Arcade Fire news

Arcade Fire to score Donnie Darko director's new film.

Montreal's finest return from their holidays with a soundtrack of shadowy anthems. Expect hurdy gurdys and Cameron Diaz.

Sean Michaels
Tuesday May 13, 2008
guardian.co.uk

Arcade Fire and Richard Kelly seem to be unrelated - but as Donnie Darko taught us, the oddest things turn out to be connected.

The first are earnest art-rock musicians, gallivanting round Montreal's Mile End, the second is an idiosyncratic film auteur, busying himself on directing a new Cameron Diaz flick.

After months of touring, Arcade Fire returned to Montreal this spring for some quiet time. They sipped coffees and ate ice-creams, but apart from a few rallies for Barack Obama they waved off concert requests or the suggestion that they begin work on a third album.

They appeared, at least to the public, to be laying low.

Meanwhile, in Hollywood, journalists have been pestering director Richard Kelly about a sequel to his 2001 film, Donnie Darko. An unrelated production company has started work on S. Darko, which will follow the story of Donnie's younger sister Samantha. It's to be helmed by low-budget horror director Chris Fisher, and everyone is chasing Kelly's opinion.

Kelly doesn't want to talk about S. Darko. "I have absolutely no involvement with this production, nor will I ever be involved," he wrote on his MySpace blog . Instead, Kelly wants to talk about his new movie, Box, and of the intriguing musical collaboration involved.

The first clue was on Kelly's blog: "We're starting to work with a very famous band honouring us with being the first film-makers they've ever scored a film with," he wrote. But disclosed nothing more.

Producer Markus Dravs was not so tight-lipped however. On a page uncovered by Pitchfork News, the recording guru gave a succinct update on his current project. "Having finished Coldplay's forthcoming album," he wrote, "[I'm] now off to Canada to work with Arcade Fire on a soundtrack for the forthcoming Richard Kelly film."

And there it is. While Arcade Fire pretend to take a holiday they have in fact set to work on their first film project. It's not a tale of snowstorms or revolution, or a Wes Anderson excursion into the wilds of rural Quebec. Instead it's the adaptation of a 1970 Richard Matheson short story (and Twilight Zone episode) about a couple who find a box with a magic button. Every time they push the button, they receive a load of money - and someone, somewhere, dies.

Greed, murder and Cameron Diaz seem just the stuff for Arcade Fire's shadowy anthems. We'll hope for harp and hurdy gurdy in the scary bits, hollers and mandolin in the pretty bits. And the next time Arcade Fire claim to be taking some time off, we'll not believe them for a second.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

Eric Burdon

Eric Burdon and War To Reform.

by Paul Cashmere @ Undercover - February 9 2008

Eric Burdon and War Concert Poster

Eric Burdon and War will reform for one night only in London in April for the first time in 37 years.

Animals lead singer Burdon joined US R&B, funk and jazz band War in 1970 but it was short-lived. They disbanded in 1971.

However, in their short career, Eric Burdon & War produced two now classic albums, both in 1970. 'Eric Burdon Declares War' featured the number one hit 'Spill The Wine' as well as 'Tobacco Road'. That same year, 'The Black Man's Burdon' contained the amazing cover of The Stones 'Paint It Black'.

"The diversity of influences on us was not only musical, but was social as well," says singer-keyboardist and founding War member Lonnie Jordan. "As a result we tried to be entertaining while also spreading the word of peace, harmony and brotherhood. Our instruments and voices became our weapons of choice and the songs our ammunition. We spoke out against racism, hunger, gangs, crimes and turf wars, as we embraced all people with hope and the spirit of brotherhood."

Eric Burdon & War will perform at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday, April 21st.

The line-up will be:

Eric Burdon (Vocals)
Lonnie Jordan (Vocals, Keyboards)
Salvador Rodriguez (Drums, Vocals)
Fernando Harkless (Saxaphone, Vocals)
Marcos Reyes (Percussion)
Start Ziff (Lead Guitar, Vocals)
Francisco 'Pancho' Tomaselli (Bass Guitar, Vocals)
Mitch Kashmar Lead Vocals (Harmonica, Vocals)

Tickets go on sale February 14

Oscar Peterson

Oscar Peterson no more.

Canada's legendary jazz pianist, a technical virtuoso who performed with the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz and Dizzy Gillespie and inspired generations of jazz musicians, dies aged 82.

John Fordham
Tuesday December 25, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Oscar Peterson: 'could transform any melody into streams of spontaneous alternatives'. Photograph: AP

After the phenomenal jazz-piano virtuoso Art Tatum died in 1956, Canadian pianist Oscar Peterson - who had already been waiting in the wings for a decade - eased his formidable frame on to the throne. Like Tatum, Peterson had a Liszt-like technique (classical music's star pianists came to marvel at both of them), and could transform any melody into streams of spontaneous alternatives, sustain any tempo, use his left hand as freely as his right, and keep a faultless built-in rhythm section at work in his head. These skills made Peterson, who has died of kidney failure at the age of 82, one of the best-loved stars in the jazz mainstream.

The sympathetic but uncharitable among jazz purists might have held that Peterson was the unfortunate victim of his spectacular technique. All his performances would feature the same mix of flooding arpeggios, cascading introductions and codas, ragtime and barrelhouse pastiches, and solos at impossible tempos - and even after a stroke in 1993, the indomitable keyboard giant fought on to rebuild much of his sweeping technical authority. The standard Peterson trio offering would be the uptempo tune (either a standard or an original that sounded like a standard), starting either solo or with minimal accompaniment. It would grow in volume from both piano and drums in the second chorus, and by the third become an unbroken cascade of runs the length of the keyboard, resolving in thumping chords, thumbs-down-the-keys ripples and churning repeated phrases.

With cavalier glee, Peterson would apply this treatment to tunes ideally suited to it - like Anything Goes, or Sweet Georgia Brown - and to those that weren't, since he would often subject ballads to same burnups, bizarrely relapsing them into caresses at the end. Yet there was a true artist in Peterson too. Deliciously liquid arpeggios and arching, yearning phrases would sometimes emerge once he was sure he had given his audiences what they initially expected, and such contrastingly patient and spacious music might then allow the eloquence of his frequently superb accompanists to flower, notably the work of the double-bass giant Ray Brown.

Peterson had received classical piano lessons from the age of six in his native Montreal; the impetus came from his father, a railway porter and self-taught pianist. At 14, Oscar won a local radio talent contest, and worked in his late teens on a weekly Montreal radio show - and he was also a regular member of Canada's Johnny Holmes Orchestra, playing in an elegant swing keyboard style drawn from Teddy Wilson, Tatum and Nat "King" Cole. Though he had studied trumpet too, childhood illness led him to abandon it for the piano, and he practised constantly, an irrepressible enthusiasm mingling with natural gifts to build a fully two-handed technique (some 40s jazz pianists made relatively perfunctory use of the left hand) that rivalled that of classical recitalists. Though Cole was perhaps the artist Peterson felt most in sympathy with stylistically, the speed, orchestral richness and lyrical sweep of his music made the virtuoso Tatum the only fitting comparison once the Canadian's mature style formed.

Peterson resisted offers to come to America at first, but made his US debut at Carnegie Hall with Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic in September 1949. Granz saw in Peterson just his kind of charismatic, communicative performer who reaches out from the subculture of jazz to a much wider audience, and he managed the pianist's career through the 1950s, recorded him, and regularly toured him with Jazz At The Philharmonic. Initially the pianist adopted the Cole trio's methods, frequently playing simply with guitar and double bass and allowing his own unerring rhythmic sense and driving swing to take the place of drums. Through the 1950s, Peterson's bassist was usually Brown, with Herb Ellis on guitar - but from 1958, Ellis was replaced by the subtle drummer Ed Thigpen, one of the few percussionists who could complement the storming Peterson without appearing to compete with him for the maximum number of sounds squeezable into a bar. The group recorded extensively, and Peterson's reworkings of classic standards were so exuberant and upbeat that his recordings found their way into the collections of jazz fans and fascinated non-buffs alike.

