Many of us are staying at home more often than we would have normally done, and if that means working from or just enjoying it and taking the time to relax, it can be a time we will never have again. However, there are so many things we could be doing with the time that we have now. With that in mind, here are some suggestions that will help you to keep it real in lockdown and how you can enjoy it.
Read more
One of the first things that you can consider doing is reading more. Many people will say that they don’t have the time to enjoy a good book anymore, but now we have more time than ever. It could be worth looking online and seeing what others are reading and reviewing. You may find that you start to enjoy new genres and pick up on things you love that you never thought you would do.
Redecorate your home
Being at home more means that you may have taken a long hard look at your home and decided now is the time to make some changes. Maybe you have repainted the walls or looked online to find a famous Australian artist with some unique and contemporary artwork to jazz up the walls. It might be you have the time to sort through photographs, frame them and display them. Maybe decluttering is on the cards or looking for new storage options to consider.
Learn a language
It could be that you take the time to think about learning a language. This could open up many different options for you, perhaps travelling or working abroad or even things like new job prospects. You could take the time to really pick things up and make a difference and it could be a great thing to occupy your time.
Improve your skills and gain qualifications
Maybe you have noticed that you now have the time to focus on your career a little more. It might not be the job that you want to do, so it might be time to think about how you can improve upon your skills and gain some new qualifications. Online learning can be a great thing to take advantage of at the moment, and it could help you to finally progress in the workplace and make some great changes to your working lifestyle moving forward. A successful career requires consistent learning and training. If you are involved in healthcare, you can find valuable online courses such as Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) and attend completely online. This way you can get certified while working.
Take better care of yourself
Finally, you could take this time to take better care of yourself. It might be that you look at improving and buying on your skincare routine. Focusing on moisturising and cleansing on a daily basis. Maybe it is exercising more frequently and eating well. Perhaps now having the time to cook meals from scratch and enjoy better quality of food and meals. There are many ways you can take better care of yourself and you will start to benefit from it in the long term.
Let’s hope these tips help you to keep it real in lockdown and enjoy it more.
The Recording Academy, the organization behind the Grammys, has announced a number of changes to their rules and guidelines, including name changes for several categories. Most notably, “Best Urban Contemporary Album” has been renamed “Best Progressive R&B Album”, seemingly in response to increasing criticisms of the term “Urban” since the category was introduced in 2012. However, the term has been kept for the category of “Latin Pop”, which has now been renamed “Latin Pop and Urban”.
According to a statement by the Recording Academy’s interim president and CEO Harvey Mason Jr., the change was decided last month. “We’re constantly evaluating our Awards process and evolving it to ensure the Grammy Awards are inclusive and reflect the current state of the music industry,” he said.
“Each year, we receive a number of rule change proposals from artists, producers and songwriters asking us to reevaluate our process,” Chief Awards Officer Bill Freimuth added.
The Best Progressive R&B Category is described as “intended to highlight albums that include the more progressive elements of R&B and may include samples and elements of hip-hop, rap, dance, and electronic music” and may incorporate “production elements found in pop, euro-pop, country, rock, folk, and alternative.”
“Best Latin Pop or Urban”, on the other hand, is “intended to recognize excellence in Latin pop or urban music recordings that utilize a stylistic intention, song structure, lyrical content, and/or musical presentation to create a sensibility that reflects the broad spectrum of Latin pop music style and culture.”
Moreover, “Best Rap/Sung Performance” has been renamed “Best Melodic Rap Performance”, representing “solo and collaborative performances containing…. a strong and clear presence of melody combined with rap cadence.”
With regards to the “Best New Artist” category, there is no longer a limit on the number of prior releases for an act to be eligible for the award. Instead, “screening committees will determine whether the artist had attained a breakthrough or prominence prior to the eligibility year,” according to the new rules. Previously, artists with more than 30 singles/tracks (or three albums) were not eligible for the prize. This change is likely in response the controversy following Lizzo’s nomination last year, which was allowed despite her surpassing the maximum amount of tracks.
The Recording Academy also made changes within its Nominations Review Committees, the group responsible for taking the most popular Grammy submissions, who are now required to fill out conflict of interest forms.
You can check out the entire 66-page rule book here.
Gorillaz have recruited London rapper Octavian for a new single titled ‘Friday 13th’. The track marks the fourth installment of the group’s Song Machine series. Listen to it below.
