Watch Morrissey on “Conan”

Morrissey appeared last night on “Conan”, in support of his current tour dates in the U.S. and Mexico. Backed by his clean-cut band, Moz performed the new song “People Are the Same Everywhere”, which he played on BBC Radio 2 earlier this year. Watch the performance below.

Troy Sanders has revealed that Mastodon will team with Feist to work on a split 7″ for Record Store Day 2012. The split 7″, which was her idea, will feature each band covering the other. You can check out Troy discussing it with MTV News Canada below.

Mastodon, who recently headlined Terminal 5, released one of Decibel’s favorite albums of the year, though Feist’s recently released “Metals” did not make the list (it didn’t make Rough Trade’s list either).
That video with Mastodon tour dates below…

MASTODON – 2011-2012 TOUR DATES
NOV 29 Asheville, NC – Orange Peel
DEC 1 Lake Buena Vista, FL – House of Blues
DEC 2 Atlanta, GA – “The Missing Link” The Tabernacle
JAN 11 Tampere, Finland – Pakkahuone
JAN 12 Helsinki, Finland – Circus
JAN 14 Stockholm, Sweden – The Annex
JAN 15 Oslo, Norwa – Sentrum Scene
JAN 16 Copenhagen, Denmark – VEGA
JAN 17 Aarhus, Denmark – Voxhall
JAN 19 Brussels, Belgium – Encienne Belgique
JAN 20 Paris, France – Le Bataclan
JAN 22 Lisbon, Portugal – Coliseum
JAN 23 Madrid, Spain – Joy Slava
JAN 24 Barcelona, Spain – Razzmatazz
JAN 26 Milan, Italy – Xtra
JAN 29 Frankfurt, Germany – Batschkapp
JAN 30 Munich, Germany – Backstage Halle/Werk
JAN 31 Berlin, Germany – C-Club/Astra
FEB 2 Cologne, Germany – Essigfabrik/E-Werk
FEB 3 Tilburg, Holland – 013
FEB 5 Bristol, UK – 02 Academy
FEB 6 Manchester, UK – Academy
FEB 7 Glasgow, UK – Barrowlands
FEB 9 Norwich, UK – UEA
FEB 10 Birmingham, UK – HMV Institute
FEB 11 London, UK – O2 Academy Brixton

From Nine Inch Nails:

We’re auctioning off a selection of NIN memorabilia, with the proceeds going to our friends rescuing greyhounds at Greyhound Rescue and California Greyhound Adoption Promotion. Click here to view the auctions, and check back as more items will be added in the coming weeks…

“I’m feeling optimistic about the future no matter what happens at this point. I mean, every band runs its course. We’ve been together way longer than any of us ever imagined would happen and it’s been for the most part an incredibly pleasurable ride. There’s still a lot of stuff we’re going to continue to do. There’s tons and tons of archival projects and things like that that are still going on, so there are so many ways in which we are tied to each other for the future both musically and in other ways.”

– Lee Ranaldo tells Rolling Stone that he remains hopeful regarding the future of Sonic Youth, despite Thurston and Kim’s recent separation. As previously reported, Matador will release Ranaldo’s solo album on March 20.

After letting audio tapes for more than 800 shows languish in a closet for years, Fugazi has begun putting them all on its Web site, with the first batch of 130 shows going up next Thursday.

In keeping with its commercial principles of low prices and trust in fans, the shows’ suggested price is $5 each, with a sliding scale of $1 to $100, for the cheap or the philanthropic.

As a career-spanning archival project, the Fugazi Live Series has few equals, putting the band in the unlikely company of acts like the Grateful Dead and Phish. And for Dischord, Fugazi’s self-run label, it has taken more than two years and tens of thousands of dollars, said Ian MacKaye, one of Fugazi’s two singer-guitarists and a co-founder of Dischord.
-[NY Times]

The Fugazi Live Series is now in beta and officially launches on December 1st.

Alabama Shakes – “You Ain’t Alone” from Outlaw Laboratories on Vimeo.

The famously factitious relationship between former Oasis members Liam and Noel Gallagher looks set to deteriorate further following reports that Noel has filed court documents accusing his younger brother of abusive and “irresponsible” behavior prior to the band’s split in 2009.

The siblings’ legal dispute dates back to August this year, when Liam filed a lawsuit against Noel following his claims that the singer had pulled out of a headline performance at the 2009 V Festival because of a hangover. Speaking at a London press conference to promote his debut solo release “Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds,” the former Oasis songwriter also stated that the band’s break-up was partly related to Liam wanting to advertise his Pretty Green clothing line in the group’s touring merchandise.

Noel later retracted his claims and apologized, leading–or so it seemed–to Liam withdrawing the legal action. Now it appears that Noel has filed a series of counter claims in response to the High Court libel action, with British tabloid newspaper the Mirror obtaining fresh legal documents that detail the reasons behind the multi-million selling band’s split.

According to the Daily Mirror, the 14-page writ, which was lodged November 1, contains a number of scathing accusations from the elder Gallagher including details of a backstage bust-up in Paris in 2009 where Liam was “physically violent” towards Noel.

“He went to his dressing room, fetched his guitar, and on returning began swinging the guitar around in the air like an axe, nearly smashing the defendant [Noel] in the face with it,” the court papers go on to say. Noel is said to have regarded this incident as “the last straw” and quit the band that evening.

The papers also lodge claims that Liam left “offensive voicemail messages on the Defendant’s [Noel] wife’s mobile phone, insulting her and others the Defendant cared about.”

One excerpt reads: “The claimant [Liam] had a history over the years of not only throat problems and of pursuing such an incompatible lifestyle, but of treating Oasis fans and the defendant with disrespect by disrupting gigs, including walking off stage, assaulting them and generally acting irresponsibly.”

The court document goes on to list 12 separate occasions dating from 1994 to 2005 in which Liam allegedly “disrupted” gigs by storming out, being drunk or getting into fights, says the Mirror.

They reportedly include the claim that Liam head-butted a fan who asked for his autograph in Australia in 1998. Another incident cited by Noel’s lawyers is his brother walking out of a three-week tour of America in 1996 to go house hunting.

Referencing the original libel filed by Liam in relation to the pulled show at 2009′s V Festival, Noel admits that Liam did have laryngitis and medical certification to prove it. But his recovery was hampered by drinking and smoking until “at least 1am” the previous evening.

Noel also admits to saying that Pretty Green advertising would be included in Oasis’ touring brochure “over my dead body,” but says that he never spoke directly to his brother about the matter.

The legal documents also describe how Noel regarded his brother as “spiteful and childish” for dedicating songs onstage to Pretty Green employees.

French actor, writer and director Julie Delpy is reportedly attached to direct a biopic of Clash frontman Joe Strummer, according to Variety. The film’s title, ‘The Right Profile,’ is culled from a song of the same name which appears on their landmark 1979 album ‘London Calling.’ The song is based around actor Montgomery Clift.

Not much information about the film has been revealed yet other than that it will be helmed by Delpy and it will focus on Strummer’s life from 1982, after he left the Clash and largely disappeared from the public eye, until his death in 2002. The project will be produced by Simon Halfon, a graphic designer who has worked with other touchstone British bands like the Jam and Oasis and produced the feature film ‘Sleuth.’

