Gunn, meanwhile, is on a hot streak this year. After an exquisite solo set (“Time Off”), and a mellow collaboration with Hiss Golden Messenger (“Golden Gunn”, on the same label as the Grody album, Three Lobed Recordings), “Cat Mask At Huggie Temple” is more exploratory, moving back into the blues-raga territory of his two Gunn-Truscinski Duo albums. The collective responsible is called Desert Heat and, alongside Gunn, John Truscinski returns on drums, again playing Billy Higgins to Gunn’s Sandy Bull.
These two long jams are given added heft, though, with the addition of Cian Nugent, an Irishman who’s recently shifted from acoustic fingerpicking to a more psychedelic, electric style. Further evidence, perhaps – alongside forthcoming albums from Chris Forsyth and from Nugent with his own band, The Cosmos – that the prevailing underground fashion is for onetime John Fahey acolytes to plug in, without sacrificing intricacy and nuance.
Now That's What I Call Indie...
A five-disc, 130+ track survey of British indie through the 80s that manages to be paradoxically both more and less than meets the eye. With its title – a mangling of the line from Hurrah!’s “Hip Hip” (not included here), which inspired the fanzine, that birthed the Sarah Records label – and sketchy bowlie boy cover star, STGH is selling itself as the definitive, Nuggets-y story of the rise of indie-pop.
But the vagaries of compiling such a boxset hamper this aim. The reluctance of key players like The Pastels or The Vaselines to be involved means that, as a reliable historical account, STGH leaves something to be desired. The aegis of Cherry Red also means that certain labels – Mike Alway’s elegantly eccentric él, for example – are more heavily represented than you might expect. The sheer capacious sprawl of the collection means that the genre is stretched to bursting point, with everyone from The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughters to the TV Personalities. Squint and you can just about see Lloyd Cole as indie-pop, for example (especially in the light of Camera Obscura’s homage), but Prefab Sprout? The Milltown Brothers? Big Flame?
Still, these contingencies frequently work in the collection’s favour. Post-C86, the reification and overdefinition of “indie-pop” (a well-trodden path leading from Buzzcocks and Orange Juice to Belle and Sebastian, via Pastels, Creation and Sarah) has resulted in a rarefied international scene where new groups base careers on re-creating the ambience of a solitary flexi disc by The Wake or a Shop Assistants B-side.
STGH is engaging for its haphazard trip through the back roads of ’80s guitar groups. Like a tape of some random mid-’80s Peel Show or flicking through an old NME, it restores the vivid mess of history, before it was tidied into canons and genres. The chronological sequencing on the first disc canters from Dolly Mixture’s “Everything And More” to Prefab Sprout’s “Lions In My Own Garden (Exit Someone)” via the The Nightingales, Scars, Jane, Farmer’s Boys, The Room and Weekend. The variety diminishes as the set progresses, (disc three, particularly, is a canonical reunion of the usual C86 suspects). Still, the fact the compilers find space for outliers like Jamie Wednesday and The Shamen encourages the idea of indie as an endearingly varied place.
STEPHEN TROUSSÉ
Now That’s What I Call Indie…
A five-disc, 130+ track survey of British indie through the 80s that manages to be paradoxically both more and less than meets the eye. With its title – a mangling of the line from Hurrah!’s “Hip Hip” (not included here), which inspired the fanzine, that birthed the Sarah Records label – and sketchy bowlie boy cover star, STGH is selling itself as the definitive, Nuggets-y story of the rise of indie-pop.
But the vagaries of compiling such a boxset hamper this aim. The reluctance of key players like The Pastels or The Vaselines to be involved means that, as a reliable historical account, STGH leaves something to be desired. The aegis of Cherry Red also means that certain labels – Mike Alway’s elegantly eccentric él, for example – are more heavily represented than you might expect. The sheer capacious sprawl of the collection means that the genre is stretched to bursting point, with everyone from The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughters to the TV Personalities. Squint and you can just about see Lloyd Cole as indie-pop, for example (especially in the light of Camera Obscura’s homage), but Prefab Sprout? The Milltown Brothers? Big Flame?