In 1960, Peterson founded the Advanced School of Contemporary Music in Toronto - assisted by Brown, Thigpen and composer/clarinettist Phil Nimmons - and he remained there for the next three years, devoting much of his time to running the institution. But he continued to perform and record, and developed another string to his considerable bow by singing on a Cole dedication, With Respect to Nat, in 1965.

In the 1970s, though jazz was in retreat against the swelling popular and commercial pressure of rock'n'roll, Peterson continued to prove that his talents were robust enough to be less affected by the changing climate than most. He took to performing unaccompanied, and delivered astonishingly self-sufficient performances in which he frequently seemed to resemble two or three pianists playing simultaneously. By this time one of the most secure of mainstream international jazz stars, Peterson was now invited to perform in all kinds of contexts, including work with symphony orchestras, and guest appearances on many all-star jazz get-togethers with artists including Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz, trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Clark Terry, and guitarist Joe Pass. In later years Peterson frequently worked in duet with bassist Niels-Henning 0rsted Pedersen, a remarkable virtuoso of complementary gifts to the pianist's. Pared-down accompaniment always suited Peterson best, since his devastating technique frequently meant that the more musicians there were in a Peterson group, the more they would all try to keep up, like a party full of non-stop talkers.

Peterson had a prolific output as a recording artist, in some years releasing as many as half a dozen albums. Affinity (1963) was one of his biggest sellers, but his catalogue includes interpretations of the songbooks of Cole Porter and Duke Ellington, a highly successful single on Jimmy Forrest's compulsive Night Train (perfectly suited to Peterson's churningly machine-like style) and 1964's Canadiana Suite, an extended original nominated as one of the best jazz compositions of 1965 by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Peterson furnished the soundtrack to the movie Play It Again Sam, hosted a TV chat show a 1974 tour of Russia, and influenced musicians as different as Steve Winwood, Dudley Moore and Joe Zawinul. A dedicated spreader of the word, Peterson also published educational works for student jazz pianists.

Though Peterson has sometimes been criticised as a musician in thrall to his own runaway technique, he remained a great virtuoso of piano jazz, and an equally effective populariser of the music among those who might otherwise not have encountered it. He was the kind of jazz musician who invited a sometimes-daunted general public in, and he always performed as if making the music was the most fun it was possible for a human being to have. When he performed to a packed Royal Albert Hall two years ago, Peterson delivered a startlingly ambitious programme for a man who looked as if the journey from the dressing-room to the piano stool had been a considerable effort of the will. That show could have been a wistful tribute to what once was - but with musicality, courage, skill and energy, Peterson made it a performance that stood proud on its own two feet. It was the story of his life.

In that same year of 2005, he became the first living person other than the monarch to feature on a Canadian commemorative stamp, and he saw his name adopted for streets, concert halls and schools. He is survived by his fourth wife, Kelly, their daughter Celine, and six children from previous marriages.

Oscar Emmanuel Peterson, jazz pianist, born August 15 1925; died December 23 2007

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

Girl Power

If you wanna be a pop star, you better get with the girls.

'Girl Power', once just a slogan, now dominates the pop charts. So what happened to the boys?

Kitty Empire
Sunday October 21, 2007
The Observer

As pop manifestos go, the one touted by the nascent Spice Girls in long-ago 1996 was more suspect than most. Girl Power was a cheeky, hen-night vision of feminism riddled with body dysmorphia and worse. It was all catchphrase and little artistic control, as Spice memoirs have laid bare. But a decade on, with the Girls reunited and retailing their forthcoming album in lingerie chain Victoria's Secret, it turns out that Girl Power was no eye-rolling matter after all, at least commercially.

As 2007 sashays to a close, pop has rarely been more female. A glance at the albums being released up until Christmas reveals a coven of pop high priestesses handbagging each other in pursuit of pop buyers' cash. Britney's comeback has been rushed forward to stave off internet leaks; Kylie's big, sparkly two fingers to cancer arrives next month. In pop, as in life, women seem to outlive men. Deathless disco mama Madonna has a new £60m deal and another pop confection due next year. British pop's most confounding triad, Sugababes, continue to have hits despite having their DNA frequently rearranged; they are the perfect example of a brand, rather than a band.

After a year cooking up her debut in the US, X Factor winner Leona Lewis's imminent album will try to establish her as an enduring pop force. Rihanna's 'Umbrella' was a rain dance so effective it changed the climate and stayed at No 1 for 10 weeks. And the most entertaining girl group of all, Girls Aloud, defy rumours of their demise with a new set, also out next month. We need no reminder that the biggest pop news this year was Kate Nash. Meanwhile, the wellbeing (or not) of Amy Winehouse (though her retro sound is outside the realm of pure pop) remains a national obsession, and her arrest last Thursday in Norway ensures the prurience will continue.

But where are the boys? Genders used to be evenly matched in the pop game. For every female artist, there was a winsome romantic beau, sexually unthreatening to pre-teens but just lush enough to inspire filthy home-made banners from fans on the way to the sold-out arena. In pop's heyday, the Eighties, the Whams and Spands and Frankies defined the age more indelibly and with more make-up than the girls, who have faded from memory (although it is nice when Kim Wilde crops up on a TV gardening show). In the Nineties, clots of chaps - Bros, New Kids on the Block, Take That, East 17, Boyzone, Westlife - ruled the arenas, a status quo that the Spice Girls overturned.

The demise of the boy band has been widely mulled over during the past few years. Even those notional saviours of the genre, McFly, have lost their lustre. True, the Take That reunion and the continued existence of Westlife mean that there will never be a national shortage of swollen multi-part ballads. The odd trouser turn-up does occasionally breach the frilly cordon sanitaire in place around pop - this year Mika was the exception that proved the rule that boys in pop are missing, presumed dead. And Robbie? His most heartfelt and breezy album tanked, making you feel almost sorry for him. Almost.

If boys in pop are all but dead, we know the execution date and the executioners. It was 2002, when two Pop Stars: The Rivals teams squared up. In the red corner, Girls Aloud with their strange, twanging single, 'Sound of the Underground'. In the blue corner, slushy boy band One True Voice, Svengali'd by pop puppeteer Pete Waterman. The smart money was on the fellas, but Girls Aloud staged a historic pop upset when they trounced the hapless, derivative guys and went on to be the most successful British talent show act ever.

What did the boys do in the wake of this symbolic defeat? They stropped. Busted earned the boy band a brief, riffy reprieve from obsolescence. Many more of them felt sorry for themselves, and learned how to play acoustic guitar. Where once a young man could prance under a hundredweight of hair gel and get rich, in the mid-Noughties it was essential to become a sensitive singer-songwriter to impress. What is Paolo Nutini but a lost boy band member trying to cut it as a troubadour? It would take a stylist half a second and some bicycle shorts to shear James Morrison of all his hard-conjured credibility.

Perhaps pop's gendercide is better explained as a diaspora: the cute boys and their ballads moved sideways, out of dance routines and on to guitar stools - or into R&B. In the US, male pop is a one-man show. Justin Timberlake presides over the most impressive post-boy band career ever. Like us, the Americans also have plenty of pouting male singer-songwriters who might once have been pressed into pop shapes; John Mayer sees himself as a serious blues guitarist but has he looked in the mirror? Jack Johnson - a buff surfer with an acoustic guitar - is one of the US's biggest draws.

But if you are looking for the love of a soft-hearted stripling, you will find it has become almost exclusively an urban thing. While our own Craig David is now a figure of fun, in the US, the loverman brigade - Omarion, Joe, Ne-Yo, Akon and Mario - are potent chart players. They take the schmaltz of pop and dress it up in the more attitudinal garb of hip hop. At heart, though, these are ladies' men. Antecedents aren't hard to find here. American music is stuffed with old soul lovermen, and the new breed draw deeply from the well dug by priapic teddy bears Luther Vandross, Alexander O'Neal and R Kelly. But rarely have soppy men appeared in such numbers, so consistently high in the Billboard charts. Usher remains the undisputed champion of this eye-wateringly tedious strand of R&B.

Why has the XY factor gone out of pop? It's not an easy question to answer. Gay men are the pivotal early adopters of all puissant pop outfits. Groups like Take That spent their early months touring gay clubs as well as schools. Have gay men given up on smooth-cheeked wannabes? They may well have ploughed all their cash into supporting needy divas like Madonna and Barbra Streisand instead. According to a tabloid, London's Soho is to erect a statue of Kylie, thanks to lobbying by fans: Soho's denizens are hardly campaigning for Gareth Gates on a plinth.