Delpy, who is best known for her movies ‘Before Sunrise’ and ‘Before Sunset,’ has just finished production on ’2 Days in New York,’ the sequel to her acclaimed ’2 Days in Paris.’ Delpy has a deep history of starring in her own movies, so her directorial role for the Strummer film will most likely include a turn as an actress.

French dream-pop outfit Air are set to release an album on February 7 through Astralwerks, their first since 2009′s Love 2. Titled Le Voyage Dans La Lune after Georges Méliès’ 1902 silent short French film by the same name, it’s an expansion of a project they worked on earlier this year. (The duo provided music for an updated version of Méliès’ film for its debut at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.)

The record features lyrics and vocals from Beach House’s Victoria Legrand on a song called “Seven Stars” and lyrics written by Au Revoir Simone on the track “Who Am I Know? The release will include a limited-edition version of the short film and Air’s original score. Here’s the tracklist:

Le Voyage Dans La Lune:

01 Astronomic Club
02 Seven Stars
03 Retour sur terre
04 Parade
05 Moon Fever
06 Sonic Armada
07 Who Am I Know?
08 Décollage
09 Cosmic Trip
10 Homme lune
11 Lava

Air also recently contributed music to a short-film series for Cartier as part of a campaign called “How Far Would You Go for Love?” Below, watch the clip the duo scored– “Painted Air”– followed by some of the original 1902 version of Méliès’ film.

Air: “Painted Air”:

Georges Méliès’ 1902 short film Le Voyage Dans La Lune:

It has been revealed that PJ Harvey composed part of the score for the Young Vic’s current production of Hamlet in London.

The show, which runs until January 21, 2012 and stars Michael Sheen in the title role, sees the character of Ophelia – played by Vinette Robinson – performing some of Harvey’s compositions live on stage.

The Shrine / An Argument from Sean Pecknold on Vimeo.

Radiohead have posted three new remixes of tracks from ‘The King Of Limbs’ album online – scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the widget to listen.

The band made the new tracks from Anstam, Nathan Fake and Jamie xx available on their blog, after they were unable to include them on their remix album ‘TKOL RMX 123457′.

The three new songs are alternate takes or extended remixes of the same tracks the artist’s produced for the album, and will be available for purchase from the band’s official website from Monday (November 21).

Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood posted a message to accompany the remixes, writing:

Hello! Here are the three remixes by Anstam, Nathan Fake and Jamie xx that sadly didn’t make it in time for the vinyl release – we wanted to get them out because we’re big fans and wanted you to hear them too.
Radiohead released ‘The King Of Limbs’ in February this year, and went on to put out ‘TKOL RMX 123457′ in September. Last month, the band’s drummer Philip Selway said that they were “astounded” by some of the remixes they were given for the LP.

Legendary indie rock band Dinosaur Jr. has joined the cassette revival movement, issuing the “Cassette Trilogy,” a limited edition box set with three classic albums on cassette.

Heck, If you’re under 25, you might not even remember the cassette, an analog music medium equally loved and hated, which saw its rise and decline from the ’70s to early ’90s.

Practical because of its small size, but never reaching the sound quality of vinyl or CD, the cassette now mostly exists in basements and as a fond memory in the minds of music lovers all around the world. Recently, however, the audio cassette has been experiencing a comeback of sorts, with many indie music artists releasing their albums in this format, which today is almost completely obsolete for lack of new cassette players on the market.

Of course, listening to music on an audio cassette is both an exercise in retroism as well as one of the more “hipster” things you can do. However, the recent resurgence of older style media, such as vinyl records and audio cassettes, might indicate a certain satiation with the way we’re currently experience music. When everything is digital and immediately available, one starts to yearn for the physical medium and all the little quirks that go with playing a record on a gramophone or playing a tape in the old cassette recorder.

Dinosaur Jr. is one of the best known bands to join the party. The band has been around since 1984 and had an important influence on late ’80s/early ’90s Indie rock scene.

The “Cassette Trilogy” box set is a limited one-time release with 500 copies, containing three of the band’s legendary albums from the eighties: Dinosaur, You’re Living All Over Me and Bug. I just ordered one. It’s was 39 bucks, how could I say no?!

ORDER YOUR OWN COPY RIGHT HERE

The limited-edition Joy Division box set comprised of 10 newly remastered 7-inch singles that was released late last year is being reissued next month — this time on compact disc, collecting “CD replicas of 10 singles presented in a beautiful clamshell box.”

Like the forthcoming New Order outtakes album, it appears the CD version of Joy Division’s +-: Singles 1978-80 hasn’t yet been formally announced, but online retailers — including Amazon.com — are starting to list the 10-disc set as being released Dec. 19 by the UK arm of Rhino Records, which issued the original 7-inch box last December.

Aside from the format, the new version of +- appears to be identical to last year’s, with 21 songs over 10 discs in a box designed by Factory Records co-founder Peter Saville. The music itself was newly remastered from the original tapes by drummer Stephen Morris and Frank Arkwright, who also worked with Johnny Marr to remaster the entire Smiths catalog for that band’s box set.

Journalist Jon Savage selected the tracks, and given the fact that Joy Division only released a handful of singles — including non-album favorites “Love Will Tear Us Apart” and “Atmosphere” — during its short career, some of the singles assembled for +- “have been created specifically for this release” using previously released songs (see full tracklist below).

Tracklist: Joy Division, +-: Singles 1978-80

Disc 1
1. “Warsaw”
2. “Leaders Of Men”

Disc 2
1. “No Love Lost”
2. “Failures”

Disc 3
1. “Digital”
2. “Glass”

Disc 4
1. “Autosuggestion”
2. “From Safety To Where”

Disc 5
1. “Transmission”
2. “Novelty”

Disc 6
1. “Atmosphere”
2. “Dead Souls”

Disc 7
1. “Komakino”
2. “Incubation”
3. “As You Said”

Disc 8
1. “Love Will Tear Us Apart”
2. “These Days”

Disc 9
1. “She’s Lost Control” (12-inch Version)
2. “Love Will Tear Us Apart 2″ (Pennine Version)

Disc 10
1. “Isolation”
2. “Heart and Soul”

The boys of Smith Westerns will embark on a mini tour early next year in support of their acclaimed second album, Dye it Blonde.

It’ll be their last tour dates for Dye it Blonde. After that, the Chicago band will be heading back into the studio to work on their third album.

Check out the dates and video for “Weekend” below.

Smith Westerns – “Weekend” from Fat Possum Records on Vimeo.

Dates:
Fri 1/27 TORONTO, ON Horseshoe *#
Sat 1/28 MONTREAL, PQ Il Motore *# Sun 1/29 BOSTON, MA Paradise *#
Tue 1/31 NEW YORK, NY Webster Hall *#
Wed 2/1 WASHINGTON, DC Black Cat *#
Fri 2/3 CHICAGO, IL Metro *#
Sat 2/4 MILWAUKEE, WI Turner Hall *#

# = w/ Porcelain Raft * = w/ Bleached

Philadelphia rockers Dr. Dog will debut their sixth full-length album, Be the Void on February 7 via ANTI-. It’s their second album for the label.

With the addition of two new members, Eric Slick (drums) and Dimitri Manos (guitar, electronics-percussionist), the new album will have a different sound to it.

On Be the Void, the band, “turns up the guitars and delivers a truly great cathartic rock ‘n’ roll album played with near reckless abandon and passion.”