Still, these contingencies frequently work in the collection’s favour. Post-C86, the reification and overdefinition of “indie-pop” (a well-trodden path leading from Buzzcocks and Orange Juice to Belle and Sebastian, via Pastels, Creation and Sarah) has resulted in a rarefied international scene where new groups base careers on re-creating the ambience of a solitary flexi disc by The Wake or a Shop Assistants B-side.
STGH is engaging for its haphazard trip through the back roads of ’80s guitar groups. Like a tape of some random mid-’80s Peel Show or flicking through an old NME, it restores the vivid mess of history, before it was tidied into canons and genres. The chronological sequencing on the first disc canters from Dolly Mixture’s “Everything And More” to Prefab Sprout’s “Lions In My Own Garden (Exit Someone)” via the The Nightingales, Scars, Jane, Farmer’s Boys, The Room and Weekend. The variety diminishes as the set progresses, (disc three, particularly, is a canonical reunion of the usual C86 suspects). Still, the fact the compilers find space for outliers like Jamie Wednesday and The Shamen encourages the idea of indie as an endearingly varied place.
The line-up has just been announced for this year’s London Film Festival, and it looks like pretty good – with new films from the Coens (yes, it’s that one), Jim Jarmusch, Alexander Payne, Steve McQueen, Jonathan Glazer and Richard Ayoade at the top of our must see list.
It’s worth, too, flagging up this year’s particularly rich selection of music documentaries, including Good O’ Freda, Ryan White’s documentary on Beatles secretary Freda Kelly, Tom Berninger’s National film Mistaken For Strangers, and Sini Anderson’s film about Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKYMHhMeexU
Of the big hitters, the films I’ll be queuing down the front to see include Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity, Steve McQueen's 12 Years A Slave, the Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis, Alexander Payne's Nebraska and Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUQNjfhlREk
Those aside, I’m fascinated to see Frank Pavich’s documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, which explores Alejandro Jodorowsky’s doomed attempt to adapt and film Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel in the mid 1970’s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-oBEGF7uwE
You can find a full list of what’s on – and when – over here. See you in the queue for popcorn…
The 2013 BFI London Film Festival runs from October 9 to October 20. Tickets will go on sale to the public on September 20.
Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner.
The line-up has just been announced for this year’s London Film Festival, and it looks like pretty good – with new films from the Coens (yes, it’s that one), Jim Jarmusch, Alexander Payne, Steve McQueen, Jonathan Glazer and Richard Ayoade at the top of our must see list.
It’s worth, too, flagging up this year’s particularly rich selection of music documentaries, including Good O’ Freda, Ryan White’s documentary on Beatles secretary Freda Kelly, Tom Berninger’s National film Mistaken For Strangers, and Sini Anderson’s film about Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKYMHhMeexU
Of the big hitters, the films I’ll be queuing down the front to see include Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity, Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave, the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis, Alexander Payne’s Nebraska and Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive.
Those aside, I’m fascinated to see Frank Pavich’s documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, which explores Alejandro Jodorowsky’s doomed attempt to adapt and film Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel in the mid 1970’s.
You can find a full list of what’s on – and when – over here. See you in the queue for popcorn…
The 2013 BFI London Film Festival runs from October 9 to October 20. Tickets will go on sale to the public on September 20.
Australian radio DJ Richard Kingsmill has revealed in a Tweet that a new Arcade Fire single will be available on September 9 at 9pm EST.
Rolling Stone report that the band's American label, Merge, has confirmed to the magazine that something connected to the band is due to happen on that date and time.
This is the latest twist in the band's campaign for their fourth album, believed to be called Reflektor.
At the start of August, graffiti images incorporating the word 'reflektor' appeared in a number of cities. Shortly after, the band confirmed their connection to the graffiti.
Meanwhile, the band have recently announced they will score Spike Jonze latest film, Her.
The band have also confirmed live dates for early 2014.
Australian radio DJ Richard Kingsmill has revealed in a Tweet that a new Arcade Fire single will be available on September 9 at 9pm EST.