But the real culprits are probably youngsters. The rosy-cheeked masses who loved pop are fractured now. They are forming aesthetic judgments earlier than previous generations. Instead of being told what to like by Smash Hits and record companies, they are roaming the web, favouring outfits like the Kooks over cute boys with no guitars.

It is also the fault of the acts themselves. With every generation of British boy band, the output became more saccharine. Take That were feisty; Boyzone far duller. By the time the boy band franchise trickled down to Westlife, it was all ballads, all the time. They appealed to grandmothers.

Some of the blame can be ascribed, too, to the lack of imagination of producers and record companies. In R&B, as in pop, it is usually the female-fronted records that take the most musical risks. Producers have done immensely cool, creepy, daft and marvellous things with Britney, Amerie, Aaliyah, Christina Aguilera; Gwen Stefani's records do nothing but monkey about with pop convention.

The sexiness of these female stars - the crux of pop transactions - is a given. As long as they gyrate and smoulder, and some sort of hook is present, the rest of the record can sound like an accident in an electronics factory, and no one will bat an eyelid. Pop's men are more limited, crooning sweet nothings to a swell of synthesised strings. They lack topspin, winks, daring. You can count the men who have fronted avant-garde pop records on two fingers: Timberlake and Usher, whose icy crunk hit of 2004 'Yeah' was the torso-toting dullard's finest moment. Until the records get more exciting, male pop stars are doomed. (We await the new Duran Duran album - laced with collaborations with Justin Timberlake and producer Timbaland - with great interest.) And the new breed? Up 'n' coming foursome Palladium are making a valiant attempt at rekindling the male pop band. Their single, 'High Five', contains such charmingly pre-sexual pop sentiments as 'three kisses for me, and I know she's the marrying kind'. But rather than just dancing giddily, Palladium have had to resort to playing instruments to get attention. They sound like the Feeling with a few added riffs. If they are the best the industry can cook up, pop's men are going to be missing in action for some time yet.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

Subways news

The Subways preview new material at Club NME LA.

The trio thrill the packed house.

The Subways

The Subways previewed new material during their sold-out show at Club NME Los Angeles with Fred Perry Subculture last night (October 17).

The English trio breezed through crowd-pleasing favourites including 'Young For Eternity' and 'Rock And Roll Queen' in addition to new tracks 'Kalifornia', 'Girls & Boys' and 'I Won't Let You Down'.

"This is only the tenth show we've done this year, which is weird for us because we're used to playing a lot of shows, but we've been busy making our new record," frontman Billy Lunn told the crowd before launching into a new song.

The packed house, which included Art Brut's Eddie Argos, sang along to several tracks from The Subways' debut album and pumped their fists in the air.

"Thank you guys--you've been the best club we've ever been to -- ever!" gushed Linn at the end of their 45-minute set.

The band have been in Los Angeles for the past few weeks recording the follow-up to 'Young For Eternity'.

"It's nerve-wracking to play the new material for the first time, and I really didn't know what to expect from LA gigs," Linn told NME.COM after their set. "But it's been amazing and humbling to see so many people who know the words to our songs."

The Subways played:

'Kalifornia'
'Turn Around'
'With You'
'Young For Eternity'
'Girls & Boys'
'Oh Yeah'
'I Want To Hear What You Have Got To Say'
'I Won't Let You Down'
'Mary'
'Rock & Roll Queen'

Club NME with Fred Perry Subculture takes place at Spaceland in the Silver Lake neighbourhood of Los Angeles every Wednesday night.

Next Wednesday (October 24), Air Traffic are set to headline Club NME LA with Fred Perry Subculture.

For more information, visit Myspace.com/clubnmela.

--By our Los Angeles staff.

Bat For Lashes live

Bat For Lashes preview new material at sold-out LA show.

Brighton band also cover Tom Waits.

Bat For Lashes
Picture: Guy Eppel

Bat For Lashes previewed new material and covered Tom Waits during their sold-out show at the Troubadour in Los Angeles last night (October 9).

Brighton's Natasha Khan was backed by an all-female three-piece band who traded instruments throughout the night including violin, harpsichord, xylophone, flute, drums, guitars and keyboards.

The band created a mystical atmosphere with dark stage lighting and renaissance-style costumes replete with glittering headbands, which was mimicked by several girls in the audience.

"We're two weeks into our American tour and we just went to the Grand Canyon, which was amazing," Khan told the crowd, adding that she picked up a giant walking stick there, which she used as percussion on some songs.

Bat For Lashes previewed an atmospheric untitled new song, which featured haunting harmonies and a heavy bassline.

"This is our second time in LA in two months and it's great to be back," Khan told the crowd, who cheered loudly in response.

The recent Mercury Prize nominee played every track from the debut album 'Fur & Gold', as well as a cover of Waits' 'Lonely' during their 75-minute set.

--By our Los Angeles staff.

Von Bondies news

Von Bondies Prepare For New Album.

by Paul Cashmere @ Undercover - August 21 2007

Von Bondies

Von Bondie's last album 'Pawn Shoppe Heart' was released on 2004. Fans will get the follow-up in early 2008.

The new Von Bondies album is called 'Love, Hate and The There's You'. The album was produced by Rick Parker (BRMC), Peter Katis (Interpol) and Butch Walker (Hot Hot Heat).

All songs were written by singer/guitarist Jason Stollsteimer.

'Love, Hate and Then There's You' is the third album for Von Bondies. The first record 'Lack of Communication' was an indie and then the band signed with Warner for album two.

The band will play songs from the new album this Friday in New York.

Drummer Don Blum said " Real quickly: New record finished. Out in early 2008. We're proud of it. But we haven't had a chance to play a show in quite a while. Sure, a proper nationwide tour is in the works for later to support the new record, but we wanted to get out and play at least one show sooner than that".

"So we've set up a special New York City show for Friday, September 7 at the Mercury Lounge on Houston Street" he says. "It'll be an early show, which means we play at 8:30pm sharp. It'll be a chance for you to get reacquainted with us and hear some of our new material. You also get the chance to ask us questions, such as, 'How have you been, Don Blum?'

and 'Don Blum, we really like you!' and 'Don Blum! Don Blum! Don Blum!' Spock out."

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7:
THE MERCURY LOUNGE - 217 EAST HOUSTON, NYC;
8:30 PM SET TIME

THE VON BONDIES:

Jason Stollsteimer - vocals, guitar
Don Blum - drums
Alicia Gbur - keyboards
Matt Lannoo - guitar
Leann Banks – bass

White Stripes Interview

If Something's Missing, All the Better.

Stephen Chernin/ Associated Press

By KELEFA SANNEH

They were wearing suits! And hats! No, not the two band members: Jack White was wearing red pants and a red T-shirt, while Meg White was wearing black pants and a red shirt. And besides, plenty of musicians dress up when they play Madison Square Garden. On Tuesday night, though, the White Stripes went one step further: those suits and hats belonged to the guys setting up the amplifiers.

Once the show started, the White Stripes were left alone: the two of them spent nearly two hours on a big stage in a big — and full — room. "I don't believe we've played this bar before," said Mr. White, surveying the Garden. He probably didn't feel quite that blasé, but he certainly didn't seem intimidated, or thrilled, or even triumphant. He simply went to work, howling and shrieking and sighing, while inducing his guitars to do the same.

The entire set was red, and carefully positioned footlights projected beautiful shadows of the two onto a huge red backdrop. The only special effect was a big disco ball, but that was plenty. In between songs, he paid courtly tribute to "my big sister Meg" (the two are actually a divorced couple), and to his opening act, the Nashville veteran Porter Wagoner, "the best-dressed man in country music." (The other opening act was Grinderman, led by Nick Cave.)

It's astonishing how much the White Stripes have achieved through pure stubbornness. Over the course of six albums, they have sidled up to the rock 'n' roll mainstream without softening their approach. They still sound as rude and as unhinged as ever, especially compared with the emo and alternative bands with whom they share the modern-rock radio airwaves.

