Brian Eno has soundtracked a new Extinction Rebellion short film titled Extinction Emergency, and Why We Must Act Now. The video is narrated by Naomie Harris, star of 2016’s Moonlight as well as several Bond films, directed by Miritte Ben Yitzchak, and written by Mark Ellis. Check it out below.
“I’m proud to be able to lend my voice to this project, which I hope will inspire viewers to get behind the ambitions of Extinction Rebellion with a great deal of urgency,” Harris said in a statement. The video is the latest in a series of videos delving into “the most pressing issues facing us in this vital decade for the survival of all life.”
EA has finally released the long-awaited trailer for FIFA 21 Career Mode. Here is a short take on what the trailer has presented us with.
Interactive Match Sim / Jump In Mode
This well-known feature is not exactly new but has been requested by thousands of career mode fans. Luckily for FIFA gamers, it has been re-added with some improvements. Firstly, we have the main feature of this mode, which lets you jump in during a game whilst it’s being simulated. This means you won’t need to only sim the full game or play it, but you’ll be able to join in at any point during a match. This is great if you only want to spend time playing the second half, or simply want to get through the career mode quicker by playing the last ten minutes of the match.
During this mode, you will also be able to make tactical changes and track the progress of each player, bringing in more realism and positive progression to the game.
Player Development
This new feature will not just allow you to improve the attributes of the player, but turn your players from one position to another. It’s a great way to create a more dynamic squad without having to spend a lot of money in the transfer market.
Active Training
Moreover, we have been presented with an active training a feature which allows you to schedule your team’s training. Unlike the previous FIFA’s, you’ll be able to manage more players during these sessions, meaning once again a more realistic progression has been added to the career mode. This feature allows you also to choose rest days.
Match Sharpness
Match sharpness is another superb feature by FIFA 21. This stat will show the manager if a player is going to play at the best of his abilities or not, making another great way to select your squad for matchday.
New Transfer Options
Career Mode will now provide players with more transfer options, meaning you’ll be able to be more creative when it comes to making deals for wanted players during the transfer market. This has been implemented in previous FIFA games but by the looks of it, has been enhanced for more realism.
Sufjan Stevens has released a new single from his upcoming album, The Ascension. Titled ‘Video Game’, it comes with an accompanying video directed by Nicole Ginelli and choreographed by Jalaiah Harmon. Check it out below.
“It’s unfortunate that we live in a society where the value of people is quantified by likes, followers, listeners and views,” Stevens said in statement about the track. “So many people are seeking attention for the wrong reasons. I think we should all be doing our best work without looking for accolades or seeking reward.”
He continued: “The main takeaway of ‘Video Game’ for me is: your worth (invaluable) should never be based on other people’s approval (ephemeral). Just be yourself. Keep it real. Keep it moving. Do all things with absolute purity, love and joy. And always do your best. Jalaiah epitomizes all of this and I’m truly inspired by her. So I thought, ‘what if we could get Jalaiah to star in a “dance video” about not wanting to star in a “dance video?”’ I’m so honored she agreed. She clearly owns it, and her work here is beautiful, poignant and true.”
For Harmon, this was the first time she was asked to do the choreography for a whole song. “I was a little nervous in the beginning, but once I really broke the song into parts and listened to the lyrics over and over, I just put moves together that connected to the words and felt natural for me to do,” she said. “I think I’m still really trying to get used to this kind of success, so I can’t really define it just yet. I just know that when you work hard and you treat others with kindness and fairness, good things come back to you.”
The Japanese House, the project of 25-year-old singer-songwriter Amber Bain, has released her new EP Chewing Cotton Wool via Dirty Hit. The 4-track EP includes a track featuring Bon Iver‘s Justin Vernon called ‘Dionne’. Listen to it below.
The song’s title is in reference to legendary singer Dionne Warwick. “I’ve been thinking about my storyline / And how your past becomes your present if it’s always on your mind,” Bain sings, “We play Dionne Warwick “Walk On By” / And Freddy put his heads between his legs and cried.”
Baine’s debut EP, Pools to BatheIn, which was released under an anonymous identity in 2015, was actually recorded at Bon Iver’s cabin. She later became known for her 2017 hit ‘Saw You In A Dream’ and the 2019 track ‘Maybe You’re The Reason’, which appears on the new EP. She released her debut album, Good at Falling, last year.
