Music news

• Seven Davis Jr: Universes review – funk swagger and 90s house gets 21st-century makeover

  23-07-2015 23:30
  
  (Ninja Tune) There’s nothing new about blowing the dust off an old genre and presenting it as something fresh. For Paloma Faith, Michael Bublé and just about any recent 90s-referencing guitar band, it’s the basis of an entire career. Thankfully singer-producer Seven Davis Jr also updates the styles he is reviving, dragging a mixture of funk swagger and 90s house into the 21st century on his debut. He recalls Prince on No Worries, while Fighters tiptoes around race issues and violence
  
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• Strange Wilds: Subjective Concepts review – decent but typical grunge-punk

  23-07-2015 23:15
  
  (Sub Pop) A renamed version of Wet (the west-coast four piece, not the Brooklyn synth-pop trio), Strange Wilds are an Olympia band in both sound and spirit. Their debut album is firmly embedded in the Pacific north-west’s grunge tradition and the wider west coast’s hardcore roots. Tracks reference the scuzzy repetition of Nirvana and Mudhoney (Pronia, Autothysis, Oneirophobe), while others veer into the unapologetic hardcore of Sub Pop labelmates Metz and Sacramento malcontents Trash Ta
  
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• Field Music: Music for Drifters review – shoals of silver daring

  23-07-2015 23:00
  
  (Memphis Industries)Here’s one for the heads: David and Peter Brewis’s latest endeavour is a 20-track cinematic score for Drifters, a seminal film documenting the UK’s herring fishing industry in 1929. It evokes the ferocious waters that smashed against the north-eastern coastline and brought in the bounty, with the brothers conveying the clash of tradition and modernity by dextrously applying their gawky time signatures and inquisitive melodies. In other hands, such a concept might be mud
  
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• Faith No More: 'We’ve made bad decisions our whole career. That’s why the English champion us'

  23-07-2015 22:54
  
  Once they were punk misfits, who upset their crowd with metal covers. Then they got confused for metallers, and irked that audience with Commodores songs. Now, the re-formed band are suprised to find that fans love them for their contrarinessWhen the Californian rock band Faith No More broke up in 1998, they released the perfect swansong. Despite their mainstream success and festival-headliner status, their quixotic, dysfunctional career was fundamentally defined by kamikaze contrarianism and a
  
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• Faith No More: 'We’ve made bad decisions our whole career. That’s why the English champion us'

  23-07-2015 22:54
  Once they were punk misfits, who upset their crowd with metal covers. Then they got confused for metallers, and irked that audience with Commodores songs. Now, the re-formed band are suprised to find that fans love them for their contrarinessWhen the Californian rock band Faith No More broke up in 1998, they released the perfect swansong. Despite their mainstream success and festival-headliner status, their quixotic, dysfunctional career was fundamentally defined by kamikaze contrarianism and a
  
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• Omar Souleyman: Bahdeni Nami review – irresistible, hyperactive electronica

  23-07-2015 22:45
  
  (Monkeytown) Related: Omar Souleyman – Bahdeni Nami: album stream For those unfamiliar with the music of Omar Souleyman, the Syrian wedding singer who transformed traditional dabke music into a hyperactive electronic stomp, it’s not like much else. It’s so fast that the only appropriate way to engage with it is to wriggle your limbs. Melodies are both abrasive and ebullient, chattering endlessly like raucous birdsong. For those who are – his 2013 album, Wenu Wenu, won him many
  
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• 10 former Chilean soldiers charged in Victor Jara killing

  23-07-2015 22:39
  
  SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — A judge has charged 10 former soldiers in the killing of internationally renowned Chilean folk singer and political activist Victor Jara, who was tortured and shot to death just days after the country's 1973 coup.
  
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• Music Review: Watkins duo gives everyone a turn at the mike

  23-07-2015 22:36
  
  Watkins Family Hour, "Watkins Family Hour" (Family Hour Records)
  
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• Impossible

  23-07-2015 22:34 via mtv.co.uk
  
  Impossible
  
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• Counting Down The Days

  23-07-2015 22:34 via mtv.co.uk
  
  Counting Down The Days
  
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• Vinyl Williams: Into review – fitfully intriguing, with stretches of inertia

  23-07-2015 22:30
  
  (Company)
  His grandfather may be legendary film composer John Williams, but you can’t imagine Lionel “Vinyl” Williams soundtracking the travails of velociraptors or X-Wing pilots, unless it’s for a scene in a pop-up cronut bar on Tatooine. He trades in on-trend dreampop, and as the dreams of others tend to be, it’s intermittently intriguing but hard to get excited about. The strongest tracks, such as Gold Lodge, echo James Pants’ grubby funk or Stereolab’s music for moon
  
