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Björk Shares Sonos Radio Mix: Stream
Björk is the latest artist to curate a Sonos Radio station, plumbing her formidable WAV archives for a playlist that touches every corner of the globe. Her channel is called “21 years worth of wave files liquidated into a stream”. As she explained in an interview at the top of the mix, Björk has owned the same laptop for 21 years. It’s become a repository for all her favorite tracks discovered on CDs, cassettes, vinyl, and more — every song that she says “saved my life” she converted into a high-quality WAV format. Now, these sonic chronicles have been distilled down to an eclectic hour’s worth of music, featuring performances by Alim qasimov, Jeremiah, Oui, LFO, Aby Ngana Diop, ML Buch, and more. In a statement, Björk delved into her curation process, writing, “i am quite t...
Weezer’s Brian Bell on What Albums to Expect Next
Kyle Meredith With… Weezer Listen via Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Play | Stitcher | Radio Public | RSS Weezer multi-instrumentalist Brian Bell joins Kyle Meredith to talk about OK Human, the band’s latest LP that finds them working with an orchestra on a seamless thematic piece. The guitarist discusses playing the acoustic guitar and organ since the record has no electric instruments, the importance of human voices, and using the Fibonacci sequence in one of their songs. Bell also dives into how the band continues to work on multiple records at once, gives an update on the delayed Van Weezer LP, drops the news on a classic-Weezer-inspired Weezer album that’ll be included in a four-part album series, and the possibility of a...
Kings of Leon Share New Song “Echoing”: Stream
Kings of Leon are in the process of rolling out their first album in five years, When You See Yourself. The full record arrives next month, but today they’re giving fans another taste of what’s to come with a new song called “Echoing”. Last month, the Nashville-bred band announced their first full-length since 2016’s WALLS by sharing two promising singles, “The Bandit” and “100,000 People”. The former was a brisk and rattling rocker in the vein of their 2008 mega-hit “Sex On Fire”, while “100,000 People” was took more of a slow-burning ballad route that still featured a satisfying build. “Echoing”, which is the second-to-last song on the tracklist, falls somewhere in the middle between those two sounds. It begins with a tense and lively drum beat that revs in the background the whole time ...
In Defense of Phoebe Bridgers Smashing Her Guitar on Saturday Night Live
This past weekend, Phoebe Bridgers made her eagerly anticipated debut as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. During the final moments of her performance of “I Know the End”, a track from her buzzy sophomore album, Punisher, Bridgers went out with a bang — literally — when she repeatedly smashed her guitar into a monitor onstage. Unfortunately, the Internet being what it is, Bridgers’ epic moment of punk euphoria was clouded by curmudgeonly chatter. A simple search of “Phoebe Bridgers guitar” on Twitter brings up a litany of comments wondering why “that woman” had the nerve to “damage expensive property.” Others called the act pointless and even poked fun at Bridgers for apparently not being strong enough to have done more physical damage to the instrument. No matter how much doom scr...
Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood Calls for UK Government to Renegotiate Brexit Touring Provisions
On February 1st, the long-running Brexit saga finally came to an end, and British citizens woke up on an island both figuratively and literally. But the ramifications of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union are still being parsed. On February 8th, Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood wrote an op-ed in The Guardian that looked at the new requirements for British bands on the Continent and called for the government to “renegotiate on the provision for touring in Europe.” Greenwood opens the op-ed by recalling Radiohead’s first European excursions, the “small clubs and early festival slots across Sweden, The Netherlands and France in a crappy old bus that smelled of diesel and had sad grey curtains.” He adds, “There were so many different kinds of milk.” Beyond the fond memories, G...
Phoebe Bridgers Guitar Smashes Her Way Into SNL Lore With Epic Two Song Performance: Watch
Phoebe Bridgers proved to be one of the few bright spots of 2020, as the talented Los Angeles-based songwriter managed to become a full-blown superstar while hunkered down in quarantine. She released one of the year’s best albums with Punisher. She then proceeded to deliver memorable covers of Radiohead, John Prine, and Goo Goo Dolls; launched her very own record label; made a music video with Phoebe Waller-Bridge; and recorded and released another collection of music with Copycat Killer EP. All the while, she masterfully navigated the limitations of performing remotely, setting a standard that few have been able to match (see: her bathtub performance on Kimmel, her karaoke rendition of “Kyoto” on Colbert, and her NPR Tiny Desk set, to name just a few). For her efforts, Bridgers was honore...