At most rock concerts, there are moments when the machine — the band — briefly comes unhinged: the beat is a split-second late, or the guitar emits a deafening squeal, or a lyric emerges as a formless howl. A White Stripes concert consists of almost nothing but these moments, and that's the whole point. The two make a fierce, wobbly racket, confident that listeners won't miss the comfort afforded by steady bass lines and fuller arrangements. Hearing them play is a bit like reading a sentence with no vowels. Wh rlly nds vwls, nywy?

A White Stripes concert also underscores the importance of Ms. White, whose drumming is more sophisticated than many fans (and many more non-fans) realize. She refuses to imitate a metronome, refuses to flatten the songs by making them conform to a steady pulse. Instead she seems to hear the music the way Mr. White does: as a series of phrases, each with its own shape and tempo. In "Icky Thump," the title track from the group's most recent album, which was released last month, she occasionally warped the rhythm by shortening one of the beats, perfectly in unison with Mr. White's guitar. If her playing were mathematically precise, it would be less musically precise.

Much of the set was devoted to songs from "Icky Thump," which is a bit more raucous than its excellent and unpredictable predecessor, "Get Behind Me Satan." Where that album found Mr. White experimenting with marimba and other instruments, "Icky Thump" is a return to guitar-dominated tantrums and pleas. Ear fatigue occasionally sets in (that's one inevitable effect of the band's ruthless approach), but more often, it was simply exciting to hear familiar traditions — garage rock, country music, the blues — sounding so strange. And Mr. White's squiggly solo during "You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do as You're Told)," from the new album, sounded downright catastrophic, in the best sense.

The White Stripes are in the happy position of having too many songs to choose from, though they found time for most of their biggest hits, some of which were packed into the encore. There was a singalong version of "We're Going to Be Friends," a breakneck run through "Blue Orchid" and, eventually, a thumping rendition of "Seven Nation Army." But one of the band's biggest songs, "Fell in Love With a Girl," appeared only in modified form: a screaming garage-rock hit was reborn, slower and quieter. Perhaps some fans missed the original version. Others probably took it in stride: part of the fun of a White Stripes concert is learning how much you can live without.

Oldies and Goldies

Some old albums still sell like new.

Titles from the '80s and '90s by bands such as AC/DC, Bon Jovi and Metallica continue to do a brisk business.

By JAKE COYLE

The Associated Press

A POWERFUL PREMIERE: The debut album by Metallica, featuring singer-guitarist James Hetfield, is the second-biggest selling album of the Nielsen SoundScan era. It sold 275,000 copies in 2006.

BERTIL ERICSON, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Much of the rock 'n' roll and pop canon is well established.

Buying the albums of '60s and '70s acts like the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley is akin to a rite of passage for any young music fan. These are the artists that baby boomers love to keep buying, and with whom seemingly every teenager at some point experiments. (Remember A.J. hearing Bob Dylan for the first time in the "Sopranos" finale?)

Now that the '80s and '90s are ancient history, what albums are people still buying from those decades? Do critical favorites like Radiohead and the Pixies grow more popular with time? Or do the Backstreet Bo ys and Madonna still rule the charts?

The short answer is that, above all, people are buying vintage Metallica, AC/DC, Bon Jovi, Guns 'N Roses and, well, Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

AC/DC's "Back in Black" (1980) last year sold 440,000 copies and has thus far old 156,000 this year, according to the Nielsen SoundScan catalog charts, which measure how well physical albums older than two years old are selling. (All figures for this article were provided by Nielsen SoundScan.)

Those "Back in Black" numbers would make most contemporary CDs a success. Metallica's self-titled 1991 album is altogether the second-biggest selling album of the Nielsen SoundScan era, which began in 1991. "Metallica" sold 275,000 copies last year.

Bon Jovi's greatest hits collection "Cross Road" last year sold 324,000 copies, while Guns 'N Roses "Appetite for Destruction" (1987) sold 113,000. The Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Christmas Eve and Other Stories" (1996) continues to be a holiday favorite; it was bought 289,000 times last year.

Greatest hits compilations are counted as catalog releases, and account for the majority of vintage best-sellers. Artists that commercially peaked in the '80s or '90s that have had lucrative best-of collections include Garth Brooks, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tim McGraw, Creed, Queen, Tom Petty, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Def Leppard, Aerosmith and Lionel Richie.

U2, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Celine Dion, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Dave Matthews Band and the ever-touring Jimmy Buffett also all continue to sell large amounts of old records.

Michael Jackson, of course, still has one of the most desirable back catalogs. His best- selling "Thriller" moves over 60,000 copies a year and his "Number Ones" collection yielded 162,000 sales last year.

Avid fans may be buying everything their favorite artist puts out, but there's more than nostalgia fueling vintage sales.

"Young fans aren't excluded from catalog sales – especially the ones who really get interested in music, there's always that sense of discovery," says Geoff Mayfield, the director of charts at Billboard Magazine.

Not everything maintains long-term success. Asia's self-titled 1982 album was the biggest seller of 1982, but only sold 5,000 copies last year. Whitney Houston's 1985 debut, also self-titled, was 1986's top album, but now sells about 7,000 discs a year.

The same trajectory has befallen past mega-hits like Ace of Base's "The Sign," Bobby Brown's "Don't Be Cruel" and the Spice Girl's "Spice." Though one of the best selling artists of all time, Mariah Carey's self-titled debut sold a measly 5,000 copies last year. The Backstreet Boys' "Millennium" managed only 9,000 sales.

Alas, the turning wheel of fortune isn't always kind to boy bands. "The only thing that kept coming to mind to me was that line in the Bruce Springsteen song: 'Someday we'll look back at this and it will all seem funny,' " recalls Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke.

Now, some critical hits that were trounced on their initial release by the likes of 'N Sync can claim a measure of commercial superiority. The Flaming Lips' "Soft Bulletin," often hailed as one of the best albums of the '90s by critics, sold a solid 38,000 copies last year.

Radiohead's legendary "OK Computer," currently celebrating its 10-year anniversary, last year sold 94,000 copies. Nirvana's "Nevermind" has done even better; it sold 143,000 copies in 2006.

Current events can alter the charts. When Ray Charles died, his older albums spiked for months, says Mayfield. A new album from Alanis Morissette would surely increase sales of her 1995 disc "Jagged Little Pill," one of the best selling albums of the past 20 years.

Likewise, recent reunions of the Police and Genesis can be expected to increase sales of their catalogs. The Police's 1986 compilation "Every Breath You Take" has already doubled its already strong 2006 sales by selling 107,000 copies so far this year.

Many well-regarded albums continue to do healthy business, including: U2's "Joshua Tree," Dr. Dre's "The Chronic," Beck's "Odelay," Wu-Tang Clan's "Enter the Wu-Tang," the Clash's "London Calling," Weezer's "Weezer," and the Pixies' "Doolittle." Each sold at least 20,000 copies last year.

Still, many albums that are consistently revered on critic top-ten lists of the '80s and '90s have not sold much. Joy Division's "Closer," the Smiths' "The Queen is Dead," My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless," and REM's "Murmur" all sold 12,000 copies or less last year.

Labels often reissue classic releases to capitalize on the devotion of die-hard fans and to attract a new audience. In the past few years, revered indie label Matador Records has released Pavement's first three albums, including "Slanted and Enchanted," a disc frequently ranked among the best in the '90s.

"It's almost like a new release for us," says Matador founder Chris Lombardi. "We probably sold in a one-year period, pretty much what those records sold in their first year period when they were initially released."

Though hip-hop continues to rule today's charts, many of its most historic albums don't enjoy the catalog sales that those from rock's heyday do. Public Enemy's "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back" sold 15,000 copies last year; Beastie Boys' "Paul's Boutique" sold 22,000; and Run DMC's "Raising Hell" sold far less than both.

So far this year, catalog sales are down 11.7 percent, but that's stronger than overall sales, which are down 14.7 percent, according to Billboard. It's a major portion of the music business. This year's total catalog sales of 95.6 million copies accounts for about 40 percent of all albums sold physically.