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• The Chemical Brothers: Born in the Echoes review – sturdy, well made and creatively bereft

  23-07-2015 22:15
  
  (EMI) Related: The Chemical Brothers: ‘We’ve been together longer than a lot of marriages’ The dance duo extend the decade-long dilution of their canon with their new record, which is as technically accomplished as ever, but creatively exhausted. Perhaps trying to avoid the crass build-drop-build of EDM and trap, tracks such as Under Neon Lights (featuring a wasted St Vincent) vacillate weakly in the middle ground. Other producers, such as Barnt and Jon Hopkins, are ripped o
  
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• Lamb Of God: VII: Sturm und Drang review – ferocious and focused

  23-07-2015 22:00
  
  (Roadrunner)The past few years have been somewhat eventful for Lamb of God, not least owing to frontman Randy Blythe’s trial on manslaughter charges in the Czech Republic. Exonerated and free to roar anew, Blythe clearly has plenty of fresh axes to grind on his band’s seventh studio album. With songs about the violent history of Prague’s Pankrác prison (Still Echoes), politically motivated self-immolation (Torches) and the bloody aftermath of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich,
  
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• Readers recommend: songs about trash | Peter Kimpton

  23-07-2015 21:00
  
  Rubbish? Garbage? Litter? Landfill or recycled, tip out your music collections to find throwaway treasures that may refer to objects, talk, situations or feelings
  “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” said Hector Urquhart in his introduction to Popular Tales of the West Highlands (1860). Was he talking a load of rubbish? Well, his words actually pertained to fairy eggs – floating seashore objects – and also stories themselves, seen as dubious by some, and magical by others. Bu
  
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• Hip hop on top as Kanye West beats Bob Dylan in breadth of lyrical vocabulary

  23-07-2015 21:00
  
  Analysis of vocabulary used by 99 of the biggest-selling artists finds Eminem and Kanye West streets ahead of Dylan and the Beatles for number of words used
  He has been hailed a genius,and described as the greatest songwriter America has ever produced. But new research pitting the lyrical breadth of Bob Dylan against some of today’s most successful rap artists suggests the times they are a-changing. Analysis of the vocabulary used by 99 biggest-selling artists has revealed that the lyrical voc
  
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• SoundCloud Running “Dangerously Low on Cash,” Sources Report…

  23-07-2015 20:51
  
  Streaming mega-giant SoundCloud is now close to exhausting its available financing, according to three individuals close to the organization.  SoundCloud, whose valuation recently soared past $700...
  The post SoundCloud Running “Dangerously Low on Cash,” Sources Report… appeared first on Digital Music News.
  
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• Competitors Spotify and Beatport Decide to Team Up…

  23-07-2015 20:36
  
  SFX Entertainment-owned Beatport has partnered with Spotify. Beatport will distribute exclusive music and video content to Spotify, including music exclusive to Beatport and SFX programming....
  The post Competitors Spotify and Beatport Decide to Team Up… appeared first on Digital Music News.
  
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• Hallé orchestral concerts deserve the audience’s full attention | Letters

  23-07-2015 20:25
  
  Many concert-goers, like me, will be disappointed that the Hallé is planning to allow patrons at its orchestral concerts to come and go as they please, and to bring drinks into the auditorium (Report, theguardian.com, 21 July). This strikes me as a case of making music more “accessible” to some, while rendering it less accessible to others. Reference books provide evidence of how much time and effort composers put into the production of their works. Similarly, orchestral musician
  
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• Tim Richards Hextet: Telegraph Hill review – funky soul-jazz and hard bop

  23-07-2015 20:00
  
  (Tim Richards/Track)British composer-pianist Tim Richards doesn’t record often, but this set for his six-piece band confirms that his attractive 30-year-long agenda – smartly composed adaptations of the funky soul-jazz and hard bop styles, shrewd band-leading choices of talented old hands and gifted newcomers – remains in good shape. All 10 tracks are by the band (six are old and new Richards originals), and the lineup includes the subtly boppish former Ronnie Scott trumpeter Dick Pearce,
  
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• Executive Shuffles: YouTube, SFX Entertainment, PPL, Peter Jones…

  23-07-2015 19:54
  
  YouTube has hired Susanne Daniels away from MTV, where she was President of Programming. Daniels is now VP of YouTube Originals, an area YouTube is getting serious about....
  The post Executive Shuffles: YouTube, SFX Entertainment, PPL, Peter Jones… appeared first on Digital Music News.
  