Foo Fighters and Billie Eilish Perform at ALTer EGO Fest: Watch
iHeartRadio’s annual ALTer EGO festival went down in livestream form on Thursday night with headlining performances fro Foo Fighters and Billie Eilish. Foo Fighters kicked off the evening with a four-song set. “Shame Shame” and “Waiting On A War”, from the band’s forthcoming album Medicine at Midnight, were bookended by classics “Everlong” and “The Pretender”. Eilish closed the night with performances of her latest singles “therefore I am” and “my future”, along with “everything I wanted”. Though Foo Fighters and Eilish did not perform together, Dave Grohl was no doubt pumped to be sharing a bill with the young superstar. Last year, he likened Eilish’s rapid rise to Nirvana’s in 1991: “People say, ‘Is rock dead?’ When I look at someone like Billie Eilish, rock and roll is no...
Martin Gore on Making Soundwave Art from Depeche Mode Songs
Kyle Meredith With… Martin Gore Listen via Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Play | Stitcher | Radio Public | RSS Depeche Mode songwriter Martin Gore hops on the line with Kyle Meredith to discuss The Third Chimpanzee. The new instrumental solo album finds him thematically bridging primates to humans in both the sounds he’s making and the inspiration he draws from. Gore dives into the ways he makes instrumentals speak to something, and the state of panic and anxiety he felt over the past four years. The electronic innovator also talks about being on the forefront of computerized music, his thoughts on AI songwriters, making soundwave art out of Depeche Mode songs, and the upcoming remixes for The Third Chimpanzee. Kyle Meredith W...
New Radicals to Reunite for Joe Biden’s Inaugural Parade
New Radicals will reunite after 22 years to perform at Joe Biden’s inaugural parade. Rolling Stone reports the band will perform their signature hit “You Get What You Give” to close the virtual “Parade Across America” on Wednesday, January 20th. During the presidential campaign, “You Get What You Give” was used as the walk-out song for Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff. The song was also beloved by President-elect Biden’s late son, Beau, and became something of a personal theme song for him as he battled cancer. “During breakfast, Beau would often make me listen to what I thought was his theme song, ‘You Get What You Give’ by the New Radicals,” Biden wrote in his 2017 memoir Promise, Me Dad. “Even though Beau never stopped fighting and his will to live was stronger th...
Trent Reznor, Billy Corgan, Gary Oldman & Others Sing Bowie Songs for 74th Birthday Livestream: Watch
On Saturday night, David Bowie’s friends, collaborators, and some of the many musicians he inspired came together to celebrate his 74th birthday. (The event had originally been scheduled for Friday night, but was postponed due to technical difficulties.) Among the many highlights: Trent Reznor, along with his Nine Inch Nails bandmate Atticus Ross, Reznor’s wife Mariqueen Maandig, and Bowie collaborator Mike Garson, performed covers of “Fantastic Voyage” and “Fashion”. Billy Corgan played “Space Oddity”, Duran Duran covered “Five Years”, and The Cult’s Ian Astbury tackled “Lazarus”. Bowie’s close friend Gary Oldman sang Tin Machine’s “I Can’t Read”, and Michael C. Hall, who starred in Bowie’s musical Lazarus, performed “Where Are We Now?”. Slipknot’s Corey Taylor, Foo Fighters’ Taylor Hawki...
Ex-Governor Ngilari: PDP is dead, will be buried in 2023
Former Adamawa Governor Bala James Ngilari, said the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has no future in Nigeria because it is a dying party. Ngilari said this at the state All Progressives Congress (APC) stakeholders meeting on Saturday in Yola. The former governor who defected to APC in 2020, was the PDP’s Adamawa North Senatorial Candidate at the 2019 general election. ” One of the reasons why I dumped PDP for APC is that PDP is a dying party. In fact, PDP is dead and it will be buried in 2023. ” Secondly, I don’t see PDP as an alternative for the future of Nigeria, because the contradictions in the party will make its members go to the graveyard and we will help them bury themselves. ” And the reason why I identified myself with APC is because of its laudable objectives that will take us t...
Gary Numan Announces New Album Intruder
Gary Numan will return on May 21st with a new album called Intruder. Intruder serves as Numan’s 18th studio album overall and follows 2017’s Savage: Songs From a Broken World. Per a press release, Intruder presents a “fresh but complementary narrative” to Savage, which depicted Earth as a barren wasteland in which humanity and culture had been largely crushed by the effects of global warming. As Numan himself explains, “Intruder looks at climate change from the planet’s point of view. If Earth could speak, and feel things the way we do, what would it say? How would it feel? The songs, for the most part, attempt to be that voice, or at least try to express what I believe the earth must feel at the moment.” “The planet sees us as its children now grown into callous selfishness, with a t...
