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Gorillaz Enlist Elton John and 6LACK for New Song ‘The Pink Phantom’

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Gorillaz have dropped a new song from their Song Machine series, titled ‘The Pink Phantom’. This one features Elton John and 6LACK and is set to appear on the upcoming Song Machine: Season One – Strange Timez albumCheck it out below, along with an accompanying Jamie Hewlett-directed video.

“Damon reached out and asked me to do something and the way the song has turned out is just great,” Elton John said in a statement. “I was in the studio in London and he was at the other end in Devon, but even remotely it was such an engaging and creative process. I’ve always loved Damon because he encompasses so many different sorts of music. He has his fingers in so many pies and although he’s achieved so much, he never sits still creatively. He’s constantly pushing forward and embracing the new, which is admirable and rare. He’s always working—he’s always doing something. He’s done so much to promote music from around the world, from Africa, from China, that people hadn’t previously heard and I really admire that. I’ve always been a Gorillaz fan anyway, so when he asked me to do a Gorillaz track—it was a no brainer. I’m so very, very happy that that’s come about.”

Gorillaz have been sharing singles in the Song Machine series since January, including collaborations with Robert Smith, SlowthaiPeter Hook, Georgia, OctavianSchoolboy Q, and more. Song Machine: Season 1 — Strange Timez arrives on October 23rd, and will also feature contributions from St. Vincent, Beck, EarthGang, CHAI, GoldLink, and others.

Billie Eilish Shares Music Video for ‘No Time To Die’

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Billie Eilish has shared the music video for her James Bond theme song, ‘No Time To Die’. The song, which dropped back in February, is set to feature on the forthcoming film of the same name. Check it out below.

Eilish teased the clip yesterday, writing on Instagram: “FINALLYYYYYYY ‘no time to die’ music video out tomorrow at 9am pt @007 !!!!!!!!!”

No Time to Die was originally scheduled for release on April 10, but is now set to come out in theatres on November 10. Eilish is the youngest artist ever to record the theme song for  a James Bond movie. Earlier this year, she released her second single of 2020, ‘my future’. She recently announced a new feature-length documentary called The World’s a Little Blurry.

Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker Unveils New Song ‘dragon eyes’

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Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker has released a new song called ‘dragon eyes’. It’s taken from her upcoming album songs, which is out on October 23 via 4AD along with an accompanying LP titled instrumentals. Listen to it below.

The double album was recorded in quarantine, inside a cabin in the mountains of western Massachusetts alongside engineer Philip Weinrobe. It comes with a digital free-vinyl recording, a.k.a. analog-analog-analog (AAA). “Not only does this process allow for a very specific type of sonic experience to come alive,” Weinrobe explained in a statement, “but the process also dictates how we work. The fine-toothed editing and micro-adjustments that every modern record relies on are not available. The computer screen is not glowing while the music is being recorded.”

He added: “The entire workflow becomes a part of the music in a way that is simply not possible when working in digital audio. AAA is a very labor and resource-intensive process and it has a wide array of limitations compared to digital record-making, but there is no other way we could have achieved both the capture and delivery of this music without it.”

‘dragon eyes’ follows the previously released ‘anything’.

Drive-By Truckers to Release New Album Tomorrow, Drop New Song

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Drive-By Truckers are set to release their second album of 2020 this Friday, October 2, via ATO. It’s called The New OK and it follows January’s The Unraveling. Below, check out the newly unveiled title track, and scroll down for the album’s cover artwork and tracklist.

In a press release, co-founder Patterson Hood said the band wrote and recorded The New OK across “this endless summer of protests, riots, political shenanigans and pandemic horrors.” He described the 9-track LP as “a full album that hopefully balances out the darkness of our current situation with a hope for better days and nights ahead.”

Physical editions of the album will be available on December 18.

The New OK Cover Artwork:

The New OK Tracklist:

1. The New Ok
2. Tough to Let Go
3. The Unraveling
4. The Perilous Night
5. Sarah’s Flame
6. Sea Island Lonely
7. The Distance
8. Watching the Orange Clouds
9. The KKK Took My Baby Away (Ramones cover)

Lavender Diamond Announce First Album in 8 Years ‘Now is the Time’, Share New Song

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Lavender Diamond, the trio of Becky Stark, Steve Gregoropoulos, and Ron Regé, Jr., have announced their first new album in 8 years: Now Is the Time arrives December 4 via Petaluma. The group have previewed the record with a new song called ‘This Is How We Rise’. Check it out below, and scroll down for the album’s cover artwork and tracklist.

