News
by Luke Slater
Of course you're probably familiar with the solo works of Euros Childs, former frontman and founder for Gorky's Zygotic Mynci. But there were other people in that band, too. And they also have solo projects, including bassist Richard James, who releases his second solo record on June 21. »
News
by Luke Slater
Bassist of masked collective Slipknot, Paul Gray, has been found dead in a hotel room in America, aged just 38, reports have confirmed. The founding member of the group was discovered by an employee of the Town Plaza hotel in Urbandale, Des Moines, Iowa - where Slipknot hail from.»
News
by Luke Slater
Former Wilco guitarist Jay Bennett died a year ago to the day, and now a foundation has been formed in his name - an organisation which will support both music and education. Education through music in fact. »
News
by Luke Slater
Arguably it could do with a few more vocals but, y'know, maybe I'm just feeling a bit irritated and stuffy on a day such as today. I spilt my melting Mini Milk on my black t-shirt this afternoon, which did not please me. It does, however, wind right up really slowly. Then it releases. And you understand what the fuss was all about. It's liberating, maaaaaan.»
News
by Luke Slater
London-based folk troubadour Johnny Flynn releases his second album, Been Listening, on June 7 through Transgressive. It features a total of 11 tracks, one of which is a duet with high-flying peer Laura Marling. Now there's a five-track sampler of the record to stream through SoundCloud, which features the aforementioned duet with Marling, entitled 'The Water'.»
News
by Luke Slater
Last week's chart news thingamy was the first for quite a while. This one obviously isn't. Though there's perhaps less 'indie' interest than last week (Foals, National etc.) Still, there arrives good news in some ways that The Rolling Stones have clocked »
News
by Luke Slater
Fresh from finishing their current jaunt over here at Radio 1's One Big Weekend Paramore have just released dates of another trip over this side of the Atlantic, featuring a whole six dates in England and Scotland. Five of them take place in England, but still. »
News
by Luke Slater
This last weekend just gone was Radio 1's Big Weekend. I think ONE BIG WEEKEND is the proper title for it all but anyway. It took place in Bangor, North Wales which, though I've never been, I'm assured it's lovely. A fair few artists performed, as you'd expect, like Cheryl Cole, Justin Bieber and The Black Eyed Peas.»
News
by Luke Slater
Lily Allen won a hattrick of Ivor Novello awards for songwriting, at the awards ceremony yesterday in London. Other notable winners included Nathasha Khan a.k.a. Bat For Lashes and Paolo Nutini. »
News
by Luke Slater
We've been waiting far too long for the next Arcade Fire album. The last one was over three years ago now. Hurry up already. Oh, what's this? Some new material? Sweet. Or not. The clips are quite short and obviously don't give a true indication of a) the whole song b) the whole record and c) much. But it's promising from what we hear! Listen for yourself below. Clips are about 10 seconds or so long and will repeat incessantly. »
News
by Luke Slater
Fans of the expansive-rock (this is the new euphemism for modern prog, by the way) as absolute heroes of the genre The Mars Volta have revealed that they're starting work on their new album, their first since last year's Octahedron, which received a reasonable reception from us (via StereoKill and our own boards.»
News
by Luke Slater
The first 6Music protest 'event' took place at the end of March in a bid to save the doomed radio station from closure. There were drinks, lots of people and even a few bands, who all gathered outside Broadcast House in London. »
News
by Luke Slater
It was only yesterday that we were talking about artists releasing two albums in one calendar year, as is the case with Laura Marling. The sufficiently-older Eels will be doing the same thing in 2010, as they'll release the follow-up to January's End Time»
In Depth by Luke Slater
Sincerest and most super apologies for a recent deficiency in Spotify playlists. We get all the way to 42 without missing a single one and then BAM! there's only one in three weeks. That's just how these things go sometimes. But we hope we make up for it with this week's varied offering, featuring Crystal Castles, Grails, Tweak Bird, Zola Jesus, Atlas Sound, Toro Y Moi and plenty more for you to get your lugholes round. »
News
by Luke Slater
That Laura Marling is in danger of being too productive. Already two fine, fine records under her belt (the better of which being her latest, I Speak Because I Can. Later in the year she's releasing her third full-length record, after previewing (presumab»
News
by Luke Slater
Whilst the news that The Roots and "Brooklyn Hipster Indie" types Dirty Projectors are working together may comes a surprise to some of you, it doesn't to us and the rest of you given that a) Questlove from The Roots plays drums for the house band on Fallon and b) because of this he tends to hang around with some of the most hip and happening bands in the known universe, including the DP. Oh, and c) they recently revealed that they'd been working with Joanna Newsom in a manner of speaking.»
