I like to think that I made a punk record. A highly honest, disruptive, angsty record with all of the nuances that I wanted to express. With punk music, white kids were allowed to be disruptive, have rage, destroy property and provoke riots. I like to think that this is my punk moment, and that I’m doing that through this album. | | | | | Solange at Coachella, April 2014. (Neon Tommy) | | | | | | “I like to think that I made a punk record. A highly honest, disruptive, angsty record with all of the nuances that I wanted to express. With punk music, white kids were allowed to be disruptive, have rage, destroy property and provoke riots. I like to think that this is my punk moment, and that I’m doing that through this album.”
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| | rantnrave:// All the surprise/sudden/secret release strategies in the world are meaningless if the release itself isn't worth rushing to your computer or phone for. Which is why it's a good thing that pretty much all the major press about SOLANGE's sublime A SEAT AT THE TABLE is about the album and the issues it addresses, rather than the fact that nobody knew it was coming until about 24 hours before it did. I'm not really in the business of reviewing albums, as I may have mentioned last week, but Solange's first album in nearly a decade is a gorgeous and personal R&B album, some of it forward-looking, some of it decidedly retro, that has as much to say about being black in AMERICA in 2016 as any album released this year, including her big sister's... Shoutout to SOLANGE's narrator... Agreed with JAIME WEINMAN of MACLEAN's and TOM CARSON at BILLBOARD that one of the problems with the recent deluge of failed rock and roll TV shows is that rock is no longer a major part of the cultural zeitgeist, and hasn't been in a long time. Then again, I'm not sure zombies and dragons were part of the cultural zeitgeist either until someone made good shows about them. And if anything connected ROADIES, VINYL and SEX&DRUGS&ROCK&ROLL more than the dated music they championed, it was the dramatic malaise of the shows themselves. There were missing sparks. Make a show about rock that's as good as, say, MOZART IN THE JUNGLE -- based on a book subtitled SEX, DRUGS AND CLASSICAL MUSIC -- and viewers will follow... ANIMAL COLLECTIVE are mensches... ALICIA MACHADO: the music videos... RIP SIR NEVILLE MARRINER, OSCAR BRAND and JOSH FISCHEL... CORRECTION: The photo atop Friday's newsletter that I captioned as NICOLAS JAAR was actually a photo of JAAR's DARKSIDE collaborator DAVE HARRINGTON. My apologies. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| In a revealing conversation with Rookie's Tavi Gevinson, Solange Knowles speaks out on motherhood, racism and black empowerment -- themes that dominate her third studio album, A Seat at the Table, which was released today: "I like to think that this is my punk moment." | | |
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| An anonymous musician talks us through the hard realities that many touring DJs face up to. | | |
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| What does the hiring of the ex-300 exec mean for music industry harmony? | | |
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| Last week, US industry body the RIAA revealed that recorded-music revenues were up 8.1% to $3.4bn in the first half of 2016. Apple Music was a factor. | | |
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| Technological and creative advancements are currently rearranging the very idea of live music, offering exciting new possibilities for electronic performance in the process. | | |
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| Drive-By Truckers new album 'American Band' is a politically-charged look at gun violence and race relations in a turbulent United States. | | |
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| Amid lurid boardroom drama and plunging ratings, MTV president Sean Atkins, 45, talks his two-year turnaround plan and why the “M” in MTV still matters. | | |
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| There’s no stats to cite, but the problem’s nevertheless on the verge of a full-blown epidemic: people will not shut the f*** up at concerts. | | |
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| It's Clipping, b*tch. Even the most diehard fans have trouble following whatever comes next. Daveed Diggs raps with a typewriter-off-the-edge cha-ching fury, firing phrases like bullets, weaponry designed to speed through the silvery screen of unrelenting noise that William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes summon. | | |
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| TV shows and movies that tap into rock ’n’ roll nostalgia used to be a sure thing. Not any more. | | |
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| No Limit was the blueprint for record labels in the post-Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls era. | | |
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| It's worth celebrating whenever we get a brand new, RIAA-certified diamond-selling album -- indicating sales (and streaming equivalent sales) of ten million units -- because for a while, it looked like we might never get another one again. | | |
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| The Tampa band wanted us to call this article "Grand Marketing Failure." | | |
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| As he prepares to release a memoir, Gone ’Til November, we look back at the New Orleans rapper’s career -- from giving Drake his big break to becoming the voice of Katrina and his ongoing Cash Money legal battle. | | |
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| A new academic study breaks down some of the business challenges facing independent musicians. Stephen Carradini, a Ph.D. student at North Carolina State, surveyed a group of self-described indie rock musicians nationwide, ranging in age from 18 to 43. | | |
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| Moby, Zola Jesus, Xiu Xiu, and more discuss the enduring cultural influence of the director's TV shows and films. | | |
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| The Brooklyn MC on ‘Devastated,’ Mr. Robot fan theories, and his visit to the Wonderland house | | |
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| It began in the late 1960's as everything does (or so one Baby Boomer version of history goes). But it's full and "deathly" flowering didn't occur until the middle four years of the 1970's (1973-6). Marvin Gaye kicked it off, or more properly, a bit of an audio recording of Fred and Madeline Ross did. | | |
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| Slacker Radio's Jack Isquith reflects on how the transition of music from it's cumbersome physical form onto the significantly more accessible cloud has made it enjoyable in way that seems miraculous. | | |
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| There's no saga in rock history quite like that of Temple of the Dog. The Seattle supergroup featuring Soundgarden's Chris Cornell and Matt Cameron along with future members of Pearl Jam came together for just a few weeks in late 1990 to record a tribute album to late Mother Love Bone frontman Andy Wood. | | |
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