Rolling Stone report that the band’s American label, Merge, has confirmed to the magazine that something connected to the band is due to happen on that date and time.
This is the latest twist in the band’s campaign for their fourth album, believed to be called Reflektor.
At the start of August, graffiti images incorporating the word ‘reflektor’ appeared in a number of cities. Shortly after, the band confirmed their connection to the graffiti.
Meanwhile, the band have recently announced they will score Spike Jonze latest film, Her.
The band have also confirmed live dates for early 2014.
Five flats on London's Baker Street in what used to be offices belonging to Apple Records have been sold for £10.2 million.
The Apple Apartments, which will be available to rent by the end of the year for between £750 and £1,150 a week, were restored by developer The Malins Group and sold to Middle Eastern investors after just four weeks on the market. London's Evening Standard reports that the flats have a "contemporary design and a splash of Sixties pop culture" and are described by developers as "the ultimate slice of memorabilia". A blue plaque on the exterior of the building marks the link to John Lennon and George Harrison.
Last month (August) it was reported that The Beatles will release a second volume of recordings from their sessions at the BBC. A new collection featuring previously unreleased songs from the Fab Four's sessions with BBC radio in the mid-'60s is set to be released: a follow-up to their 1994 compilation 'Live At The BBC'.
Plans for the new set of recordings were revealed by a Beatles fansite which spotted a Facebook page from MCA Music in the Philippines, which is part of Universal Music, promising the new collection was on its way. The claims have not yet been confirmed by either The Beatles' official website or by Universal's representatives in the UK or US.
Photo: Apple Films Ltd
Five flats on London’s Baker Street in what used to be offices belonging to Apple Records have been sold for £10.2 million.
The Apple Apartments, which will be available to rent by the end of the year for between £750 and £1,150 a week, were restored by developer The Malins Group and sold to Middle Eastern investors after just four weeks on the market. London’s Evening Standard reports that the flats have a “contemporary design and a splash of Sixties pop culture” and are described by developers as “the ultimate slice of memorabilia”. A blue plaque on the exterior of the building marks the link to John Lennon and George Harrison.
Last month (August) it was reported that The Beatles will release a second volume of recordings from their sessions at the BBC. A new collection featuring previously unreleased songs from the Fab Four’s sessions with BBC radio in the mid-’60s is set to be released: a follow-up to their 1994 compilation ‘Live At The BBC’.
Plans for the new set of recordings were revealed by a Beatles fansite which spotted a Facebook page from MCA Music in the Philippines, which is part of Universal Music, promising the new collection was on its way. The claims have not yet been confirmed by either The Beatles’ official website or by Universal’s representatives in the UK or US.
Arctic Monkeys are streaming their forthcoming album AM online.
The album, which is released on September 9, is now available to listen to via iTunes.
The band's fifth studio album features guests including Josh Homme and former member of The Coral, Bill Ryder-Jones. See below for a full tracklist...
Arctic Monkeys are streaming their forthcoming album AM online.
The album, which is released on September 9, is now available to listen to via iTunes.
The band’s fifth studio album features guests including Josh Homme and former member of The Coral, Bill Ryder-Jones. See below for a full tracklisting.
As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, a big backlog of music to work through here. And while I try and offer some fractionally different recommendations away from the usual media pile-ons (Oh look, Haim etc), this Janelle Monáe album is terrific and I totally recommend having a listen on The Guardian’s stream: very much in the zone of “The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill” (especially “Victory”).
