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First Spin: The Week’s Best New Dance Tracks From Peggy Gou, Icona Pop, Amtrac & More
After applying a balm to our collective anxiety last month with the downtempo ballad “Nabi,” Peggy Gou is pulling us back onto the dancefloor with her new track “I Go.” Despite her relatively short tenure in the dance world, Gou is becoming a perennial summer banger-bringer, with hits such as 2018’s “It Makes You Forget (Itgehane)” and 2019’s “Starry Night” already in her pocket. (Last summer doesn’t count, for obvious reasons.) A ready successor, “I Go” is sparkling dancefloor fantasy rendered in pink and lilac pastels, with Gou’s vocals breezing across trance-tinted melodies, a simmering acid synthline and a searing whistling sound that evokes images of seagulls soaring along the coast and endless horizons — images of freedom and possibility. In a statement, Gou shares that t...
Universal Music Publishing China Hosts All-Female Writing Camp with She Is The Music
June’s all-women camp marked She Is The Music’s first songwriting camp outside the U.S. and connected some of UMP China’s most promising women writers with songwriters from several other countries, including the U.S., Mexico, South Korea and Australia. According to USC Annenberg’s Inclusion Initiative, which surveys the number of women represented on the Billboard Hot 100 Year-End Charts, only 12.6% of the songwriters and just 2.6% of the producers behind 2020’s hottest tracks were women. Stats like these are the driving force behind She Is The Music, which was founded to try to increase these numbers, both on the U.S. charts and abroad. So when UMP China reached out to She Is the Music to propose a collaboration last year, Michelle Arkuski, She Is the Music’s executive director, was...
‘The Velvet Underground’ Is a Boldly Artful Documentary for a Boldly Artful Band
“I didn’t need to make a movie to tell you how great the band is,” Haynes said in an interview. “There were a lot of things I was going to be like: OK, we know this. Let’s get right to how this happened, this music, where these people came from and how this miracle of this group of people came together.” The Velvet Underground, which Apple will release in theaters and on its streaming platform Oct. 15, plumbs little-seen footage and features a host of rare interviews, including founding member John Cale (who describes the band as striving for “how to be elegant and how to be brutal”), Jonathan Richman of the Modern Lovers and an early disciple, and Jonas Mekas, the late pioneering filmmaker who filmed The Velvet Underground’s first ever live performance in 1964 and to whom the film is dedi...
GEORGE LYNCH To Release First-Ever Instrumental Album ‘Seamless’ In August
With over 40 years playing guitar and songwriting as a professional musician, career firsts are minimal for someone as prolific as George Lynch. On August 20, George gets to add another highlight with the release of his first-ever full-length instrumental album, “Seamless”. The album is being released via Rat Pak Records and features nine brand new tracks and three bonus tracks from Lynch, who is backed by drummer Jimmy D’Anda and bassist Eric Loiselle on the album. “Seamless” is produced by Lynch and is now available for pre-order in various configurations here. Says Lynch: “‘Seamless’ is my attempt at creating a guitar driven instrumental record that delivers something outside the realm of what most people would expect from a guitar instrum...
K.K. DOWNING Says DAVID ELLEFSON Joining KK’S PRIEST ‘Was Never A Consideration’
Former JUDAS PRIEST guitarist K.K. Downing says that David Ellefson was never considered as a possible addition to KK’S PRIEST, the new band K.K. formed with fellow ex-PRIEST member Tim “Ripper” Owens. Ellefson performed a full-length set of PRIEST classics with Downing, Owens and ex-JUDAS PRIEST drummer Les Binks in November 2019 in Wolverhampton, United Kingdom. However, when KK’S PRIEST‘s formation was first announced over a year ago, the band’s bassist was listed as Tony Newton, a founding member of the long-running British hard rock act VOODOO SIX. At the time, it was assumed that Ellefson‘s non-involvement with KK’S PRIEST was down to the fact that his main priority was MEGADETH, which was working on a new studio album. In late May, MEG...
DEFTONES And GOJIRA Postpone North American Tour Until Spring Of 2022
DEFTONES have postponed their previously announced North American tour with GOJIRA until the spring of 2022. The trek was originally scheduled to take place last summer before being pushed back, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, to August and September of this year. Earlier today, DEFTONES issued a statement on social media once again announcing the postponement of the tour. The Sacramento, California-based act cited the “uncertainty” related to the coronavirus crisis in “different markets throughout the country” and explained that it did not want to be “in a situation where shows have to be adjusted or cancelled on short notice for any guideline adjustments or reconsiderations while we are on the road.” DEFTONES also said that the tour’s original open...
