Rosalía and Travis Scott have released a new song and video called ‘TKN’. The video was directed by Nicolás Méndez aka CANADA. Check it out below.
This isn’t the first collaboration between the Spanish pop singer and Houston rapper; last year, Rosalía appeared in a remix of Travis Scott’s ‘HIGHEST IN THE ROOM’ with Lil Baby.
“Travis is an artist who I’ve admired a lot since the beginning of his career and I can’t imagine a better artist to collaborate with on this song,” Rosalía said in a statement announcing the track on Thursday. “I hope ‘TKN’ gives you energy, makes you dance, and gives you strength if you’re going through difficult times,” she added.
Rosalía further discussed the collaboaration in an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe:
“You know that there artists that when they come into the room, everybody like gets smaller. But with Travis, it’s not like that. It’s not like that,” she said. “Everybody flows with him, he’s flowing and it’s beautiful like that. And I think that he’s very special and that we had a lot of fun. And also I think that he has lots of layers . . . Like, I think as an artist, what makes his art and his work so good, I think it’s because he has so much layers in his personality, not just as an artist.”
Rosalía’s last album was 2018’s EL MAL QUERER, while Scott’s most recent album was ASTROWORLD, also released in 2018.
In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on May 29th, 2020:
Lady Gaga, Chromatica
Pop’s most eccentric star is back with her much-anticipated sixth studio album, Chromatica, out now via Interscope. Originally scheduled to be released on April 10th before being pushed back due to the coronavirus pandemic, Chromatica is the follow-up to 2016’s Joanne, which saw Lady Gaga taking her sound in a rootsier, more stripped-back direction. In an interview with Zane Lowe, she described the new album, which features collaborations with Ariana Grande, Blackpink, and Elton John, as a reminder of her “absolute love for electronic music”. Preceded by the singles ‘Stupid Love’ in February and ‘Rain on Me’ earlier this month, the 16-track album is executive produced by BloodPop and Gaga. Speaking of the album’s title, she said: “I live on Chromatica. I found Earth. I deleted it. Earth is canceled. I live on Chromatica. Chromatica is a frame of mind.” Further elaborating on the the album’s concept, she added: “It’s all the colors, all the sounds. We’re talking about inclusivity and life.”
Deerhoof, Future Teenage Cave Artists
Deerhoof have released their latest album, Future Teenage Cave Artists, via Joyful Noise. The first album of original material since 2017’s Mountain Moves, the indie band’s new effort contains the previously released singles ‘The Loved One’ and the title track. In a statement, they described ‘Future Teenage Cave Artists’ as being about “what it feels like knowing that the rebels are our only hope. Today’s derelicts, romantics, and children are forced to be tomorrow’s heroes.” Last year, the band celebrated their 25th anniversary by reissuing their first three albums —1997’s The Man, the King, the Girl, 1999’s Holdypaws, and 2001’s Halfbird.
Mrs. Piss, Self-Surgery
Mrs. Piss, the new collaborative project of Chelsea Wolfe and Jess Gowrie, have released their debut album titled Self-Surgery through Sargent House. Featuring Wolfe on vocals and guitar and Gowrie on drums, guitar, bass, and programming, the album was recorded at the Dock Studio in Sacramento, California and at Wolfe’s home studio, the Canyon. In a statement, Wolfe said that the duo “tried not to overthink the songs as we were writing them, but at the same time we did consciously put a lot into crafting them into our own weird sonic vision.” She added: “This project was a chance for us to do things our own way, on our own terms, and we plan to invite more womxn musicians along for future Mrs. Piss recordings.”
Other albums out today:
Flying Lotus, Flamagra (Deluxe Edition); Lil Yachty, Lil Boat 3; Kygo,Golden Hour; Jade Hairpins, Harmony Avenue.
A Faint Resemblance is a photography series by Jan Erik Waider, a fine art photographer and visual artist based in Hamburg, Germany. The series itself focuses on the Antarctic Peninsula. Through his lens, Waider captures the beautiful essence and the atmospheric landscape of the north — beautifully. A Faint Resemblance is one of our favourite photography series, and puts Jan Erik Waider on the map as one of the photographers to follow in the future.
Find more superb work by Jan Erik Waider on his website.