When people switched from cassette tapes to compact discs, catalog sales received a windfall as people re-bought their collections. The onset of digital downloading hasn't had that affect because CDs can easily be downloaded to your iPod, but digital stores do have the advantage of unlimited (virtual) store space to sell older music.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has pegged catalog downloads as 64 percent of all download sales in the U.S. (Apple declined to share its iTunes data on catalog sales.) That still leaves illegal downloads unaccounted for, as well as a more important quantity: cultural impact. Though bands like Sonic Youth, the Ramones and Public Enemy may never sell as much as other acts, their influence remains immeasurable.

"Impact is not strictly about sales," says Fricke. "Otherwise everyone would be running around forming bands that sound exactly like Poison."

Live Earth..?

The Brazil show has just been canceled.

Rock group Arctic Monkeys have become the latest music industry stars to question whether the performers taking part in Live Earth on Saturday are suitable climate change activists.

"It's a bit patronising for us 21 year olds to try to start to change the world," said Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders, explaining why the group is not on the bill at any of Al Gore's charity concerts.

"Especially when we're using enough power for 10 houses just for (stage) lighting. It'd be a bit hypocritical," he told AFP in an interview before a concert in Paris.

Bass player Nick O'Malley chimes in: "And we're always jetting off on aeroplanes!"

Large parts of the band's hometown of Sheffield were flooded at the end of last month after a deluge of mid-summer rain that some blamed on global warming. Two people were killed.

But the band wonder why anyone would be interested in the opinion of rock stars on a complex scientific issue like climate change.

"Someone asked us to give a quote about what was happening in Sheffield and it's like 'who cares what we think about what's happening'?" added Helders.

"There's more important people who can have an opinion. Why does it make us have an opinion because we're in a band?"

The group, whose first record was the fastest-selling debut album in British history, will clock up thousands of air miles -- in normal airliners not private jets, they say -- during their tour to Asia and Australia in the next few months.

They are not the only stars to take a cynical view of Live Earth, which aims to raise awareness about global warming but which will require many longhaul flights and thousands of car journeys to and from the music venues.

Many of the biggest acts have questionable environmental credentials -- the car-loving rapper Snoop Dogg appeared in a Chrysler commercial last year -- and there are doubts about the ability of pop stars to galvanise the world into action.

Bob Geldof, the architect of Live Aid and Live 8, the two biggest awareness-raising concerts in history, had a public spat with Al Gore about the need for the event.

"Why is he (Gore) actually organising them?" Geldof said in an interview with a Dutch newspaper in May, adding that everyone was already aware of global warming and the event needed firm commitments from politicians and polluters.

Roger Daltrey, singer from 1970s British rock band The Who, told British newspaper The Sun in May that "the last thing the planet needs is a rock concert."

And the singer from 80s pop sensations The Pet Shop Boys, Neil Tennant, attacked the arrogance of pop stars who put themselves forward as role-models.

"I've always been against the idea of rock stars lecturing people as if they know something the rest of us don't," he was reported as saying by British music magazine NME.

Live Earth takes place Saturday in seven cities -- Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, Hamburg, London, Johannesburg and New York -- and organisers hope for a television audience of two billion.

An eighth show in Rio de Janeiro was cancelled by police due to security concerns.

"Live Earth is going to bring together a massive audience around the world to take action against the climate crisis," says Live Earth organiser Yusef Robb.

"Some may say that rock stars tend to be conspicuous consumers, but if we can get those people to turn the corner then we're happy to do so."

Planners have put an enormous effort into minimising the environmental impact of the event in an effort to pre-empt sniping from critics about hypocrisy and the pollution caused by the concerts.

Fans are being encouraged to share cars or use public transport to attend, all lightbulbs will be energy-efficient and the food will be sourced locally where possible.

All the signs from the New York show and the stage in Tokyo will be recycled or composted.

"Where we can't use biodegradable materials, there'll be comprehensive recycling programmes," said Robb, who says the Live Earth gigs will set new green standards for the events industry.

After the shows, the organisers, with the help of accountancy group PricewaterhouseCoopers and an army of consultants, will calculate the volume of carbon emissions created and will then "offset" the difference.

Carbon offsetting means investing in carbon-reducing initiatives such as planting trees or making donations to renewable energy projects.

Robb highlights the good work being done by many artists.

British ska-rock group The Police and US funk-punk band Red Hot Chili Peppers are examples of "people who practice what they preach."

Meanwhile, nu-metal headliners Linkin Park have their own climate change charity and Hawaiian artist Jack Johnson tours in a biodiesel-fuelled bus.

Justice

Electronica That Rocks, à la Française

By WILL HERMES, New York Times
Published: July 1, 2007

ONE of the most blogged-about sets at this year's Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Southern California took place on a stage dominated by towering Marshall amplifier stacks and a huge illuminated cross. When the dark-clad musicians let loose with a familiar hammering riff, the fans erupted in roars, punching their fists in the air and barking out lyrics.

Young audiences "just want more fun in electronic music," says Gaspard Augé, right, of the duo Justice, with Xavier de Rosnay. No, the group wasn't a heavy-metal revival act — not exactly. Justice is a French D.J. duo at the forefront of a new school of electronic music far removed from the genteel soundtracks one commonly hears in W Hotel lobbies and design-conscious restaurants. The music is harder and hookier, as apt to inspire slam-dancing as hip shaking. It's more like rock, which effectively dislodged dance music early this decade as the hipster soundtrack of choice.

"Our crowd is more a rock crowd," said Gaspard Augé of Justice, who is still surprised that fans sometimes stage-dive at its gigs. Young audiences, he suggested, "just want more fun in electronic music, more hedonism."

So in a year that has seen indie rockers like Bright Eyes and the Shins releasing conservatively tuneful CDs that parents might borrow from their kids, rowdy electronic music seems to be seeding a new underground. "People are dancing again," said Tom Dunkley of GBH, the New York company behind Cheeky Bastards, a weekly club event that has embraced the new sound. When Justice and several like-minded D.J.'s performed at a Cheeky Bastards event in Manhattan in March, Mr. Dunkley said, the demand for tickets was "crazy, completely unusual."

Justice's debut full-length CD, whose provocative "title" is a simple cross icon, arrives July 10 via the Vice Records label. The duo had a video added on MTV (extremely rare these days for an electronic act) and has just finished a remix of "LoveStoned" for Justin Timberlake. And it has emerged amid the ever-growing influence of Daft Punk, the Parisian D.J. duo that pioneered the harder, faster approach that characterizes Justice's music with its thrillingly crude electro-house debut, "Homework," in 1996. The rapper Kanye West sampled a track from that album for his hit "Stronger"; this summer Daft Punk will embark on its first major tour in a decade, a multimedia extravaganza that will come to Keyspan Park at Coney Island on Aug. 9.

Some American acts, like LCD Soundsystem and Ghostland Observatory, have been channeling this new sound, as have cutting-edge artists elsewhere. (In recent recordings and live shows, Bjork has been adding noise to her usual dance beats.) But for the past couple of years France has served as its most exciting incubator, on indie labels like Kitsuné, Institubes and especially Ed Banger, which signed Justice and whose name suggests its M.O. (Try pronouncing "headbanger" with a Parisian accent.) And despite some tut-tutting by fans of minimalist techno and other esoteric electronic styles, the new headbanging aesthetic has found an audience.

The members of Justice — Mr. Augé, 27, and Xavier de Rosnay, 24 — met in Paris. Mr. Augé was a Metallica fan who once played in an experimental post-rock group. Mr. de Rosnay was a fan of hip-hop and pop. Justice was effectively born in 2003 when the pair, on a lark, refashioned a song for a remix contest promoted by a college radio station in Paris.

"You could download the separate tracks: guitar, drums and other things," Mr. de Rosnay said via phone from Paris, explaining their remix process. "But we were working without music software: just a sampler, a sequencer and a synthesizer. So we downloaded just the voice on the chorus, because there was not space enough for more than eight seconds of sound on our sampler."

The remix, a radical reshaping of "Never Be Alone" by the British rock group Simian, lost the contest (no one seems to recall who won) but netted the duo a deal with the nascent Ed Banger label in 2003. Eventually retitled "We Are Your Friends" to echo its shouted refrain, the track became a club and Internet phenomenon. To top it off a striking video clip for the song, which looked like the aftermath of a college keg party as dreamed by Michel Gondry, won the award for best video at last year's MTV Europe Music Awards, trumping even the Evel Knievel-themed flamboyance of "Touch the Sky" by Kanye West (who, characteristically, threw a tantrum over the outcome).

