“First” Major Label Blog Launches in 2009… err Gratz?
By Brom on Apr 6 2009
EMI Australia has announced its latest attempt to decide for millions of consumers what’s “cool” in the music world with their totally original idea for "the first major label blog" in the world. Fantastic guys, you want a medal? The In Sound From Way Out (great name, by the way) features EMI artists across the globe as well as the typical features you’d expect from a music blog. However, the Aussies have come up with one unique element: an artist and repertoire (A&R) Dropbox where those connoisseurs of music, the general public, can recommend the latest acts to the dudes at EMI. This, of course, means you can expect legions of Kelly Clarkson, All-American Reject, and Lily Allen fans proposing... yep more artists like Kelly Clarkson, The All-American Rejects, and Lily Allen!
The team pictured below are representatives for EMI. But let’s be honest here: even if you were a rabid Justin Timberlake fan, would you trust these jokers to recommend you good music?
Mario Speedwagon’s Under The Radar News Roundup: Man Man Tour With Cursive And Gogol Bordello, Merge Fest Initial Details Announced, Mastodon Set To Tour, All Points West Festival Tickets On Sale Now
By Mario Speedwagon on Apr 3 2009
It’s been raining here for about a week now. The sun finally came out today (it’s weird), but otherwise, I feel like how you should feel after it’s been gloomy and wet for 6 days. I don’t know how you people up in the Pacific Northwest do it. That being said, this shit is going to be boring. I’m spent.
- Man Man are heading out with Cursive this spring and playing a few dates with Gogol Bordello. Their tour runs from mid-April to early-June. You can check out all the dates on Man Man’s MySpace page. I’d also like to mention as a side note that Cursive’s album title for their new jam, Mama, I’m Swollen (TMT Review), makes me feel gross.
- Merge Records has announced the initial lineup of their 20th anniversary festival, XX Merge. Bands set to play, so far include Superchunk, Spoon, Conor Oberst, Spent, M. Ward, The Rosebuds, Destroyer, Guv’ner, Polvo, Pipe, and The Broken West. Many more bands are yet to be announced, both “expected and unexpected.” Whatever that means. The festival runs July 22-26 at the Cat’s Cradle (Sunday will be at Memorial Hall) and takes place in Carrboro, NC. Tickets go on sale April 8 at 10 AM and are $150 for 5-day passes (individual passes will also be on sale). I’m pumped.
- Atlanta teddy bears Mastodon are heading out on tour next week in support of their new album, Crack The Skye, out on Reprise Records. Their tour kicks off Friday, April 10 in Birmingham. You can check out all the dates at Mastodon’s official website.
- The second annual All Points West Music & Arts Festival will be returning to the Jerz for the weekend of July 31 - August 2. This year's lineup includes The Beastie Boys, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Vampire Weekend, MSTRKRFT, My Bloody Valentine, Tool (okay), Arctic Monkeys, Coldplay, Echo & The Bunnymen, and a buttload of other bands. Tickets go on sale TODAY and are $199 for a 3-day pass (single-day passes are $89). You can buy tickets at TicketBastard.com and find out more information on bands and whatever the “arts” part of the festival is at the official site. (On a side note: I wonder how long it will be before I start posting about festival cancellations?)
ZzzzZzzzzzzz…
By Liz Louche on Apr 3 2009
One man. Six tracks. This mid-April, there's only one label with the power to reissue this out-of-print album with a bonus disc. Experience...
Jim O'Rourke in I'm Happy and I'm Singing and a 1, 2, 3, 4.
Setting: the past. The years 1997-1999. Jim O'Rourke, solo artist and member of groups like Sonic Youth, Loose Fur, and Gastr del Sol, has just completed recording I'm Happy and I'm Singing on his laptop. The music was hot, and the babes were even hotter, and the cities where the album was recorded -- New York, Osaka, Tokyo, Toronto, and Malmö -- didn't even know what hit 'em. Fastforward to 2009. The album has been out of print for five years. The fans are restless. The music community has only one hope: that of a Editions Mego records reissue.
Starring Vin Diesel and Tara Reid, no other album reissue will have you THIS on the edge of your seat. Coming this mid-April, don't miss the reissue that Roger Ebert declared "a non-stop summer blockbuster of minimalism" and Leonard Maltin called "the best new artwork I've ever seen on a reissue."