Now Is the Time was written and produced by Lavender Diamond. Tucker Martine handled the mixing at Flora Recording & Playback in Portland, Oregon. The 11-track LP features contributions from Bright Eyes’ Nathaniel Walcott, SASAMI, and former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Josh Klinghoffer.

“Right before our current storm of catastrophe these songs came pouring in to us,” vocalist Becky Stark said in a statement. “These songs of healing for a world in crisis. Crisis holds profound opportunity for healing and transformation. Now is the most powerful time we have ever known to transform our world and to build justice peace and prosperity for all by living in harmony and with love for the earth, embodying the wisdom of equality and respect for all.”

She added: “I came to this realization that there’s medicine in the music itself. It can lift people up and heal them and point them toward transformation, and that led me to this tremendously powerful need to start writing and recording again.”

Now is the Time marks the follow-up to the band’s 2012 studio LP Incorruptible Heart.

Now Is the Time Cover Artwork:

Now Is the Time Tracklist:

1. Look Through the Window
2. This Is How We Rise
3. Ocean and Ground
4. In the Garden
5. Flashback
6. Now Is the Time
7. In the Middle
8. New Religion
9. Straight Through the Night
10. Please Plant the Seeds
11. Calling on My Nation

Watch HAIM Perform ‘Gasoline’ on ‘Kimmel’

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HAIM were the musical guests on last night’s episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! Performing from the same empty parking lot of the Forum in Los Angeles where they filmed the ‘Don’t Wanna’ video, the sister group played their Women in Music Pt. III track ‘Gasoline’. Watch it below.

Women in Music Pt. III was released back in June. Since then, HAIM have unveiled The Summer Girl Remixes Volume 1, featuring five reworkings of their single ‘Summer Girl’.

Watch Phoebe Bridgers Perform ‘I Know the End’ on ‘Seth Meyers’

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Phoebe Bridgers was the musical guest on Tuesday night’s episode of Late Night With Seth Meyers. The singer-songwriter performed the Punisher track ‘I Know the End’. Directed by Jason Leste, the one-shot clip was filmed at an a empty theater in Covina, California and sees Bridgers roaming the corridors before finally appearing on the stage. Check it out below.

Earlier this month, Bridgers appeared on CBS This Morning, NPR’s Tiny Desk (Home) Concert series, as well as BBC Radio 1’s Piano Sessions for a cover of Radiohead’s ‘Fake Plastic Trees with Arlo Parks.

Laura Jane Grace Surprise Releases New Solo Album ‘Stay Alive’

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Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace has surprise released a new solo album called Stay Alive. It’s out now via Polyvinyl, while a physical release will be available on December 11 via Big Scary Monsters. The album was recorded between July 6 and 9 with Steve Albini at the producer’s iconic Electrical Audio studio in Chicago. Take a listen below.

“We came home from the Against Me! tour we were on in March, and right before we left, we had been in the studio working on songs, and I had been working on them for months prior,” Grace explained in a statement. “I sat around for a month-and-a-half at a home just being shell-shocked being like, ‘What the fuck happened and what the fuck is happening with the world?’ As I started to get my bearings, I just came to the realisation that waiting was going to kill the record and kill the songs. I spent two years working on all these songs, and the idea of throwing them away didn’t sit well with me. But then I was like, ‘What am I waiting for?’ All I have to do is adjust my scope. I can sit here on my fucking ass and do nothing, or I can work.”

She added: “I just want to put this out because it makes me feel alive and it’s giving me something better than sitting here losing my mind while the world falls apart. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about what you do. Just stay alive.”

Stay Alive marks the follow-up to Grace’s solo debut, 2018’s Bought to Rot, and her first for Polyvinyl.