Moreover, if you would like to purchase some high-quality Adobe Lightroom presets for your photography, made by Waider, you can do so here.
To accuse The 1975 of being self-indulgent now is to ignore the band’s entire back catalogue. The 80s-inspired pop structures of their early albums always felt like they were struggling to contain frontman Matty Healy’s urge to create something as chaotically decadent as possible, a glossy veneer ready to fall apart at any moment. The more the Manchester quartet broke free from those conventions, the more outrageously ambitious and interesting their music got, culminating with 2018’s landmark A Brief Inquiry in Online Relationships. If there was ever sense that Matty Healy was still holding back a little – it was only an inquiry, after all – on the band’s latest album, Notes on a Conditional Form, he lets all his inhibitions run wild.
The results are polarizing at best. As with A Brief Inquiry, Notes should invoke one of two reactions: blind adoration or bemused annoyance, though neither of them are entirely justified. But chances are, if you could barely tolerate or even found yourself admiring elements of the band’s previous outing, you’ll have trouble sitting through the entirety of Notes without tuning out at least once. Clocking in at an hour and twenty minutes, the 22-track album is a patently messy and directionless experiment that hops from one genre to the next with seemingly no intention other than to satisfy some half-formed creative impulse. As hinted by its pseudo-intellectual title, the album’s boundless incoherence is, well, inherent in its nature – this time, though, it’s so blown out of proportion that it loses most of its appeal.
Which is a shame, because there’s not a single track here that sounds poorly written, recorded, or mixed, largely thanks to the band’s secret weapon, drummer and producer George Daniel. Even drab, purposeless electro cuts like ‘What Should I Say’, ‘Yeah I Know’ and ‘Shiny Collarbone’ sound sleek, like they could easily fit into a solid if somewhat indistinctive electronic EP. ‘The End (Music for Cars)’ is a lushly arranged orchestral interlude that would also sound fine in a different context – just not after the ruthless, IDLES-esque punk anthem ‘People’, which itself follows from opener ‘The 1975’, an ambient spoken word piece featuring environmental activist Greta Thunberg. As a single, the track felt like a powerful statement, a promising sign of what’s to come; and even here, paired with the restless political anger of ‘People’, it hints at a more outward-looking, socially charged direction that unfortunately never fully materializes.
Instead, the record continues its genre excursions with little rhyme or reason, wandering into airy electropop (‘Frail State of Mind’), alternative country (‘The Birthday Party’), and 2000s indie rock nostalgia (‘Then Because She Goes’). By the time we reach ‘Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America’, an acoustic cut featuring Phoebe Bridgers that sounds like a semi-parody of the Bridgers-Oberst collaborative project Better Oblivion Community Center, we’ve basically seen it all – and there are still 13 whole tracks left. The song also features some of Healy’s less-than-profound lyrics, closing off with the head-scratching line: “If we turn into a tree, can I be the leaves?”
The record’s tendency to meander wouldn’t be such a flaw if its second half didn’t explore much of the same territory they’ve already dived into with little to no variation. Take ‘I Think There’s Something You Should Know’, for instance, which might as well be titled ‘Frail State Of Mind Pt. 2’. ‘Playing on My Mind’, on the other hand, follows the same acoustic formula as ‘Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America’, except with less of an interesting concept, though it does contain one of Healy’s more cheekily self-aware lines: “But I won’t get clothes online ’cause I get worried about the fit/ But that rule don’t apply concerning my relationships.”
Notes peaks with ‘If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)’, the band’s most commercially successful single in a while – which is ironic, considering it’s about being infatuated with a girl he met in an adult website. Featuring an appearance from FKA Twigs, it’s an infectiously upbeat tune most reminiscent of the 1975s’ typical sound, complete with tongue-in-cheek lyrics and a euphoric sax solo. But as Healy himself said in an interview, “it’s another completely different tone to the album and it kind of comes out of nowhere.” Which proves that, again, this is all part of the point – like A Brief Inquiry before it, Notes is intended as a reflection on our increasingly shortening attention spans, and in that respect, its stream-of-consciousness flow gets the point across fairly well. It’s just not the definitive masterpiece it tries and very well could be.
