Tori Amos Gives Epic the Two-Finger Salute, Complete with Fairy Dust
By Heidi Vanderslice on Jun 3 2008
Tori Amos has officially ended her stint with Epic Records after seven years. (madonna.) She was signed with Atlantic Records from 1992 to 2001, but apparently turned into some kinda masochist and signed another contract with Epic, which bites the dust this week. (radiohead.) "As with many of her contemporaries, Tori is devising new and exciting ways of getting her music to the masses without the boundaries and limitations of the major music companies," tells her manager John Witherspoon to Billboard. (nine inch nails.)
Amos has a new album hitting the shelves, virtual and otherwise in 2009, and she is also writing a musical for the British National Theater called The Light Princess. (paul mccartney.) Her album catalog will also be immortalized in a new graphic novel called Comic Book Tattoo. (the love symbol. I mean, prince.)
(these parenthetical artists get to be in lowercase because they jumped ship back when it was just starting to get embarrassing to stick with your major label, and everyone knows people who write in lowercase are way hip. Tori's gotta earn them stripes. next time, Tori. maybe next news story.)
Dan Deacon Cancels Upcoming Shows
By Joe B. on Jun 3 2008
As reported on Pitchfork, Dan Deacon has canceled seven upcoming shows in France and Portugal due to “matters in [his] personal life beyond [his] control.”
Pitchfork courteously took on the hard part of my job and asked Dan to comment: “In addition to working out the matters in my personal life,” he said, “I will be using the time to finish work on the record, work out the plans for possible build out of the new Wham City arts center, and finalize the remaining aspects of the Whartscape Festival.”
As we reported about a month ago (TMT News), Deacon’s new album, Bromst, is tentatively set for release in the fall. The Whartscape Festival will take place July 17-20 in Baltimore. I’m thinking about going. As far as the Wham City arts center, that’s the first I’ve heard of it. Awesome.
Take your time, Dan. Hope everything works out.
The Canceled Dates:
$ Ultimate Reality show
OiNK Users Arrested; We Ex-OiNK Users Should Probably Start Going Through The Name-Changing Paperwork Now
By Scout Leader Kyle on Jun 2 2008
File-sharing utopia and invite-only torrent site OiNK.cd was shutdown by the Cleveland and Dutch police back in 2007. Since then, no users, not even the site's owner, have been charged.
Until now, that is.
The go-to torrent news blog TorrentFreak reports that Cleveland, UK police recently arrested six OiNK users for, according to their sources, “Conspiracy to Defraud the Music Industry.” This essentially means the accused OiNK members were apparently arrested for sharing advance/pre-release albums with ties to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), an affiliate of the RIAA. (The IFPI mostly parties with the major labels, but judging by its extensive list of member sites, the group also expands its protection to indies.)
The British Phonographic Industry provided the following statement (via The Register):
The BPI and IFPI worked with the police in order to close down the OiNK tracker site last October. The illegal online distribution of music, particularly pre-release, is hugely damaging, and as OiNK was the biggest source for pre-releases at the time we moved to shut it down. We provided the information to assist this investigation, but this is now a police matter and we are unable to comment further at this stage.
At this point, it's unclear if more arrests are expected and why British police are involved in this particular investigation but not other file-sharing incidents.
Anyway, if you don't see any news stories from me for more than two weeks from today, then you can safely assume that I've either (a) gotten fed up with Mr P's bullshit or (b) have been caught and incarcerated.
I'm all for option A.
Adventure Signs to Carpark, To Release Debut in September
By Mango Starr on Jun 2 2008
Wham City extraordinarily extraordinaire Benny Boeldt is Adventure, and Adventure is his debut album, set for release September 16 on Carpark. But does that mean Adventure is Benny? Does it mean that Benny himself is an album? Does it mean the release date is really Carpark, and that the record label is Benny's moniker? C'mon press release, tell me something good:
His ultra-melodic synth compositions pull from his earliest exposure to the 8-bit soundtracks of the Sega Genesis video game catalog. But it's not just retro video game music. Mix in the kitschy Moogy sound of Hot Butter's "Popcorn", the saturated disco-theatrics of late seventies electro-pop acts like Sparks and Yellow Magic Orchestra, and a penchant for Eastern European diminished scales and you've come pretty close to Adventure's accelerated baroque sound.
Adventure's tracklisting:
Adventure's tracklisting without line breaks: 1. Loredo 2. Poison Diamonds 3. Civilization 4. Hyper Glow 5. Travel Kid 6. Iron Stallion 7. Battle Cat 8. Wild Wild Ride 9. Ultra Zone 10. Crypt Castle Cult 11. Jurassic Park City
Finally, Adventure has a couple dates in June (at New York's Cake Shop on June 4 and at Talking Head in Baltimore the next day), but is planning on tagging along the Wham City Round Robin tour this October with Dan Deacon, Ponytail, Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez, and others. They all have new albums coming out too, as we've reported here and there. More dates too with Dan Deacon and Video Hippos!
[Photo: Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez]