News
by Luke Slater
What the hell? Zola Jesus hasn't even released a UK single yet? That's just crazy. This is all going to stop very soon, however, as the 21-year-old Arizonan will be unleashing 'Night' unto the masses of English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish on June 14, through the ever-brilliant Souterrain Transmissions. That precedes the released of an EP , entitled Stridulum II, following on from the release of Stridulum. »
News
by Luke Slater
Over the last few years we've run out of adjectives to describe what Dananananaykroyd are like live. We could probably come up with something stupid like "the moment the Bubblegum pops and stick to your face, but in musical form" but that's fairly nonsensical. It would suffice to say that you'd have to actually experience it live. A wall of hugs?! Oh, go on then!»
News
by Luke Slater
This may not be news to many of you, as the announcement's been out for a couple of weeks but as we neglected to run it when it was first announced then we thought we'd make up with for it now. Yeah. So that's exactly what we're doing. »
News
by Luke Slater
Um, yeah. It's not like we've got an over-60s remit or anything, even though it may seem that way in the past couple of days. Honestly. But we thought in a well-that's-strange-but-I-might-try-it-anyway sort of way that you'd be interested to know that Saint Paul McCartney is indulging in a live webchat this afternoon.»
News
by Luke Slater
The Camden Crawl may have finished a little while ago but arriving very, very recently are some video clips of a few of our favourites - and hopefully yours - playing 'sessions' during the festival (sponsored by Gaymers Cider). These include Veronica Fall»
News
by Luke Slater
We know as well as you do that Tom Jones is not among our standard fare of coverage but, we do try and be quite broad minded about these things. We were unsure ourselves until we actually heard the track in question. It's a cover of a Bob Dylan song, but »
News
by Luke Slater
It's probably fair to say that the name of Toro Y Moi has seen frequent usage over the past year or so. Partially as a leader of a genre which I'm not entirely sure exists in real life. Still, we can appreciate the quality of the music (the record itself »
News
by Luke Slater
We've been waiting for another visual masterpiece from Brent Knopf's Ramona Falls ever since we first saw the video for the bellowing brilliance of 'I Say Fever'. Well, OK, we spent a good few weeks marvelling in the video for it, and trying to work out what, if anything, the video made.»
News
by Luke Slater
Now, we're not usually ones to post grainy and low-quality YouTube clips of artists performing 'new' material, mainly because it's not good for the listener to receive the work in that manner and b) it's even less good for the artist for their work to be heard in substandard form. You could argue that we've already made an exception for the recent Le Tigre vs. Christina track.»
News
by Luke Slater
Remember back in February when there was all this noise about Christina Aguilera collaborating with Le Tigre? Was it exciting times or just generally quite ambivalent times for you? Anyway, some of us were intrigued if not excited about what the hell this fusion of fantastic musical minds would produce. »
News
by Luke Slater
Oh dear. Bad news for lovers of the heavy stuff as behemoths of the genre, Isis, have decided to call it a day, some thirteen years after their birth. It was a good life, for sure. The band detailed the reasons in a mammoth blog post on their...ahem...blog.»
News
by Luke Slater
Sisterly folkish duo CocoRosie have started to scare me these last few months, what with their album covers and indeed some of the weird and unconventional vocalisations on their new record, Grey Oceans.»