Elsewhere, those of you who’ve been worried about some kind of Black Keys-style streamlining of White Denim can relax: “Corsicana Lemonade” has plenty of the progressive garage-choogle, or whatever, as requested. Also sounding especially good on first listen: the new Cian Nugent and Chris Forsyth full band sets; Carlton Melton’s “Always Even”; and a business-as-usual outtake from the last Date Palms album. More as I get it/listen to it a second/third/fourth/etc time…
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1 White Denim – Corsicana Lemonade (Downtown)
2 Giorgio Moroder – E=MC2 (Repertoire)
3 Date Palms – Sky Trails (Thrill Jockey)
4 Cian Nugent & The Cosmos – Born With The Caul (No Quarter)
5 Blitzen Trapper – VII (Lojinx)
6 Lonnie Holley – Six Space Shuttles And 144,00 Elephants (Dust-To-Digital)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UKGmCMBP9E
7 Chris Forsyth – Solar Motel (Paradise Of Bachelors)
8 Matthew E White – Outer Face EP (Domino)
9 Various Artists – I Am The Center: Private Issue New Age Music In America 1950-1990 (Light In The Attic)
10 Carlton Melton – Always Even (Agitated)
11 The Dirtbombs – Ooey Gooey Chewy Ka-Blooey! (In The Red)
12 Damon – Song Of A Gypsy (Now Again)
13 Lee Ranaldo & The Dust – Last Night On Earth (Matador)
14 Euros Childs – Situation Comedy (National Elf)
15 The Celebrate Music Synthesizer Group - Warung Mini (Drag City)
16 Israel Nash Gripka - Israel Nash’s Rain Plains (Loose)
17 Dino Valente – Dino Valente (Tompkins Square)
18 The Grateful Dead – Sunshine Daydream (Rhino)
19 Janelle Monáe – Electric Lady (Atlantic)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEddixS-UoU
As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, a big backlog of music to work through here. And while I try and offer some fractionally different recommendations away from the usual media pile-ons (Oh look, Haim etc), this Janelle Monáe album is terrific and I totally recommend having a listen on The Guardian’s stream: very much in the zone of “The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill” (especially “Victory”).
Elsewhere, those of you who’ve been worried about some kind of Black Keys-style streamlining of White Denim can relax: “Corsicana Lemonade” has plenty of the progressive garage-choogle, or whatever, as requested. Also sounding especially good on first listen: the new Cian Nugent and Chris Forsyth full band sets; Carlton Melton’s “Always Even”; and a business-as-usual outtake from the last Date Palms album. More as I get it/listen to it a second/third/fourth/etc time…
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1 White Denim – Corsicana Lemonade (Downtown)
2 Giorgio Moroder – E=MC2 (Repertoire)
3 Date Palms – Sky Trails (Thrill Jockey)
4 Cian Nugent & The Cosmos – Born With The Caul (No Quarter)
5 Blitzen Trapper – VII (Lojinx)
6 Lonnie Holley – Six Space Shuttles And 144,00 Elephants (Dust-To-Digital)
7 Chris Forsyth – Solar Motel (Paradise Of Bachelors)
8 Matthew E White – Outer Face EP (Domino)
9 Various Artists – I Am The Center: Private Issue New Age Music In America 1950-1990 (Light In The Attic)
10 Carlton Melton – Always Even (Agitated)
11 The Dirtbombs – Ooey Gooey Chewy Ka-Blooey! (In The Red)
12 Damon – Song Of A Gypsy (Now Again)
13 Lee Ranaldo & The Dust – Last Night On Earth (Matador)
14 Euros Childs – Situation Comedy (National Elf)
15 The Celebrate Music Synthesizer Group – Warung Mini (Drag City)
16 Israel Nash Gripka – Israel Nash’s Rain Plains (Loose)
I guess there are probably worse jobs to return to after a fortnight’s holiday. I arrived back in the Uncut office yesterday to be greeted by a big pile of new releases, which I’m still picking my way through. Currently playing: Track Two of Damon’s reissued “Song Of A Gypsy” – “Generally regarded,” it says here in the press release, “as one of the finest privately-pressed psychedelic rock records” of the late ‘60s. We shall see.
It’s been easy to be distracted these past 24 hours by reissues of records that were barely released in the first place: a big chunk of yesterday afternoon was consumed by a beatific comp titled “I Am The Center: Private Issue New Age In America, 1950-1990”. Some vintage New Age music is being deservedly reassessed at the moment, as you might have divined from the Rediscovered! review of Iasos in the current Uncut.
Also waiting for me in my inbox yesterday was an interview for next month’s mag with sometime Eno collaborator, the spiritually elevated Laraaji. Laraaji, I learn, is “currently learning the didgeridoo and has a sideline in laughter workshops”. His lovely music never worked well in clubs, apparently, because it “would put people into trance states. And people in a trance don’t buy drinks.”