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• Avelino Drops Video For 'M.O.E'

  23-07-2015 19:53
  
  Avelino Drops Video For 'M.O.E' (Money Over Everything) Wretch 32
  
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• Vegan Black Metal Chef, Reggae Reggae Sauce, Headbanger's Kitchen: why do so many musicians cook?

  23-07-2015 19:46
  
  From rapper Coolio and Levi Roots to Kelis and UK Subs guitarist Nicky Garratt, musicians are making more than a successful sideline as cooks‘There are tonnes of parallels between touring and cooking food for people,” says Warren Oakes, one of an array of musicians who has made the unlikely journey from stage to kitchen. Until 2009, he was the drummer in American hardcore punk band Against Me!, before he suddenly left the band to open Boca Fiesta, a restaurant in Gainesville, Florida, specia
  
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• Evan Parker/Alex von Schlippenbach: 3 Nights at Cafe Oto review – a fine free-improv treat

  23-07-2015 19:45
  
  (Matchless)Free-improv CDs sometimes turn up in the record-business equivalent of fish-and-chip paper, but this handsome book-form package encloses three audio CDs, a DVD, a raft of colour photography, and a thoughtful essay from Richard Williams. It documents a 2013 Cafe Oto season for the UK trio of drummer Eddie Prévost, bassist John Edwards and saxophonist Evan Parker, plus German musicians Christof Thewes (trombone) and the doyen of European free-jazz pianists, Alex von Schlippenbach
  
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• Scottish National Jazz Orchestra/Makoto Ozone: Jeunehomme review – truly musical

  23-07-2015 19:30
  
  (Spartacus)Mozart was 21 when he wrote the K271 Jeunehomme piano concerto, and some connoisseurs consider it his first masterpiece. But if the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra are daunted by its prestige and cascade of ideas, they don’t show it. Nor does Japanese jazz pianist Makoto Ozone, who has successfully specialised in such crossovers in recent years. This fine band is strikingly fast on its feet in reacting to the free-time fluidity of the cadenzas, and to Ozone’s skids from frolickin
  
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• Raury: 'This generation is not hopeless'

  23-07-2015 19:29
  
  He’s only 19 and counts Kanye West as a fan – but is the world ready for his brand of his blissed-out New Age rap?In order to define itself, every generation must reject the past and assert its own take on the world: for example, the pop culture explosion of the 60s followed the austerity of the postwar years, or the eruption of punk against the hippies who preceded them. But what about the youth of 2015? If the the mass media is to be believed, this is a generation warped by technology, who
  
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• Gurrumul: The Gospel Album review – an exquisite voice playing it safe

  23-07-2015 19:15
  
  (Skinnyfish Music) The first new studio album in nearly four years from the massively successful, blind Australian aboriginal singer-songwriter Gurrumul shows that he is still in exquisite, distinctive voice, but playing safe. The new set is a “re-imagining” of the church songs he learned from his mother and aunts while growing up in the remote territory of Arnhem Land, and once again he sings in the Gumatj dialect. He starts with Jesu, a cool, drifting hymn of praise that shows off his high
  
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• The Soil: Nostalgic Moments review – township vocal styles meet jazz, hip-hop and beatboxing

  23-07-2015 19:00
  
  (Proper Music) Unaccompanied harmony singing is one of the great traditions of South African music, and The Soil have transformed the style with a bravely contemporary approach. A trio who began singing together at a Soweto high school, they mix township styles with soul, pop and hip-hop. Each plays a distinctive role, with Buhlebendalo Mda providing much of the powerful lead work, Ntsika Fana Ngxanga adding sturdy harmony lines, and his brother Luphindo “Master P” acting as a human beatbox.
  
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• Demi Lovato Is All Kinds Of Sexy In 'Cool For The Summer' Video - Watch Here!

  23-07-2015 18:56
  
  We want her wardrobe, like, now!
  
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• Brahms Symphonies CD review – Orozco-Estrada and the Tonkünstler's approach is too thoughtful

  23-07-2015 18:00
  
  Tonkünstler Orchestra/Orozco Estrada(Oehms Classics)Andrés Orozco-Estrada is set to take over as principal guest conductor at the London Philharmonic in the autumn, but for the past few years he has headed the Tonkünstler Orchestra in Vienna. The warm, dense orchestral sound he has cultivated there characterises their Brahms symphony cycle. Indeed, that sound is at times too heavy in a repertoire that benefits from lightness and transparency; for example, though the opening of the S
  
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• Taylor Swift Has Actually Apologised To Nicki Minaj Over VMA Noms Clash

  23-07-2015 17:53
  
  'I misunderstood', says Swiftie...
  