Check out the track list for Be the Void below.

01. Lonesome
02. That Old Black Hole
03. These Days
04. How Long Must I Wait
05. Get Away
06. Do the Trick
07. Vampire
08. Heavy Light
09. Big Girl
10. Over Here, Over There
11. Warrior Man
12. Turning the Century

David Byrne and Will Oldham (aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy) collaborated on music for Paolo Sorrentino’s recent film, This Must Be The Place. (You know, the one that stars Sean Penn as a Robert Smith-esque Nazi hunter. Yeah.) Now, the film’s soundtrack receives a tracklist and a handful of songs have hit the web (via TwentyFourBit).

Dubbed The Pieces of Shit, the cinematic supergroup of sorts features Byrne and Oldham, alongside Irish singer-songwriter Michael Brunnock. The trio have five tracks on the album, one of which is a previous Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy tune (“Lay & Love”). But that’s not the only music featured in the film. Other notables on the soundtrack include Jónsi, Iggy Pop, and myriad renditions of the Talking Heads song from which the film takes its name.

Check out three tunes by The Pieces of Shit below, including David Byrne’s live performance of the titular song. Also, stay tuned for more information, specifically a release date.

“Lay & Love”

“Open Up”

“Eliza”

“This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)” Live

This Must Be the Place Tracklist
01. Gavin Friday – “Lord I’m Coming”
02. The Pieces Of Shit -“Lay & Love”
03. The Pieces Of Shit – “Open Up”
04. Mantovani & His Orchestra – “Chairmaine”
05. Daniel Hope & Simon Mulligan – “Spiegel Im Spiegel”
06. Trevor Green – “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)” [Edit]
07. David Byrne – “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)” [Live]
08. Julia Kent – “Gardermoen”
09. Jónsi & Alex – “Happiness”
10. The Pieces Of Shit – “Eliza”
11. Iggy Pop – “The Passenger”
12. The Pieces Of Shit – “You Can Like It”
13. Brooklyn Rider – “Achille’s Heel: II. Second Bounce”
14. The Pieces Of Shit – “If It Falls It Falls”
15. Gloria – “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)”
16. Nino Bruno E Le 8 Tracce – “Every Single Moment In My Life Is a Weary Wait”
17. The Pieces Of Shit – “The Sword Is Yours”

Sonic Youth performed what may have been their final concert ever last night in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It was the closing date on band’s South American tour, and their last scheduled show after the announcement of Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon’s separation, which has left the future of the band uncertain. Watch a three-video playlist of the 70-minute set below, and check out the setlist, via Slicing Up Eyeballs.

Thurston Moore has announced a string of U.S. shows for January and February, in support of his 2011 album Demolished Thoughts. As the Matablog notes, Moore will tour with his Demolished Thoughts ensemble: Keith Wood of Hush Arbors, Mary Lattimore, John Maloney, and Samara Lubelski. Moore will again share a bill with Kurt Vile on two of the dates. This fall, he’ll tour Europe. Check out all of his dates below.

Thurston Moore:

11-20 Easthampton, MA – Flywheel Arts Collective (performing Psychic Hearts)
11-27 Dublin, Ireland – Button Factory
11-28 Glasgow, Scotland – The Arches
11-29 Leeds, England – Brudenell Social Club
11-30 Manchester, England – The Ritz
12-02 London, England – Union Chapel
12-03 Minehead, England – ATP Festival (performing Psychic Hearts) *
12-04 Cologne, Germany – Week-End Festival
12-05 Berlin, Germany – Volksbuhne
12-06 – Munich, Germany – Munchner Kammerspiele
12-07 Ferrara, Italy – Teatro Comunale
12-08 Rome, Italy – Auditorium Parco della Musica
12-09 Milan, Italy – Teatro Dal Verme
12-10 Zurich, Switzerland – Moods / Kilbi Im Exil
12-11 Paris, France – La Gaite Lyrique
12-12 Amsterdam, Netherlands – De Duif
12-13 Ghent, Belgium – Vooruit Concertzaal
01-28 Hartford, CT – Arena Theatre @ Wadsworth Museum of Art
01-29 Burlington, VT – First Unitarian Church
01-30 Portland, ME – SPACE Gallery
01-31 Somerville, MA – Somerville Theatre ^
02-02 New York, NY – Lincoln Center’s American Songbook
02-03 Hoboken, NJ – Maxwell’s
02-04 New Hope, PA – New Hope Winery
02-05 Washington, DC – Black Cat ^
02-07 Durham, NC – Duke Performances @ Reynolds Industrial Theatre
02-08 Atlanta, GA – The Goat Farm
02-10 Dallas, TX – Texas Theatre
02-11 Austin, TX – St. Davids Church

* with Tall Firs
^ with Kurt Vile

Setlist: Sao Paulo, Brazil, 11/14/11:

01 Brave Men Run
02 Death Valley ’69
03 Sacred Trickster
04 Calming the Snake
05 Mote
06 Cross the Breeze
07 Schizophrenia
08 Drunken Butterfly
09 Starfield Rd.
10 Flower
11 Sugar Kane
12 Teen Age Riot

Kingblind.com is happy to be giving away a copy of the new Beach Boys Smile 2 cd set and a excellent Smile T-shirt. Please send an email with SMILE!! in the Subject line to: WE HAVE A WINNER!! CONGRATS TO QUINN IN GEORGIA!!

Remember kids,
Subject= SMILE!!
Body of the message= name, address and t-shirt size

ABOUT SMILE:
The long awaited release of the Brian Wilson and Beach Boys masterpiece, SMiLE Sessions. With the full participation of original Beach Boys Al Jardine, Mike Love, and Brian Wilson, Capitol/EMI has, for the first time, collected and compiled the band’s legendary 1966-’67 sessions for the never-completed SMiLE album. Rolling Stone magazine recently called SMiLE “the most famous unfinished album in rock & roll history.” 

In several sessions between the summer of 1966 and early 1967, The Beach Boys recorded a bounty of songs and drafts for an album, SMiLE, that was intended to follow the band’s 1966 album, Pet Sounds. The master tapes were ultimately shelved, and The Beach Boys’ SMiLE has never been released. Drawn from the original masters, SMiLE Sessions presents an in-depth overview of The Beach Boys’ recording sessions for the enigmatic album, which has achieved legendary, mythical status for music fans around 
the world. 

SMiLE Sessions physical and digital configurations include an assembled collection of core session tracks, while the box set delves much deeper into the sessions, adding early song drafts, alternate takes, instrumental and vocals-only mixes, and studio chatter. SMiLE Sessions invites the listener into the studio to experience the album’s creation, with producer, singer and bassist Brian Wilson’s vision leading the way as he guides his fellow Beach Boys, singer Mike Love, drummer Dennis Wilson, lead guitarist Carl Wilson, rhythm guitarist Al Jardine, and newest member Bruce Johnston (who’d replaced Brian Wilson in the touring group during 1965), through the legendary sessions. 

Artwork for all of the SMiLE Sessions physical and digital configurations has been created with and inspired by Beat-Pop artist Frank Holmes’ original 1967 LP sleeve art and booklet designs intended for the SMiLE album. With its three-dimensional shadowbox lid, The SMiLE Sessions box set offers a whimsical peek inside the storied “SMiLE Shop.” 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebeachboys

UPDATE 11/12 4pm: TMZ reports that Rocawear is no longer selling the shirts.

