The Range, the project of Vermont-based producer James Hinton, has returned with a new single called ‘Bicameral’. Check out its accompanying visual, directed by Stevie Gee and Essy May, below.
“’Bicameral’ represents the beginning of a move into a more ethereal space in my music,” Hinton explained in a statement about the track, which follows his 2016 LP Potential as well as collaborations with Tourist, Yaeji, and Jim-E Stack. “I began working on it while on a retreat in Nicaragua in 2016, and finished it in 2020 in Vermont, and so it uniquely captures a lot of the extreme positive and negative memories over that time. In this song the original vocal – a song called ‘The Roa’” by the Eritrean singer Bemnet Tekleyohannes – is “When you lighten” but I like that the interpretation of “When you lied – when you lied to me” is equally readable as the phrase repeats and changes.”
Cassandra Jenkins and Peter Bjorn and John have shared their contributions to Under the Radar‘s 20th anniversary Covers of Covers compilation. Listen to Cassandra Jenkins’ take on Animal Collective’s Vashti Bunyan collaboration ‘It’s You’ and Peter Bjorn and John’s rendition of The Divine Comedy’s ‘Songs of Love’ below.
“Covers are a great way to experiment with sounds, palettes, and people I want to work with,” Jenkins said in a statement. “Harpist Rebecca El-Saleh and I did some e-mail recording during quarantine and this was the first time we got to play in a room together, with Zubin Hensler engineering. I had been listening to a lot of Curtis Mayfield at the time and loved some of the harp usage in his recording, and felt like the harp was one of the few acoustic instruments that could capture something similar to the original recording. Michael Coleman added some piano, and I used field recordings from the house where I’ve been living for a good part of this year, because the bugs made their way into all of my vocal tracks anyway, so I just embraced them.”
Peter Morén of Peter Bjorn and John commented:
Suddenly I realized The Divine Comedy/Neil Hannon wrote the theme tune for the Irish-English sitcom classic ‘Father Ted’, a perennial favorite of mine. This madcap mid-’90s series about three bonkers Catholic priests on a remote, fictitious island called Craggy Island, hit me hard when it ran late night on TV in Sweden. Apparently it’s been banned in the United States and voted second best British comedy after Fawlty Towers, by some poll in 2019. On a tour of (you guessed it) Ireland I got the DVD box-set and pained the rest of the band with it on the bus TV (though our British crew got it).
Long story, but I thought we might as well have a go at it. Bingo! A few jammed out, slightly psychedelic PB&J-angled takes with some added vibraphone and tape-echo and there you have it. We then thought… well the song DOES have a lyric, looked it up, and sang it. A good set of words too… nothing soever to do with Mrs. Doyle or ecumenical matters. Thanks Neil for writing it, and thanks Under the Radar for the opportunity.
Covers of Covers is out March 4 via American Laundromat Records. One dollar from every purchase of the album will be donated to Sweet Relief Musicians Fund, a non-profit organization that “provides financial assistance to all types of career musicians and music industry workers who are struggling to make ends meet while facing illness, disability, or age-related problems.” Under the Radar previously shared Grandaddy’s cover of ‘Blindness’ and EMA’s version of Modest Mouse’s ‘Trailer Trash’.
Madi Diaz has announced the Same History, New Feelings EP, featuring collaborations with Waxahatchee, Angel Olsen, Courtney Marie Andrews, and Natalie Hemby. The project, out March 4 via ANTI-, includes four reworkings of songs from Diaz’s 2021 album History of a Feeling. To accompany the announcement, Diaz has today shared a new version of ‘Resentment’, produced by Brad Cook and featuring vocals from Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield. Listen to ‘Resentment (New Feelings Version)’ below.
“I’m so thrilled to have been asked to reimagine the song ‘Resentment’ from Madi Diaz’s album History Of a Feeling,” Katie Crutchfield said of the collaboration in a statement. “I listened to that album more than anything else last year and I think Madi is one of the most talented and exciting people putting out music right now. This specific song hits me so hard every time I hear it and having the chance to sing harmonies with Madi is always a true thrill.”
Talking about the inspiration behind the EP, Diaz said: “I love how when one person says a word or phrase that it can be attached to a completely different narrative than when I say the same word – I can have a totally different experience with a line of music than your experience. These little differences in us still find some alignment, share some understanding, and access some parts we recognize in one another when we come together over a song.”
“I’ve been listening as a fan to these four women for quite awhile now,” she added. “I’m honored to call them my friends and to have their voices singing these songs with me is something that I still can’t quite fathom. I’m so thankful for their artistry and their stories giving these songs a whole new world and a whole new life. To share this earth and make music with them in this lifetime is a treasure and a gift from beyond the beyond.”