Laraaji also talks about sharing Eno’s ideas about ambient music: “It’s music that you can just be in – it doesn’t require you to think.” Which is probably why it’s so useful to have on while you’re working. Of course, that’s not always what we require from music, and maybe a few of the new records which have turned up while I’ve been away – White Denim’s “Corsicana Lemonade, Lee Ranaldo & The Dust’s “Last Night On Earth”, new jams from Chris Forsyth and Cian Nugent, plenty more stuff I haven’t had time to play yet – are rather more arresting.
I’ll write about these some more in a playlist blog in the next day or two, and include a few things for you all to hear. But in the meantime, this is incredible, I think: the lead track from Matthew E White’s new “Outer Face” EP. It’s called “Hot, Hot, Hot” and it sounds extremely roughly like how “Gris Gris” might have worked out if it had been produced by the Tropicalia scene’s maestro of orchestration and sound collage, Rogério Duprat.
White was, by all accounts, one of the highlights of the End Of The Road festival last weekend, which Uncut was proudly involved with this year. Tom was there blogging, among other things, throughout the weekend, and you can read his reports on Belle & Sebastian, Eels , David Byrne & St Vincent and plenty more here.
And if you fancy telling us your highlights of the festival – or indeed want to talk about anything – I’m happy to announce that, this morning, we opened a new comments system on all our blogs (There’s no need to use Facebook to talk to us any more, if you’re averse to that sort of thing). Don’t be a stranger; or, as it kept reiterating on all those Deadline Day liveblogs I wasted half of yesterday reading, GET INVOLVED!
Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey
Photograph: Pieter M Van Hattem
I guess there are probably worse jobs to return to after a fortnight’s holiday. I arrived back in the Uncut office yesterday to be greeted by a big pile of new releases, which I’m still picking my way through. Currently playing: Track Two of Damon’s reissued “Song Of A Gypsy” – “Generally regarded,” it says here in the press release, “as one of the finest privately-pressed psychedelic rock records” of the late ‘60s. We shall see.
It’s been easy to be distracted these past 24 hours by reissues of records that were barely released in the first place: a big chunk of yesterday afternoon was consumed by a beatific comp titled “I Am The Center: Private Issue New Age In America, 1950-1990”. Some vintage New Age music is being deservedly reassessed at the moment, as you might have divined from the Rediscovered! review of Iasos in the current Uncut.
Also waiting for me in my inbox yesterday was an interview for next month’s mag with sometime Eno collaborator, the spiritually elevated Laraaji. Laraaji, I learn, is “currently learning the didgeridoo and has a sideline in laughter workshops”. His lovely music never worked well in clubs, apparently, because it “would put people into trance states. And people in a trance don’t buy drinks.”
Laraaji also talks about sharing Eno’s ideas about ambient music: “It’s music that you can just be in – it doesn’t require you to think.” Which is probably why it’s so useful to have on while you’re working. Of course, that’s not always what we require from music, and maybe a few of the new records which have turned up while I’ve been away – White Denim’s “Corsicana Lemonade, Lee Ranaldo & The Dust’s “Last Night On Earth”, new jams from Chris Forsyth and Cian Nugent, plenty more stuff I haven’t had time to play yet – are rather more arresting.
I’ll write about these some more in a playlist blog in the next day or two, and include a few things for you all to hear. But in the meantime, this is incredible, I think: the lead track from Matthew E White’s new “Outer Face” EP. It’s called “Hot, Hot, Hot” and it sounds extremely roughly like how “Gris Gris” might have worked out if it had been produced by the Tropicalia scene’s maestro of orchestration and sound collage, Rogério Duprat.
White was, by all accounts, one of the highlights of the End Of The Road festival last weekend, which Uncut was proudly involved with this year. Tom was there blogging, among other things, throughout the weekend, and you can read his reports on Belle & Sebastian, Eels , David Byrne & St Vincent and plenty more here.
