I always feel like everything I do is my one shot. If I have one song that’s s***ty, then people are going to give up on the band. | | | | Adam Granduciel waging his War on Drugs in Seattle, July 27, 2014.
(Suzi Pratt/FilmMagic/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I always feel like everything I do is my one shot. If I have one song that’s s***ty, then people are going to give up on the band.”
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| | rantnrave:// After a summer of every festival is the same and/or every festival is a scam and/or every festival is a bubble about to burst, it's sweet relief this weekend to be in BROOKLYN, where AFROPUNK sets up shop for its annual two-day run at the edge of FORT GREENE. The 12-year-old fest, which puts the multi in multicultural, is a growing commercial force that doesn't feel like one. It feels more like a community block party, and that's clearly one of the driving factors behind the unique (and pretty much best-in-field) curation. This year: SOLANGE, ANDERSON .PAAK, RAPHAEL SAADIQ, KAYTRANADA, DIZZEE RASCAL, SZA, GARY CLARK JR., lots more. Also, the style on display in the crowd is 10 times better than at COACHELLA or almost any other major music event... WARNER MUSIC has re-upped its SPOTIFY deal, which means Spotify has deals with all three majors, which means get out your wallet and get ready for that IPO... KATY PERRY hosts the MTV VMAs Sunday night, starting exactly one hour before the GAME OF THRONES season finale, which seems like not a very good idea, unless PINK brings a dragon... Twenty years after releasing "THAT DON'T IMPRESS ME MUCH," SHANIA TWAIN finally explains why BRAD PITT is one of the things that doesn't impress her much, and it may be the best two-decades-later explanation of a song ever... It's FRIDAY and that means new music from THE WAR ON DRUGS, FIFTH HARMONY, XXXTENTACION, LIL UZI VERT, QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE, A$AP MOB, SUSANNE SUNDFØR, EMA, IRON & WINE, ACTION BRONSON, JACK TEMPCHIN, LILLY HIATT, FILTHY FRIENDS, OH SEES, MADEINTYO, GOGOL BORDELLO, LUKAS NELSON & PROMISE OF THE REAL, LIARS, BROCKHAMPTON, DAN ZANES & FRIENDS, CADILLAC THREE and GRIEVES... And, nbd, a TAYLOR SWIFT single. Taylor does not like your tilted stage, according to "LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO." Anyone know anyone who's toured with a tilted stage recently? Asking for a friend... RIP BEA WAIN and CHRIS WHORF. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Bloomberg |
| YouTube is turning South Korea into a pop culture juggernaut. | | |
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 | Cultural Learnings |
| It was striking that when Swift’s most recent album cycle started this week, it began with the erasure of her social media history, a symbolic act reflective of the focus implied by the album’s title—"Reputation"—but also fundamentally at odds with the way she has launched three mega-successful albums in the past. | | |
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 | Mixmag |
| Ever wonder what powers your favourite Ibiza club? | | |
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 | Consequence of Sound |
| It’s not just about music anymore. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| The ashes of ill-conceived festivals are all around. | | |
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 | UPROXX |
| The Long Island band's fifth, and possibly final, album is a glorious send-off. | | |
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 | Pigeons & Planes |
| Professor Dan Charnas and his NYU students dug deep into the legendary work of J Dilla and explored the idea of "Dilla Time." | | |
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 | Billboard |
| With little leverage besides its huge customer base, Amazon is finding that disrupting the U.S. ticketing market won’t be as easy as throwing its weight around, as negotiations with Ticketmaster grind to a standstill. | | |
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 | MetalSucks |
| MetalSucks was recently contacted by a group of metal musicians identifying itself as The Anti-NSBM Working Group to ask if we'd publish an open letter they'd drafted addressed to metal label and distro Hells Headbangers (sic). The goal: to call on Hells Headbangers to "cease releasing and distributing Nazi propaganda." | | |
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 | Frontiers |
| Studies have shown that some musical pieces may preferentially activate reward centers in the brain. Less is known, however, about the structural aspects of music that are associated with this activation. Based on the music cognition literature, we propose two hypotheses for why some musical pieces are preferred over others. | | |
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| Pitchfork |
| With the new War on Drugs album nearly out, let’s take a late-night drive through like-minded plastic pastures, from Neil to Bruce to Phosphorescent. | | |
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 | AListDaily |
| The new VR video plan is designed to offer stronger storytelling opportunities for artists and musicians and additional engagement avenues for fans. Pitchfork says interactive nature of VR opens up a number of possibilities for visualizing and experiencing music. | | |
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 | Medium |
| She’s as (or more) important than Biggie or Jay. | | |
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 | LA Weekly |
| Motorcycles, margaritas and dancers -- how Motley Crue made an MTV and '80s hard rock classic. | | |
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 | Techdirt |
| For years now, we've highlighted how these days -- you don't technically own the things you buy. And thanks to a rotating crop of firmware and privacy policy updates delivered over the internet, what you thought you owned can very easily change -- or be taken away from you entirely. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| He has gone from gigs in Carlisle pubs to selling out the Royal Albert Hall, but by his own admission is ‘invisible in the mainstream’. Steven Wilson ponders his life as Britain’s least starry musical megastar. | | |
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 | Splice Today |
| Japanese drone artist Saito Koji erases his own music. | | |
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 | Red Bull Music Academy |
| The Atlanta-based engineer and producer goes deep on Future’s creative use of the embattled vocal software. | | |
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 | WTF with Marc Maron |
| Marc gets the full story of how Vincent Furnier became Alice Cooper and took rock & roll into dark and unexpected territory. Alice tells Marc about the early formation of his band, how his return to Christianity helped him confront his alcoholism, and how he's remained sober for nearly 40 years. | | |
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| Pigeons & Planes |
| Spam comments, TV commercials, or blasting out of a car at a red light. Here are some ways to discover new music in 2017. | | |
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| © Copyright 2017, The REDEF Group |
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