That said, the album rewards any listeners who stay up until the very end, as it closes off with two of the band’s most heartwarmingly earnest moments. ‘Don’t Worry’ is a heartfelt, lullaby-like collaboration with Healy’s dad, who wrote the song when his son was just a toddler; but it’s ‘Guys’ that’s the real stand-out here, an unashamedly sentimental love letter to the frontman’s bandmates that is sure to become a fan favourite. “The moment that we started a band/ Was the best thing that ever happened,” he croons amidst nostalgic keys. It might strike an entirely different note from the album’s opening – which wouldn’t be such a problem if there was any sense of an emotional arc running throughout – but still, it’s proof of just how affecting the band’s music can be when they shed some of those layers of irony, when they embrace those metamodern qualities Healy is so fond of. By striking that balance between self-awareness and emotional sincerity, the band could make an album that’s truly transcendent, even if it’s just as unsure of itself as Notes – it just has to be a little bit more focused.
Charli XCX isn’t the only pop star who’s written and recorded an entire album during lockdown. Carly Rae Jepsen, who just surprise-released her new album, Dedicated Side B, revealed she’s already made “an entire quarantine album” with longtime collaborator Travish Crowe.
In an interview on the Switched On Pop podcast, the Canadian singer called the album “very different”, adding: “We had to do it around Zoom or things like that so it’s been like a challenge but a really fun one! You kind of write differently that way. You have more time to have space inbetween the decisions you’re making and more time to kind of be away from the song for a minute, so I find it to be a whole new style of going at it, and I like it.”
Jepsen first revealed that she’s been working on new songs in an interview with the Guardian last week. “When I don’t have an album immediately due, I just allow myself to experiment,” she said. “If you heard what we were making you’d be like, ‘every song sounds completely different’ — and that’s the point.”
We still have no idea when the album will be released, or if it will even see the light of day. Last year, Jepsen revelead she’d made a disco album that she has no intention of releasing. “I had an album I named ‘Disco Sweat’ that will probably never be released, and shouldn’t,” she said.
TTRRUUCES, a duo known for taking a different approach when it comes to music, have released their beloved song I’m Alive, today. The song has already featured big on the biggest football game in the world FIFA 20, and has steadily helped grow the fanbase of TTRRUUCES. With this unexpected release, we expect things to come for TTRRUUCES in 2020.
The duo will be releasing their self-titled album on the 26th of June, however for now here is the ear-pleasing song I’m Alive.
Netflix’s Sex Education (2019 -) is a British comedy-drama that follows Otis Milburn, a sixteen-year-old virgin, as he sets up a sex therapy clinic at school with Maeve Wiley, a very smart, well-read social pariah who needs money to pay rent. The series finished its second season not long ago. To remind us of the brilliance that Sex Education brings, we have selected five empowering moments from the series.
Adam Finds a Friend
Adam Groff is the son of Moordale High’s Headmaster, an uptight man who sends Adam to a military school after he fails his classes. He’s kicked out of this military school after protecting two of his roommates from being found out as gay, though this fact is kept under wraps.
Back in Moordale, Adam gets a job and impresses his boss by taming his dog—Adam’s first achievement in the series. He helps his parents, even washing his dad’s car, but Groff is irritated that Adam is doing this when he needs to leave for work. As to his job, Adam is fired when the shop is ransacked the morning after he was allowed to lock up.
Ola—Moordale student, Otis’s ex-girlfriend, and Adam’s fellow employee—shows up and says the lock was already faulty, so their boss fires them both. Adam is confused as to why Ola defended him and she explains it’s because he’s her friend. He says that nobody has ever called him their friend, then hugs her.
After struggling for so long to accept and love himself, Ola sees Adam as a boy who’s trying his best. Ola is new to Moordale, so unlike Adam’s other peers, she doesn’t have the weight of his past mistakes to cloud her judgement. This proves that Adam has truly grown over the two seasons. Ola’s words help him embrace his identity and stand up to his father.
Eric And His Father Make Amends
Eric’s father often expresses concern over his effeminate mannerisms. When Eric and Otis plan to see a musical production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch for Eric’s birthday, Mr Effiong almost stops Eric from leaving in his costume.
