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LA Witch Share Eerie New Single ‘Gen-Z’
Garage rock trio L.A. Witch is back today with their latest single, “Gen-Z,” which appropriately sounds like it was recorded right in their neighbor’s empty garage or hashed out in a local cave. The reverb-heavy track is the second single off their August record, Play With Fire, and finds Ellie English, Irita Pai and Sade Sanchez dedicate some space off their nine track release to the youth. Sanchez says the track was inspired by articles she read about “high suicide rates” among Gen-Z due to social media pressure. She says she also read about music companies “not doing well,” citing a lack of interest in learning to play instruments. “When I was a kid, music and guitar were my escape,” Sanchez said. “Music was how I fought through my depressions. What will the future do to get throug...
Hulu’s Palm Springs Had a Record-Breaking Opening Weekend
When was the last time you experienced pure, unbridled joy? It’s clearly been some time, and Hulu’s latest success story is proof. As IndieWire reports, Andy Samberg’s newest film Palm Springs has smashed the platform’s opening weekend streaming records, proving that we’re all quite desperate for the twin balms of romance and laughter. Palm Springs was directed by Max Barbakow and written by Andy Siara. Set in the titular idyllic California town, it stars Saturday Night Live alum Samberg and Cristin Milioti, who you may remember as the panicked crew member trapped aboard the USS Callister from Black Mirror’s fourth season. It’s an earnest, warmhearted take on the time-loop format; think Groundhog Day meets When Harry Met Sally, set against a hazy desert sky. Sure, we’d all love to be ...
SoundCloud Is Now Offering Algorithmic Audio Mastering for $5 a Song
SoundCloud has partnered with Dolby to offer algorithmic audio mastering. “Mastering on Soundcloud” provides a variety of “mastering profiles,” and seeks to bridge the gap between amateurs and professional-quality masters for a fraction of the price. When done by a skilled human, the final master can cost anywhere between $50 and $200 a song. On SoundCloud, that service is available for $4.99. If it works — and that’s not guaranteed — it could do what Instagram filters did to photography, and radically reshape the market. Of course, many “groundbreaking” products are ultimately worse versions of what’s currently available, and that may be the case here. But SoundCloud and Dolby are big players, and what they say they can do is tantalizingly cheap. In a new blog post, SoundCloud revealed th...
IDLES Offer Up “A Hymn” of Shame and Love: Stream
Ultra Mono is the third album from post-punk group IDLES, due out this fall through Partisan Records. The effort, which comes two years after Joy As An Act of Resistance, is being previewed today with “A Hymn”. While previous singles “Mr. Motivator” and “Grounds” the Bristol natives ferocious and snarling as always, their newest offering opts for an entirely different mood. “A Hymn” rolls out slowly and steadily, almost in a drone-like fashion. “I want to be loved, everybody does/ I find shame in the crack-like corpse un-cadaver reign… I find shame gripped tight like your withering fame,” sings frontman Joe Talbot, with an equally monotone cadence. The fixed churn of it all echoes the backstory for “A Hymn”, which according to a tweet from the band ” rejoices in the sinister flesh-eating v...
beabadoobee Announces Debut Album Fake It Flowers, Shares “Care”: Stream
Filipino-British indie rock wunderkind beabadoobee has announced her debut album, Fake It Flowers. As a first look at the highly anticipated project, she’s sharing a new single called “Care”. According to a statement, Fake It Flowers is due out sometime later this year through Dirty Hit Records, the English indie label home of The 1975, Wolf Alice, and former Artist of the Month Rina Sawayama. The full-length follows last year’s Space Cadet, an EP that contained the Pavement-referencing single “I Wish I Was Stephen Malkmus”. The forthcoming album’s lead single “Care” picks up where that project left off, but is also a welcomed continued evolution of her lo-fi bedroom style, which has drawn comparisons to The Moldy Peaches. Her vulnerability here is noticeably more raw, as the 20-year-...
DMX Will Challenge Snoop Dogg for Verzuz ‘Battle of the Dogs’
There’s a dogfight coming to #Verzuz. In what’s billed as “The battle of the dogs,” DMX will square off with Snoop Dogg for the next round of the Verzuz series, due to take place July 22. There are no puppies in this stoush. DMX’s decades-long career includes 15 visits to the Billboard Hot 100. Snoop, of course, is a mainstream superstar with a long list of movie credits, TV series and no less than 43 Hot 100 hits, including three No. 1s: “Drop It Like It’s Hot” (featuring Pharrell), and assists on Akon’s “I Wanna Love You” and Katy Perry’s “California Gurls”. Verzuz was launched in March by hip-hop producers Timbaland and Swizz Beatz. Starting life as a 20-song showdown between evenly matched producers, the series has also come to enlist writers and performers. Some of the hottest b...