"We Are Your Friends" isn't on Justice's new album, but there are plenty of other signs of the members' fusion-minded taste, from a pixilated take on Parliament-Funkadelic ("New Jack") to the kiddie-disco singalong single "D.A.N.C.E.," which seems to have struck a chord: A leaked version was so widely remixed by Internet sample-jackers that Vice posted alternate versions on its blog.

The album also includes the vocal-less single "Waters of Nazareth" from the group's self-titled EP, which made numerous best-of lists last year. The new version begins with a serrated sputtering of electronic noise; when a 4/4 kick-drum beat comes in, the noise becomes a simple, brutish melody. It mutates as the beats fragment, like chips of wood from the blade of a buzz saw, and is replaced by a churchy organ riff on the bridge; then the two melody lines combine, skidding back into pure modulating noise again at the end.

As with the best garage rock or heavy metal — as well as '80s electro, the synthesizer-heavy urban dance style Justice frequently echoes — there is beauty in the relentless primitivism.

As for the cross-icon title, Mr. Augé said it was inspired, in part, because "it was a potent pop symbol in the '90s, with people like Madonna and George Michael using it." Of course it's also a common heavy-metal motif, a connection also suggested by Justice's crudely gothic black-and-silver cover art (not to mention those awe-inspiring Marshall stacks, which, it should be noted, are merely stage props).

Both members of Justice have worked as graphic designers, and visual presentation is an important part of Ed Banger's aesthetic. So is a sense of playfulness, whether it's the shameless potty mouth of Uffie, a female American rapper of sorts best known for the campy gangsta track "Pop the Glock," or the way DJ Mehdi mixes old-school hip-hop and electro with bits of hair-metal guitar. (Both acts appear on the recent compilation "Ed Rec Vol. 2," released in America via Vice.)

"I've never worked with a group that's so fully formed," said Adam Shore, the general manager of Vice Records, referring to the Ed Banger crew. "They've got the music, the art, the aesthetic, the amazing videos, and they're kind of a traveling party."

Ed Banger's multimedia sensibility, not to mention its sound, has a clear antecedent. The label is run by Pedro Winter, who, in addition to making music as Busy P, has for many years managed Daft Punk, the duo of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo. Like Justice, Daft Punk played Coachella, in 2006; its set was a spectacle of lights and video with the duo, in the guise of robots, triggering electronics atop a sort of neon pyramid.

Daft Punk is not directly involved in Ed Banger, but you can hear its influence on the label. And Mr. Bangalter's superlative remix of DJ Mehdi's "Signature" turns a teasing snippet into what might be the most ecstatic dance track you'll hear this year. The duo's influence persists elsewhere too.

"Daft Punk were my heroes when they released the `Homework' album," said Thomas Turner of the young Austin synth-rock band Ghostland Observatory. "That really influenced my view on music."

Mr. Bangalter, who spoke from Los Angeles last month during a break from tour rehearsals, is amused that, at 32, he is considered an elder statesman to a new generation of electronic musicians. And unlike the scene veterans who reject the rockist attitude of Justice and its peers, Mr. Bangalter appreciates the music on its own terms.

"Most of these people were like 6 or 7 years old" during electronica's first wave, he said. "It's not really their history. So they are starting from scratch maybe. From more of a blank slate."

Or as Justice's Mr. Augé put it, "We just don't care about respecting the rules."

CBS & Last.fm

CBS buys social music site Last.fm for £140m.

· TV firm gains access to online community of 15m
· Founders started in single east London room

Katie Allen, media business correspondent
Thursday May 31, 2007
The Guardian

US television network CBS has paid $280m (£140m) for London-based music and social networking website Last.fm.

The deal - the largest UK web 2.0 acquisition to date - gives CBS access to a fast-growing online social network for a fraction of the $1.65bn Google recently paid for online video phenomenon YouTube.

Set up in 2002, Last.fm tracks the music tastes of more than 15 million users, provides them with customised radio stations and connects them with other listeners to share recommendations.

It claims to be the world's largest social music platform and has users in more than 200 countries, including almost 2 million in Britain and 3.5 million in the US.

The undisclosed windfalls for its founders may not quite match the sums paid to the creators of YouTube and MySpace but the $280m deal is a welcome payoff for a project that started out from one room in Whitechapel, east London.

The site struggled to raise funding in the early days and, unable to pay the rent on their own flats, the team lived in tents on the roof of their office. Last.fm took donations from sympathetic observers and friends to stay afloat while it looked around for bigger investors.

"When we started in the dire days of 2002 no one wanted to put any money into online music because Napster had just been sued into submission," said founder Martin Stiksel. "We took it without any external investment up to over a million users so we had to cut some corners with the sleeping arrangements."

It then attracted the interest of Index Ventures, which has also bought into other success stories such as Skype and purchased by eBay for $4.1bn. Now Last.fm, which will continue to be run as a separate business in London, hopes the CBS deal will lift it to a new level.

"It's great news for making sure Last.fm sees through its mission and becomes the last music destination on the net," said Mr Stiksel. "We can do all the things we only dreamed about before. We have a lot more ideas in the pipeline that we can now put into effect and also we have a strong partner on our side."

The management team, including the other founders Felix Miller and Richard Jones, hope the tie-up will mean they can negotiate better deals with record labels and cheaper rates for music streaming.

The acquisition, all in cash, follows a number of moves by CBS to expand its online presence including the acquisition of video business news blog Wallstrip.com and investments in Joost, the web TV service created by the co-founders of internet telephone service Skype.

CBS chief executive Leslie Moonves said the deal was a major step in the group's attempt to transform itself from a "content company into an audience company". "Their demographics also play perfectly to CBS's goal to attract younger viewers and listeners across our businesses."

The president of CBS's interactive division, Quincy Smith, said: "We looked at a lot of companies to provide a base for CBS's investment in online reach, and found Last.fm to be poised at an inflection point - balancing fast growth, a sticky community and the opportunity for monetisation that does not distract the user."

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

The Nymphs live

THE NYMPHS - LIVE AT THE ROXY! ALL AGES!!!

When:

Wednesday Jun 06, 2007 at 8:00 PM

Where:

The Roxy
9009 W. Sunset Blvd.
Hollywood, CA 90069
United States

The Nymphs are at the Roxy for an all ages show!!! This is my first headlining show since I've been "back". I hope to see YOU there!

Love, Inger

This show is ALL AGES!

You can get tickets here at http://www.Ticketmaster.com.

Also, check out an exclusive video of the Nymphs at RockNRollTV.net!!! HEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

CHECK OUT THIS SUPER BEHIND THE SCENES VIDEO INTERVIEW OF US AT OUR REHEARSAL SPACE THAT WE SHARE WITH KIM DEAL OF THE BREEDERS/PIXIES!!!!!!!!!!!! (SEE HOW MANY BREEDERS/PIXIES CLUES YOU CAN SPOT IN THE BACKGROUND BEHIND US.

Nightmare of You, Rasputina, Sigur Ros and Dungen.

Nightmare Of You, Homeless?

Story by: Taylor Mason

After spending the last few months perfecting tunes for their sophomore record, Nightmare Of You declared their free-agency yesterday, announcing that they have parted ways with label EastWest. Confirming the split via their official MySpace page, NOY wrote, "As of today, April 17, 2007, Nightmare Of You and our respective Bevonshire Label have left our old home at EastWest and are free to explore the best options for the future of the band. Our forthcoming album will NOT be affiliated with Sire Records nor will it suffer from the poor distribution our debut endured."

The Long Island band, which features emo veterans Brandon Reilly (the Movielife) and Samuel Siegler (Rival Schools, GlassJaw) remained optimistic about their recording future, going on to write "We are very lucky for this freedom to explore the 'right' options for us since most contractually obligated bands can end up crippled by a lack of both passion and resources."...

http://www.nightmareofyou.com

http://prod1.cmj.com/articles/display_article.php?id=35047291


Rasputina's New Album Set For June Release.