The Throne supports Occupy Wall Street… sort of. Last month, a silent Kanye West hit the protest site in New York’s Zuccotti Park for a quick walk-around. Now, Business Insider (via the Hollywood Reporter) reports that Jay-Z’s clothing label Rocawear plans to sell Occupy Wall Street-themed t-shirts that read “Occupy All Streets.” (Hov’s been seeing wearing one of the shirts himself).
But the slogan is as far as the support goes. “‘Occupy All Streets’ is our way of reminding people that there is change to be made everywhere, not just on Wall Street,” a Rocawear spokesperson told Business Insider. “At this time we have not made an official commitment to monetarily support the movement.”

Below, watch footage from Jay and Kanye’s “Watch the Throne” kick-off show in Atlanta last month:

“Niggas in Paris”:

Reuters:
Veteran British rock band Black Sabbath said on Friday they are reuniting in their original four man line-up for a new album and a world tour…

Live from 1971. Neil digs around in his pockets trying to find the right harp and then plays a new song…Heart of Gold. Happy Birthday Neil.

There’s prolific, and there’s Bradford Cox. Deerhunter’s principal singer/songwriter and Atlas Sound’s sole proprietor clearly doesn’t understand the concept of downtime, judging by the four-volume home recordings released online late last year under the title Bedroom Databank. Those 49 songs – from ambient sketches to psych-nuggets to expansive krautrock – were followed by four versions of the Artificial Snow single, in the same year as Deerhunter’s breakthrough album Halcyon Digest. In 2008, when the band’s Microcastle album was leaked online, they quickly recorded and added another album (Weird Era Cont.) to encourage fans to still buy it – the same year he released Atlas Sound’s first album, Let the Blind Lead those Who Can See but Cannot Feel. In 2009, he was shockingly lax, only releasing one album, Atlas Sound’s second opus Logos. And the amazing thing is, they’re all terrific. Including Parallax.

Only one Bedroom Databank track turns up here, re-recorded of course; Mona Lisa, one of Cox’s prettiest melodies, splicing Merseybeat simplicity with uncanny dream-pop. The other 11 tracks equally tap Cox’s more concise handle on shivery, shimmery melody (he calls them “sci-fi fever dreams”), a long way from Let the Blind…’s swimming ambience and even Logos’ more diverse rhythmic tropes. His fascination with 60s producer Joe ‘Telstar’ Meek continues, brilliant bedroom boffins both, with an obsession and talent for otherworldly, shifting mosaics of refracting guitar and electronic FX (all played by Cox, including drums) that testify to a mind in overdrive, both comforted and haunted by the melodies that spill out. The strange, complicated and confrontational loner that Cox is, Parallax (according to Wikipedia, “a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight” but probably chosen because ‘parallax’ sounds groovy, trippy and futuristic) is stained by a lost, aching mood. To borrow a New York Dolls song title, his solo alias could equally be Lonely Planet Boy as Atlas Sound.

Parallax being Cox’s most coherent record to date, it’s harder to spotlight individual tracks, but individual settings stand out. The opening track The Shakes comes from the same 50s/Buddy Holly-sourced planet as Deerhunter’s Don’t Cry; Amplifiers and Flagstaff are especially ghostly-sad, Doldrums is the trippiest, the title-track relocates Marc Bolan to a western prairie orbiting Mars, and Modern Aquatic Nightsongs sounds exactly that, while posing the question: “Is your love like a sunset chandelier?” Nothing is quite what it seems in Coxworld. But whichever way you look at him, he is currently the most gifted, fascinating and beguiling songwriter around, as well as the most prolific. There’s only one Bradford Cox, but how badly we need more of his ilk.

Paul Weller has said that he hopes he’ll never “be skint enough” that he will be forced to reform his old band The Jam.

In an interview with Shortlist, the singer claimed that other bands who decided to reunite were largely motivated by financial considerations because “money talks”.

Earlier this week, it was reported that the recently reformed Stone Roses would make £10 million from their comeback gigs at Manchester’s Heaton Park next summer, and are also said to be earning over £1 million for each festival appearance they make.

Beady Eye singer Liam Gallagher recently suggesting that he’d like Oasis to reform in 2015 for the 20th anniversary of their (‘What’s The Story) Morning Glory’ album, too, but Weller was adamant he would not reform The Jam for the same reasons.

“Money talks, doesn’t it?” he replied when asked why he thought band reunions were so popular. When asked if he would consider reuniting with his old band, meanwhile, he added: “Hopefully I’ll never be that skint, mate.

“I mean, I don’t know the Roses that well, apart from Mani who’s a good mate. There’ll be a financial consideration, obviously, but I know from [Mani's] point of view that he’s been mad to do it for years. He’s actually really wanted to get back with his mates and he loved that band.”

He went on to add:

But for Ian [Brown] and John [Squire], I don’t know… I really don’t think there’s too much love lost there. We live in that age, though, don’t we? It’s either bands reforming, bands playing their classic album or tribute bands.
He also ruled out the possibility of playing a ‘classic album’ show of his own, stating: “I’m going to go out and play a classic album next year, but it’ll be my fucking new one. Not one from 20 years ago.”

In April of this year, Paul Weller claimed he had finished work on a new album, although it is not yet known when the LP will be released. It will be the follow-up to his 2010 album ‘Wake Up The Nation’.

Pixies frontman Frank Black has launched his own record label, which he has called The Bureau.

The singer, who is in the middle of a US tour with the Pixies, which the band have dubbed their ‘lost cities’ tour, has said he will use the label to release his own music as well as “the next big new sexy thing”.

The labels’ first releases will come from Jeremy Dubs and former Captain Beefheart collaborator Eric Drew Feldman, according to the Guardian

Black said of the label: “I wasn’t planning to start up my own record label, but I hope I get invited to some really intense high-end parties.” He also said that he originally set up the label to release his own music as “more traditional record companies find it a little overwhelming that I come up with another record every nine months.”

He also said that he believed running a label was no different now than it had ever been, just with slightly less money than before. He added: “Running a label today isn’t that different than at any other time. There’s less money floating around, but I think it’s a good thing. I think it’s more honest. It just puts the pressure on everybody to be good. Some of these record companies need to just stop fucking around and being such asses.”

Black has also said that thought the Pixies are planning new stuff, it won’t be coming out on The Bureau. He said of this: “Pixies will either do something really traditional, with a big old record company, or something a lot more radical. Hopefully the radical approach. But the Bureau has other things on its plate.”

All Tomorrow’s Parties:

“I’LL BE YOUR MIRROR” London
25th-27th May 2012 – Alexandra Palace, London

Slayer performing ‘Reign In Blood’, Mogwai, Guided By Voices confirmed to headline!

ATP are incredibly excited to announce that this year the event starts on Friday 25th May when the incomparable SLAYER will present their undisputed classic Reign In Blood live in it’s entirety during their headline set to celebrate it’s 25th anniversary! Released in 1986, it is widely considered one of the greatest albums of all time – in 2006 Metal Hammer named it “The best metal album of the last 20 years.” Joining Slayer on Friday night are influential doom metal trailblazers SLEEP – this will be their first UK visit since reforming for two amazing ATP festival shows in 2009, and legendary Washington sludge group MELVINS, with more to be confirmed.

