Archive for May, 2008 »

Sara Bareilles – Love Song – Single Review

sara-bareilles-love-song

Fresh from chart success in her native America, Sara Bareilles is launching an assault on the British charts with a love song called Love Song

Anyway, wasn’t it The Beautiful South who started this trend of writing songs about writing songs? Jennifer, Alison, Phillipa, Sue…

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R.E.M. – Hollow Man – Single Review

R.E.M. release the second single from their Accelerate album, Hollow Man on 2 June 2008. In keeping with the R.E.M. renaissance vibe, Hollow Man is a very straightforward, immediate tune.

As Eric Zimmermann writes:

I think it speaks of being Middle Aged.  I think that we all look at ourselves in the mirror sometimes and wonder just if our lives are what we expected when we were 18.

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Who the Hell are Vampire Weekend?

Vampire Weekend biography

Vampire Weekend are hot property at the moment. Any serious music publication is talking about them – but who are they and are they any good? This guide will tell you (mostly) everything you need to know about the band, who are not real vampires by the way. Shame, because that would be a great gimmick…

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Win Glastonbury Tickets!!!

Tips on how to win Glastonbury tickets by playing Spot the Bull in the biggest Glasto ticket giveaway ever.

Watch ‘OrtzRoka Planets’

Heralded by the dance press and influential media (Fluokids, Channel 4 Music, Popjustice), OrtzRoka have received huge support from a whole bunch of musician and DJ folk – Busy P, New Young Pony Club, Laurent Garnier, Erol Alkan, Justin Robertson, Ewan Pearson, Prins Thomas, Rob Da Bank, People Are Germs and Ivan Smagghe.

OrtzRoka recently supported Midnight Juggernauts and Pin Me Down (Bloc Party’s Russell Lissack’s new band), performed DJ sets at Vice, Apocalypso and Magazine Club, and have been tipped by DJ Magazine as artists to most likely have ‘Major Impact in 2008′ alongside Booka Shade, Moby and Deadmau5. Read more & comment »

Rhianna Loved Working With Maroon 5 On ‘If I Never See Your Face Again’

Rihanna has revealed on GMTV how much she’s enjoyed teaming up with Maroon 5 on their next single, If I Never See Your Face Again.

Speaking to GMTV’s Carla Romano in LA, the Good Girl Gone Bad said that working alongside the pop rockers was “Awesome for me”.

She went on to heap praise on the lads, saying: “Maroon 5 are one of my favourite bands and when they approached me to do this record, I was like, ‘Any song, I don’t care if it’s a song that I don’t like – I want to do it because Maroon 5 is dope’. But fortunately I love this song, I think it’s a smash.”

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Review Round-up: Pendulum – In Silico

Pendulum - In Silico

Australian drum and bass duo Pendulum rocked the Radio One Big Weekend this year, and they’ve just released In Silico, their new album. And since it’s been a while since we’ve done an album review round-up, let’s have a look across the Internet to see what other bloggers are saying about In Silico.

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The Ting Tings – That’s Not My Name – Single Review

ting-tings-not-my-name

These Ting Tings, and their stripped down musical stylings. First it was the very lo-fi Great DJ, which I wasn’t impressed with. That’s Not My Name, by comparison is a major improvement.

The whole song revolves around a repetitive Hey Mickey style drumbeat, which is the only instrumentation at the beginning, gradually joined by guitars and bass and other sound effects until the whole thing builds into a raucous noisy crescendo.

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T4 On The Beach 2008 Lineup Revealed

t4-on-beach

Get your buckets and spades ready, music lovers, because Channel 4 has announced more acts for their annual T4 On The Beach event.

T4 On The Beach is coming to Weston-super-Mare on Sunday 20th July and the latest acts announced for the event are Adele, Pigeon Detectives, Sam Sparro and McFly.

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Madonna reaches out to secondary ticket sales

madonna-stage

Madonna has apparently signed a deal with secondary market ticket sellers StubHub and Viagogo. Why is this news? Well, because it’s the first time in the history of the universe that a major artist has had a formal agreement in place with the secondary ticket market.

John Wilson has an interesting write-up on his blog about the meaning of the deal.

Having sold her touring rights to LiveNation last year, this represents a major endorsement of secondary markets by one of the world’s largest promoters and blows a hole through the “moral” arguments that were advanced by some parts of the live music industry, who condemned such market as scalping or touting. Similarly, it leaves the recently formed industry association that was advocating a revenue tax on secondary markets completely wrong footed.

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