Fucking shocker, I know. Well, to everyone who was a part of reality, anyway. So, pretty much anyone who wasn’t a diehard fan. The best part? Commenter “Tiffany” who left, in part, this gem YESTERDAY on my post about The Rev’s death: “It still [sic] isn’t sure what his cause of death was, but you can’t say it was drugs. It probably was a natural cause.” [emphasis added] Yes, actually I can. I knew it…
Bleurgh. Apologies for that. But! There is good news to share. And here it is: perennial ZME favourite, talented indie songstress and rather lovely person to boot, Amber Rubarth had a hand in scoring the new Joan Rivers biopic, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, which opens in US theatres on Friday. Of course, in some ways, this isn’t good news. One way it’s bad is because I’ll never see this film, a result of…
The above completely ludicrous illustration is the official cover art for Black Mountain’s third studio effort, “Wilderness Heart”, designed by the band’s keyboardist Jeremy Schmidt. Yeah, any kind of art with jaws in it is badass art in my book. The psych rockers’ previous effort, the 2008 “In the Future”, was extremely well received, catapulting the Vancouver quintet in a hot position of the scene. Not too much is known about Wilderness Heart at this…
Cover art for one of the maddest records of the year - King of the Beach
There’s a new website called Six Degrees of Black Sabbath. Essentially, it’s Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, only with musicians. The title is kinda odd, as you can name any two artists in music history and the site will attempt to connect them in as few moves as possible – with or without Sabbath. For example, it jumped from Buddy Holly to Six Feet Under in 15 steps. It’s quite the fascinating site in terms…
It’s Monday, the 24th of May, and we all know what that means: nothing of significance. I’m thirsty. Anyway, you may have heard the story of how Justin Bieber walked into a door last week. Irish broadcasting monolith RTÉ certainly did. And because respectable journalism tends to frown on any kind of personality or humour, their website’s entertainment section was forced to recount the story with nary a smirk or a wink. It really does…
Here are the stats of Billboard for this past week. Some bad, some good, some are just fascinating. First the bad news: Only 5.32 million albums were sold last week. Compare that to the 6.07m from the week previous, and the 5.89m from the comparable week in 2009. Year to date sales are at 115.1m, compared to 127.9m this time last year, which is a 10% drop. The worst news of the week: Justin Bieber…
Jarvis Cocker, Pulp alumnus, eccentric genius, and the first man to successfully clone himself (evidence), is still keeping busy. When he’s not winning awards for his BBC Radio 4 series, he’s sifting through a selection of “found sounds” collected by The National Trust (laudable British conservationists) and arranging them into an ambient album he BBC-quotingly describes as “a holiday for the ears”. If you enjoy hearing music boxes, old doors creaking, Steve Vai wailing and…
I really hope Niamh doesn’t kill me for that title. But yes, I’ve made no bones about my unfettered enthusiasm for Ham Sandwich – I’ve previously told you how heartswellingly splendid they are on precisely four thousand different occasions. But now there are four thousand and one occasions, because I’m about to do it again. The reason for that is this: they’re building up to the May 14th release of their new single “The Naturist”…
I simply loved the 2008 “In Ear Park” by the smashing indie duo Department of Eagles, individually formed by Grizzly Bear’s Daniel Rossen and Fred Nicolaus. At times the album feels likes a religious experience, one where the surreal meets life and blends into one unique crossroad. The whole thing was extremely polished, from composition, to arrangements, to production – a perfectionist’s soundtrack, if you will. As such, a lot of tracks have been scrapped….
Steve Lampiris
Al Byrne
Tibi Puiu