Music news

• Federal Judge Orders Temporary Shutdown of Aurous

  15-10-2015 23:49
  
  Update, Friday AM: Aurous has now pulled all available downloads from aurous.me following the court order; Aurous founder Andrew Sampson has confirmed the yank-down in a tweet this (Friday) morning.  
  The following is the story we published Thursday afternoon, immediately following the court-issued temporary injunction.
  The order, signed by US District Court judge Jose E. Martinez at 2:20 pm ET today (Thursday), orders Aurous to halt all further distribution of its application, i
  
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• Real Lies: Real Life review – lovelorn electropoppers repackage the 90s

  15-10-2015 23:30
  
  (Marathon Artists) Related: Real Lies – Real Life: Exclusive album stream and track by track Late nights, empty streets, dog-eared consumerism – this is the world of Real Lies. The London trio prowl around the unfashionable edges of metropolitan existence in a manner so casual it comes across as studious. “The men who drink in A-road pubs / And rave flyers / All lost in the same sea,” runs a line in North Circular. They have created a 21st-century soundtrack by voraciousl
  
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• 5 Seconds of Summer: 'Not cool enough?... I mean, what is that about?'

  15-10-2015 23:20
  
  They sell out stadiums around the world but Sydney four-piece 5SOS, as they’re known by millions of fans, struggle to win over the more grizzly music writersTheir music has been described as “stupidly catchy” and “blandness in its purest form”. At the 2015 NME awards, they were crowned “worst band” by the magazine’s readers. For 5 Seconds of Summer, media criticism and listener hostility have become the norm ­– something they largely try
  
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• Raury: All We Need review – brave but blatant hip-hop preacherman

  15-10-2015 23:15
  
  (Columbia)Earlier this year, 19-year-old rapper/revolutionary Raury said he was about to release “the best album of the year”, suggesting he might bring enlightenment to all mankind in the process; a more compelling mission than the usual “write good tunes”, but not as easy to achieve. It’s part flower-power protest, part stoner romance (think André 3000 circa The Love Below, or early NERD), but there are also misjudged moments of earnestness, such as Friends
  
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• Majical Cloudz: Are You Alone? review – surreal and beguiling pop

  15-10-2015 23:00
  
  (Matador)My lasting memory of seeing Montreal duo Majical Cloudz perform is singer Devon Welsh’s maniacal stare – huge, unwavering eyes that burned into the air. No matter that producer Matthew Otto was prodding keyboards behind him, Welsh seemed solitary. Similarly, their second album bears that sense of being alone in a room full of people. Their electronic pop songs detail the breakdown of a relationship with the sad detachment of someone who feels misunderstood. Melancholic synth
  
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• Amy Winehouse's father, Mitch, hails his late daughter as a 'great human being'

  15-10-2015 22:46
  
  Mitch Winehouse has paid tribute to his daughter Amy, calling her a “wonderful singer” as he attended a gala in her honour.
  
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• Demi Lovato: Confident review – swagger and fragility on a compelling pop record

  15-10-2015 22:45
  
  (Hollywood)Demi Lovato is the second former Disney star in a week to release an autobiographical album, but Confident is a good deal starker than Selena Gomez’s Revival. Lovato has the voice and the backstory to ensure that her fifth album is often compelling: a teenage stint in rehab may be behind her, but – perversely for an album called Confident – her fragility surfaces more than once. While some of tracks abound with self-assurance that would do credit to Miley Cyrus, othe
  
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• John Newman: Revolve review – chest-thumping soul with an inner emptiness

  15-10-2015 22:15
  
  (Island)After bustling his way towards the front of the overcrowded retro-soul field with 2013’s Tribute, Yorkshireman John Newman sounds desperate to go further. Revolve opens with a chest-thumping speech about strength and resilience, and is packed with stadium-aimed tunes, strings, brass, a choir and presumably a kitchen sink – but that didn’t stop recent single Tiring Game limping to No 134. Lights Down and top 5 hit Come and Get It are much stronger songs, and Newman&rsquo
  
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• Tori Kelly: Unbreakable Smile review – big-voiced, self-absorbed funk-pop

  15-10-2015 22:00
  
  (Capitol/Schoolboy)Californian singer-songwriter Tori Kelly starts and ends her debut album with a peculiarly passive-aggressive philosophy of the self, sorry-not-sorrying for defiantly remaining true to “the only Tori that I know how to be”. Authenticity, to Kelly, is a moral high ground, a defence mechanism – she used early criticisms that she was “bland” and “cookie-cutter” as inspiration – and, by the end of Unbreakable Smile, a tiresome s
  
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• Amy Winehouse's father, Mitch, hails daughter as a 'great human being'

  15-10-2015 21:53
  
  The father of Amy Winehouse has paid tribute to his daughter as a "wonderful singer" and a "great human being" as he attended a star-studded gala for her foundation.
  