After teasing the collaboration online, the cartoon band also shared an official music video featuring Octavian as well as a host of Gorillaz members in their animated form. At the end of the video, we’re shown a quote by US activist James Baldwin: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”
Speaking of the track, drummer Russel Hobbs said: “Every day starts in the dark, and ends in the dark, but in the middle there is light.”
The Song Machine series kicked off in January with a track titled ‘Momentary Bliss’ featuring slowthai and Slaves. Since then, the group has unveiled ‘Désolé’, ‘Aries’, and ‘How Far?’, a collaboration with the late Tony Allen and Skepta.
Last month, Gorillaz announced the Gorillaz Almanac, to be published by Z2 Comics, in celebration of their 20-year history.
Lollapalooza, an annual four-day music festival taking place in Chicago, has been cancelled due to COVID-19. The city’s mayor, Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot, announced the decision yesterday (June 9) at the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE). The festival will instead host “a weekend-long livestream event” from July 30 to August 2 in “honour its annual summer tradition”, according to the announcement. The livestream will also live music as well as never-before-seen archival footage.
Lollapalooza organizers also released a statement on their website and social media pages, writing: “We wish we could bring Lollapalooza again to Grant Park this year, but we understand why things can’t move forward as planned. The health and safety of our fans, artists, partners, staff, and community is always our highest priority.”
They added: “Rest assured, we will be working hard behind the scenes to deliver Chicago a spectacular celebration of Lollapalooza’s 30th anniversary in the summer of 2021, and we can’t wait to celebrate with you.”
Lollapalooza South America has been postponed from March to late November/early December, with The Strokes, Guns N’ Roses and Travis Scott set to headline.
Denim clothing is mass-produced and seen in most if not all of the retail stores; in fact, 70 million pairs of jeans are sold in the UK, every year. Yet, much as we love to wear denim, we don’t realise how harmful it can be for the environment and the people who deal with producing denim. The purpose of this article is solely to inform how denim affects the environment and the workers. Hopefully, this may encourage you to try out different types of clothes and seemingly will give you a reason to talk to the brands that abuse this system.
Denim production takes a lot of water and creates heaps of pollution. Growing cotton consumes at least 68% of water alone, while to produce one pair of jeans it takes 998.8 gallons of water. Moreover, different looks on jeans such as the distressed style cause the manufacturers to use chemicals and intensive washing, further adding to water consumption and pollution. In Xintang, China, cases of unsafe amounts of mercury, lead and copper were all found in the river near the place which produces around the third of the world’s jeans. The same river which residents use for bathing and drinking water. This pollution has caused some serious health issues for the residents.
Denim waste can also be toxic to both land animals, and aquatic life, when the wastewater is washed down the stream and flown into the rivers. It has been also found that the dangerous Manganese, a hard metal, has been found in rivers. Mangese can cause lung and liver disturbances, possible declines in blood pressure, and even brain damage. Many animals with even a small exposure to Mangese can have a very small chance of survival.
Manganese Production based on the numbers of USGS Comodity report 2007
Alternatives
It’s great to point out problems, but there is no point doing so if we bring no solutions. While a lot of old, unfriendly methods used from years ago are still present, some reliable alternatives are available. For example, companies such as Jeanologia bring highly advanced eco-technologies for fabric and garment finishing. Their methods eliminate the painful process which impacts the health of the environment and the worker.
We can also reduce our spending on denim by using ethical and sustainable alternatives. For example, denim brands like Agolde use regenerative and recyclable cotton for their clothing line, helping reduce the overall stability. If you want to check them out, you can explore Agolde jeans at Maplestore. Before shopping, make sure that the brand you are buying is transparent on the process and check if they re-invest into the working conditions of their workers and the farmers from which they get the cotton.
To conclude, our environment must not suffer from something that we can change. We must stand up and show to brands that denim can be produced more ethically and sustainably. By being smart with our shopping and letting brands know that they can be more sustainable, we can help shift the movement one step forward.
‘Thieves! (Screamed the Ghost)’, a mid-album highlight from 2016’s RTJ3, closes off with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘The Other America’ speech that has recently been making rounds on social media: “A riot is the language of unheard.” The track itself imagines a dystopian sci-fi future that serves as an allegory of racism in America, confronting of the harsh realities of police brutality and systemic violence that have plagued the country for decades. The incomparable duo of Killer Mike and El-P paint a grimly vivid scene of a riot – “burning, looting, shooting, taking, thieving” – images we’ve become all too familiar with during the last few days. It’s so frighteningly prescient one could easily mistake it for a protest song recorded in direct response to the uprising over the killing of George Floyd.
