Thurston Moore has announced a new album titled Screen Time. The record, a series of instrumental guitar pieces recorded during the summer of 2020, was mastered by Lasse Marhaug for Southern Lord, which will release the album on February 25. Listen to two new tracks, ‘The Station’ and ‘The Walk’, below.
Screen Time will follow Moore’s 2021 LP By the Fire.
Screen Time Cover Artwork:
Screen Time Tracklist:
1. The Station
2. The Town
3. The Home
4. The View
5. The Neighbor
6. The Walk
7. The Upstairs
You might like to smoke some weed every now and again, or you could consume edibles or marijuana in some other form every day. You might also be someone who has never tried the drug but is curious about it and keen to learn more.
No matter your background or choices, it’s helpful to have some insights about this plant and how it has impacted our societies over the years.
History of Cannabis in Our Society
Cannabis is used by well over one hundred million people worldwide, and it’s one of the most popular recreational drugs on the planet. While we know it has been used for a long time by humans, it has been a matter of conjecture as to just when our species discovered the plant’s properties and started utilizing them.
Typically taken from a plant known as cannabis Sativa (though other species can be used at times, too), weed, as it’s colloquially known, has been cultivated pretty much throughout our recorded history. According to research published by a team of archaeologists led by those from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, it seems likely that the plant has been used for at least 2,500 years already.
The archaeologists found physical evidence that mourners burned marijuana on a remote mountain plateau in Central Asia as part of their burial rites. They believe the reason for this was to take in the intoxicating fumes that arose from the cannabis when lit, much the same as people often use weed today. Also, it’s believed that marijuana was used as a medicinal product by many ancient civilizations over the years, including not only the Chinese but also Indians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Vikings, and Romans.
Fast forward many hundreds of years, and cannabis arrived in the United States after migrating to numerous parts of the world, including Mexico. Immigrants who fled Mexico during the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1911 are thought to have brought it into the USA. The plant was outlawed in Utah not long after, in 1915, and became illegal in 29 states by 1931.
The Marijuana Tax Act came into effect in 1937, effectively criminalizing possession of the plant throughout the United States, with regulation handled by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Today, cannabis is still classified by the federal government as a Schedule I controlled substance, alongside LSD and heroin, among other things.
Ways Marijuana Has Been and Is Used
Cannabis has been used in various ways over the years since being cultivated by humans. For example, it has been used as a source of fiber to make clothing, tents, paper, and rope, to name a few things, and as seed oil for day-to-day living. It has been grown and harvested for food and medicine and generally used for religious, spiritual, and recreational purposes for its psychoactive properties.
Today, many people use cannabis as a pain management aid and enjoy the high that can come from it, depending on its potency and how it’s prepared. It’s also a plant used for social connection purposes, and, in fact, in India, the ancient Hindus would serve cannabis rather than alcohol (which they didn’t drink) as a sign of hospitality. Many couples choose to incorporate marijuana into their weddings today, too. Some set up bars where guests can consume some weed products or serve up a cannabis-infused cake. Brides may incorporate weed leaves into their bouquets, too.
The Potential Outlook for Weed in Our Culture
A massive industry in the United States and further afield, marijuana will stick around in the future as a big part of our culture. Over the coming years, it seems likely to become increasingly accepted and used as people’s attitudes to the plant and its applications change. With more and more states legalizing the cultivation, use, and sale of it (though under strict conditions), it’s sure to become even more mainstream. In fact, according to research, two-thirds of Americans support marijuana legalization.
If you’re interested in trying some cannabis yourself or starting to consume more of it, it’s worth looking online for some quality product. Search for “California weed for sale” or “buy cannabis near me,” etc., to find some options.
Consider the style of marijuana you want to enjoy and the potency level you’re after. You may need to try a few different products to understand what works best for you and your needs.
Raum, the project of Grouper’s Liz Harris and experimental musician Jefre-Cantu Ledesma, have surprise released their first new album in nearly a decade. Daughter, which follows 2013’s The Event of Your Leaving, is out today via Yellowelectric and available to stream on Bandcamp. Listen to it below.
“Daughter is a record that took great patience to make,” a press release states, continuing:
It captures a strange time spent in the desert, later added to, edited and finally made sense of after we lost the friend we’d been there with. There are fragments of beginnings and a deep sense of loss.