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• Readers recommend: songs that contain talking | Peter Kimpton

  15-10-2015 21:00
  
  Incidental chat, rambling openings, snatched dialogue or spoken asides? Sift out favourite songs containing spiel to help make this week’s list the talk of the town
  Sometimes when walking down a city street, or entering a shop, or any public place or even work, I have a strange fantasy vision. It is that during the drab hubbub of chatter, the habitual exchanges of conversation, task, travel or retail, that everything is suddenly elevated into the world of song. That the person working the
  
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• Philip Clouts Quartet: Umoya review – light-stepping jazz fusion

  15-10-2015 20:00
  
  (Odradek) Philip Clouts is the UK-resident Cape Town pianist who helped found the African-infused world-jazz group Zubop, and is currently touring with a new quartet featuring acclaimed young Trinity Laban saxophonist Samuel Eagles. Eagles gets into the spirit of both Clouts’ cultural openness and feel for dance grooves with his snaking, whooping soprano sax solo on the breezy Lila (a fusion of North African Sufi music and township jive), and his deftly swerving post-bop inventiveness illu
  
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• Despite Serious Issues, Deezer Expects to Raise €300 Million On Its IPO

  15-10-2015 19:56
  
  It’s a streaming music IPO. What could possibly go wrong?
  Earlier, we pointed to some very troubling subscriber numbers at Deezer, the Spotify competitor that still hasn’t set foot in the US and remains woefully unprofitable.  Previously, Deezer claimed to have amassed 6-plus million subscribers through an ex-US, global approach, but IPO filings revealed that roughly half were bundled subscribers that hadn’t even played a single song in the previous month.
  And, just
  
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• Mozart: Il Re Pastore CD review – a glimpse of the composer's mature brilliance

  15-10-2015 19:45
  
  Fox/Tynan/Devin/Ainsley/Hulett/Classical Opera/Page
  (Signum Classics)Now on its fourth instalment, Classical Opera’s ongoing project to record all Mozart’s stage works is saving the undisputed masterpieces for later, but Il Re Pastore, the last of his teenage operas, gives more than a glimpse of the composer’s mature brilliance. Mozart was so attached to Aer Tranquillo – an aria for Aminta, the shepherd king of the title – that he reworked it only a few months later
  
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• Julian Argüelles: Tetra review – full of jazz and non-jazz surprises

  15-10-2015 19:45
  
  (Whirlwind) This is saxophonist, composer and Loose Tubes alumnus Julian Argüelles’s second release in six months, but it’s markedly different from his South Africa-dedicated Let It Be Told. Tetra joins him with some of the UK’s leading younger jazz musicians in the form of Kit Downes on piano and the powerful bass and drums duo of Sam Lasserson and James Maddren, displaying Argüelles’ consistent talent for freewheeling jazz ventures packed with striking composi
  
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• Mozart: Die Entführung aus dem Serail CD review – energetic and vivacious reworking

  15-10-2015 19:30
  
  Johannsen/Eriksmoen/Schmitt/Akademie für Alte Musik/Jacobs
  (Harmonia Mundi)As René Jacobs’ survey of the Mozart operas has emerged over the last 16 years, we have become used to the different ways in which he has attempted to rethink these canonical works in recording terms, using ideas that are sometimes scrupulously musicological, sometimes much more fanciful.Now he has turned Die Entführung aus dem Serail, a Singspiel with spoken dialogue, as Mozart conceived it, into a
  
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• Brad Mehldau: 10 Years Solo Live review – virtuosity and ingenuity in five hours of solo piano

  15-10-2015 19:30
  
  (Nonesuch) In the late 1990s, Brad Mehldau began turning his refined attention to the exacting art Keith Jarrett had dominated for so long: unaccompanied acoustic-piano improvisation. This set – released now as an eight-LP vinyl set, and on CD next month – features five hours of live solo Mehldau, a torrent of remodelled Beatles songs, Thelonious Monk tunes, jazz standards and Brahms intermezzos, organised here according to themes of mood, motive and musical structure. Despite this g
  
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• Hailee Steinfeld Guesses Her Celebrity Admirers Just From Their Fangirl Tweets

  15-10-2015 18:29
  
  From Sam Smith to Shawn Mendes, Hailee sure has some big fans…
  
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• Pretty Little Liars Boss Tells Us What The Rosewood Boys Are Up To After The Five-Year Time Jump

  15-10-2015 18:05
  
  Lucas is back, y’all.
  