On Saturday 26th May, the first ever ATP festival curators MOGWAI will return to headline, and to curate the rest of the day’s line-up – this will be their only show in England in 2012 and their first choices to play alongside them are another great Washington band in the form of the fantastic MUDHONEY, and playing their first shows since 1994 with their original line-up in anticipation of also re-issuing their astounding back catalogue, reformed slow-core heroes CODEINE return to the UK (more info on their reunion here). More of Mogwai’s choices are to be confirmed very soon…

Watch the video for Tom Waits’ “Satisfied”, from Waits’ latest album Bad as Me. Directed by Jesse Dylan (son of Bob), it’s a straightforward, black-and-white affair, with Waits doing his carnival-barker thing amidst strobe lights and dirty surroundings.

David Bowie is reportedly looking to walk away from EMI – after a 15 year relationship with the label – just weeks after Robbie Williams left the label for Universal.

If true, his departure will come as a blow to the music major, which is currently in the middle of an auction by its owner, Citigroup.

EMI music currently holds the rights to the bulk of Bowie’s back catalogue including classic albums Ziggy Stardust and Space Oddity. His current contract with the label is set to end in January 2012, however a final decision by Bowie has not yet been made.

According to the Financial Times, Bowie’s deal with EMI guaranteed him more than 25% of royalties from wholesale in the US and the artist used the deal as collateral for investors who had bought into his 10-year “Bowie bonds”, which securitised the rights to future royalties.

The success of these bonds led to Guy Hands and his private equity team at Terra Firma to believe that EMI Music Publishing’s catalogue could be securitised in the same way, however this failed to materialise.

Former Manchester United midfielder and ex-England captain David Beckham played a key role in making The Stone Roses reunion happen, according to tabloid reports today (November 7).

According to The Sun, the footballer is a huge fan of The Stone Roses and apparently repeatedly attempted to persuade bassist Mani and frontman Ian Brown to make a reunion happen.

An anonymous source told the paper: "David has always been a huge Stone Roses fan. You've got to remember he was a young lad in Manchester when The Roses were a big deal. It was impossible to live there without being into the band. Ian and Mani are Reds through and through so they all knew each other a bit back in the day."

It continued: "David heard there was a chance the ice was thawing between Ian and guitarist John Squire and he got involved. He told Mani in no uncertain terms he simply had to get the band back together. He said he would be willing to ring all the boys and beg them to crack on."

It continued further: "And when he saw Ian at Old Trafford a month later, he really laid it on thick and said that he would be willing to do anything to make it happen. David was one of the first people to know it was going ahead when the boys finally got together for rehearsals again."

The Manchester band reunited last month and announced that they will be playing homecoming gigs at Heaton Park on June 29, 30 and July 1 2012, with festival dates and an arena tour strongly rumoured to follow.

Jeff Mangum has announced a new leg of US tour dates as well as European dates and the newly rescheduled All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in Minehead, UK he is curating this March.

More information and links to purchase tickets are below.

Jeff Mangum on tour:
Jan 18 New Haven, CT Shubert Theater On Sale on Fri, 11/11 at 12pm EST
Jan 20 Brooklyn, NY Gilman Opera House at Brooklyn Academy of Music On Sale on Fri, 11/11 at 12pm EST
Jan 25 Philadelphia, PA Irvine Auditorium at University of Pennsylvania On Sale on Fri, 11/11 at 12pm EST
Jan 27 Washington, DC Lincoln Theatre On Sale on Fri, 11/11 at 12pm EST
Jan 30 Chapel Hill, NC Memorial Hall at University of North Carolina On Sale on Fri, 11/11 at 12pm EST
Feb 01 Atlanta, GA Variety Playhouse On Sale on Fri, 11/11 at 12pm EST
Feb 04 Minneapolis, MN Pantages Theatre On Sale on Fri, 11/11 at 12pm CST
Feb 06 Chicago, IL Athenaeum Theater On Sale on Fri, 11/11 at 12pm CST
Feb 07 Chicago, IL Athenaeum Theater On Sale on Fri, 11/11 at 12pm CST
Feb 08 Milwaukee, WI Pabst Theater On Sale on Fri, 11/11 at 12pm CST
Feb 10 Athens, GA 40 Watt Club On Sale on Fri, 11/11 at 12pm EST
Feb 11 Athens, GA 40 Watt Club On Sale on Fri, 11/11 at 12pm EST
Mar 07 Dublin, IRE Vicar Street (Rescheduled Date) SOLD OUT
Mar 09 – Mar 11 Minehead, UK All Tomorrow’s Parties Curated By Jeff Mangum (Rescheduled Dates)
Mar 13 London, UK Union Chapel (Rescheduled Date) SOLD OUT
Mar 14 London, UK Union Chapel (Rescheduled Date) SOLD OUT

Radiohead has confirmed the first ten dates of its forthcoming 2012 U.S. tour.

The band’s first extensive Stateside trek since 2008 will begin February 27 at the American Airlines Arena in Miami, FL, with dates currently running through March 15 at the Jobing.com Arena in Glendale, AZ. Other Lives will support on these dates.

General on-sales for these shows will begin November 12, with the exception of the February 29 Tampa, FL date, which will go on sale November 19.

There will be a four ticket per person limit.

For further information on ticketing, go to http://radiohead.com/tourdates/

RADIOHEAD U.S. TOUR 2012
Mon 27 American Airlines Arena Miami, FL USA ON SALE 9 NOV
Wed 29 St. Pete Times Forum Tampa, FL USA ON SALE 9 NOV
Thu 1 Philips Arena Atlanta, GA USA ON SALE 9 NOV
Sat 3 Toyota Center Houston, TX USA ON SALE 9 NOV
Mon 5 American Airlines Center Dallas, TX USA ON SALE 9 NOV
Wed 7 Frank Irwin Center Austin, TX USA ON SALE 9 NOV
Fri 9 Scottrade Center St. Louis, MO USA ON SALE 9 NOV
Sun 11 Sprint Center Kansas City, MO USA ON SALE 9 NOV
Tue 13 1st Bank Center Broomfield, CO USA ON SALE 9 NOV
Thu 15 Jobing.com Arena Glendale, AZ USA ON SALE 9 NOV

Previous Tour Dates
Wed 28 Roseland Ballroom New York City USA
Thu 29 Roseland Ballroom New York City USA

For years, Detroit has been coming to Thanksgiving dinners across the country: The Lions, the city’s NFL franchise, have played (often haplessly) on national television as a matter of tradition. This year, the Lions are playing very well for once, yet their fans are not all happy campers.

As we reported yesterday, an online petition has emerged to protest this year’s Lions Turkey Day game. Specifically, some fans are clamoring for the team to take back its offer to have Nickelback perform as the game’s halftime entertainment. What, no Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger, Eminem, Aretha, Kid Rock? “Detroit is home to so many great musicians and they chose Nickelback?!?!?!” reads part of the petition.

Now, one Detroit native, soul singer Mayer Hawthorne, is wading into this burning issue. “Detroit is a huge part of everything I do,” he told Rolling Stone as he was cutting this tongue-in-cheek campaign video. “Not even just in music. It’s a big part of life for me. That’s where I grew up, and it’s the city that I love. I wrote an anthem, an ode to Detroit on my new record.”