Story by: Tom Duffy

Brooklyn chamber-rock outfit Rasputina are set to release their sixth full-length album, Oh Perilous World!, June 26 via Filthy Bonnet. Following the release of her 2006 solo album, Perplexions, singer/lead celloist Melora Creager spent the last two years scouring over daily world events and adapting them into songs.

"I wrote the songs featured on Oh Perilous World! over the last two years when I realized that current world events were more bizarre than anything I could scrounge up from the distant past," she says. "I obsessively read daily news on the Internet and copied words, phrases and whole stories that especially intrigued me and compiled a vast notebook of this material."

Original from Kansas, Creager moved to New York at 18, where she began playing her cello in rock bands. She joined local band Ultra Vivid Scene, who recorded three albums for cult British label 4AD and went on to open for the Pixies and Throwing Muses. But it was after touring with Nirvana as a cellist on their In Utero tour that she decided it was time to branch out on her own, thus creating Raspuntina.

Oh Perlious World! is performed by Creager, alongside drummer Jonathon TeBeest with second chair Sarah Bowman.

Tracklist For Oh Perilous World!:

01. 1816, The Year Without A Summer
02. Choose Me For A Champion
03. Cage In A Cave
04. Incident In A Medical Clinic
05. Draconian Crackdown
06. Child Soldier Rebellion
07. Oh Bring Back The Egg Unbroken
08. Old Yellowcake Breaking News
09. In Old Yellowcake
10. A Retinue Of Moons/The Infidel Is Me
11. The Pruning

http://www.rasputina.com

http://prod1.cmj.com/articles/display_article.php?id=35047307


A Year At Sea With Sigur Ros.

Story by: Taylor Mason

Icelandic rockers Sigur Rós announced today on their website a June 1 release of In A Frozen Sea—A Year With Sigur Rós (Artist In Residence), a book compiled by industry veteran and longtime Sigur Rós fan Jeff Anderson. The collector's item is a photographic essay comprised of exclusive photos and interviews collected from the band's iconic tour of Iceland last summer, paired with beautiful images of the Icelandic countryside, creating an intricate, fan-derived look at the band. Further appeasing fans, Sigur Rós will repackage a limited 5,000 issues containing the book release of In A Frozen Sea as well as three of the band's 12-inch LP's.

http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk

http://prod1.cmj.com/articles/display_article.php?id=35047310


Dungen Preps New LP.

Story by: Kevin Kampwirth

Swedish psych-rockers Dungen will release their nine-track fourth LP, Tio Bitar (translated as "Ten Pieces") on May 15 in the States via Kemado. As has been the case with past Dungen records, Tio Bitar was written and constructed almost completely by front man Gustav Ejstes—who also played most of the instruments himself—with some help from guitarist Reine Fiske. No dates are set yet in support of the album, but a spring tour is in the works.

Tracklisting For Tio Bitar:

01. Intro
02. Familj
03. Gor Det Nu
04. C Visar Vagen
05. Du Ska Inte Tro Att Det Ordnar Sig
06. Mon Amour
07. Sa Blev Det Bestam
08. Ett Skl Att Trivas
09. Svart Ar Himlen

http://www.dungen-music.com

http://prod1.cmj.com/articles/display_article.php?id=35047328

Year Zero / Nine Inch Nails

Flirting With Dystopia, Experimenting With Noise.

By KELEFA SANNEH, New York Times

Published: April 17, 2007

Miniature hard drives stashed in bathrooms. Unlisted phone numbers that lead to ominous messages. A small constellation of mysterious Web sites chronicling a grim future 15 years away. This is how Trent Reznor is letting the world — or some fanatical portion thereof — know about "Year Zero" (Nothing Records/Interscope), the new Nine Inch Nails album, which arrives in shops today. Open the packaging and you'll find another secret message: the disc itself changes color with heat, turning white to display the copyright information and a long string of ones and zeroes. In this paranoid world, everything worth knowing is a secret.

The disc of the new Nine Inch Nails album, out today, changes color with heat, turning white to show copyright information.

Mr. Reznor has been making aggressive computer music under the name Nine Inch Nails for about two decades, but it was "The Downward Spiral," his bilious but elegant 1994 blockbuster, that confirmed his position as a true rock star in an era largely devoid of them. He released a colder-blooded double album, "The Fragile," in 1999, then laid low for half a decade. His seething 2005 CD, "With Teeth," felt like a comeback, a reminder to his fans — and maybe to himself — that he hadn't retired after all.

Apparently the follow-up came quickly: Mr. Reznor has said the new album "began as an experiment with noise on a laptop in a bus on tour somewhere." (A sticker on the cover bears a promise, or a warning: "16 noisy new songs.") But "Year Zero" is much more seductive than "With Teeth," partly because of all the so-called noise. Hard beats are softened with distortion, static cushions the tantrums, sneaky bass lines float beneath the surface. And as usual the music is packed with details: "Meet Your Master" goes through at least three cycles of decay and rebirth; part of the fun of "The Warning" is tracking the ever-mutating timbres.

If all these sounds often distract listeners from Mr. Reznor's lyrics, well, so much the better. In the year 2022, apparently, clumsy sloganeering is all the rage. The album's first single, "Survivalism," includes the phrase "Mother Nature is a whore," a sarcastic expression of anti-environmentalism. And "Capital G," which sounds a lot like an anti-Bush diatribe, has another deluded narrator we're supposed to hate: "I pushed a button and elected him to office and a/He pushed a button and it dropped a bomb."

Some will enjoy finding connections between these songs and the narrative that unfolds on the cryptic "Year Zero" Web sites; fans have had to figure out the URL addresses on their own. ("Another Version of the Truth" is an instrumental track; anotherversionofthetruth.com is one of the sites.) But even listeners who don't know their Parepin (a sinister panacea of the future) from their Opal (an illegal drug of the future) may find that this fictional world serves a useful purpose.

It's a pretty neat trick: just knowing there's a hidden story makes those generically disaffected words sound less generic. If the songs share the same sonic palette, and if the lyrics sometimes overlap ("Down on your knees" in one song, "On hands and knees we crawl" in another; "Can it go any faster?" in one, "Make it come faster" in another), that's because they are all artifacts of the same fictional world.

Hidden messages, hidden Web sites, a hidden world: all this secrecy is supposed to tell us something ominous about the future. So why does Mr. Reznor's dystopia seem so familiar? His paranoid vision evokes nothing so much as the 1990s, the decade that gave us Heaven's Gate suicides, the militia movement, the first President Bush's New World Order, the Y2K scare, "The X-Files." It's hard to spend much time in Mr. Reznor's world without thinking of that show's famous slogan: "The truth is out there."

In the 1990s, when online culture was young, it was tempting to believe that the Internet was full of secret sites and furtive e-mail messages and clandestine information; back then all those mysterious "Year Zero" Web sites might have seemed pretty spooky. Nowadays everyone knows that the Internet is a spectacularly bad place to store secrets, and e-mail is even worse; it keeps getting harder to make information disappear.

Last week Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, inadvertently summed up our archive- obsessed culture when he scoffed at a claim that sensitive White House e-mail messages had been lost: "You can't erase e-mails, not today. They've gone through too many servers!" The truth isn't out there, it's right there: on Google or YouTube or Wikipedia. People used to worry that the world was full of secrets; now it's possible to wonder whether there are any secrets left.

Certainly the secrets of "Year Zero" didn't stay that way very long. Nine Inch Nails fans who lack the time or inclination to puzzle out the story can simply look it up: a few minutes on Wikipedia will answer all your questions. (The game continues. On Friday "Year Zero" obsessives were summoned by e-mail to a secret meeting on a Los Angeles street corner.) But again, solving the riddle isn't really the point. Although it claims to be an ominous portrait of a fictional future, "Year Zero" seems more like an affectionate tribute to our recent past.

Surely it's not a coincidence that the 1990s were the heyday of Nine Inch Nails, the decade when Mr. Reznor went from cult hero to mainstream rock star. And perhaps he misses his days as an underground favorite. (Now that just about any kind of music is, literally, accessible, it's no longer clear what "underground" means.) Even the electronic noises on "Year Zero" sound a bit old-fashioned: a throwback to the days when computer-generated music was full of static and blips.

