Breaking News
STEVE GUNN SHARES NEW SONG ‘STONEHURST COWBOY’
Following the release of the acclaimed single New Moon, Steve Gunn has shared a second song off of The Unseen In Between (out January 18th on Matador Records), titled ‘Stonehurst Cowboy’.
The song is the emotional centrepiece of the album, a duet between Gunn’s raw acoustic guitar and spare basslines by Bob Dylan’s musical director Tony Garnier, who is featured throughout the album. The lyrics distil the lessons Gunn learned from his father and is a solemn but tender remembrance, a tribute to his father’s reputation as a tough, wise, and witty guy from far west Philadelphia.
“’Stonehurst Cowboy’ is a tribute to my late father, who passed away in 2016. Stonehurst is an area in Southwest Philadelphia where both my parents grew up,” says Gunn, adding, “Heavily affected by the Vietnam War, he became an adult at hyperspeed after high school when he was drafted — though he didn’t end up actually fighting in Vietnam. He was too young to know what the hell was going on when the war broke, and it wasn’t until he, his brothers, and friends came back to make any sense of it.”
Thom Yorke - Open Again (Suspiria Radio Session)
Holly Herndon x Jlin (feat. Spawn) ‘Godmother’
For the past two years, we have been building an ensemble in Berlin.
One member is a nascent machine intelligence we have named Spawn. She is being raised by listening to and learning from her parents, and those people close to us who come through our home or participate at our performances.
Spawn can already do quite a few wonderful things. ‘Godmother’ was generated from her listening to the artworks of her godmother Jlin, and attempting to reimagine them in her mother’s voice.
This piece of music was generated from silence with no samples, edits, or overdubs, and trained with the guidance of Spawn’s godfather Jules LaPlace.
In nurturing collaboration with the enhanced capacities of Spawn, I am able to create music with my voice that far surpass the physical limitations of my body.
Going through this process has brought about interesting questions about the future of music. The advent of sampling raised many concerns about the ethical use of material created by others, but the era of machine legible culture accelerates and abstracts that conversation. Simply through witnessing music, Spawn is already pretty good at learning to recreate signature composition styles or vocal characters, and will only get better, sufficient that anyone collaborating with her might be able to mimic the work of, or communicate through the voice of, another.
Are we to recoil from these developments, and place limitations on the ability for non-human entities like Spawn to witness things that we want to protect? Is permission-less mimicry the logical end point of a data-driven new musical ecosystem surgically tailored to give people more of what they like, with less and less emphasis on the provenance, or identity, of an idea? Or is there a more beautiful, symbiotic, path of machine/human collaboration, owing to the legacies of pioneers like George Lewis, that view these developments as an opportunity to reconsider who we are, and dream up new ways of creating and organising accordingly.
I find something hopeful about the roughness of this piece of music. Amidst a lot of misleading AI hype, it communicates something honest about the state of this technology; it is still a baby. It is important to be cautious that we are not raising a monster.
– Holly Herndon
ICEAGE UNVEIL NEW TRACK ‘BROKEN HOURS’
Following ‘Balm Of Gilead’ released earlier in the month (“as snarling and clobbering as anything you could hope for from the band” – The Fader), Iceage today unveil a second new track with Broken Hours. A five minute epic of doom-laden swing and crashing, spidery riffs that backdrop Elias Bender Rønnenfelt’s howling incantation: “Dying figures, they settle in / Broken hours / It lingers on” – it’s another heart-racing transmission from a band at the peak of their craft.
Previewed by singles Catch It (Pitchfork ‘Best New Music’), Pain Killer feat. Sky Ferreira (“They’ve finally sold out, and it’s marvellous” – Guardian Guide), Take It All, and The day the music dies, with its sauna and Masonic Temple-visiting video, Beyondless is the culmination of Iceage’s output so far, finding a knowing yet untamed band creating the most thoughtful, dramatic and visceral music out there. It boasts an earthy and hypnotic sound that pays tribute to American music, from country honk brawls to sleazy soul revues to cocaine blues. Echoes of The Waterboys to Exile-period Stones to John Cale are laced with a ubiquitous air of ecstatic abandon and channelled via masterful songwriting. Throughout their career, the band’s charm has rested in their running ahead of themselves with blind confidence; on Beyondless, they are treading with a disarming assurance, but no loss of charm.
JUNGLE RELEASE ‘BEAT 54 (KRYSTAL KLEAR 12” MIX)
London collective Jungle are a band renowned for exquisitely curated remixes of their music. Their half-a-million selling, Brit and Mercury Prize-nominated eponymous debut album spawned a string of top drawer remixes from the likes of Soulwax, Special Request, Zomby and Joe Goddard that transported their productions from their Shepherds Bush studio setup to dancefloors around the world.
Today the band reveal the first mix from their second album For Ever, which was released to widespread acclaim in September via XL Recordings.
‘Beat 54 (Krystal Klear 12” Mix)’ sees sophisticated studio scientist and DJ Krystal Klear, arguably having the biggest year of his career on the back of his huge crossover anthem ‘Neutron Dance’, step up to rework Jungle’s current single ‘Beat 54 (All Good Now)’. Krystal Klear’s M.O. has been pretty straightforward from day one: dance music that makes people actually dance. And this version – with one foot in the disco camp, the other in the house and techno world and, in Krystal Klear’s own words, “made with memories from New York in the perspective” – perfectly delivers.
‘Beat 54’ is taken from Jungle’s second album For Ever, which also features the AA sided singles Happy Man / House In LA and Heavy, California / Cherry.
Jungle will tour extensively throughout 2018 and 2019. The tour will include their biggest headline shows to date, including a return to Toronto (March 15th and 16th – Danforth Music Hall), Montreal (March 17th – Mtelus) and Vancouver (March 9th – The Vogue).
Tickets for all shows are on sale now via http://junglejunglejungle.com/live/