And if you fancy telling us your highlights of the festival – or indeed want to talk about anything – I’m happy to announce that, this morning, we opened a new comments system on all our blogs (There’s no need to use Facebook to talk to us any more, if you’re averse to that sort of thing). Don’t be a stranger; or, as it kept reiterating on all those Deadline Day liveblogs I wasted half of yesterday reading, GET INVOLVED!
Pixies have released a brand new EP and video today (September 3).
The four-track EP, titled EP-1, was recorded at Rockfield Studios in Wales and was produced by Gil Norton, who also helmed previous Pixies releases Dolittle (1989), Bossanova (1990) and Trompe Le Monde (1991). Also released today i...
Pixies have released a brand new EP and video today (September 3).
The four-track EP, titled EP-1, was recorded at Rockfield Studios in Wales and was produced by Gil Norton, who also helmed previous Pixies releases Dolittle (1989), Bossanova (1990) and Trompe Le Monde (1991). Also released today is the first video from the EP, for the track “Indie Cindy”, which you can watch below.
The trackslisting for ‘EP-1’ is as follows:
‘Andro Queen’
‘Another Toe In The Ocean’
‘Indie Cindy’
‘What Goes Boom’
Last month (August 16), Frank Black teased the new material by posting a Vine which appeared to show him singing along to a new song. The clip followed the release of their comeback single ‘Bagboy’ in June.
Pixies recently announced four UK and Ireland dates this November (2013) as part of the first leg of a “massive world tour”. They’ll be joined on the tour by new bassist Kim Shattuck, who previously played with The Muffs and The Pandoras. Original bass player Kim Deal confirmed she was leaving the band in June.
The new Pixies line-up will play Dublin’s Olympia on November 18, before crossing the Irish Sea for gigs at Manchester Apollo on November 21, Glasgow’s Barrowland on November 22 and London’s Hammersmith Apollo on November 24 and 25.
David Crosby has revealed details of his forthcoming album on Twitter.
Crosby - who's been providing regular Twitter updates about the album over the last few months - confirmed last night [September 2] the album title and release date, as well as provided more information about the guest musicians...
David Crosby has revealed details of his forthcoming album on Twitter.
Crosby – who’s been providing regular Twitter updates about the album over the last few months – confirmed last night [September 2] the album title and release date, as well as provided more information about the guest musicians who’ve played on it.
In the first Tweet, Crosby wrote: “OK I think it is done ….a brand new David Crosby record…..11 tracks …all new ….I love it ….”
He followed it up by naming the album “Dangerous Night… we finished mixing it tonight… myself… Son James… and friend Dan Garcia….not like anything else”
“Can’t wait to play this live which I should be able to do in Feb. Or March… mostly just can’t wait for you to hear it”
“Probably going to piss off the government again… one of the songs ‘Morning Falling‘ is about a drone strike”
“Most of the others are about life and love… but just as usual…strange and hopefully beautiful”
“I think it will come out in Jan. probably sell at least 18 copies….”
“Players… James Raymond, Marcus Eaton, Steve DiStanislao, Kevin McCormick, Shane Fontayne, Lee Sklar, Steve Tavaglione, Wynton Marsalis”
According to a report in London's Evening Standard last night [September 2], David Bowie is reluctant to make his long-awaited live comeback because he is experiencing nerves over the prospect of returning to the stage.
Earlier in the day, representatives working for Bowie have said the singer still has "no current plans" to perform live following reports he has been offered a multi-million pound deal to play in London next year.
Live Nation reportedly offered Bowie a lucrative deal to play live at the Olympic Park in East London in 2014. The tabloid reports that the company has close links with Bowie’s tour agent John Giddings and are confident of securing a deal. Rival promoters AEG are also expected to lodge an offer with Hyde Park likely to be their venue of choice.
However, asked to confirm the reports of the offer, a spokesperson for David Bowie told NME: "There are currently no plans for any live dates."
Earlier this year Michael Eavis has said that he is sure Bowie could headline Glastonbury again. The singer is being tipped to play the 2014 event, having previously headlined the festival in 1971 and 2000.