Bon Iver recently unveiled a new single titled ‘AUATC’, which featured contributions from Bruce Springsteen, Jenny Lewis, and more. Justin Vernon also collaborated with Taylor Swift on ‘exile’, from her new album folklore.
Canadian electronic artist Peaches has shared a blistering new track titled ‘Flip This’. It arrives with an accompanying music video filmed in her studio in Berlin. Check it out below.
“This song is about me waking myself up and getting active,” she said in a statement about the track, which sees her taking aim at systemic inequality. “F*ck the system, watch it crumble,” she sings over a propulsive beat.
Peaches released her last album, Rub, in 2015. Earlier this year, she contributed to a T. Rex tribute album with a cover of ‘Solid Gold, Easy Action’. The compilation, titled AngelHeaded Hipster: The Songs of Marc Bolan and T.Rex, was produced by the late Hal Willner and also featured Nick Cave, Kesha, U2, Elton John, Father John Misty, and more.
Beck has released a new visual album counterpart to his latest album Hyperspace, in collaboration with NASA. Helmed by directors OSK, the Hyperspace: A.I. Exploration visual album sees the singer-songwriter team up with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for a series of visuals incorporating images and data from NASA missions using artificial intelligence technology. Watch it below, and scroll down for the tracklist alongside corresponding visual details.
Speaking of the project in a statement, Beck and NASA explained: “The realization of these Hyperspaces was executed by A.I. architects and directors OSK, who asked ‘How would artificial intelligence imagine our universe?’. In finding the answer, OSK created a unique A.I. utilizing computer vision, machine learning and Generative Adversarial neural Networks (GAN) to learn from NASA’s vast archives. After training on hundreds of thousands of images, videos and data points from NASA’s space exploration research and missions, the Hyperspace A.I. then began creating its own visions of our universe.”
Beck added: “I think each song is kind of a different way that different people ‘Hyperspace’. We escape from the reality that we’re all dealing with.”
In addition to the new visual album, Beck also revealed details for a deluxe reissue of Hyperspace, set for release on December 4th. The limited-edition vinyl will include two extra tracks as well as new 2020 mixes of ‘Star’, ‘Hyperspace’, ‘See Through’, and ‘Die Waiting’.
Hyperspace: A.I. Exploration Tracklist:
1. Hyperlife | Landsat 8, International Space Station
2. Uneventful Days | Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), Apollo 12
3. Saw Lightning | Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), Curiosity Rover, Viking 1 Orbiter
4. Die Waiting | Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)
5. Chemical | Cassini-Huygens
6. See Through | Juno
7. Hyperspace | Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)
8. Stratosphere | Spitzer Space Telescope
9. Dark Places | Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
10. Star | Hubble Space Telescope (HST), Swift, Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope
11. Everlasting Nothing | Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
Marie Davidson & L’Œil – the newly formed trio of Marie Davidson, Pierre Guerineau, and Asaël R. Robitaille – have announced their debut album Renegade Breakdown, out September 25 via Ninja Tune. They’ve also shared the album’s title track, alongside a lyric video created by Greg Barnes. Check it out below, and scroll down for the album’s cover artwork and tracklist.
Davidson and Guerineau, who are married, have previously worked together as a duo under the moniker Essaie Pas, but this marks the first time they’ve collaborated on a full project with Asaël R. Robitaille. “We wanted to make songs, like the music we’ve been enjoying altogether for more than a decade,” Davidson said in a press release.
Davidson’s last album was 2018’s Working Class Woman.
Renegade Breakdown Cover Artwork:
Renegade Breakdown Tracklist:
1. Renegade Breakdown
2. Back to Rock
3. Worst Comes to Worst
4. Center of the World (Kotti Blues)
5. La Ronde
6. C’est parce que j’m’en fous
7. Just in My Head
8. Lead Sister
9. My Love
10. Sentiment
Future Islands have announced their sixth studio album, As Long As You Are. The follow-up to 2017’s The Far Field comes out October 9 via 4AD and contains the previously released ‘For Sure’ and the newly unveiled single ‘Thrill’, which comes with a one-take video created by and starring frontman Samuel T. Herring. Check it out below, and scroll down for the album’s cover artwork and tracklist.