How To Create Educational Start-up Using Only Mobile

The area of online education has taken leaps and bounds in the last year, mainly thanks to COVID-19 rearing its head. The idea of online education has been around for over twenty years, although the earliest models of virtual classes were incredibly limited at the time. In recent years they’ve changed considerably, but it’s only in the last year that an educational online learning environment has seen serious consideration of use across the market.

As a result, people are scrambling to expand current online educational programs and many more are looking at the creation of new online education start-ups. There are a few different approaches that people are taking, such as attracting investors and hiring employees. It doesn’t take an army to build an educational start-up, though. All one really needs is a mobile phone. Here a few education start-up ideas:

It Has to Have A Few Bells and Whistles

A mobile phone can be as simple as something that people make calls from and send out the occasional text from. Understand that this kind of mobile will not meet the needs of someone who wants to create e-learning start-ups. Running a business will involve a lot of calls and e-mails, yes, but it also needs a great deal more than that.

To run everything from a mobile is going to be difficult. Realize that laptops and desktops may be cumbersome, but they’re also capable of doing just about anything a proper business person needs, and that’s what top edtech start-ups use. If, that isn’t an option, though, then get an amazing smartphone that comes pretty close!

Look For Mobile Support

This was more of an issue ten years ago, but it can still be a bit of a problem when a person is using their phone for more than just surfing the Net or making a payment. People running a start-up through their cellphone will need to access website software, educational apps, and other more complex software that simply wasn’t built for a phone.

The best way to avoid this is to look for and stick with sites, companies, and web hosting services that allow ease-of-use for a cellphone on their sites. This is information that most websites have readily available.

Make Sure You Can Pay

Nobody likes the guy at the table who skips out on the bill and forces everyone else to pay for him. The same thing exists online. It doesn’t matter if a company doesn’t have a brick-and-mortar store nearby, leaving them holding the bill will still damage your credit and reputation. Those are both things you can’t afford to lose for your educational business.

The best way to avoid this is to have a few avenues of payment available online. A credit card is a good start, as is an online payment service like PayPal. Finally, even a phone pay app isn’t such a bad thing to have on your mobile.

It’s a good idea to make sure that the sites or services you pay for do accept whatever payment methods you have available to you. Never go with any online service until you’ve seen their payment methods. It’s also important to be able to keep all of your bills and statements organized and paid. That’s why it’s absolutely essential that you’re able to be confident with personal statement service. The best way to do this is to find a personal statement service that is both professional and easy to use.

Have A Great Plan

Running an entire start-up through a smartphone means that you’re going to be making a lot of calls, texts, and spending many hours online every day. How much this will cost you depends on which country you’re in. Great Britain, for example, has reasonable fees, but Italy has the highest. Whichever country you’re in, always make sure that you have a great phone plan that has a tremendous amount of data coverage.

Get A Scheduling App

If you don’t already own one, then get one right away! Most people who are doing an educational start-up are also working a full or part-time job to keep the bills paid while they pursue that dream. That means that a person might be juggling their work life, home life, kids, bills, meetings, and whatever else they may be responsible for.

How does a person keep track of all of those myriad things? Simple. They download a scheduling app. Some are free, and some are by subscription, but offer more flexibility in how it works. There are even schedulers that will pay your bills for you and can access statements from personal statement writers, so it’s definitely worthwhile to have one.

Get Professionals to Set Up the Website and Advertising

An online school is never going to happen without a streamlined website that’s easy for people to access and use. It’s also not going to last long if it’s not set up for the bandwidth required for use by hundreds of students, many of which will be accessing the website at the same time.

There is the rare person who can do it themselves, but hiring a professional site builder and hosting service is usually the best way to go. Trust them, they know what they’re doing.

What’s just as important is not to handle the advertising yourself. Again, unless you’re an expert, it’s best to leave it up to them. They are the ones who will know how to put together a campaign and target the right people. The greatest advantage of leaving advertising and site-building to others is that they’ll be handling it on their hardware, so you don’t have to.

It’s with these tools, like getting personal statement writers uk, that anyone can create an educational start-up with just a mobile phone!