Unfortunately, Otis doesn’t end up going because he gets caught up in a sex therapy debacle with Maeve. Eric feels vulnerable on his own, and his paranoia distracts him so much that he doesn’t notice someone steal his things at the station. He walks home in the dark, where two men beat him up. Mr Effiong’s concern proves to be warranted, and Eric tones down his vibrant outfits and personality.
On the morning of the school dance, Eric sees a man on the street whose nails he describes as “fierce”, and he’s inspired to embrace his identity. Before the dance, his dad asks if he’s sure he wants to go in dressed as a woman. He explains that he struggles to fit in as an immigrant, but Eric stands his ground. “Your fear doesn’t help me, Dad. It makes me feel weak.” Still, his father worries that he’ll be hurt, but Eric replies that he’ll be hurt either way, so wouldn’t it be better to be himself?
Someone honks at Mr Effiong to move his car, but he yells at them to wait. He turns back to Eric and says, “Maybe I am learning from my brave son.”
Watching this whole exchange is Adam. He attempts to tease Eric, but he’s no longer afraid of this boy who bullied him for years.
Jean Reassures Florence
In the school’s musical production of Romeo and Juliet, Florence stars as Juliet opposite Jackson Marchetti: Maeve’s ex-boyfriend, Moordale High’s Head Boy and most popular student, and a swimming champion who suffers from anxiety. Florence’s friends tease her that Jackson will have sex with anyone, so she better get in quick. But the constant reminders of sex make her uncomfortable. She schedules a sex therapy session with Otis, but he mistakenly believes that she feels insecure about falling behind her peers.
Otis’s mother, Dr Jean Milburn, has been invited to Moordale High to observe the school’s sex education curriculum and set up a counselling office to get a better idea of what the school needs. Florence comes in to see her after receiving Otis’s unhelpful advice. Jean gently asks Florence if she’s heard of asexuality. Florence worries that she won’t be able to fall in love, but Jean reassures her that romance is possible without sex. When Florence confesses she thinks she’s broken, Jean replies, “Sex doesn’t make us whole. And so, how could you ever be broken?”
The Girls Smash Stuff
Aimee Gibbs is Maeve’s best friend. Early in season 2, Aimee decides that she wants to be a baker. She makes a cake for Maeve’s birthday and is carrying it with her on the bus to school when a man ejaculates onto her jeans. Nobody says or does anything, thinking she’s made it up or exaggerated the incident. At first, Aimee is only indignant and upset that he ruined her jeans. Maeve insists on taking her to the police station, where Aimee feels she’s wasting everybody’s time and keeps saying that it’s not a big deal. As the season continues, the trauma of the event slowly creeps up on her. She stops catching the bus and making physical contact with her boyfriend.
Towards the end of the season, the girls (Aimee, Maeve, Olivia, Viv, Ola, and Lily) receive a detention when their teacher finds them standing before a slander painted on a bathroom mirror in lipstick. When no one admits to the crime, she sets the girls the task of writing an essay about what binds them together as women. The girls can’t settle on anything, and Ola and Maeve end up bickering about Otis. In the background, Aimee starts crying and yells at them to stop fighting. She finally admits that she can’t get on the bus, and the girls all reveal similar stories of their own. In the end, the teacher finds the true culprit. The girls tell her that the only thing that binds them together is “non-consensual penises”.
After detention, they’re reluctant to part, so Ola suggests an activity for them. They go to a scrapyard (to which Ola was introduced by Adam) and channel their anger into smashing old junk while voicing the injustices that make them angry.
The Girls Take the Bus with Aimee
The morning after detention, Aimee is walking to school as usual, but finds the girls waiting for her at the bus stop. Maeve smiles and tells her they’re all getting the bus with her. But when the time comes to board, Aimee is hesitant. Maeve asks the driver to wait a minute and reassures Aimee that “it’s just a stupid bus”. She takes Maeve’s hand and they climb on together. The final shot of the episode is of the girls sitting together in the backseat, each with their own history of struggles, each unique in her own way. Aimee has tears in her eyes, but this time she’s smiling.
Following the cancellation of its 2020 edition due to the coronavirus pandemic, Primavera Sound Festival has announced the first 100 names on the line-up for their 2021 festival. New additions from the previous lineup include Charli XCX, FKA Twigs, Jamie xx, Gorillaz, Napalm Death, Mica Levi, Autechre, Jorja Smith, IDLES, and more. The bill also includes Tyler, the Creator, the Strokes, Bikini Kill, Bad Bunny, the National, Chromatics, Rina Sawayama, Brockhampton, 100 gecs, Iggy Pop, Caroline Polachek, Beck, Black Midi, Yo La Tengo, among others. Check out the full lineup below.