As Long As You Are marks the first album by the band to include a fourth member, drummer Mike Lowry, in addition to the three-piece lineup featuring Herring, William Cashion and Gerrit Welmers. The band also handled some of the production for the first time in a their decade-and-a-half-long career, working alongside producer and engineer Steve Wright at Baltimore’s Wrightway Studios.
In September of last year, the band previewed seven new tracks during a show at the Pearl Street Nightclub in Northampton, Massachusetts: ‘The Painter’, ‘Hit The Coast’, ‘Born In A War’, ‘Thrill’, ‘B.Ham’, ‘Plastic Beach’, and ‘Moonlight’, all of which appear on the new album (with the apparent exception of ‘B.Ham’).
Upon release day, Future Islands will host a ticketed livestream event from Baltimore. Find more details here.
As Long As You Are Cover Artwork:
As Long as You Are Tracklist:
1. Glada
2. For Sure
3. Born in a War
4. I Knew You
5. City’s Face
6. Waking
7. The Painter
8. Plastic Beach
9. Moonlight
10. Thrill
11. Hit the Coast
Ride’s Andy Bell has announced his debut solo album, titled The View From Halfway Down, set for release on October 9 via Sonic Cathedral. Accompanying the announcement, Bell has shared the lead single ‘Love Comes in Waves’, alongside a psychedelic music video directed by Chris Tomsett. Check it out below, and scroll down for the cover artwork and tracklist.
Initially inspired by the death of David Bowie, the album was recorded over the next four years and finished during lockdown. “I’ve always wanted to make a solo album,” Bell said in a statement. “I’ve always said I would do it, although I never imagined it happening like, or sounding like, this one does. I’d been sitting on this pile of almost finished tracks, along with all the other hundreds of ideas that had fallen by the wayside since I’ve been making music. Lockdown gave me the opportunity to find a way to present it to the world.”
He added: “The album is not about songwriting. There aren’t many verses or choruses, because this album is about sounds, a listening experience.”
The title of the album is taken froma poem written by Alison Tafel for the penultimate episode of Bojack Horseman. “The poem describes someone committing suicide by jumping to their death and the regret the protagonist experiences when he sees “the view from halfway down”,” Bell explained. “Although, of course, it’s too late to change what’s going to happen. I read this poem as having a message of suicide prevention: if you could see the view from halfway down, you would never go through with anything that would end your life. I’ve never been suicidal, but I felt really moved by this brilliant poem when I watched the show during Ride’s U.S. tour in Autumn 2019. It’s an incredible message.”
He continued: “There was a small kind of a parallel with me, sitting at home in London in March 2020. In the early stages of lockdown, you could feel the tension in the air, causing what felt like a global panic attack. But, in common with what I’ve heard from others who can experience anxiety for no reason in their everyday lives, I felt strangely calm in the midst of all of this, seeing things in my life very clearly. Such clarity allowed me to finally compile this record. In a way, to see my life flash before me and be able to curate moments of it into a 40-minute listening experience, then find a title that would fit. I also got a lot of DIY done.”
The View From Halfway Down Cover Artwork:
The View From Halfway Down Tracklist:
1. Love Comes in Waves
2. Indica
3. Ghost Tones
4. Skywalker
5. Aubrey Drylands Gladwell
6. Cherry Cola
7. I Was Alone
8. Heat Haze on Weyland Road
IDLES have unveiled an animated video for a new song titled ‘Model Village’. It was co-directed by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind director Michel Gondry, who’s previously helmed music videos for Radiohead, the White Stripes, Björk, Daft Punk, and more. He worked on the video, which is a collaboration with WePresent, alongside his brother, Olivier Gondry. Check it out below.
“Olivier [Gondry] and I were excited to work on this because we use completely opposite techniques,” Michel Gondry said in a statement to WePresent. “I work with a primitive system of cutting paper and moving it under the lens frame by frame. Olivier then transforms it by morphing, warping and CGI…. Basically, in the first part we try to illustrate the lyrics as close as possible, to create the world, and then in the second half…. they go to the moon.”
Speaking about the inspiration for the song, frontman Joe Talbot said: “I hated growing up in a city that was really a town that was really a fishbowl. I left as soon as I could, only to realise the fishbowl didn’t exist… just the fish, and they’re everywhere.”
‘Model Village’ is taken from IDLES’ upcoming album Ultra Mono, set for release September 25 via Partisan. Previously, they shared the tracks ‘A Hymn’, ‘Mr. Motivator’, and ‘Grounds’.