If "Year Zero" feels warm and, for better and worse, familiar, this is why. It's not really a cautionary tale: it's a reminiscence.

Rock News 04 2007, some more

The Chemical Brothers, Tori Amos, Arctic Monkeys, Starsailor,
Queens Of The Stone Age, Manic Street Preachers, Sum 41, Spoon,
The White Stripes, and Supergrass.

The Chemical Brothers reveal new album details. It's due out this summer.

The Chemical Brothers have announced details of their forthcoming album.

The follow-up to 2005's 'Push The Button' is titled 'We Are The Night' and is due out in June via Freestyle Dust/Virgin Records...

Further album details and US tour dates are expected to be announced shortly.

http://www.nme.com/news/the-chemical-brothers/27225


Tori Amos reveals album tracklisting. 'American Doll Posse' features 23 songs.

Tori Amos has revealed details of her new album, which is set to be released in May.

'American Doll Posse' is the singer's first new studio release since 2005's 'The Beekeeper', although she released a greatest hits box set last year....

The tracklisting for the album is:

'Yo George'
'Big Wheel'
'Bouncing off Clouds'
'Teenage Hustling'
'Digital Ghost'
'You Can Bring Your Dog'
'Mr. Bad Man'
'Fat Slut'
'Girl Disappearing'
'Secret Spell'
'Devils and Gods'
'Body and Soul'
'Father's Son'
'Programmable Soda'
'Code Red'
'Roosterspur Bridge'
'Beauty of Speed'
'Almost Rosey'
'Velvet Revolution'
'Dark Side of the Sun'
'Posse Bonus'
'Smokey Joe'
'Dragon'

'American Doll Posse' will be released on May 1 in the States, and in the UK a day earlier.

http://www.nme.com/news/tori-amos/27224


Arctic Monkeys reveal reason for speedy studio sessions. The band wanted to get their second album out fast.

Arctic Monkeys have revealed to NME the real reason they got new album 'Favourite Worst Nightmare' finished so quickly.

The record is out on April 23, just 15 months after the release of debut album 'Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not' came out.

However frontman Alex Turner admitted the band actually wanted the new record to come out in the same week of the year as the last one did - but they didn't quite manage it.

He said: "The only pressure was what we put on ourselves because we wanted to do it quick and try get it out at the same time as the last one came out. That were the plan.

"Ultimately, we thought if we carried that on for a few years it might become like a Bank Holiday or something. It'd be a national holiday! The first one came out February 12 or something (it actually came out on January 30 after being brought forward a week) so we were trying to get this one to come out February 12, but a year later. We missed it by two months, we were fucking about."

http://www.nme.com/news/arctic-monkeys/27188


Starsailor begin work on new album. They demo three new songs.

Starsailor have begun work on their new album.

The band have begun recording demos for the follow up to 2005's 'On The Outside'.

Posting on their Myspace blog frontman James Walsh wrote:

"We have completed another set of demos in Henley which produced 3 new songs. The one which everyone is raving about is called 'Lights Out' or 'Tell Me It's Not Over' (we haven't decided yet!).

"It's got a massive drum beat, reminiscent of Doves and U2. Another couple of these and we will have a truly great album."

In an earlier post the band said that they had written 15 songs for the album, and demoed the songs 'Let Go', 'Do You Believe In Love?', 'Won't Stop Now' and 'Change My Mind'.

A release date has not been announced.

http://www.nme.com/news/starsailor/27114


Queens Of The Stone Age preview new album at SXSW. NME.COM hears first official playback.

Queens Of The Stone Age's new album was unveiled this afternoon (March 15) in Austin, Texas, and NME.COM was there to hear it.

Nine tracks from the band's fifth studio album, 'Era Vulgaris' ('common era' or 'age without god'), were previewed at the exclusive listening party, held at the South By Southwest Fader House.

The album includes the track 'Make It Witchu' from The Desert Sessions, this time with Josh Homme replacing Mark Lanegan on the vocal.

As previously reported, The Strokes' frontman Julian Casablancas also features on the record.

The songs previewed were:

'Turning On The Screw'
'Sick Sick Sick'
'Into The Hollow'
'Battery Acid'
'River In The Road'
'Suture Up Your Future'
'3s and 7s'
'I'm Designer'
'Make It Witchu'

'Era Vulgaris' is due to be released in June.

http://www.nme.com/news/sxsw/27090


Manic Street Preachers confirm new album details. Trio also reveal single.

Manic Street Preachers have confirmed the details of their new album 'Send Away The Tigers'.

The band have revealed the tracklisting for the record, which is released on May 7.

The album will be preceded by single 'Your Love Alone Is Not Enough' on April 30, which sees the band team up with The Cardigans singer Nina Persson.

The full tracklisting for their new album is:

'Send Away The Tigers'
'Underdogs'
'Your Love Alone Is Not Enough'
'Indian Summer'
'The Second Great Depression'
'Rendition'
'Autumnsong'
'I Am Just A Patsy'
'Imperial Bodybags'
'Winterlovers'

http://www.nme.com/news/manic-street-preachers/27070


Sum 41 complete album. Now band begin search for new guitarist.

Sum 41 have announced they have completed the follow-up to 2004 album 'Chuck'.

The self-produced effort was recorded in Los Angeles at Ocean Way, and follows the first new material by the band since the departure of guitarist Dave Baksh.

A post on their Myspace blog from frontman Deryk Whibley reads: "We have finished our new album. We still don't have a name for it yet though. It will be coming out this summer."

Whibley added that they were starting auditions to find a replacement for Baksh.

He then wrote: "We have no idea how long this will take so I can't really tell you when we will be back on tour. If all goes well we should be back playing shows in mid-April. We will keep you all updated here as frequently as possible. Thanks for all your support, and I can't wait for you to hear this album."

http://www.nme.com/news/sum-41/27077


Spoon reveal new album details. It's due out this summer.

Spoon have revealed details of their forthcoming album.

The follow-up to 2005's 'Gimme Fiction' is due out on July 10 and will feature 10 songs with titles including 'Don't You Evah' and 'Black Like Me'...

The tracklisting is:

1. 'Don't Make Me a Target'
2. 'The Ghost of You Lingers'
3. 'You Got Yr Cherry Bomb'
4. 'Don't You Evah'
5. 'Rhthm and Soul'
6. 'Eddie's Ragga'
7. 'The Underdog'
8. 'My Little Japanese Cigarette Case'
9. 'Finer Feelings'
10. 'Black Like Me'

http://www.nme.com/news/spoon/27286


White Stripes album tracklisting revealed. 'Icky Thump' details are out.

The tracklisting has been unveiled for the forthcoming White Stripes album 'Icky Thump'...

The tracklisting is:

'Icky Thump'
'You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do as You're Told)'
'300 MPH Torrential Outpour Blues'
'Conquest'
'Bone Broke'
'Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn'
'St. Andrew (This Battle Is in the Air)'
'Little Cream Soda'
'Rag and Bone'
'I'm Slowly Turning Into You'
'A Martyr for My Love for You'
'Catch Hell Blues'
'Effect and Cause'

http://www.nme.com/news/the-white-stripes/27285

Supergrass head into the studio. New record will be finished in a month.

Supergrass have revealed that they are to make an imminent return to the studio to record new material. Predicting that the process will be finished in little over a month, the band said they're aiming for an "energetic" sound for their new record, which will be their first since 2005's 'Road To Rouen'. Speaking to Steve Lamacq on BBC 6Music, lead singer Gaz Coombes explained: "Over the last few months we've been writing and stuff. We've been over each others places, y'know, we've got little studios at home, so we kinda get ideas and do little demos and just get the vibes up and just look to recording and bits of pre-production, which is where we're at now."

The band are now gearing up to take the new tracks into the studio. Coombes added: "We're off to Berlin in a couple of weeks to do the recording and its going to be a quick session, two or three week session, and just knock it out as fast as we can.

"That's where the enthusiasm is; in what you've got coming, in what the future holds. That's what it's like for this next record; there's just some really kind of vibrant, sort of exciting bits of music happening. Just can't wait to get it down."

http://www.nme.com/news/supergrass/27271