1. Resentment (New Feelings Version) [feat. Waxahatchee]
2. History of a Feeling (New Feelings Version) [feat. Natalie Hemby]
3. New Person, Old Place (New Feelings Version) [feat. Courtney Marie Andrews]
4. Forever (New Feelings Version) [feat. Angel Olsen]
Black Country, New Road have announced that vocalist Isaac Wood has left the band, just days ahead of the release of their new album. The London collective, which will continue as a six-piece, has also canceled their upcoming shows, including their London headline show at the Roundhouse next week. “I have bad news which is that I have been feeling sad and afraid too,” Wood said in a statement posted on the band’s social media pages. “And I have tried to make this not true but it is the kind of sad and afraid feeling that makes it hard to play guitar and sing at the same time. Together we have been writing songs and then performing them, which at times has been an incredible doing, but more now everything happens that I am feeling not so great and it means from now I won’t be a member of the group anymore.”
Wood continued: “To be clear: this is completely in spite of six of the greatest people I know, who were and are wonderful in a sparkling way. If you are reading this maybe you would have seen some of that. It has been a great pleasure and I would like to say the words ‘Thank You’ to everyone.”
The six remaining band members confirmed that they will carry on as Black Country, New Road, adding that they are already working on new material. “Although Isaac won’t be part of the group any longer, the rest of us will be continuing to make music together as Black Country, New Road,” they stated. “In fact, we’ve already starting working on it. The things we’ll miss about working with Isaac are too many and various to list here, but by listening to the music we made together, I’m sure you’ll understand at least a few of them. It’d be difficult to overstate how much our experiences as a group have affected us. In fact, it’s difficult to say anything at all coherent about what we’ve managed to do. But it has certainly been the greatest privilege to do it all together, as seven friends.”
Black Country, New Road released their Mercury Prize-nominated debut album, For the first time, last February via Ninja Tune. Their sophomore LP, Ants From Up There, is set for release this Friday (February 4).
We have some news to share concerning the future of the band. Please read on for information on upcoming shows, but it seems right to pass on this message from Isaac first pic.twitter.com/3HHmSwBDQj
Throughout the week, we update our Best New Songs playlist with the new releases that caught our attention the most, be it a single leading up to the release of an album or a newly unveiled deep cut. And each Monday, we round up the best new songs released over the past week (the eligibility period begins on Monday and ends Sunday night) in this best new music segment.
On this week’s list, we have Warpaint’s ‘Champion’, the lead offering from the band’s first album in six years and a subtle but solid reintroduction to their uniquely resonant sound; Tomberlin’s ‘idkwntht’, featuring guest vocals from Told Slant’s Felix Walworth, which creates a halo of soft light around repressed emotions and gently invites a moment of release; The Weather Station’s heartbreakingly stunning ‘Endless Time’, the first single from the follow-up to last year’s Ignorance; Denzel Curry’s lush, cinematic new track ‘Walkin’; Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, and Tom Skinner’s new the Smile single ‘The Smoke’, which treads the line between groovy and ghostly to captivating effect; and ‘Hangover Game’, the lead single off the new album by Wednesday’s MJ Lenderman, a song about the “Flu Game” of the 1997 NBA Finals that’s effortlessly driving and funny even if you don’t care about sports.
After Neil Young and Joni Mitchell decided to remove their music from Spotify, citing concerns over COVID misinformation on Joe Rogan’s Spotify-exclusive podcast, the streaming platform has announced plans to add a “content advisory” warning to any podcasts that include a discussion about COVID-19. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek released a statement yesterday (January 30) on the platform’s For the Record blog, writing that “there are plenty of individuals and views on Spotify that I disagree with strongly… it is important to me that we don’t take on the position of being content censor.”
“We are working to add a content advisory to any podcast episode that includes a discussion about COVID-19,” the statement continues. “This advisory will direct listeners to our dedicated COVID-19 Hub, a resource that provides easy access to data-driven facts, up-to-date information as shared by scientists, physicians, academics and public health authorities around the world, as well as links to trusted sources. This new effort to combat misinformation will roll out to countries around the world in the coming days. To our knowledge, this content advisory is the first of its kind by a major podcast platform.”
As the statement notes, Spotify has also published its Platform Rules, making them viewable by the public for the first time. According to the guidelines, contributors must avoid “content that promotes dangerous false or dangerous deceptive medical information that may cause offline harm or poses a direct threat to public health.” These include “asserting that AIDS, COVID-19, cancer or other serious life threatening diseases are a hoax or not real,” “encouraging the consumption of bleach products to cure various illnesses and diseases,” or “promoting or suggesting that vaccines approved by local health authorities are designed to cause death.”
Following Young, Joni Mitchell, and Nils Lofgren’s Spotify boycott, the band Belly recently changed their profile and header images on their Spotify artist pages with a graphic that reads “DELETE SPOTIFY” while exploring the “difficult” process of leaving the platform. Yesterday, it was reported that Spotify had lost more than $2 billion in market value after Young’s exit.
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday massacre, when British soldiers shot thirteen unarmed Catholic marchers dead in the Northern Irish city of Londonderry. In remembrance of the tragedy, U2 have shared a new performance of ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’, the opening track from their 1983 LP War, via Instagram. Watch Bono and the Edge’s acoustic take on the song below.