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• Jackie And Wilson

  15-10-2015 17:57 via mtv.co.uk
  
  Jackie And Wilson
  
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• TIEKS Puts Together Your Ultimate (End Of) Summer Playlist

  15-10-2015 17:12
  
  The 'Sunshine' producer walks us through his top summer jams...
  
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• Taylor Swift Is Co-Hosting The Met Ball 2016, And The Theme Is Quite Interesting

  15-10-2015 16:34
  
  Aka, we have no idea what it means.
  
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• Let It Out

  15-10-2015 16:09 via mtv.co.uk
  
  Let It Out
  
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• Confident [Explicit]

  15-10-2015 14:17 via mtv.co.uk
  
  Confident (Official Video)
  
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• Marnie Simpson Shares Totally Naked Selfie, Presumably Misplaced Her Clothes

  15-10-2015 14:03
  
  Classic Marnie, really!
  
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• LPO/Penderecki review – time hasn't blunted the impact of Penderecki's Threnody

  15-10-2015 13:49
  
  Royal Festival Hall, LondonThis fine concert featured Krzysztof Penderecki’s own compositions – with Radovan Vlatkovic the impressive soloist in the Horn Concerto – alongside Shostakovich’s SixthAs a conductor, Krzysztof Penderecki is invariably associated with performances of his own music. But it was as an interpreter of other composers’ works that he first took up the baton, and most notably considered Shostakovich’s symphonies integral to his repertory. Th
  
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• Plug-and-Play Electric Jukebox Rivals Spotify…

  15-10-2015 13:37
  
  Electric Jukebox shakes up music streaming industryThe Electric Jukebox – created by UK entrepreneur Rob Lewis – is not only a music streaming service, it’s also a music appliance.  The device can stream music from a library of more than 30 million songs via Wi-Fi, turning a television and home entertainment system into a jukebox, simply by plugging it in to the back of the TV.
  Electric Jukebox comes with a remote control that works similar to a Wii controller –
  
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• Miley Cyrus Is Planning A Naked Show With A Naked Audience

  15-10-2015 13:27
  
  That's a whole lot of naked.
  
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• Readers recommend: songs about scandal – results

  15-10-2015 13:00
  
  The Irish church institutions to Native American oppression, apartheid to oil exploitation, RR’s redoubtable regular sonofwebcore picks a scandalous playlist from last week’s topic
  Though set in Ireland, Joni Mitchell’s The Magdalene Laundries, might well be about any of those institutions which exploited vulnerable young women on three continents between 1758 and the late 20th century. Her focus is fixed on the plight of the institutionalised Irish, who had it bad, more than 3
  
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• Hailee Steinfeld Tells Us About The First Time She Met Taylor Swift, Her First Crush & More

  15-10-2015 12:38
  
  She definitely doesn't hold back...
  
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• Jesse Lawson Reveals Why He REALLY Left Sleeping With Sirens

  15-10-2015 12:34
  
  Ex-SWS member tells all two years after his departure from the band...
  
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• Scott Disick Checks Into Rehab For 'Alcohol And Drug Abuse'

  15-10-2015 12:15
  
  This follows Scott's recent split from Kourtney Kardashian...
  
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• BandPage and Deezer Team Up To Get 500,000 Musicians Paid

  15-10-2015 12:00
  
  Another day, another gold relationship BandPage has struck. Over the past couple years, BandPage has teamed up with Shazam, Rdio, Microsoft Groove, SoundCloud, iHeartRadio and Live Nation (among others) to enable musicians a simplified way to send bio, photo and tour date information to a multitude of (gated) outlets. BandPage is the central hub for all the artist’s information, and these music-based platforms pull all the necessary artist assets. As nice as it is for artists, managers an
  
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• Music streaming service Deezer to raise 300 million euro in IPO

  15-10-2015 11:59
  
  Music streaming service Deezer said it expects to raise 300 million euros ($343 million) from selling new shares when it lists on the Paris stock exchange later this month. Deezer said trading of its shares on Euronext Paris would start on Oct. 30 as it looks to raise cash to try to keep up with larger, deeper-pocketed rivals such as Apple Inc and Sweden's Spotify. "The IPO will allow us to accelerate our growth and continue to play a leading role," Chief Executive Hans-Holger Albrecht said in a
  
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• Heidi Montag Reveals Kim Kardashian Was Actually In The Hills Back In The Day, But Was Edited Out

  15-10-2015 11:55
  
  THIS IS IMPORTANT.
  