Masked Singer Sheldon Riley Shines With Billie Eilish Cover on ‘AGT’: Watch
Sheldon Riley doesn’t waste his voice on trifling matters. Like speaking, with America’s Got Talent judges. During Tuesday night’s auditions, the Sydney, Australia hopeful initially played the silent type, before revealing a voice which had Simon Cowell and Co. in raptures. Performing in an exotic black gown and a shimmering mask which could have been been lifted from Prince’s vault, Riley lit the torch with a dramatic rendition of Billie Eilish’s “idontwannabeyouanymore”. Riley later explained his quiet start. He’d rather let his performance do all the talking. Afterwards, Cowell praises Riley’s mystery and originality. “You have an amazing voice,” Howie Mandel enthused. “And the fact that I don’t know what you ...
Maroon 5’s Mickey Madden Takes Leave of Absence After Arrest: Reports
Mickey Madden of Maroon 5 has taken a leave of absence from the band, according to several published reports. The bass player steps away from the Los Angeles pop-rock outfit just weeks after his arrest for alleged domestic violence. “I have some things that I need to deal with and address right now and so I have decided to leave Maroon 5,” Madden said in a statement to Rolling Stone. “During this time,” the statement continues, “I do not want to be a distraction to my bandmates. I wish them the absolute best.” As previously reported, Madden was arrested on June 27. The LAPD provided the charge as “273.5(a),” which, according to the California penal code, is “”any person who willfully inflicts corporal injury resulting in a traumatic condition upon a vict...
Bigsound Will Go Ahead In 2020 With COVIDSafe Format
Bigsound is back on the industry calendar. While the health crisis wrecks the touring industry around the globe, Australia’s main music industry conference and showcase is set for a return to Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley in 2020 at a later date than usual, and in a condensed, COVIDSafe format. The announcement this week caught the industry by surprise. The southern state of Victoria and its capital Melbourne, widely regarded at the country’s cultural mecca, has just entered a second lockdown to try curb a worrying spike in coronavirus cases. And there are worrying signs of an outbreak or two in New South Wales. The Bigsound show, however, will go on. Originally announced for Sept 1- 4, this year’s event will be reduced to a two-day, two-night event from Oct. 21. All activities will fo...
Julianna Barwick: Healing Is a Miracle
In a pandemic, cynicism is a crutch, and optimism is a meme. It’s easier to be a skeptic than it is to imagine a path forward. The ironic internet mantra “nature is healing” pokes fun at viral glimpses of post-apocalypse (goats reclaiming a Welsh town, dolphins in the Bosporus) but also casts the possibility of recovery as a joke. As the days drag on and the extent of our disconnection is reinforced, that possibility feels increasingly abstract. Julianna Barwick’s new album, Healing Is a Miracle, couldn’t be more at odds with the dreary landscape in which it arrives, and yet it’s difficult to imagine it existing at any other moment. Refuge has always been the promise of her music—the restorative power of those sylph-like vocals, soaked in reverb and looped ad infinitum. But her vision of a...
Hear CHUCK BILLY’s Foreword To Audio Edition Of JONNY Z’s ‘Heavy Tales’ Book
An audio edition of Megaforce Records founder Jon Zazula‘s acclaimed autobiography, “Heavy Tales: The Metal. The Music. The Madness. As Lived By Jon Zazula”, read by the author himself and featuring more than two hours of bonus material, will be available July 21 via Audible. Like the print edition, the Audible book contains TESTAMENT vocalist Chuck Billy‘s foreword, also read by Billy himself. The bonus material expands upon the book, with Zazula — known the world over as Jonny Z — offering further insight into his life and career, and more behind-the-scenes stories, through material culled from a never-before-heard question and answer series with the Brothers Grimm radio show on CraniumRadio.com. You can now listen to Billy reading his foreword to “Heavy Tal...
VENOMOUS CONCEPT Feat. NAPALM DEATH And BRUTAL TRUTH Members: New Song ‘Eliminate’ Available For Streaming
Grindcore/hardcore punk veterans VENOMOUS CONCEPT — featuring members of BRUTAL TRUTH and NAPALM DEATH — will release their fourth full-length album, “Politics Versus The Erection”, on August 28 via Season Of Mist. The disc’s second single, “Eliminate”, can be streamed below. Track listing: 01. Simian Flu (03:20) 02. Hole In The Ground (00:53) 03. Eliminate (02:00) 04. Lemonade (03:42) 05. Colossal Failure (03:20) 06. Promise (03:24) 07. Septic Mind (03:15) 08. Dementia Degeneration (02:24) 09. Carrion (02:17) 10. Broken Teeth (02:09) 11. Shadows (02:46) 12. Mantis Toboggan (01:36) 13. Politics Versus The Erection (02:37) If the state of today’s society is reflected in music, VENOMOUS CONCEPT has returned to the stage with a fitting soundtrack. The band&...