LCD Soundsystem have been announced as the musical guests on Saturday Night Live next month. They’re set to perform on February 26 alongside host John Mulaney, a former head writer on the show. Check out the announcement below.
Last month, LCD Soundsystem shared a holiday special on Amazon Prime Video, The LCD Soundsystem Holiday Special, which starred Macaulay Culkin, Aparna Nancherla, and Eric Wareheim. The group was forced to cancel the last three shows of its 20-date residency at Brooklyn Steel in December due to a surge in COVID-19 cases.
Tissues, the latest album from Berlin-based, post-industrial artist Pan Daijing, is a studio recorded excerpt from Pan’s five-act opera of the same name, which played at the Tate Modern two-and-a-half years ago. Though extracted from its broader piece, this album version of Tissues still feels immediate and full of vitality as a standalone work. The music centers around the relationship between biological human sounds and mechanical synthesizer sounds. Operatic voices co-mingle with the buzzing of layered drones and noise. It’s an album that screeches and rumbles, forming compositions that are simultaneously beautiful and hostile. Ultimately, the album breaks down the binary between human and machine, revealing the humanity of machines and the mechanics of humans.
Pan’s last two records, Lack and Jade, are explorations of human limits and abjection. Her song ‘Practice of Hygien’ (the third track from Lack) unfolds as a cacophony of hideous bodily releases: grunts, wheezes, gasps, moans, spittings, slobberings, and hiccups. Though Tissues steps away from the extremely raw and vulgar human sounds which characterize Pan’s earlier work, it’s still focused on pushing the boundaries of biological sounds and questioning the limits of their classification. The album’s an experiment, exploring the musical potential of our biology in an industrial era.
At the start of ‘A Raving Still’, the first of Tissues’ four parts, a heavily distorted cluster of synths announces itself in an abrupt burst. It then subsides, simmering beneath an operatic trio of a counter-tenor, a soprano, and a mezzo-soprano. The tension between these two seemingly discordant elements (noisy electronics next to classical uses of the human voice) is the album’s musical backbone. Yet a few minutes into ‘A Raving Still’, another voice cuts through the mix (Pan’s own). The voice repeats itself three times, asking the question: “why do we have to?” This voice, pitched-down and processed, stands as a dialectical synthesis between the track’s opposing biological and industrial layers. It’s discernibly human, yet digitally manipulated: the lovechild of two opposing elements. Yet this voice isn’t just a fusion of two contrasting sounds. It’s also a merger of two disparate modes of existence: simultaneously classical and biological, yet also modern and artificial.
As Tissues unravels, Pan’s soundscapes interrogate the impurity of both human and artificial sounds. Whereas the album begins with a clear polarization between the biological and the electronic, this distinction becomes increasingly ambiguous. ‘A Tender Accent’, the album’s third piece, unleashes one of Tissues’ many intense stretches through a scratchy and wailing frenzy of sound. Artificial and biological sounds become indecipherable, too alien to distinguish their origins. These sounds evoke a framework where distinct modes of existence blur together, and the inanimate melds with the animate.
Pan often speaks about how her music takes influence from a variety of mediums (especially film and philosophy). In her Red Bull Music Academy interview, Pan describes converting stimuli from one sensory input to a different sensory output. For instance, smells can translate into sounds for her. This cross-modal approach to music reveals a streak of open-mindedness which defines Tissues. It’s an album against purities, against binaries, against the tyranny of classification. Pan’s sounds dwell on in-between zones, where nothing is complete. In Tissues, as the human voice slowly becomes one with its industrial background, it brings moments of absolute terror. Pan’s claustrophobic mixes of suffocating sounds come to life in absolute agony. Yet there is beauty amidst the chaos, once this human-industrial synthesis is accepted. Pan seems to find liberation and lucidity by surrendering her humanity to the ambiguity of our modern industrial existence. At the very least, this surrender leads to another great album in her catalogue.
Alivenique – the self-described “meta pop-art musical project” of Ali Beletic – has released a new single. ‘Rain’ follows the project’s debut offering, ‘Tune In – Prelude’, which came out last year. Listen to it below.
“When I was writing the intro to ‘Rain’, I was thinking about drawing people into the story I wanted to tell,” Beletic explained in a statement. I was imagining approaching a small village on horseback in a sort of supernatural type storm, so it begins with a huge thunderlike drum with a super long decay, and then enters the delicate rain like shaker, which has it’s own rhythmic pulse, coming in and out, and then the distant imaginative vocals coming from a far off village that get louder as you approach, finally dropping into the collaged modern cut up vocals of the verse, poppy 808’s and a multi-perspective chorus telling us that we are dealing with both tradition and modernity. Musically and lyrically, for me, this song represents the iconic hero myth call at the beginning of an epic story, a story of super(naturalism) and modern femininity.”
