Lykke Li has announced some UK dates.
The Swedish singer will hit these shores in April to support her upcoming album, which is currently untitled and due in early 2011. The dates are:
12th – Bristol Trinity
14th – London O2 Shepherds Bush Empire
15th – Leeds Cockpit
16th – Dublin Tripod
18th- Glasgow Arches
19th – Manchester Academy 2
Get in the mood with her new video:
Arcade Fire have released their new video.
It’s for the title track of their latest album The Suburbs and was directed by Spike Jonze, famed for his work on Video Days and Girl Skateboard films as well as his work on feature films such as Being John Malkovich and Where The Wild Things are.
Here’s the video, get to watching!
It seems that true fans of the The xx are mystified by this cover of Crystalised by Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz that was released this weekend. The track was recorded for a Live Lounge Session for the BBC and has split opinions so far across the web. What do you think of this version, beauty or beast?
Glitch-hop producer extraordinaire Prefuse 73 is hitting London for an intimate show this month.
The man behind such huge albums as One Word Extinguisher and Surrounded By Silence will play the Queen of Hoxton on November 28th. Ably supported by Anchorsong, it’s a chance to see the great man at a cosy venue. Pick up your tickets from here.
Since announcing that they were on-board to compose the soundtrack for the upcoming Tron sequel, Daft Punk have been mostly quiet about the project, drip-feeding fans with 20 second snippets of tracks and tiny molecules of information that the press continue to swarm over like vultures. Understandable, given that the 22-track album will be the influential duo’s first original full-length since 2005’s Human After All, for which the producers have called upon an entire orchestra to assist them. For the first time, Daft Punk have spoken at length about the project with Dazed and Confused magazine, and have finally answered all those questions many have been dying to ask.
They talk about the contrasts between the origins, producing music in bedrooms and how hearing it performed by a 90-piece orchestra was an “very intense experience”. Guy-Manuel (gold helmet) has put forward his optimism that this could encourage many of their fans to listen to more classical music and focus their attention on orchestral instruments rather than synths, which unlike the “timelessness” of a cello, Thomas Bangalter (silver helmet) argues “will probably be gone in the next 20 [years]”. Indeed, despite their dance music origins, the pair appear to have fallen in love with the more traditional music composition experience, as Thomas continues…
“We knew from the start that there was no way we were going to do this film score with two synthesizers and a drum machine… there’s more latitude to experiment with an orchestra than an 808 drum machine and synth.”
The soundtrack will be released on December 6th, 11 days prior to the movie hitting cinemas. We are excited, Rick McCrank is excited, are you?
London’s most talked about singer/producer of the NOW, James Blake has revealed that the release date of his highly anticipated debut album will be February 7th 2011.
It will be dropped via his own ATLAS Label (with major label funding) and is “probably self-titled”. Like his recent work on ‘Limit To Your Love‘ and ‘I Never Learnt To Share‘, the album will prominently display Blake’s vocal capabilities and the focus on lyrics (“taken from [his] own emotional experiences at uni”) will give the listener a insight into the musical soul of Blake far greater than what that of his post-dubstep RnB re-works permitted.
More exciting news comes in the form of a full live show as the singer continues, “We’ve done trial runs and it’s going great. I’m rehearsing with a proper band – we’re going to be playing 100% live.”
Watch the video to his Feist cover below and read our review for it here.
Last Thursday Metallica played a beast of a set in Sydney, Australia that had James Hetfield’s daughter fully involved in the on-stage carnage.
Guitarist Kirk Hammett got a little carried away while playing ‘Seek and Destroy‘ and began wandering aimlessly around a monster stage, kicking the black balls that were scattered around. One of which, went flying directly into the face of the unsuspecting junior Hetfield.
Naturally, this video is overflowing with viral possibilities for obvious reasons. So what are you doing reading this last paragraph? Why haven’t you pressed play and posted this on Facebook yet? Why haven’t you remixed it with Bizzle’s Forward Riddim’ yet? Come on…
Alt angles!
Earlier this year, Aphex Twin confirmed in an interview that since 2001’s Druqks he has recorded and essentially finished up to six albums worth of material. Unfortunately, in the same interview there was no sign of when the next release will actually happen.
This short video appeared online this week which features snippets of new material set to visuals that debuted at the London Electronic Dance Festival which almost literally blew our heads off earlier this year. What it signifies exactly remains uncertain, but after a collection of weird noises and twisted amen breaks that invokes the spirit of 90s rave in a way only AFX could achieve beautifully we’re left with a date – 12th March 2011.
Make of that what you will, but watch and listen to the AFX Seaside Specials blip below and get excited for something, hopefully soon.
Yesterday the undisputed king of party mash-ups Girl Talk topped the US Google search as he released All Day, his latest collection of hip-hop acapellas blended with nostalgic instrumentals and plenty of other re-contextualised musical treats.
Having just given it a full run through in the Crossfire HQ we are happy to confirm that it’s fucking awesome, as expected. As if this news couldn’t get any better, you can download it completely free from this website (which Girl Talk has subsequently apologised for how many server crashes he’s caused in what can only be described as the electronic equivilent of thousands of fans storming a stage) which is packed with a list of mirrors should the official link not work.
It has over 300 samples and will probably played at every house party in 2011. Get used to it now: click the cover art to get your hands on it.
This Saturday Gallows played no more than 5 songs at some Nike party in Whoreditch and caused the usual chaos they are famous for. Their typically explosive set spilled into the boxing ring that was set up beside where they were set up to play inviting the crowd to get loose between the ropes with them.
Rumours that the band will make a third album have surfaced this week after various reports of a a split between the group, let’s hope that this is true so that more parties in East London can be punked. Enjoy this small clip from Saturday night’s carnage.