A requiem, a lullaby, goodbye.
Most of the material was generated in Marfa at a residency we did with Paul Clipson in 2016. We both felt confident that someday the shape of our hours of recordings would reveal itself but at the time it felt impossible to revisit. A lot happened that week. The desert was an anxious landscape, and each of us were in our own fevered headspaces. Jefre was about to have a daughter. His last time to record and perform before becoming a father. Liz was having terrible stress and relationship issues.
Our rooms were in a haunted soldiers rec hall. Late at night we heard music playing softly in the room we were recording in. Blue static sparks shot across the room at night.
We met several times to work on finishing these recordings over the years, but a big piece of the record only made sense after sitting with the loss of Paul. The recordings took on a special resonance. They are a document of the last time the three of us were in the same physical place. His film projector sound is embedded there. The sound of our long walks in the desert scrub. Sounds of birds screaming in the mornings. Heat, calm, companionship, and grief; all moving very slowly— across years, across a remembered landscape.
The National’s Matt Berninger has joined Nashville-based singer-songwriter Caroline Spence on the new song ‘I Know You Know Me’. Give it a listen below.
“I’m still beside myself that Matt agreed to be a part of this song,” Spence said in a statement. “I recorded my own solo version for my upcoming record, but always saw potential for it as a duet. Matt’s voice brought a new depth to the narrative and the sonic palette of this song.”
Caroline Spence released her most recent album, Mint Condition, in 2019, and is currently working on its follow-up, according to a press release. Matt Berninger’s solo debut, Serpentine Prison, arrived in 2020. He’s since teamed up with Julia Stone on ‘We All Have’, covered the Velvet Underground’s ‘I’m Waiting for a Man’ and ‘European Son’, and shared a new song called ‘Let It Be’.
Wet Leg have offered their take on Irish singer Ronan Keating’s ‘Life Is a Rollercoaster’. It arrives as part of their Apple Music Home Session, for which the Isle of Wight duo also did an acoustic version of their song ‘Wet Dream’. Listen below.
“I think we chose to cover ‘Life Is a Rollercoaster’ just because we felt like we could relate to the sentiment of it,” Rhian Teasdale explained in a statement. “Kinda goes hand-in-hand with another motto that we live by, of ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway.’ It’s been such a wild and unexpected ride for us since starting Wet Leg, and we’re all ’90s babies, so we’ve grown up with Ronan Keating on the radio—so it seemed appropriate.”
Wet Leg will release their self-titled debut on April 8 via Domino. So far, they’ve previewed it with the singles ‘Chaise Longue’, ‘Wet Dream’, and ‘Too Late Now’. More recently, they shared a cover of Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’ and announced a run of UK instore shows.
YG has joined forces with J. Cole and Moneybagg Yo for a new song called ‘Scared Money’. The track arrives with an accompanying video directed by Drew Kirsch. Check it out below.
‘Scared Money’ marks YG’s first single since ‘Sign Language’, which arrived in October. His most recent solo album was 2019’s 4Real 4Real; last year, he teamed up with Mozzy for Kommunity Service.
Last week, J. Cole guested on Benny the Butcher’s single ‘Johnny P’s Candy’. He released The Off Season in May 2021. Back in 2018, Moneybagg Yo dropped his debut studio LP Reset, which featured collaborations with both YG (on ‘Curry Jersey’) and J. Cole (on ‘Say Na’).
Scottish singer-songwriter Dot Allison has shareda remix of her 2021 track ‘Love Died in Our Arms’ by the late Lee “Scratch” Perry. It’s billed as “the final project of the legendary producer’s career.” Take a listen below.
The new single is taken from Allison’s upcoming Entangled Remix EP, which follows her 2021 album Heart-Shaped Scars and will also feature contributions from Saint Etienne, Anton Newcombe, Lomond Campbell, and others. It’s out April 28 via SA Recordings. “I titled this ‘Entangled Remix EP’ to tie with Heart-Shaped Scars but also in a way the slightly disparate influences on the EP spanning decades from when I was first influenced by dub music & did a remix for St. Etienne to Anton in Berlin & the Anchoress now,” Alison said in a press release.