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• From slavery to singing star: celebrating Thomas Rutling

  23-07-2015 17:40
  
  Rutling was an extraordinary man, born a slave in Tennessee, he toured the world as a singer, and then opted to settle in Harrogate. He was a pioneer campaigner against racism: playing him in a new show made me wonder – has anything changed?
  I first heard about Thomas Rutling as a student at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. I was writing my final-year thesis on the American spiritual and how it has influenced modern music such as jazz, gospel, rock’n’roll, Motown and hip-hop.
  
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• The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 Trailer Is Here And It Will Give You Goosebumps

  23-07-2015 17:33
  
  LOVE YOU KATNISS.
  
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• Jedward Reveal Their Deepest Sharkey Secrets And The Results Are Incredible

  23-07-2015 17:14
  
  Challenge no. 3 is a personal favourite...
  
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• Etta Bond - Seen And Never Heard

  23-07-2015 16:52
  
  Etta Bond - Seen And Never Heard
  
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• WWE: Watch Eva Marie Win Over NXT Crowd With New Ring Skills

  23-07-2015 16:41
  
  ...
  
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• Nicki Minaj Hits Out At Ex Boyfriend Safaree Samuels For 'Misleading' Fans

  23-07-2015 16:28
  
  Twitter has a lot to answer for this week...
  
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• #MTVFestivalSeason: Tiësto Tells Us His Top 5 Tunes At The Mo

  23-07-2015 16:07
  
  Ahead of his set at this weekend's Tomorrowland Festival in Belgium, the dance legend tells us the five tunes he's loving at the moment...
  
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• Turns Out Iggy Izalea Is Quite The Fan Of Total Divas - But Will She Go To SummerSlam?

  23-07-2015 15:45
  
  ...
  
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• Amy Poehler's Ideas For New Inside Out Emotions Are A-Meh-zing

  23-07-2015 15:36
  
  Quite literally all the feels...
  
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• WWE's Cesaro Told Vince McMahon: 'Challenge Accepted!'

  23-07-2015 15:09
  
  ...
  
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• Kylie Jenner's First Meeting With Caitlyn Jenner Was Seriously Emotional

  23-07-2015 14:34
  
  These two are the cutest...
  
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• Vic Mensa Covers Future's 'Codeine Crazy' With His Own Spin On Things

  23-07-2015 14:33
  
  Vic Mensa Covers Future's 'Codeine Crazy' With His Own Spin On Things
  
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• FRESH: GRIZ-O - CRAZY (OFFICIAL VIDEO)

  23-07-2015 14:02
  
  FRESH: GRIZ-O - CRAZY (OFFICIAL VIDEO)
  
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• Ed Sheeran Is Totally Team Taylor, Says Nicki Minaj's Comments Are "Redundant"

  23-07-2015 13:17
  
  The 'Don't' singer also addresses THAT fake feud with Bruno Mars...
  
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• One Direction Provide #ThrowbackThursday Gold With Their First Ever X Factor Auditions

  23-07-2015 13:12
  
  REMEMBER THESE?!
  
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• Miley Cyrus Goes On Naked Photo Posting Spree After Losing Her Armpit Hair!

  23-07-2015 12:49
  
  The 2015 VMAs leading lady is all about getting her kit off...
  
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• Harry Potter's Diagon Alley Was Made IRL And It Was A Bit Amazing

  23-07-2015 12:21
  
  Harry Potter Street Art Alert!
  
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• Norah Jones or Sex Pistols? Thinking style molds taste: study

  23-07-2015 12:19
  
  By Michael Roddy LONDON (Reuters) - If you like the mellow sounds of jazz singer Norah Jones, you could well be what a new study calls "an empathizer" who responds to the emotions of others. If, on the other hand, you go for the Sex Pistols, the same study says you could be a "systemizer" who likes to analyze rules and patterns in the world. The study, published on Wednesday in the contributory research journal PLOS ONE, was conducted by a team of researchers at the Universit
  
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• Say What?! Is Henry Cavill REALLY Going To Star In The Fifty Shades Of Grey Sequel?

  23-07-2015 11:56
  
  But what about Jamie Dornan?
  
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• Watch Our Exclusive Sexy/Clever Dear White People Clip

  23-07-2015 11:41
  
  This is the reason Dear White People has been such a festival smash...
  
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