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• Nick Grimshaw Reveals Who He's Chosen To Replace Tom Bleasby On X Factor And We Are In Shock

  15-10-2015 11:44
  
  *Mic drop*
  
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• Where hardcore meets claymation – watch Radkey's new video for Glore

  15-10-2015 11:00
  
  There’s no boring performance clip from the US sibling punks for their latest video. Have a look at this …Claymation meets hardcore! What’s not to love? Radkey’s new video for Glore – directed by Nicos Livesey for Channel 4’s Random Acts strand – dispenses with any of that band-in-a-room stuff, instead featuring a preposterously time-intensive claymation clip. Mind you, a band-in-a-room would have been easier, given the clip took 10 weeks to make, used
  
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• Kris Jenner, Kendall Jenner & Rob Kardashian Break Silence As Lamar Odom Remains In A Coma

  15-10-2015 10:23
  
  The NBA star was found unconscious in a Las Vegas brothel earlier this week...
  
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• Damon Albarn: the next Gorillaz album will be fast and energetic

  15-10-2015 09:30
  
  Singer says he’s been stuck behind a piano with the group and wants to go ‘somewhere completely opposite’Damon Albarn has confirmed he is working on a new Gorillaz album, days after his collaborator Jamie Hewlett said “2016 is going to be Gorillaz all year”. Speaking to Rolling Stone, Albarn said it was “early days” for the next album but that “so far, it’s really fast, and it’s got quite a lot of energy. I’ve been stuck on piano,
  
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• Patti Smith weeps at return of stolen goods – 36 years on

  15-10-2015 08:55
  
  Woman interrupts reading to give the singer a bag of her possessions, taken from her tour truck in 1979When musicians are on tour, they often create a comfort zone of routines, rituals and objects to cope with the grind, so it can be devastating if that is disrupted by a robbery that deprives them of their most-cherished things. Equally, it can be overwhelming to get them back, as Patti Smith showed when she burst into tears when a selection of items were returned to her – 36 years after t
  
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• UK rap doesn't need mainstream exposure to prove its potency

  15-10-2015 08:00
  
  Grime may have travelled from the London streets to the suburbs, but the UK rap scene leads its own independent revolutionSome 15 years since the seething fusion of rap, dancehall and UK garage first burst from the sink estates of London, grime has finally found an abundance of mainstream attention and admiration. Now MCs such as Skepta, Stormzy, JME and Novelist are as likely to be dominating Reading and Leeds festival or appearing on Later… with Jools Holland as they are to be found fig
  
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• An emerging British folk music scene: archive, 15 October 1963

  15-10-2015 06:00
  
  The modest boom is showing every sign of turning into a super colossal folkburger, with plenty of chips on every plate and juice there for the squeezingThere has been a minor folk-song boom for as long as most addicts can remember. Nothing spectacular, nothing bloated, but steady, devoted, sure - a lasting, rippling tide of interest.It started in the mid-fifties when skiffle’s bubble burst. Skiffle was really a convenient compromise, folksy and portentous enough to engross those repulsed b
  
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• Jay Z and Timbaland arrive at court for copyright trial – video

  15-10-2015 03:22
  
  Hip-hop stars Jay Z and Timbaland arrive at court on Wednesday to testify in a copyright suit over a melody sampled in the 1999 song Big Pimpin’. The two are named in a 2007 complaint by the nephew of the late Egyptian songwriter Baligh Hamdi, which alleges they avoided asking permission to use Hamdi’s track, knowing it wouldn’t be granted given Jay Z’s risqué lyricsPhotograph: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters Continue reading...
  
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• Obama celebrates American music with 'eclectic bunch'

  15-10-2015 03:17
  
  WASHINGTON (AP) — Swaying to jazz and blues tunes while bopping his head to the beat, President Barack Obama on Wednesday night celebrated what he called one of the country's most precious gifts: "American creativity."
  
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• MANANA Is Cuba’s First Electronic Music Festival

  15-10-2015 03:07
  
   
  MANANA is a non-profit festival that aims to bridge Afro-Cuban Folkloric music with the global dance community. The event is slated for May, with a Kickstarter in the early stages.  If everything goes as planned, it will be Cuba’s first electronica music festival.
  Here’s a quick video that discusses the mission; the Kickstarter is here.
   
  The post MANANA Is Cuba’s First Electronic Music Festival appeared first on Digital Music News.
  
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• Aurous Responds: “We Plan to Fight the RIAA and Win”

  15-10-2015 00:30
  
   
  On Monday, Aurous told the music industry to go f*&k itself.
  On Tuesday, Aurous was officially sued by Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, their various subsidiaries, and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for “blatant copyright infringement.”
  On Wednesday, Aurous founder was officially served with the complaint in Miami.
  Now, Aurous is responding, and promising to fight back. 
   
  The post Aurous Respon
  
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