Kanye West has apologised for his outburst at the MTV Europe Awards in Copenhagen last week when he ranted about losing the best video award to Justice v Simian.
He came out and said: “I don’t have anything against the group that won. I’m gonna download their album right now. I didn’t mean to be offensive in any way. I love you guys. I never heard of you [but] I am your friend.”
Muppet.
Charges of gun possession against G Unit have been dropped after the investigations found that they had not been in possession of weapons when they were arrested last year in New York.
Officers had claimed that the two men, Young Buck and Lloyd Banks, were in a van that ran a red light, and once stopped were seen to be in possession of weapons. Lloyd Banks said of the matter:
“This whole experience reminds me of the title of my new album – ‘Rotten Apple’ “.
Pete Doherty has been fined £750 for his assault on a BBC reporter in March. In addition, he’ll have to pay a further £450 to cover court costs and compensation.
He pleaded guilty to kicking a microphone out of her hand and also guilty to assaulting her, though he had originally pleaded not guilty until his lawyer had seen the footage. However, Doherty will be paying his fine next week instead of this, as he only had 27p on him at the time.
After having sold out the Astoria in London last week, Enter Shikari are continuing their live dominance with some more dates starting at the end of the month. The dates are:
November
29th – Arts Centre – Norwich
30th – TJs – Newport
December
1st – Academy II – Bristol
2nd – Speakeasy (afternoon all ages show) – Belfast
3rd – Voodoo Lounge (afternoon all ages show)- Dublin
5th – Leadmill – Sheffield
6th – Rock City – Nottingham
7th – Cockpit – Leeds
8th – Charlotte – Leicester
2006 has been a stand out year for Australia’s finest export, Wolfmother. With sales of their debut album topping a phenomenal 900,000 sales and jaw dropping sets at Reading and Leeds, the big haired rockers return for one last tussle for the year with their single ‘The Joker And The Thief’.
There are many bands that spring to mind when listening to Wolfmother, but they seem to be coming into their own, and whilst they’re undoubtedly heavily influenced by 70s rock – they’re have their own unique take on it. Handpicked by Johnny Knoxville for the lead track in his painful new outing in ‘Jackass 2′, ‘The Joker and The Thief’ is a slice of melodic rock, with an almost Led Zeppelin-esque backdrop, guitars are flamboyant and moody, but the chorus never quite cranks into action as you’re expecting. This single’s something to revel in, it’s a fairytale, “I’ll tell you all the story about the joker and the thief of the night..”, played with confidence and despite lacking the expected hooks, it works.
Wolfmother hark back to the days of Deep Purple and the like, but their 70’s rock kaleidoscope of guitars and throbbing bass combined with Andrew Stockdale’s heady vocals, are the perfect recipe for a track worthy of fronting ‘Jackass’. Listen with the lights dimmed and let the good times roll…
Released November 20th….
T9, the company that are responsible for the majority of the predictive text software, have set up The Infinite Monkey Project. T9 have brought in artists from around Europe to try and create a song via the Infinite Monkey theory – “Due to the nature of infinity, a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard will almost surely eventually type every book in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France” – with the public being the monkeys to create the lyrics of a song.
The concept is to get anyone to send one word, any word, that you want on a song, which will then be collectived and any grammatically correct sentences are formed, they’ll be shortlisted for the final track. When the artists have enough content, they’ll produce their final song for download release.
It seems pointless to even try to musically pigeonhole Converge, because ultimately you need to hear (or better still, go see) the Boston quartet in action to truly discover what they’re about.
No Heroes’ is a chaotic, extreme, malevolent and – above all – brutally uncompromising beast of a sixth album, which sees Jacob Bannon and co. pushing their twisted metal/hardcore hybrid ever further into new territory. If all you neatly-groomed ‘fashioncore’ types aren’t quaking in your Converse All-Stars yet, then now would be a good time to start.
The band waste no time in pummelling your senses into submission with the opening salvo of ‘Heartache’ and ‘Hellbound’ – with guitars and vocals sounding raw anf frenzied enough to shred your speakers, given half the chance. But there’s plenty of depth beneath the sonic warfare, as perhaps best evidenced by ‘Grim Heart/Black Rose’; an almost ten-minute long epic laden with dark melancholy and even some (gasp!) actual singing. It’s unlike anything this band have recorded before, and provides an excellent contrast to the aural armageddon that surrounds it.
You can hear the album’s title track on the link above, and also check this recent interview with Jacob to find out what the future holds for Converge.
How could the combination of Seattle grunge legends The Melvins and Hydra Head recording artists Big Business be anything less than absolutely fucking incredible?
When word got out that The Melvins had teamed up with Big Business (who, in case you don’t know, delivered one of last years most powerful albums ‘Head For The Shallow’ and are equally jaw-dropping live) no one was quite sure how the end results would turn out. Chances are it was going to be a typically Melvins slab of impenetrable noise, but instead, the newly born Big-Business-Melvins have turned in the most commercial album of their long careers.
‘A Senile Animal’ is undoubtedly the band’s most straight-up rock album , but done of course in the trademark Melvins lurching doom-drenched style. Rhythmically, it’s incredible – the combination of Dale Crover and Coady Willis on drums is utterly earth shattering. Combine that with a double lashing of fuzzed-out bass and this is the sound of planets exploding. Yet all the way throughout, the vocal and guitar hooks are utterly addictive and some of these songs wouldn’t sound out of place on a Soundgarden album.
Quite how, over twenty years into their careers, The Melvins have delivered what could be their best album so far beggars belief. But then again, this is The Melvins we’re talking about here. Worship them.
An announcement of the launch of Japan’s MySpace is expected this week. Reports are that it’ll be a joint venture by News Corp [who own MySpace] and ISP Softbank from Tokyo. Just to ignite the rumours that bit more, Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp, is in Japan for a conference.
It seems like every day you open the music press and there’s some rapper getting into trouble or doing something contraversial. Here are the latest batch of crazy goings on in the world of rap.
Snoop is in trouble again after being charged with possessing a deadly weapon after he turned himself in following the incident at an airport in California where a 21 inch baton was found in his laptop bag as he tried to board a flight to San Francisco.
Snoop had claimed he didn’t know the weapon was illegal, as the charge carries a sentence of 3 years in jail. His problems with airports thus continue and he is due in court in December to answer to further weapon and drug possession charges.
On top of this, Snoop came up against some royalty, though this was unknown to him. At the bar in Copenhagen, Snoop got his crew to remove a group of men from the VIP area to get more women in, but didn’t realise one of the men was the Prince of Denmark.
Our next story concerns The Game, who has admitted to leaking his own album, the upcoming Doctor’s Advocate, onto the internet. He said: “I already leaked my album. I already leaked my shit so niggas know what it is now. All they got to wait for is the dirty version…You gotta do that. You gotta give people a sample. It’s like selling crack in the ‘hood, man. Anybody that ever sold drugs in the hood knows you gotta give a nigga a taste before they buy. I leaked ‘The Documentary’ the same time last year that I did this album. I got a formula.
Finally its Kanye and his monumental ego. At the recent European MTV video awards, he stormed onto the stage after french act Justice and Simian had picked up the award for best video for We Are Your Friends. Kanye, swearing as he got up on stage, said he deserved to win for his video Touch The Sky, because it cost a million dollars before telling everyone that if he didn’t win, “the awards show loses credibility”.
As we’d say at the football – Sit down, shut up.