The sights, sounds and words of the week in noise.
As the northern hemisphere festival season gears up, so too do the reunions, with At The Drive-In now joining LCD Soundsystem in the quest for festival payola. ATDI’s anticipated comeback will see them embark on a huge tour of North America and Europe and release new material.
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Meanwhile Radiohead, the aformentioned LCD Soundsystem and Sigur Rós head up an enormous Primavera Sound line-up, with Shellac, Boredoms, Venom, Destroyer, Tortoise, Goat and about a hundred others also making the trip to Barcelona in June.
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If you had any doubt about the huge changes the music industry faces, mull this over for a moment: In 2015, ‘catalogue’ sales (i.e. releases more than 18 months old) outsold ‘current’ releases for the first time ever. Yet more copies of Dark Side of the Moon have been pressed and inflicted upon the world, with only Adele and Taylor Swift outselling Pink Floyd’s 1973 sharehouse must-have on vinyl last year. The times they are a-changin’. Or not.
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READ
Iggy Pop and Josh Homme Team Up for Secret Album | New York Times
“The collaboration started with a text message from Mr. Pop to Mr. Homme, who recalled, “It basically said, ‘Hey, it would be great if we got together and maybe write something sometime — Iggy.’”
Heathcliff Berru and Other Missing Stairs | Impose
“We owe it to ourselves, to our work, and to the listeners and readers who are interested in what we do, to fix the missing stairs instead of leaping over them, to truly address these issues when they are raised, to listen to these allegations with fair and open minds and take them seriously.”
Why Are the Eagles So Hated? An Explainer on the Immensely Popular Yet Divisive Rock Band | Billboard
“Some Generation X-ers and other post-boomers have begun examining exactly why they were expected from puberty to reject the Eagles. In his 1972 Newsday essay, Robert Christgau praised the band’s musical prowess, then famously shifted gears with the line, ‘Another thing that interests me about the Eagles is that I hate them.’”
LISTEN
Naðra — Allir Vegir Til Glötunar
Unpronounceable Icelandic black metal. Good.
Hopefully the first of many in the trove of Bowie rarities and outtakes to surface after his death — in which he impersonates Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, and Tom Waits.
Fatima Al Qadiri — ‘Battery’
Wonky bass-driven electronica from the Kuwaiti producer, taken from forthcoming LP Brute.
WATCH
PJ Harvey teases new album The Hope Six Demolition Project with features lead single ‘The Wheel’ and album opener ‘The Community of Hope’. Out April 15.
Ty Segall and The Muggers — Live at KEXP
The garage god inaugurates the Seattle public radio station’s new studios with a half-hour set of material from new LP Emotional Mugger, released last week.