But of course, that’s exactly the point – much like that track, Run the Jewels’ latest full-length effort, released on June 3rd (two days before its actual release date), doesn’t feel so much like a reflection on the current political moment as much as a pertinent reminder of a long-standing pattern of abuse at the hands of a racist state. Even RTJ4’s most memorable lyric, which arrives once again at the midpoint of the album, isn’t in reference to George Floyd but to Eric Garner, a black man who was killed in horrifically similar circumstances six years ago: “You so numb you watch the cops choke out a man like me,” Mike raps, “Until my voice goes from a shriek to whisper—‘I can’t breathe’.” It would have been potent enough if it was written about George Floyd, but showing how it’s also about every black person whose life has unjustly been taken away really drives home the point that Mike and El-P have been making for years, be it through their music or through Mike’s activism.
But despite RTJ2’s success, RTJ3 was itself a musical riot that went largely unheard, though it had less to do with structural inequality than with the fact that it was released at the tail end of the year – even if it was the year that ushered in the era of Trump. The show Mike and El-P put on here isn’t that different – it’s still raucously fun, virulent, and bombastic all at the same time – but the stage has certainly changed, with more people watching than ever. Chances are, if you’ve heard a Run the Jewels album before, you don’t need to be told that RTJ4 is good – not as punchy as RTJ2 or as diverse as RTJ3, but it certainly doesn’t disappoint. The chemistry between the duo is more naturally effortless than ever, the production is blisteringly boisterous, and the lyrics can be both boastful and sobering. Even El-P, who’s often the less politically outspoken of the two, frequently steps out of his comfort zone to take aim at systemic oppression: “Funny fact about a cage, they’re never built for just one group/ So when that cage is done with them and you’re still poor/ It come for you,” he spits out on ‘walking in the snow’.
But there’s more to the album than just that chilling highlight, both in terms of sound and subject matter. RTJ4 is framed as an action comedy set in a world of chaos, with fiery opener ‘yankee and the brave’ introducing the rappers’ comedic alter egos as they run away from a swarm of police offers. There’s a sense of joyful frenetic energy that propels the album forward, from the catchy hooks of the classicist ‘ooh la la’ featuring Greg Nice and DJ Premier to the wildly infectious and enthralling ‘holy calamafuck’, whose thunderous production hints at RTJ4’s heightened dramatic flare. The propulsive synths and haunting backing vocals of ‘never look back’ sound like they’re coming straight from a horror movie, while ‘the ground below’ pulses with rock n’ roll dynamism. The grievous atmosphere of ‘pulling the pin’, featuring Mavis Staples Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme, is eerily reminiscent of Nick Cave’s latest work, and there’s nothing quite as evocative as Staples’ chorus as she sings: “It hurts, I’m bein’ torn apart/ There’s a grenade in my heart and the pin is in their palm.”
As is to be expected, RTJ4 is filled with ruthless attacks on capitalism and its relation to various forms of injustice, but none is as biting and witty as ‘JU$T’, co-produced by Pharrell Williams and featuring Zach De La Rocha (who also made a noteworthy appearance on RTJ2), which includes one of the album’s most memorable punchlines: “The Thirteenth Amendment says that slavery’s abolished/ Look at all these slave masters posin’ on yo’ dollar.” But what makes the album stand out from the rest of the duo’s discography is not so much its barbed political commentary as the surprising amount of self-reflection that’s on display here, from ‘never look back’ to the closer ‘a few words for the firing squad (radiation)’. The latter is a 6-minute epic that builds and builds as Mike and El-P deliver knock-out performances; El-P looks inwards to offer some poignant truths about life (“I used to wanna get the chance to show the world I’m smart/ Isn’t that dumb?/ I should’ve focused mostly on the heart/ ‘Cause I seen smarter people trample life like it’s an art”), while Mike ruminates on his own image and legacy (“Friends tell her, ‘He could be another Malcolm, he could be another Martin’/ She told her partner, ‘I need a husband more than the world need another martyr’”).
The album’s tongue-in-cheek outro serves as a reminder that this is all just a work of fiction, and a darkly comedic one at that – but it’s a framing device that actually amplifies the truths that have been laid out throughout its tense 40-minute runtime. RTJ4 is as consistently rapturous as it is fierce, managing to stay true to its playful spirit without minimising the impact of its powerful message. That MLK quote is not the only sample from that RTJ3 track that has now taken on a new resonance – a snippet from the opening monologue to a 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone perfectly distills what’s at the core of the album’s thesis: “This is not a new world, it is simply an extension of what began in the old one.”