I'm Happy and I'm Singing and a 1, 2, 3, 4 reissue tracklisting:
Disc One:
1. I'm Happy
2. And I'm Singing
3. And a 1, 2, 3, 4
Disc Two
1. Let's Take it Again from the Top
2. Getting the Vapors
3. He Who Laughs
(FYI: Jim O'Rourke is also a comedian.)
Details Revealed for Jim Jarmusch Collaboration with Boris, Sunn O))), and Earth; Spoiler: No New Tracks :(
By Liz Louche on Apr 3 2009
Pie and ice cream. Squatters and abandoned warehouses. Coffee and cream. Some things just go together.
Now you can add Jim Jarmusch and Southern Lord to that list. Jarmusch, the visionary filmmaker behind such works as Down By Law, Dead Man, Ghost Dog, Broken Flowers, and Coffee and Cigarettes, has a new flick in the works, and as previously reported (TMT News), the soundtrack leans heavily towards Southern Lord Recordings signees.
Entitled The Limits of Control, the film centers around a "mysterious loner" in modern Spain -- so, you know, it includes at least one scene of a shady business deal going down as the fiery spirit of flamenco dancers accentuates the underlying passion of, oh whatever. There will be flamenco, that's all I'm saying. (There always is in these pictures.) Yes, Bill Murray and Tilda Swinton are in it, but no, RZA and Tom Waits are not. But that's okay, really, because this soundtrack is gonna knock your socks off. Or, you know, something a little doomier.
Slated for release on Lakeshore Records, the following current Southern Lords artists and tracks will be included:
Boris - " " aka "Smile" (from the Japanese version of Smile, on Disk Union Records)Boris - "Feedbacker I & IV" (from Feedbacker, on Disk Union Records)
Boris -"Fuzzy Reactor" (from Rainbow, on Disk Union Records)
Boris -"Farewell" (from Pink, on Southern Lord)
Sunn O)))/Boris - "N.L.T." (from Altar, on Southern Lord)
Sunn O)))/Boris - "Blood Swamp" (from Altar, on Southern Lord)
Earth - "Omens and Portents 1: The Driver" (from The Bees Made Honey In The Lions' Skull, on Southern Lord)
The Limits of Control hits theatres June 3, 2009. The soundtrack is scheduled for an April 28, 2009 release.
Beck to Reissue 1994 K Records Release One Foot in the Grave in a Last-Ditch Effort to Pull One Foot of His Career Out of It
By Nobodaddy on Apr 3 2009
Remember the ’90s, when gas was $1.09, cell phones were for emergencies, and Beck was BECK? Well, Beck remembers too, and he’s apparently aching to remind us all that he wasn’t always an aging caricature who had to try incredibly hard to make it seem like he, you know, wasn’t trying hard. Back in the ’90s? He just straight-up WASN’T trying hard, and when you listen back to those early amateur moments, it’s clear that he was an expert at it.
Thus, the sadly overwrought Beck of 2009 plans to capitalize big-time on his devil-may-care debut with the reissue of his 1994 slacker-folk album One Foot in the Grave on April 14th, with reportedly 16 additional songs tacked onto the original tracklist. Although this out-of-print beauty (which was recorded before — but released after — Beck’s breakthrough major label debut Mellow Gold) was originally released on K Records, it looks as though Interscope Records will handle the reissue.
The news of the reissue first appeared in Japanese paper Daily Yomiuri, which interviewed Beck before his Japanese tour this month. “Well, it’s been out of print for a few years, so it’s something we’ve been planning, but I knew that we had these extra tracks. I’ve actually been working on this for the past two or three years,” Beck tried hard to not try hard to tell the paper. “[On] the original tapes there were an extra maybe 30 songs that weren’t on the record and I picked the best… and added them on there, so it’s got about a little over a dozen extra tracks that no one’s heard before.” So there you have it: the best of the worst of the slacker’s expertly unhappy-proletarian junk folk... wait, what?
Anyway, in addition to the original One Foot, the three-song It’s All In Your Mind EP (that’s the original, not the Sea Change version, son) is also reportedly included, as is a batch of unreleased songs that have appeared only on bootlegs and/or songs that have only previously existed in Beck-lore but never heard (”Teenage Wastebucket,” “Piss On the Door”). So this whole is pretty exciting/confusing/meaningful/sad/awesome/ineffectual/essential, basically, depending on your point of view. Hey, kind of like how Beck himself is at this point!