Album Review: IDLES, ‘Ultra Mono’

On the opening track of IDLES’ Ultra Mono, frontman Joe Talbot introduces the central conflict that runs throughout the Bristol punks’ already-divisive third studio album. “You’re unthinking, letting yourself go, it might sound silly and non-sensical, but it has the most purpose to me,” Talbot explained in an interview with Clash, referring to such lyrics as “Clack-clack, clack-a-clang clang!” and “Tukka-tuk, tuk, tuk, tuk-tukka.” There’s a deliberate frivolousness to Talbott’s delivery as he emulates what he claims to be “the sound of the gun going bang-bang” and “the sound of the drone button pusher”, which is undercut by the dark irony of the next couplet: “Shh, shhh, shhh!/ That’s the sound of the children tooker.” It leaves the impression of a performer who’s unsure where to position himself; whether to embrace the absurdity in all the chaos or expose it through meaningful satire.

What follows is an avalanche of noise: an attempt to drown it all out, or, in Talbot’s own words, an “explosion of not overthinking anything”. But the pummelling drums and roaring guitars, stripped of the complications of performance, also serve as an evocation of pure horror, the kind that the lyrics simultaneously seem to hint at and scour away from. There’s a darkness there that feels both real and inescapable, approaching an almost Swans-esque level of dread. Which is why the following call to arms – “This means war/ Anti-war!” – feels pointed rather than painfully on the nose, a moment of genuine defiance. IDLES may have found themselves at a crossroads, but their righteous anger hasn’t gone anywhere.

Still, Ultra Mono feels consistently torn between the band’s satirical, nihilist edge and the earnest positivity that has earned them such a devoted fanbase. But it never fully explores that conflict, and neither does it go to any great lengths to unpack some of the ideological uncertainty that’s bubbling under the surface. Instead, the album favours a more direct, in-your-face presentation, and while the results are often mixed, the energy remains exhilarating. Following in the footsteps of 2018’s Joy as an Act of Resistance, the themes of self-love could have had a greater impact had they been paired with more overt expressions of vulnerability – the utterly inane ‘Anxiety’ is the biggest offender in this respect – but the self-awareness showcased throughout mostly makes up for it. “How’d you like them clichés?” Talbot deadpans on ‘Mr. Motivator’, then proceeds to throw out a few: “Let’s seize the day/ All hold hands, chase the pricks away.”

He means every word he shouts. To be clear, IDLES don’t have to choose between humour and sincerity; they’ve proved they can be just as good at both. Their open-hearted embrace of love and kindness as the ultimate ideals is exactly what’s made them such a breath of fresh air in the scene; there’s something riotously fun about the gut-punch positivity of tracks like ‘Kill Them with Kindness’ and ‘The Lover’. But in the context of the record as a whole, they also have the tendency to undermine some of the album’s socio-political commentary by seemingly affording the issue of dealing with their own haters the same weight as the fight against systemic injustice. Because while the overall message of unity is effective across the board, the approach can sometimes lack nuance, particularly on ‘Carcinogenic’ and ‘Na Touche Pas Moi’, both of which feel redundant if not outright shallow.

But not all of Ultra Mono’s polemical moments fall flat. ‘Model Village’, a raucous attack on neo-fascism and reactionary politics, stands out as one of the more pertinent and cleverly written songs on the album, while ‘Reigns’ rails against the ruling class by posing a single yet powerful question: “How does it feel to have blue blood coursing through your veins?” Accompanied by an unsettling industrial instrumental, the line is suggestive enough on its own, to the point that it renders the ones that follow (“How does it feel to have shanked the working classes into dust?”) kind of unnecessary. Directness may be IDLES’ greatest weapon, but they can work around subtext just as well.

It helps that Ultra Mono finds the band once again revitalizing their sound. While noteworthy contributions from The Jesus Lizard’s David Yow, Warren Ellis, and Kenny Beats might easily go unnoticed, the album is peppered with inventive flourishes that prevent it from feeling stale and completely one-note. But it’s the song that finds IDLES most explicitly deviating from their signature formula that’s the biggest highlight on the album: downcast, fragile, and borderline existential, ‘A Hymn’ offers a glimpse into what the band could achieve if they allowed themselves to fully examine some of the darker implications of fame and mindless positivity. For now, Ultra Mono mostly works, if only as a joyous celebration of togetherness. But it’s safe to say it’s probably not gonna work a second time. Thankfully, this album offers enough proof that they’re capable of digging deeper and acknowledging their own contradictions.