Talking about the collaboration with Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, she added:
I contacted Lee to ask if he’d consider doing a mix of ‘Love Died In Our Arms’ and got a lovely reply saying ‘yes’. He later confirmed the parts had arrived and the mix was going well. So I was deeply saddened to hear he’d passed soon after and so soon after we’d been in touch. Naturally I assumed the mix had not been completed and left it at that. So I was stunned two days later to hear, from Lee’s wife, that my song had been “the last thing in his life that Lee worked on.” As if that wasn’t enough, she responded to my email a day or so later expressing my gratitude and deepest sympathies by sending the finished mix. I genuinely cannot put into words what a profound moment and an honour and gift it felt under the circumstances – I was completely blown away. That my co-producer Fiona Cruickshank was there with me when I first heard it turned this into a really magical moment. I feel a duty to Lee’s own artistry and his fans to release his last remix and I do so with a deep gratitude to Lee, his wife and family for still forwarding me this mix under such sad circumstances, I remain deeply moved and grateful for my music to have been touched by Lee’s musical genius and spirit.
The Weather Station made their late-night debut last night on Jimmy Kimmel Live, where Tamara Lindeman and her band performed ‘Tried to Tell You’, from their 2021 album Ignorance. Watch it below.
The Weather Station will be releasing a companion piece to Ignorance called How Is It That I Should Look at the Starson March 4 via Fat Possum. Last year, they performed ‘Tried to Tell You’ and other tracks from the LP on CBS This Morning.
Mitski is back with her sixth studio album, Laurel Hell. Out now via Dead Oceans, the follow-up to 2018’s Be the Cowboy includes the previously released songs ‘Working for the Knife’, ‘The Only Heartbreaker’, ‘Heat Lightning’, and ‘Love Me More’. “I needed love songs about real relationships that are not power struggles to be won or lost,” Mitski said of the new album in press materials. “I needed songs that could help me forgive both others and myself. I make mistakes all the time. I don’t want to put on a front where I’m a role model, but I’m also not a bad person. I needed to create this space mostly for myself where I sat in that gray area.” She recorded the LP with her longtime producer Patrick Hyland during the pandemic, when some of the songs “slowly took on new forms and meanings, like seed to flower,” and the record as a whole became “more uptempo and dance-y.” Read our review of the album.
Animal Collective have returned with their eleventh studio album and first since 2016’s Painting With. Out today via Domino, Time Skiffs was preceded by the tracks ‘Prester John’, ‘Walker’, and ‘Strung With Everything’, and ‘We Go Back’. Avey Tare, Deakin, Geologist, and Panda Bear recorded the LP across the course of 2020, with Marta Salogni handling the mixing. A press release described the songs on the album as “love letters, distress signals, en plein air observations, and relaxation hymns, the collected transmissions of four people who have grown into relationships and parenthood and adult worry. But they are rendered with Animal Collective’s singular sense of exploratory wonder, same as they ever were.”
Cate Le Bon has released her new album Pompeii via Mexican Summer. The Welsh musician wrote and recorded her sixth LP with co-producer Samur Khouja in an “uninterrupted vacuum” in Cardiff, with exits sealed, granting herself “permission to annihilate identity.” Le Bon explained in a statement: “Pompeii was written and recorded in a quagmire of unease. Solo. In a time warp. In a house I had a life in 15 years ago. I grappled with existence, resignation and faith. I felt culpable for the mess but it smacked hard of the collective guilt imposed by religion and original sin.” The album was previewed with the singles ‘Running Away’, ‘Moderation’, and ‘Remembering Me’.
Black Country, New Road have followed up their 2021 debut For the first time with Ants From Up Here, which is out now via Ninja Tune. The 10-track LP includes the previously unveiled tracks ‘Concorde’, ‘Bread Song’, ‘Chaos Space Marine’, and ‘Snow Globes’. While their debut blended klezmer, post-rock, and experimental music, their latest also incorporates elements of classical minimalism and indie folk. “Releasing two albums in one year has been a fun and interesting challenge,” the band stated in a press release. “At the start of 2021 we decided to make something really good together. We were lucky enough to leave London and cross a small body of water to go to the Isle of Wight to record the album – being in the countryside was a creatively enriching experience.” Just days ahead of the album’s release, the London collective announced that frontman Isaac Wood has left the group, which will continue as a six-piece.
