Art without risk is pointless. | | | | Picture perfect: Harry Styles at the Bowery Ballroom, New York, Feb. 29, 2020.
(Kevin Mazur/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Art without risk is pointless.”
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| | rantnrave:// Writing this rantnrave to a mix of music by HAROLD BUDD, who died Tuesday from complications of Covid-19, age 84. His "delicate, spare piano figures, with ample helpings of the sustain pedal," critic GEETA DAYAL once wrote, "seem at once deliciously simple and deeply emotional—and almost cosmically transporting." He rejected the classification ambient, a genre in which he was widely regarded as a towering figure. He loathed the phrase new age. He was perhaps a little less skeptical of being designated a minimalist composer. He had a background in jazz. Mostly he seemed to want to express a deep, primal idea of beauty and he neither needed nor wanted anyone to label what that was. Listening, at this exact moment, to this track from 2007's BEFORE THE DAY BREAKS, recorded with the COCTEAU TWINS' ROBIN GUTHRIE, and the slow, shimmering pulse sounds like it should be able to cure that damn disease on its own. It's perfect music, in any case, for right now. He claimed to not listen to music "at all." He didn't have a piano in his house. Piano was his primary instrument. He was best known for his collaborations with BRIAN ENO and with Guthrie, but he left behind more than a half-century's worth of recordings, compositions and soundtracks that could wash over you in countless ways like several museum walls covered in ROTHKO paintings. RIP... Wait, is this true? I guess it sort of makes sense. They basically make neo-soul music, they get played on KCRW and they made two of my favorite albums of this year, all of which probably serve as confirmation. CLEO SOL, who appears to be the mysterious British group's primary singer, is my voice of the year, both as a musical instrument and as a fount of ideas to express with music. Music that meets a moment head-on... Speaking of KCRW, music director ANNE LITT, who's been serving as interim host of the Santa Monica station's influential MORNING BECOMES ECLECTIC for the past year, on Tuesday announced that NOVENA CARMEL and ANTHONY VALADEZ will take over as permanent co-hosts in January. They'll be the show's first Black and first Latino hosts and Carmel will be the first woman to have the job without the word interim next to her name. Her dad, by the way, is SLY STONE, who was a DJ himself before forming the FAMILY STONE... In a package of stories following up on BOB DYLAN's sale of his songwriting catalog to UNIVERSAL MUSIC, Rolling Stone suggests the important question to ask isn't why Dylan was looking to sell but rather why Universal was looking to buy. The major music companies, TIM INGHAM writes, seem to be feeling a need to take a stand against upstarts like HIPGNOSIS SONGS and PRIMARY WAVE, which have been vacuuming up publishing assets at, some say, inflated prices, and which represent "existential threats." The majors seem to be sending a message both to their own artist rosters ("When you put songwriters first... the best of the best come to you," UNIVERSAL's LUCIAN GRAINGE wrote in an internal email about the Dylan acquisition) and their own investors. A Universal Music Group IPO is on the horizon. The magazine also reports that sources say Dylan got "closer to $400 million than... $300 million" and he turned down a $400 million offer from Hipgnosis before saying yes to Universal. And in case you're wondering how Dylan wound up owning the BAND's "THE WEIGHT," which was included in his catalog sale, this is how he actually became the publisher of the Band's entire debut album, MUSIC FROM BIG PINK... This keeps getting longer: MusicSET: "Best Music of 2020: The Year in Lists"... RIP LD BEGHTOL... Correction: I aged BEYONCÉ by two years when I wrote on Tuesday that JOHN LENNON was a year younger, when he was murdered, than she is now. He was, as my brain knew but my typing fingers did not, a year older. Apologies! | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| | | tuesday wednesday stay in bed |
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 | Pitchfork |
| The albums that got us through this chaotic year, featuring Fiona Apple, Bad Bunny, Lil Uzi Vert, Phoebe Bridgers, and more. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| The artist has sold his entire catalogue, but his music is inextricably interwoven into the American experience. | | |
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 | BBC News |
| The songwriters behind some of the UK's biggest hit singles "are driving Ubers" to make ends meet, MPs have been told. | | |
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 | Jacobin |
| Between fights over compensating artists and the unionization of podcast company workers, it’s clear that even the world of digital streaming has class conflict at its heart. | | |
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 | Playboy |
| A candid conversation with the reclusive couple about their years together and their surprisingly frank views on life with and without the Beatles. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| He is a pianist without a piano, a composer reluctant to compose. Tim Jonze finds Harold Budd unable to explain how he ended up the godfather of ambient. | | |
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 | DJ Mag |
| Recent years have seen an increase in the number of UK criminal trials using rap lyrics and music videos as evidence, a trend that disproportionately affects young Black men and worries many in legal and creative fields. But a Manchester-based research project, Prosecuting Rap, is challenging the use of "rap evidence" in court. | | |
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| Pitchfork |
| An in-depth interview with the singer-songwriter about everything "Fetch the Bolt Cutters," recording with Bob Dylan, scrolling Tumblr, and so much more. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| Billboard Korea was invited to join P1Harmony's packed day to see how Keeho, Jiung, Theo, Intak, Soul and Jongseob are navigating the fast lane to success. | | |
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 | Seismograf |
| At the Academy for Open Listening, Sofie Birch and My Lambertsen set out a new direction for the ASMR genre. | | |
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| | | tuesday's gray and wednesday too |
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 | Entertainment Weekly |
| The pop star, one of EW's 2020 Entertainers of the Year, delves deep into her surprise eighth album, Rebekah Harkness, and a Joe Biden presidency. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Universal Music bought Bob Dylan’s 600 songs to fight back against existential threats to its business. The two other music majors, Warner and Sony, have also joined the battle. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| The 26-year-old muso is this year's "who?" in the Grammys' album of the year category. But he's already won past awards and counts some famous fans on his side. | | |
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 | The Bitter Southerner |
| The Bitter Southerner’s seventh annual list of the best albums of the year. | | |
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 | NPR Music |
| As dance floors stood empty, a wide spectrum of dance music transformed bedrooms into clubs, kitchens into discotheques and backyards into glow-stick raves. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| Manchester-based music company NQ is making big moves in the industry, especially via star client Aitch. Its founder, Michael Adex, explains his philosophy on business. | | |
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| Los Angeles Times |
| Novena Carmel and Anthony Valadez will take over the fabled morning show for interim host Anne Litt, who had taken over for Jason Bentley. | | |
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 | JazzTimes |
| Ukulele Ike otherwise known as Cliff Edwards was a major American pop star and an important early force in jazz. It’s time to give him another hearing. | | |
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 | Vulture |
| The year of celebrating Mariah has only reinforced what we knew about her all along. | | |
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 | The Forty-Five |
| Festivals as we know them could take a while to return – so what will our summers look like until then? | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | Harold Budd and Brian Eno |
| | From "Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror" (1980). |
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