Hawthorne is a diehard Lions fan who’s known to tweet his passion during games. “The main thing that we really need in Detroit right now is hope,” he says. “Thank God for the Detroit Lions.”

To voice your approval for Mayer Hawthorne’s campaign, tweet @MayerHawthorne and include the hashtag #Mayer4Detroit.

On what is inarguably Tom Waits’s best album since Rain Dogs a quarter of a century ago, he strolls assuredly across the landscape of American music, turning his hand with equal facility to an extraordinary range of styles, and managing to invent one or two of his own along the way. It must be wonderful to exercise such protean command over one’s art, and it’s immensely satisfying to witness it wielded by a musician of such remorseless integrity.

Right from the start, it’s hard to keep up with the relentless pace of Waits’s invention: “Chicago” barrels in on furious keyboard industry akin to a Reich or Adams slice of train-themed minimalism, somehow allied to honking R&B trombone, bass clarinet and bluesharp, and the spindly blues guitars of Marc Ribot and Keith Richards. Over in just a couple of minutes, it’s a dazzling, whirlwind evocation of the great emancipatory migration from Mississippi to Chicago, and one of the greatest album openers you’ll ever hear.

The themes of migration, dissatisfaction and desperation then spread out across the album in all kinds of ways. In “Get Lost”, a peculiar Tex-Mex garage-rockabilly piece blessed with the beatific spirit of Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo, the protagonist has souped up his ride in preparation for escape; in the haunted walking blues “Face to the Highway”, Hidalgo and Ribot’s guitars lend the appropriately fatalistic air to an inveterate wanderer’s acknowledgement that the road is a stronger lure than love; and in “Last Leaf”, the allegorical leaf evokes an old-timer’s determination to resist the corrosion of age: “I’ll be here through eternity/ If you want to know how long/If they cut down this tree/ I’ll turn up in a song”. It’s a lovely image, crooned over pump organ, with Keith Richards an apt duettee. And most bizarrely of all, in “Hell Broke Luce” a poor benighted draftee bemoans his life as a grunt, barking his exasperation over a mutant march of drilling soldiers, machine-guns, explosions, horns and mangled guitars that’s entirely sui generis. It’s almost as if the classic Glenn Miller parade-ground swing had been updated to something hellish and acid-fried and supremely pissed-off: “I had a good home but I left, right, left/ That big fucking bomb made me deaf, deaf”.

Waits also reaches a rapprochement with the louche jazzbo style of his earlier records, with the beautiful barroom drawl of “Kiss Me”, the “Spanish Harlem”-esque torch-song “Back in the Crowd”, and the wistful blues-waltz “Pay Me”, with its cantina piano sounding like it came straight out of Touch of Evil. The more familiar R&B swagger is best effected on “Satisfied”, a riposte to the Stones’ “Satisfaction”, which applies the gospel roll of a Sister Rosetta Tharpe rockin’ spiritual to Waits’s antsy proclamation: “Now Mr Jagger, Mr Richards, I will scratch where I’ve been itching”. And to give him his due, Keef sounds far more engaged here than he did at the last Stones show I saw. But these are just a few of the highlights of an album which contains no filler at all, each track blooming in its own way like a collection of strange desert succulents, with a whole lot of hollerin’ and a touch of Lieber-Stollerin’.

Former Jam frontman and mod icon Paul Weller had better start cruising the Ben Sherman shop for some baby-size polos and parkas.

According to the U.K. newspaper the Sun, Weller and wife Hannah Andrews, who he married last year, are expecting twins. The sure-to-be-stylish tykes — reportedly four months along — will be Weller’s sixth and seventh children, as the 53-year-old singer has five from previous relationships.

“They are made up,” a source told the Sun, using a British phrase that presumably means the Modfather — a renowned solo artist also known for his post-Jam band the Style Council — and his missus are delighted. “It’s great news.”

Few albums are as mythic as the Beach Boys’ Smile. One of the most romantic of the myths holds that, had the album come out as intended in 1967 – instead of being abandoned unfinished until it was ostensibly completed by Brian Wilson and his latterday touring band in 2004 – it would have been acclaimed as a masterpiece, eclipsed the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper and changed the course of rock history. Listening to this box set – which assembles a virtually complete version of Wilson and lyricist Van Dyke Parks’ grand LSD-fuelled folly from the original tapes, alongside four CDs of outtakes – you find yourself wondering.

In the studio, Smile’s loudest detractor was vocalist Mike Love, who accused Wilson of wilfully “fucking with the formula” that had made the Beach Boys one of the world’s biggest bands. But he had a point about the commercial reception of Smile’s predecessor Pet Sounds, at least in the US, and he may well have had a point about how Smile would merely exacerbate the problem. The preceding single Good Vibrations had been a mammoth hit. It perfectly compressed Wilson’s new method of writing songs by brazenly splicing together wildly differing sections of music into a pop format, but there’s nothing else like it on Smile. You wonder what the kind of fan who’d preferred the gruesome forced jollity of Beach Boys Party! to Pet Sounds’s exquisite melancholy would have made of Smile’s awesome opening sweep, from the wordless, ethereal Our Prayer to the dark, lurching rumble of Do You Like Worms? via a brief cover of the Crows’ 1953 hit Gee and the wilfully episodic version of Heroes and Villains that, depending on your perspective, either pushed the “feel” technique to new heights of awe-inducing audacity or to breaking point, where the song started to sound genuinely disjointed, however spectacular the vocal harmonies on the chorus sounded. Furthermore, there’s no guarantee the hipsters would have got it either. Jimi Hendrix dismissed the re-recorded version of Heroes and Villains as “a psychedelic barbershop quartet”: a description that fits the Smile original even more perfectly.

Hendrix clearly thought the Beach Boys sounded hopelessly square, and he too had a point. Wilson may have been a genius, the greatest songwriter and studio technician of the 60s, but he was never cool. The LA hipsters who flocked around him in the mid-60s sneered behind his back at his terrible taste, his galumphing attempts to grasp the counter-culture. And Smile was the sound of a square mind unleashed by LSD. What came gushing out was a warped version of straight-arrow, white-collar American pop culture, the stuff most rock stars in 1967 deemed hopelessly naff. If it ultimately sounds like nothing else, it still variously touches on doo-wop, barbershop singing, ragtime, the mock-Polynesian Tiki culture that swept Hollywood in the 50s, pre-rock’n'roll crooning, yodelling, cowboy movies, You Are My Sunshine. Unlike any other major rock record in 1967, it bore no debt to Bob Dylan, but you could catch an echo of the scrubbed-clean version of the folk revival promoted by the TV show Hootenanny on Cabinessence’s astonishing re-telling of the saga of America’s pioneers. It was a psychedelic experience Hendrix wouldn’t understand, but Don Draper might.