The Barcelona-held event is set to run from June 2-6, 2021, with more acts to be announced until then. All tickets purchased for Primavera Sound Festival 2020 will be valid for 2021, while remaining tickets will go on sale on Wednesday, June 3rd. You can find out more information about refunds and ticket exchanges here.
“Whoever said that the second chances are never good did not imagine that we would experience something like what is happening this 2020,” Primavera organisers said in a statement. “With the whole world on pause due to the evolution of the global pandemic and with the live music sector holding its breath facing a summer without festivals, we can only look forward: towards 2021, specifically, the year in which we are going to recover everything that will be pending from 2020.”
They added: “So, we are especially proud to announce that the first names in the Primavera Sound Barcelona 2021 line-up feature a majority of artists who reconfirm their presence at the festival, as well as the occasional very special new addition. A first selection of artists that condenses the spirit of the festival for an edition that is as long awaited as this 20th anniversary edition is, and that will be updated soon with new names, both from the 2020 lineup and new surprises.”
Following the singles ‘Persona Non Grata’ and ‘Forced Convalescence’, Bright Eyes have shared the third track from their forthcoming album, titled ‘One and Done’. Listen to it below.
The song features Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea on bass and Queens of the Stone Age’s Jon Theodore on drums, with Nathaniel Walcott providing the track’s orchestral arrangement and Miwi La Lupa singing backing vocals.
The release date of the album, which will be their first since 2011’s The People’s Key, has yet to be announced.
Billie Eilish has released a short film titled ‘NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY’. The video, which addresses the public’s perception of the artist’s body and clothing, premiered at the opening night of her now-postponed 2020 world tour in Miami. Watch it below.
Against a chilling instrumental backdrop, the film sees Eilish removing layers of clothing before sinking into water. “The body I was born with – is it not what you wanted?” she asks. “If I wear what is comfortable, I am not a woman,” she continues. “If I shed the layers, I’m a slut.”
“Would you like me to be smaller? Weaker? Softer? Taller? Would you like me to be quiet? Do my shoulders provoke you? Does my chest? Am I my stomach? My hips?” she goes on to ask.
As she sinks further into the dark, the film ends with the question: “Is my value based only on your perception? Or is your opinion of me not my responsibility?”
Earlier this month, Eilish announced she would postponing all remaining tour dates of her ‘Where Do We Go?’ tour due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Pop’s most eccentric star is back with her much-anticipated sixth studio album, Chromatica, out now via Interscope. Originally scheduled to be released on April 10th before being pushed back due to the coronavirus pandemic, Chromatica is the follow-up to 2016’s Joanne, which saw Lady Gaga taking her sound in a rootsier, more stripped-back direction. In 
Deerhoof have released their latest album, Future Teenage Cave Artists, via Joyful Noise. The first album of original material since 2017’s Mountain Moves, the indie band’s new effort contains the previously released singles ‘The Loved One’ and the title track. In a statement, they described ‘Future Teenage Cave Artists’ as being about “what it feels like knowing that the rebels are our only hope. Today’s derelicts, romantics, and children are forced to be tomorrow’s heroes.” Last year, the band celebrated their 25th anniversary by reissuing their first three albums —1997’s The Man, the King, the Girl, 1999’s Holdypaws, and 2001’s Halfbird.
Mrs. Piss, the new collaborative project of Chelsea Wolfe and Jess Gowrie, have released their debut album titled Self-Surgery through Sargent House. Featuring Wolfe on vocals and guitar and Gowrie on drums, guitar, bass, and programming, the album was recorded at the Dock Studio in Sacramento, California and at Wolfe’s home studio, the Canyon. In a statement, Wolfe said that the duo “tried not to overthink the songs as we were writing them, but at the same time we did consciously put a lot into crafting them into our own weird sonic vision.” She added: “This project was a chance for us to do things our own way, on our own terms, and we plan to invite more womxn musicians along for future Mrs. Piss recordings.”