STEPHEN PEARCY Once Again Floats Possibility Of Classic RATT Reunion: ‘I’m Opening The Door’
Stephen Pearcy has once again floated the possibility of the surviving members of the classic RATT lineup reuniting to play live shows or make a new studio album. Pearcy made the comments three months after he was joined by his former bandmate Bobby Blotzer during the RATT singer’s livestream concert from the world-famous Whisky A Go Go on the Sunset Strip. Asked in a new interview with “The Jeremy White Podcast” where the prospect of a classic RATT reunion stands at the moment, Pearcy said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Bobby came out and did the jam. I invited him out. You can call it ‘instigate,’ being the instigator, but why not? I’ve gotta be clear — I hate bullshitting our audience, thinking this [latest lineup of RATT] is RATT. No di...
HOLOW Unveils Mesmerizing Song “Comet” via Ultra Records
Budding electronic music artist HOLOW has returned, unveiling a mesmerizing tune called “Comet.” “Comet” features a catchy house beat textured with warm, aching synths. The track combines soothing vocals with an electro-pop beat that captivates listeners early on, skillfully building to a phenomenal drop brimming with bubbly sound design. The buoyant pop-house hybrid starts off slow, but HOLOW expertly infuses his signature melodic sound with a pulsating bassline. Layered with complimentary piano keys and romantic lyricism, “Comet” invites the listener to “dance with me all night.” Check out the stunning track below, which arrives by way of Ultra Records. The storyline in “Comet” revolves around the ...
Ghetto Ghetto and Fraudulent Records Collide for Must-Listen House Music Compilation
Two formidable tastemakers in the house music scene have joined forces for a masterstroke of a compilation. The sophomore collaborative compilation between Ghetto Ghetto and Fraudulent Records officially hit the virtual shelves today—and it’s a spoonful of house heaven. The record, which follows their inaugural joint effort almost a year ago to the day, bears the fruits of a long and successful creative partnership. “I’d say that friendship is the main bond between our two organizations,” said Fraudulent label head CastNowski. “Julian [Ragland, Ghetto Ghetto’s founder] and I have known each other for a long while, I had a release on his label at the beginning of my musical career and we both do share the ...
Jaycen A’mour and Z A K Team Up for Pulsing Tech House Tune “EOTY”
New Zealand meets Miami with “EOTY,” a rumbling new collab from Jaycen A’mour and Z A K. “EOTY” (an acronym for “end of the year”) is a tech house banger in every sense of the term, stomping in right off the bat with a grime-inspired vocal refrain: “When I enter the rave, it’s clear.” The track then builds organically before culminating in a downright mean drop, which tightropes the line between haunting and banging with eerie, siren-like fills. Meanwhile, a pulsing bassline ebbs and flows in its cadence, slithering through the drop alongside ominous plucks. A’mour and Z A K refuse to keep their feet off the pedal in the break, reintroducing the vocal refrain in a head-bobbing section that doubles as a mind-bending...
Mysterious RÜFÜS DU SOL Posters Are Popping Up in Los Angeles and Sydney
What is going on with RÜFÜS DU SOL? Mysterious posters depicting the Grammy-nominated trio have popped up around random areas of Los Angeles this week. The adverts are cryptic in nature, only featuring the group’s website and the word “Alive.” Mysterious posters depicting RÜFÜS DU SOL have popped up in Los Angeles. EDM.com It seems new music is on the horizon. A visit to the band’s website leads visitors to a landing page that offers two options: “Sound On” and “Sound Off.” Opting to enable sound triggers a clip of an unreleased song and lyrics that flash across the screen: “I’m coming back again / I wanna make it right.” Once the ephemeral lyrics fade after a few seconds, an invitation to sign up for RÜFÜS DU...
JAY-Z Enters Trading Card Market With Investment in Certified Collectibles Group
JAY-Z is once again expanding his business portfolio and this time, he is hopping onto the ever-growing trend of the collectible market. His company, Roc Nation has recently invested in Blackstone’s majority stake acquisition in Certified Collectibles Group. Certified Collectibles Group (CCG) is a company that focuses on authenticating collectibles such as trading cards, comic books, magazines, stamps, banknotes and many more. The $500 million USD transaction saw additional investors such as Fanatics founder Michael Rubin, NBA guard Andre Iguodala and Philadelphia 76ers basketball operations president Dary Morey join in the funding round. Bloomberg, which calls Blackstone the “world’s largest alternative investment firm,” reportedly saw the company’s share rise 0.3 percent last week after ...