Eavis said: "The younger ones sort out most of the music, but I like to book the headline names...I can't tell you at the moment who that will be as we're still talking to people. David's done it a couple of times before but I'm sure he could come back again."
According to a report in London’s Evening Standard last night [September 2], David Bowie is reluctant to make his long-awaited live comeback because he is experiencing nerves over the prospect of returning to the stage.
Earlier in the day, representatives working for Bowie have said the singer still has “no current plans” to perform live following reports he has been offered a multi-million pound deal to play in London next year.
Live Nation reportedly offered Bowie a lucrative deal to play live at the Olympic Park in East London in 2014. The tabloid reports that the company has close links with Bowie’s tour agent John Giddings and are confident of securing a deal. Rival promoters AEG are also expected to lodge an offer with Hyde Park likely to be their venue of choice.
However, asked to confirm the reports of the offer, a spokesperson for David Bowie told NME: “There are currently no plans for any live dates.”
Earlier this year Michael Eavis has said that he is sure Bowie could headline Glastonbury again. The singer is being tipped to play the 2014 event, having previously headlined the festival in 1971 and 2000.
Eavis said: “The younger ones sort out most of the music, but I like to book the headline names…I can’t tell you at the moment who that will be as we’re still talking to people. David’s done it a couple of times before but I’m sure he could come back again.”
DVD debut of long-unavailable concert footage from 1996, with bonus backstage access...
As their recent shows confirmed, there are few more glorious sights in rock'n'roll than Neil Young & Crazy Horse in full flow, a bunch of grizzled old geezers galumphing round the stage like golems trying to party. In this Jim Jarmusch concert documentary shot in 1996, that quality is splendidly on show throughout the live segments, most notably the raw, raucous version of "Fuckin' Up" that seems to smoulder right through the screen. This isn't older musicians trying to sustain some delusion of youthful potency; this is a bunch of middle-aged men, led by a surly, stomping guitarist in baggy knee-length shorts and a nondescript T-shirt. But the very lack of self-conscious stagecraft carries with it the implication that what you're being given is something purely musical, unmediated by modern digital strategies that demand everything be a multi-platform, multi-media, interactive experience. It's pure rock'n'roll, as the introductory tagline explains, "Made loud to be played loud. CRANK IT UP!".
Jarmusch filmed a couple of dates, at a Roman amphitheatre in Vienne, France, and at The Gorge, in Washington state, in Super-8 film, the grainy quality of which matches both the attitude of the band's performance, and the earlier backstage footage from 1976 and 1986 which, along with more recent interviews, punctuates the music. It's all neatly stitched together - the "Fuckin' Up" performance, for instance, slips straight into a backstage argument from Rotterdam in 1986 between Young and bassist Billy Talbot about somebody fucking up that performance: Young is heated, furiously demanding, and Talbot gives as good as he gets in return, an indication of the untrammelled flow of energy within the band. Elsewhere, we get to see the 1976 band in dumb rock-tour mode, burning fake flowers in a Glasgow hotel room, and there's a brilliant, brief moment from that tour showing Young smashing his head on a table in mock-exhaustion as he's about to be interviewed by Richard Williams.
It's far from the ideal Neil and Crazy Horse setlist, with only a handful of classics – including a version of "Tonight's The Night" following a segment about the deaths of Danny Whitten and Bruce Berry – sprinkled parsimoniously through the show. But it barely matters: as Young maintains, "It's all one song," an ongoing flow of music hewn into eight-to ten-minute chunks. And any technical effects are kept to a minimum, and used subtly, as when stage footage of the band playing "Slips Away" is blended with a tour bus shot of passing sky and landscape.
The most dramatic moment, though, comes during "Like A Hurricane", which begins in usual manner, as if the song is being wrenched physically from the sound, like a tectonic plate shifting free, the kind of suitably elemental approach that no other bunch of ndad-rockers would dare attempt - then suddenly, seamlessly segues into a younger, thinner-faced Neil playing the song at Hammersmith Odeon in 1976. It's a startling coup de cinéma which perfectly illustrates his earlier contention that "the older we get, the more we realise how special it is".