Limón Limón, an LA-based duo, have released their new single Barcelona Night which they state recalls the memories of days spent wandering a vibrant city by the sea. The single comes after the release of their song Routine.
Barcelona Night is the perfect song for the summer, featuring euphonious vocals, catchy lyrics and warm, energy-filled production. If you’re looking for a refreshing track, then you’ll love Barcelona Night.
Bonnie Pointer, one of the founding members of the Grammy Award-winning vocal group The Pointer Sisters, has died at the age of 69.
Anita Pointer confirmed her sister’s passing in a statement to TMZ. “It is with great sadness that I have to announce to the fans of The Pointer Sisters that my sister, Bonnie died this morning,” she said. “Our family is devastated, on behalf of my siblings and I and the entire Pointer family, we ask for your prayers at this time.”
Born in Oakland, California, Bonnie and her sister June started performing as a duo in 1969 before the group expanded into a quartet including their other sisters, Anita and Ruth. After signing to Blue Thumb Records in 1972, the group found success with the release of their debut self-titled album, released the following year, which featured their first hit single ‘Yes We Can’. A year later, the group won a Grammy for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group for their second hit, ‘Fairytale’, off their album That’s a Plenty, which was later covered by Elvis Presley. This led them to become the first African American group to perform at the Grand Ole Opry.
The band’s success continued with 1975’s Steppin’, but in 1977, Bonnie left the group to pursue a solo career before the band’s commercial peak. She made her self-titled debut for Motown Records in 1997 and went on to release four albums, with her most popular single ‘Heaven Must Have Sent You’ reaching No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100.
In 1994, The Pointer Sisters reunited in celebration of their Hollywood Walk of Fame star. In 2010, she played herself in Monte Hellman’s 2010 romantic thriller Road to Nowhere, and released her final album, Like A Picasso, in 2011.
We are all stuck with a lot of time on our hands at the moment. Some people are embracing it such as decluttering their homes and making some positive changes in their lives, whereas others are finding that boredom has started to creep in. Are you finding lockdown hard right now? If so now might be the time to try out a new hobby. Here are some suggestions to help you get started.
Collecting
Collecting is a great hobby, and it can be quite time-consuming which makes it ideal to start in January when you really don’t want to be overdoing it with spending a lot of money. Collecting things could range from anything like stamps and first day covers to rare stones. Some people like to collect china or mugs, the options are endless, and you can spend your time hunting out bargains to add to your collection. Be that online at specialist websites or even on auction sites like eBay.
Exercise
So I guess that exercise might be a hot topic of conversation for some as people tend to place a lot of focus with their new year’s resolutions around being healthy. So why not seize the opportunity and really focus on it by turning it into a hobby. You may find that you want to take up a new sport like tennis or football, or simply join a gym or go out for a run. Whatever you decide to do, exercise not only gives you something to do but after a few weeks, you will start to see the benefit of it.
Maybe you want to learn music and try something different, and now with some extra time, you could finally learn that musical instrument. You may want to start playing the guitar, or even the piano. You could try out things such as learn to play the Piano in 21 Days and see how you get on. It could be a great thing to focus your mind and energy, especially during difficult times we all find ourselves in.
Start a blog or journal
Blogging and journaling have become somewhat trendy of late, but that doesn’t mean you can seize the opportunity and start one yourself. Blogging is a great way to share your knowledge and tips on any subject you feel passionate about, or simply document your life as an online diary. Journaling might be taken differently as you can choose to write in a diary your thoughts and hopes, but you could also be specific with things like a happiness or gratitude journal where you place some focus on your mental well-being.
Learn a language
Maybe you want to do something a little out of your comfort zone or just something completely different, then learning a language could be the ideal option for you. Whether you choose something obscure, or something a little more mainstream, the added attention to something could help you in other areas of your life as well as enabling you to feel more confident if you do visit that country in the future.
Let’s hope that this has inspired you to consider some of the hobbies you could try this month.
Petra Leary, an award-winning New Zealand born photographer, has released a superb aerial series named Daily Geometry. In this eye-pleasing series, Leary explores different basketball courts that showcase various colours, shapes and textures. This is a wonderful series that brings us a new view from above.
