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Everything Is Recorded return with New Music
Pure energy; stripped-back simplicity; a big Smog sample; creative spontaneity; two contrasting but equally vital new collaborators; the universal feeling of anticipation and excitement that fuel a Friday night out… these are the raw materials that make up 10:51PM / THE NIGHT, the new single from Richard Russell’s collaborative artist project Everything Is Recorded.
It’s the first new music in nearly two years from the London artist and producer, whose eponymous debut album was released in 2018 and went on to be nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, being hailed by Q Magazine as “a masterclass in the art of collaboration”. If that debut album was part defined by its looseness – born out of an open door policy at Russell’s Copper House studio, open-ended recording sessions and an idiosyncratic mix of collaborators including Sampha, Giggs, Kamasi Washington, Ibeyi, Syd, Green Gartside, Damon Albarn, Owen Pallett and Infinite – ‘THE NIGHT’ is a much more focused creation, written and recorded in just a couple of hours.
It introduces two new Everything Is Recorded collaborators in the form of Trinidad-born Londoner Berwyn (his first official release) and Galway’s Maria Somerville. It captures and narrates that “anything can happen” feeling we’ve all experienced at the moment the working week becomes a hazy memory and we launch into a Friday night, a snapshot from a longer story that Everything Is Recorded are exploring. It’s built around a sample from Smog’s “Hollow Out Cakes”, the latest in a line of musical tributes to Bill Callahan from Russell. And it’s an enticing glimpse of what’s to come from Everything Is Recorded in 2020.
HAWA announces debut EP
It has been a whirlwind January for HAWA.
First, she closed Telfar’s Pitti Uomo fashion show in Florence performing atop an ornate table above Solange, Kelela and Juliana Huxtable, followed by a performance that grabbed Vogue’s attention at Gap x Telfar’s event in Paris and now she announces her debut EP.
the ONE will be released on March 5 via b4.
The EP includes previously released single “MY LOVE” and is produced by Tony Seltzer with beats from Cadenza, Kashaka & Oscar Key Sung.
HAWA also shares new single IPHONE today, a melancholic Hip Hop call for romantic ceasefire where clarity in a relationship is sought, circling back to the EP’s title.
HAWA says of the new track, ““IPHONE” is about a person trying to do everything right by the one they’re in love with, but still feeling like that person is never fully satisfied. It seems like they’re losing their love. Is the only reason why they’re staying is because they’re used to it?”
Pitchfork says HAWA’s strong, direct “sing-rap delivery stand[s] out in a crowded New York scene” and her tracks have received praise everywhere from FADER to Dazed to Pigeons & Planes.
Although HAWA’s first-ever song was released just over a year ago and she graduated from high school this past spring, the 19-year-old has already lived many lives. Born in Berlin to West African parents and raised in New York City, as a pre-teen HAWA was one of the youngest-ever composers for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom she toured the world. But soon HAWA’s insatiable creativity became stifled by the classical world’s stuffy limitations so she broke out.
the ONE is released on b4, a future-facing label launched in 2018 that serves as a home for tomorrow’s most relevant artists. The music on b4 is a reflection of the genre-smashing landscape, where prior categories no longer apply. This is b4’s first-ever EP release.
Stephen Malkmus announces new album and North American Tour
Stephen Malkmus announces his new album, Traditional Techniques, out March 6th via Matador, lead single, “Xian Man,” and a North American tour.
Traditional Techniques, Malkmus third solo LP without the Jicks (or Pavement), is new phase folk music for new phase folks, with Malkmus as attuned as ever to the rhythms of the ever-evolving lingual slipstream. It’s packed with handmade arrangements, modern folklore, and 10 songs written and performed in his singular voice.
An adventurous new album in an instantly familiar mode, Traditional Techniques creates a serendipitous trilogy with the loose fuzz of the Jicks’ Sparkle Hard (2018) and the solo bedroom experiments of Groove Denied (2019). Taken together, these three very different full-lengths in three years highlight an ever-curious songwriter committed to finding untouched territory.
Malkmus took on Traditional Techniques as a kind of self-dare. Conceived while recording Sparkle Hard at Portland’s Halfling Studio, Malkmus had observed the variety of acoustic instruments available for use. The idea escalated within a matter of weeks into a full set of songs, and shortly thereafter into a realized and fully committed album. When he returned to Halfling, Malkmus drew from a whole new musical palette—including a variety of Afghani instruments—to support an ache both quizzical and contemporary. The resulting Traditional Techniques is expansive and thrilling. Alongside gorgeous folk music, there are also occasional bursts of flute-laced swagger, straight-up commune rock (“Xian Man”), and mind-bending fuzz.
Centered around the songwriter’s 12-string acoustic guitar, and informed by a half-century of folk-rock reference points, Traditional Techniques is the product of Malkmus and Halfling engineer/arranger-in-residence Chris Funk (The Decemberists). Matt Sweeney (Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Chavez) plays guitar throughout.
Malkmus will embark on a North American tour this spring with an entirely new band. The Traditional Techniques live band is Malkmus (vocals, guitar), Funk (pedal steel, keys), Sweeney (guitar), Brad Truax (bass), and Jake Morris (drums), joined at times by Qais Essar (rabab) and Eric Zang (kaval, udu, daf).
Canadian stops include Montreal on April 16th and Toronto on April 17th. Tickets are on sale Friday, January 24th at 10am local time.
ALGIERS RELEASE SPECIAL LIVE PERFORMANCE VIDEO OF ‘DISPOSSESION’ FROM CONKLIN METAL BUILDING IN ATLANTA
Following the release of their already critically acclaimed third album, There Is No Year, last Friday on Matador Records, Algiers have shared a special live version of single Dispossession, recorded live at the Conklin Metal Building in their hometown of Atlanta.
The haunting, stripped-back rendition, set against the expansive and cavernous space, reveals further hypnotic and engulfing facets of the mournful yet red-hot lament to compromised freedom and dislocation. The filmed performance follows videos for singles We Can’t Be Found, Void, and Dispossession.
Radiohead Public Library
The internet as a whole has never been a reliable resource for detailed or even accurate information re: Radiohead.
Many sites that attempted to provide some measure of service have long since gone dark as well. The overall effect has been “Radiohead” search results that yield random and/or abbreviated shards: songs and album titles unaccompanied by detailed artwork or any additional context, low quality videos preceded by advertisements and shuffled via algorithms, and so on…
That ends with the unveiling of the Radiohead Public Library. From today, visitors at Radiohead.com will be able to create their own library card and membership number, and access a highly curated and organized archive of the band’s catalogue and corresponding visuals and various artefacts associated with each album: Detailed artwork, official videos, and ad-free HD live and TV performances, B-Sides and compilation tracks, previously out-of-print merchandise to be custom made on demand, band members’ “office chart” playlists from around the time of In Rainbows, The King of Limbs and A Moon Shaped Pool recording sessions, and more.
To commemorate the Library’s opening week, Colin and Jonny Greenwood, Ed O’Brien, Philip Selway and Thom Yorke will each take a turn serving as librarian for a day beginning January 20 and ending January 24, each presenting a curated selection of archival material across the band’s social media channels (as well as their own Radiohead Public Library cards).
Finally, coinciding with the Library’s opening, a number of previously unavailable Radiohead rarities have been made available to stream and download, including the band’s 1992 debut, the Drill EP, “I Want None of This” from the 2005 charity compilation Help!: A Day in the Life, and the 2011 TKOL RMX 8 remix EP.