Amid the outtakes – stuff even the most dedicated bootleg collector won’t have heard – there’s a telling moment. “You guys feeling any acid yet?” asks Wilson during a session for Our Prayer. He sounds terrified. LSD didn’t make Wilson relax and float downstream: it scared the shit out of him, lighting the touch paper on a whole range of mental health problems. And he couldn’t keep the fear out of his music. Even at its most remorselessly upbeat, the Beach Boys’ music was marked by an ineffable sadness – you can hear it in the cascading tune played by the woodwind during Good Vibrations’s verses – but on Smile, the sadness turned into something far weirder. All the talk of Wilson writing teenage symphonies to God – and indeed the sheer sumptuousness of the end results – tends to obscure what a thoroughly eerie album Smile is. Until LSD’s psychological wreckage began washing up in rock via Skip Spence’s Oar and Syd Barrett’s The Madcap Laughs, artists tactfully ignored the dark side of the psychedelic experience. But it’s there on Smile: not just in the alternately frantic and grinding mayhem of the instrumental Fire, but in Wind Chimes’s isolated, small-hours creepiness and the astounding assembly of weird, dislocated voices on I Love to Say Da Da.

Isolated, dislocated, scared: Smile often sounds like the work of a very lonely man. There’s not much in the way of company when you’re way ahead of everyone else. Whether anyone would have chosen to join Wilson out there in 1967 seems questionable: perhaps they’d have stuck with the less complicated pleasures of All You Need Is Love after all. What’s beyond doubt is the quality of the music he made.

As previously reported, Sigur Rós frontman and solo artist Jónsi has scored Cameron Crowe’s literally titled new film We Bought a Zoo, which tells the story of a family that moves to a rural area to help resurrect a flailing zoo.

The soundtrack will be released December 13 through Columbia. The score includes two full new tracks from Jónsi: “Ævin Endar” and “Gathering Stories”, the latter a collaboration with Crowe himself. Also included are several pieces of the score, and reworked versions of songs from Jónsi’s 2010 solo album, along with Sigur Rós’s “Hoppipolla”. Nico Muhly contributed orchestral arrangements.

The film itself will be out in theaters everywhere on December 23. Below, after the tracklist, watch the video for “Boy Lilikoi”, one of the tracks from Jónsi’s solo album that’s getting the rework treatment for the soundtrack.

We Bought a Zoo:

01 Why Not
02 AEvin Endar (full new song)
03 Boy Lilikoi (reworked)
04 Sun
05 Brambles
06 Sinking Friendships (reworked)
07 We Bought a Zoo
08 Sigur Rós: “Hoppipolla”
09 Snaerisendar
10 Sink
11 Go Do (reworked)
12 Whole Made of Pieces
13 Humming
14 First Day
15 Gathering Stories (full new song)

Four years ago, Ethan Diamond underwent an ordeal trying to buy an album online that a band had self-released: First the website crashed, then the download failed and left him struggling to find a link to report the problem.
Eventually the band’s singer e-mailed him a link to the songs, which were low-quality audio files with no titles or track information. “Every one of those problems was something I felt like I could solve,” says Diamond, a programmer whose previous venture was bought by Yahoo! (YHOO) and became Yahoo Mail.

He left Yahoo in 2007 and started Bandcamp the next year to create an easy way for bands to publish and sell music online. Artists can plug Bandcamp’s player and storefront into their own websites to stream entire albums for free and sell or give away downloads. Today, hundreds of thousands of artists use Bandcamp, and Diamond says about 25,000 join every month. That makes the company a fast-growing contender to succeed Myspace as the go-to online tool for musicians to get music directly to fans. As Myspace users decamped for Facebook, “there was basically a huge vacuum left,” says Aram Sinnreich, founder of media consultant Radar Research. “There were more than 10 million bands on Myspace. All those bands needed someplace to go.”

Other companies catering to independent musicians, including TuneCore, ReverbNation, and CD Baby, distribute songs to online stores such as iTunes (AAPL) and Amazon MP3 (AMZN) for a fee. Bandcamp doesn’t distribute to digital retailers and many artists on Bandcamp also sell on those sites. The difference: Bandcamp lets musicians set their own prices. Plenty of bands seeking exposure use it to give songs away. They can offer downloads in exchange for joining a mailing list or they can use a Radiohead-style “pay what you want” model. The site also handles orders (though not shipments) for CDs and merchandise. The 12-employee company takes 10 percent to 15 percent of any sales made through the site.

To build Bandcamp, Diamond recruited veteran programmers from tech companies that include Yahoo, Apple, and Adobe (ADBE). The company’s team is spread as far as Australia and Hawaii, with the founders based in San Francisco, where they worked out of a public library until moving into a co-working space two months ago. With blogging tools like WordPress as their model, their goal was to make it as easy to distribute music on the Web as it is to put up a blog post. Toni Schneider, chief executive officer of WordPress.com’s parent company, sits on Bandcamp’s board; True Ventures, where he is a partner, invested a seed round in the company in 2008.

Some musicians are seeing impressive results from Bandcamp: Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls self-released an album of Radiohead covers on the ukulele and brought in $15,000 in minutes. Sales via Bandcamp alone were enough to propel Sufjan Stevens to the Billboard 200. Diamond says artists have sold $7.3 million of product on the site in the last 12 months. That’s a tiny sliver of annual digital music sales, which the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry estimates at $4.6 billion globally. Two-thirds of digital sales in the U.S. went to Apple last year, according to market researcher NPD Group.

Consultant Sinnreich expects Bandcamp to have to find new ways of making money as listeners shift from buying downloads to subscribing to such streaming services as Spotify. “I don’t think anyone’s investing in Bandcamp based on 10 percent of indie music sales,” he says. The fate of Myspace offers an exemplary reminder of how fast shifting tastes can undermine a business. Sinnreich, who plays bass in a soul band called Brave New Girl, says he used to get leads for new gigs every week through the band’s Myspace page. That hasn’t happened in years. Now, he says, the group is thinking of putting its next album on Bandcamp.

Hipster heartbreak.

Just two years after tying the knot, Zooey Deschanel and Ben Gibbard have separated, Deschanel’s rep confirms to Us Weekly.

“It was mutual and amicable,” a source adds. “There was no third party involved.”
The New Girl actress, 31, and Death Cab for Cutie frontman, 35, got married near Seattle, Wash. in late September 2009.

In Deschanel’s September cover story in New York magazine, Gibbard gushed about meeting and pursuing the star, who also fronts the band She and Him. “I’d seen her movies and obviously I thought she was very beautiful,” Gibbard explained.

When their mutual music manager finally introduced them three years ago, “I was just awestruck that she was even talking to me.”

Deschanel told iVillage that it was “definitely hard” being apart from her indie rocker guy when he was away on tour. “He’s really good at calling. He’s probably better than I am. He’s a very conscientious person.”

What surprised her most about marriage life? “You can’t expect to make no effort. You still have to make the effort and be kind and understanding. It sort of just solidifies your commitment.”

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NME reports that My Bloody Valentine frontman Kevin Shields has started a record label, called Pickpocket, with Charlotte Marionneau of the London band Le Volume Courbe. The first release, out November 14, is Le Volume Courbe’s Theodaurus Rex EP.

Shields told NME that the EP was originally prepped for release on a different label. “I was like, ‘I’ll just get rid of a few pedals that I’ve had lying around for ten years and we’ll start a label,’” he said. NME also reports that Shields has been recording a 10-minute noise track. “We thought we could put it out as a 10-inch,” Marionneau said.

NME reports that the label does not plan to release new music by My Bloody Valentine. Sigh.

Watch the video for MBV’s “Soon”, below.

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Kingblind.com is moving to new and improved servers today. Posts will be light until tomorrow A.M. thanks everyone.

An Amy Winehouse album comprising 12 tracks, including new material will be released in time for Christmas, it has emerged.