Let The Festivities Begin!, the debut album from Los Bitchos, has arrived via City Slang. The London-based, pan-continental instrumental four-piece – comprised of Serra Petale, Agustina Ruiz, Josefine Jonsson, and Nic Crawshaw – previewed the record with the singles ‘Good to Go!’ and ‘Las Panteras’, and ‘Pista (Fresh Start)’, all of which came with videos directed by Tom Mitchell. The record was produced by Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand in Gallery Studios, London, the recording space owned by Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera.
yeule, the London-based artist born Nat Ćmiel, has released their latest LP, Glitch Princess. The follow-up to 2019’s Serotonin II features the previously shared tracks ‘Friendly Machine’, ‘Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself’, and ‘Too Dead Inside’. Combining video game sounds, experimental shoegaze, and art-pop, Glitch Princess “opens a channel to the in-between spaces: error messages and broken computer code, what it is to be conceptually manifested and the curation of the aesthete,” according to a press release. “Ćmiel’s experiences with sobriety resulted in a flood of emotions and Glitch Princess is the undiluted excerpt of this downpour. A redirection of chaotic energy into verse, and the opportunity to confront their own vices.”
Saba has dropped a new album called Few Good Things. It marks the Chicago rapper-producer and Pivot Gang co-Founder’s third studio LP and includes collaborations with Pivot Gang, G Herbo, Black Thought, Krayzie Bone, 6LACK, Smino, Mereba, Fousheé, Benjamin Earl Turner. “The concept of ‘Few Good Things’ is the realization of self after a search for exterior fulfillment,” Saba explained in a statement. “It is the satisfaction and completeness you gain by simply living a life that is yours. Few is a small number, but few is not lonely. In the face of all adversity, a few good things is recognizing and accepting blessings. Few is to count them, one by one – an empty glass is full of air, an empty bank is full of lessons., and an empty heart is full of memories. Few good things is to grow comfortable with the empty, and despite that, finding your fullness.”
Rolo Tomassi have put out their latest album, Where Myth Becomes Memory, via MNRK. The follow-up to the UK post-hardcore band’s 2018 LP Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It was preceded by the singles ‘Cloaked’, ‘Drip’, and ‘Closer’. It completes a trilogy of albums that began with 2015’s Grievances, with all three albums being produced by longtime collaborator Lewis Johns. “This is a really important album for all of us,” keyboardist/vocalist James Spence explained in press materials. “Of anything we’ve done, it’s the one I’m most proud of. I think it’s the most ambitious and creative that our band has ever sounded and something that we’ve all needed to get through the last few years. We can’t wait to share it and to have you help us bring it to life.”
Other albums out today:
Erin Rae,Lighten Up; Korn, Requiem; 2 Chainz, Dope Don’t Sell Itself; The Districts, Great American Painting; A Place to Bury Strangers, See Through You; Hippo Campus, LP3; recovery girl, NAUSEA POP vol 2; The Reds, Pinks and Purples, Summer at Land’s End; Bastille, Give Me the Future; Wild Rivers, Sidelines; Partner Look, By the Book; Sofia Bolt, Soft Like a Peach.
METZ have shared a new song called ‘Demolition Row’. The track will appear on an upcoming split 7″ with Adulkt Life, which is set for release on March 4 on What’s Your Rupture?. Listen to it below.
“Our motivation for doing this split 7″ was really just a way of doing something special for our upcoming tour where we’ll be playing with Adulkt Life in London,” METZ said in a press release. “We’ve done a few similar projects in the past (Mission of Burma, John Reis, APTBS remix, Clipping) and it’s because we are fans of the music. Book of Curses was a record we all enjoyed and one thing led to another. ‘Demolition Row’ is a song we recorded ourselves and I think it’s quite singular as far as the METZ catalogue is concerned. We’ve never sounded this way before.”
Adulkt Life released their debut LP, Book of Curses, in 2020. That same year, METZ issued their most recent full-length, Atlas Vending.
Mitski is back with her sixth studio album,
Animal Collective have returned with their eleventh studio album and first since 2016’s Painting With. Out today via 
Cate Le Bon has released her new album 
Black Country, New Road have followed up their 2021 debut For the first time with 
yeule, the London-based artist born Nat Ćmiel, has released their latest LP, 
Rolo Tomassi have put out their latest album, 