Andy Gill
DVD debut of long-unavailable concert footage from 1996, with bonus backstage access…
As their recent shows confirmed, there are few more glorious sights in rock’n’roll than Neil Young & Crazy Horse in full flow, a bunch of grizzled old geezers galumphing round the stage like golems trying to party. In this Jim Jarmusch concert documentary shot in 1996, that quality is splendidly on show throughout the live segments, most notably the raw, raucous version of “Fuckin’ Up” that seems to smoulder right through the screen. This isn’t older musicians trying to sustain some delusion of youthful potency; this is a bunch of middle-aged men, led by a surly, stomping guitarist in baggy knee-length shorts and a nondescript T-shirt. But the very lack of self-conscious stagecraft carries with it the implication that what you’re being given is something purely musical, unmediated by modern digital strategies that demand everything be a multi-platform, multi-media, interactive experience. It’s pure rock’n’roll, as the introductory tagline explains, “Made loud to be played loud. CRANK IT UP!”.
Jarmusch filmed a couple of dates, at a Roman amphitheatre in Vienne, France, and at The Gorge, in Washington state, in Super-8 film, the grainy quality of which matches both the attitude of the band’s performance, and the earlier backstage footage from 1976 and 1986 which, along with more recent interviews, punctuates the music. It’s all neatly stitched together – the “Fuckin’ Up” performance, for instance, slips straight into a backstage argument from Rotterdam in 1986 between Young and bassist Billy Talbot about somebody fucking up that performance: Young is heated, furiously demanding, and Talbot gives as good as he gets in return, an indication of the untrammelled flow of energy within the band. Elsewhere, we get to see the 1976 band in dumb rock-tour mode, burning fake flowers in a Glasgow hotel room, and there’s a brilliant, brief moment from that tour showing Young smashing his head on a table in mock-exhaustion as he’s about to be interviewed by Richard Williams.
It’s far from the ideal Neil and Crazy Horse setlist, with only a handful of classics – including a version of “Tonight’s The Night” following a segment about the deaths of Danny Whitten and Bruce Berry – sprinkled parsimoniously through the show. But it barely matters: as Young maintains, “It’s all one song,” an ongoing flow of music hewn into eight-to ten-minute chunks. And any technical effects are kept to a minimum, and used subtly, as when stage footage of the band playing “Slips Away” is blended with a tour bus shot of passing sky and landscape.
The most dramatic moment, though, comes during “Like A Hurricane“, which begins in usual manner, as if the song is being wrenched physically from the sound, like a tectonic plate shifting free, the kind of suitably elemental approach that no other bunch of ndad-rockers would dare attempt – then suddenly, seamlessly segues into a younger, thinner-faced Neil playing the song at Hammersmith Odeon in 1976. It’s a startling coup de cinéma which perfectly illustrates his earlier contention that “the older we get, the more we realise how special it is”.
Arctic Monkeys debuted a new track "Arabella" at Zurich Open Air Festival.
It was the first time the band have played the track live. "Arabella" is taken from their forthcoming album AM. You can watch the band perform the song by scrolling down the page.
AM is set for release on September 9 and al...
Arctic Monkeys debuted a new track “Arabella” at Zurich Open Air Festival.
It was the first time the band have played the track live. “Arabella” is taken from their forthcoming album AM. You can watch the band perform the song by scrolling down the page.
AM is set for release on September 9 and also features the tracks “R U Mine?” and “Do I Wanna Know?”. Guests on the album include Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme and former member of The Coral, Bill Ryder-Jones.
In next week’s issue of NME (available from Wednesday, September 4) , we speak to the Arctic Monkeys about their fifth album. We went into their studio as they rehearsed their new material – including “Arabella” – and discovered that frontman Alex Turner plans to put down his guitar for the band’s live shows so that he can dance around more.
Later this year, Arctic Monkeys will embark on a nine-date UK tour including a homecoming gig at Sheffield’s Motorpoint Arena. Starting in Newcastle at the Metro Radio Arena on October 22, the tour will then visit Manchester, London, Liverpool, Cardiff, Birmingham and Glasgow before ending with the Sheffield gig on November 2. The Strypes will support on all dates.