In a Soho recording studio, journalists heard most of the record, entitled Lioness, in the company of executives from Winehouse’s label, Island Records. Her manager Raye Cosbert and producer Salaam Remi were also present. Remi worked with the singer on her two albums Frank and Back to Black and was slated to produce her third.

Remi introduced and played seven songs – those he declined to reveal were a Frank-era live set opener, Best Friends; an early version of the hit Valerie; a demo of the song Wake Up Alone; a version of the Shirelles’ Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow; and the Tony Bennett duet Body and Soul, which has already appeared on the veteran singer’s own recent album.

At best, the seven tracks sounded like the basis for another hit album, although it’s hard to make any kind of judgment on the basis of one listen. Several are based around demos or early versions of songs, to which Remi subsequently added vocal parts, backing tracks and more. He insisted that since Winehouse’s death on 23 July, he has only spent two weeks polishing the material. “Touching things up, adding some strings,” he said. “Just what you’d do with any recording.”

Nonetheless, it is hard to believe that Winehouse herself – who oversaw every aspect of the two albums she released – wouldn’t have reworked much of the material that is to be put out. There are certainly times when her vocal on a song sounds more like a sketch, even if she was an instinctive artist who appreciated the magic of capturing a first take.

As Remi said, however: “Lots of people are going to want to remember other aspects of her life, but what we have here highlights that musically and creatively, she was the tops. She was a great musician and a great songwriter as well. She wasn’t a musical fluke.”

These are the seven tracks played at the listening session:

Our Day Will Come

Remi explained that during the recording of Winehouse’s debut, Frank, the pair of them would play around with different versions of songs that they liked, once a vocal take was in place. Hence a reggae version from those sessions in 2002 of this 1963 hit by doo wop outfit Ruby & the Romantics. “It also points the way forward to the doo wop sound of Back to Black,” Remi added. The producer subsequently added backing vocals and the result is an deep, rich and uptempo call to arms that is also touching in its sentiment. “Our day will come and we’ll have everything,” Winehouse sings. “No one can tell me that I’m too young to know … ”

Between the Cheats

Recorded six years to the month after Our Day Will Come, in May 2008, for possible inclusion on Winehouse’s planned third album. The song is another with a heavy doo wop influence, and “shows one of the main directions in which she was heading”, according to Remi.

The song title has led to speculation that it references Winehouse’s tempestuous relationship with her ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil, whom she divorced in July 2009. But – starting with a spot of whistling – it’s another big and brassy song, not a maudlin ballad. Nor in this recording of the song can the lyrics be clearly heard – at least, not on a first listen – although there is a reference to “my husband”.

“Amy was mostly a one-take person,” said Remi. “Going through all the [computer] files of her music: it’s mostly all one or two takes.”

Tears Dry

A version of the song that appears on Back to Black – in fact, the first version to be recorded, in Miami in November 2005 with Remi. “It brings another light to the song,” said the producer. “It’s not so much about the production: it’s her … making a direct connection with the listener.” So, a ballad to which strings have subsequently been added. But not – for this listener at least – a real tearjerker.

Like Smoke

Recorded two weeks after Between the Cheats and featuring a guest appearance from the New York rapper Nas, whose verses were added subsequently to the recording. “He was one of Amy’s favourite artists,” Remi said, adding that the song In My Bed from Frank, effectively sampled one of his tracks, while Me & Mr Jones told the story of missing one of his gigs. “They had an affinity,” said Remi. “Besides which, they were both born on 14 September.”

The producer also explained the meaning in Nas’s verse behind the phrase “colder than a penguin’s pussy”, saying it was a phrase that Winehouse herself – who could be “quite the comedian, and very clever” – taught the rapper. “If you think about it,” Remi added, “a penguin drags its ass on the ground all day”. Nas also references Winehouse’s death, when he raps about a visit to Camden, and his belief in heaven. The song is another strong Remi production, with lavish strings and a flute in the mix. It seems to detail the end of an affair.

Halftime

“This was part of her repertoire when I met her in 2002,” said Remi. The song was recorded three or four times but missed the cut for the record that became Frank. It did, however, give that album its title, as Winehouse mentions Ol’ Blue Eyes himself in the lyrics (” … and when Frank Sinatra sings, it’s too much to take … he pacifies my ache.”)

It is Winehouse’s vocal and guitar playing that form the basis of the track, but Remi later invited Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson of the Roots to add a drum part. The song starts in acoustic fashion, but when Winehouse sings “when the beat kicks in, everything falls into place”, on cue, Questlove does his thing.

Again, as with so many Winehouse songs, it’s a tale of heartache and fierce pride. “You can try and stop me,” Winehouse sings. “But you won’t get the chance.”

The Girl from Ipanema

In May 2002, Winehouse met Remi in Miami for the first time. “I didn’t even know what she looked like at the time, but she came in with an acoustic guitar and sang this. Her voice just filled and lit up the room. She really put something into the song that I’d just not heard before.”

This track takes that recording as its basis, and it’s daft and fun, so never mind that it’s clearly a half-finished take, with Winehouse resorting to scat singing.

A Song For You

Introduced to journalists with the warning that a debate surrounded the inclusion of this version of the Leon Russell classic made famous by Donny Hathaway. “It may not be the best song technically,” said an Island Records executive. Nonetheless, the recording has its own story – being recorded in one take at Winehouse’s house in north London in early 2009, where the singer had built a home studio. “She said to me, we can make the new album here,” Remi recalled. “We don’t have to worry about the paparazzi.

“She was just lying down on a couch, with the mic in her hand and by about halfway through the song she was crying, really weeping, with makeup running down her face.” Remi took this recording and added further production to it, including the sound of rain with which it begins.

The song concludes with the lines: “And when my life is over/ Remember when we were together/ We were alone and I was singing this song for you.” It would have made an appropriately sentimental end to Lioness, and it is sequenced as the last track on the album. But after the song finishes playing, we hear a snatch of Winehouse talking to Remi, discussing the relative merits of Marvin Gaye and the singer who first made the song famous. “Donny Hathaway,” she says. “It was like he couldn’t contain himself … he had something in him, you know.”

After playing the seven tracks, Remi explained that he was in London the weekend Winehouse died; he had planned to attend a friend’s wedding with her on the Sunday morning, but “before I could make it from Shepherd’s Bush to Notting Hill, she had gone”.

“For me, working on a record was a healing process,” he continued. He said he had only needed to spend two weeks of further production on the tracks since his friend’s death. “I had a big brother relationship with her – with me, there was a musical space where she could be herself and not worry about anything else. And with this record: I wanted to get it off my chest. I knew what material was there, and I didn’t want to rehash the pain that I feel now, in 12 months’ time … These songs: I’d like people to know them. I didn’t want them sitting on a hard drive, wilting away.”

This may not be the last we hear from Winehouse, with a label executive acknowledging that there is a trove of live material from which to draw for a future release, as well as other previously unheard songs. “We’re not looking to paper over any cracks with this record,” he insisted, adding: “We want this album to be good enough to exist on its own merits, and we think it’s faithful to her legacy. Whether you can hear every lyric on every song or not, you can always hear the emotion there.”

Remi added: “I know there were times when she wasn’t in great shape – although personally, I didn’t really see that side of her; it didn’t go on in my presence – but music for her was her escape.”