Two and a half years after the release of their second album Favourite Worst Nightmare, Arctic Monkeys are back.
The first single from upcoming third album Humbug was released on download this week, giving fans the first chance to hear what producer Josh Homme has done to their sound.
Just as Favourite Worst Nightmare was a totally different sound to their debut, Crying Lightning hints at another intriguing new direction. The single has Homme's influence all over it - a doomy bassline, some brilliant guitar licks that could have been lifted from a Tarantino film, and a huge, pounding chorus that manages to sound both sinister and uplifting at the same time.
It swoops and swirls around menacingly, while Alex Turner unravels a strange tale of flirting with a mystery woman over a bag of sweets ("my thoughts got rude, as you talked and chewed, on the last of your pick and mix"). His vocals sound a million miles away from the raw Sheffield accent of their debut - there's almost a croon to his voice now, perhaps a leftover from his side project The Last Shadow Puppets.
It even finds time to drop magnificently into a coda of hammering drums, before that chorus bursts in again and nearly rips your speakers off. It may take a couple of listens to work its magic, but once it has, this will be your new song of the summer. If this is even a hint of the quality of the upcoming album Humbug, then Arctic Monkeys fans could be in for a treat.
Crying Lightning is released on CD on August 17th, and is available for download now on iTunes.
Michael Jackson has died, aged 50, after suffering a cardiac arrest at his Los Angeles home.
The story first appeared on celebrity gossip website TMZ.com and was immediately picked up on Twitter. The BBC, PA, AP and the LA Times later confirmed the singer had indeed passed away.
The superstar had not been breathing when found and was taken by ambulance to the UCLA Medical Center, at which fans and media crews have started to congregate in large numbers.
The news comes just a fortnight ahead of the first of 50 scheduled dates at London's O2 Arena and caused Twitter to grind to a halt and the internet generally to slow down for over an hour.
A first reaction to Jackson's death, as the world generally comes to grips with the news: Michael Jackson Dies, Aged 50
This video (below) was recorded in 1966. Skip James, the man with the guitar and the voice, died 40 years ago, back in 1969.
I'd added a version of Devil Got My Woman to my monthly playlist at the start of the year; this one I'd heard on the Beyond Mississippi compilation and it fitted beautifully alongside music by Nick Mulvey and Shearwater, none of which referenced his Deep South blues style but seemed to me to come from a similar, internal, human place. His sound, with a slower tempo than the video suggests, remains timeless.
The video, at the time of writing, had been viewed nearly 200,000 times on YouTube. With that kind of audience, Skip'd make a decent claim for stardom now, 107 years after his birth.
Jas and James are back with a new single, Audacity Of Huge, and Kate Moross has directed the video (see below).
The single is available from all good and legal places on 3rd August, with the parent album Temporary Pleasure following on 17th August.
This excites us just a little, what with its hugeness and everything. And if you can tell us what the purple liquid in the jug is, we'll consider awarding you a virtual gold star.
Here's what happened when we chatted with Jas Shaw last year: interview
We also met James Ford last year, but that was on a dance floor.
It's Meltdown time again, this year curated by Ornette Coleman, and in just over two hours the first of this year's events gets going at the South Bank Centre.
Tony Allen (pictured), Afrobeat drummer par excellence of Fela Kuti and The Good, The Bad & The Queen fame, takes on The Front Room and gets the party started.
Check out our review from his show earlier this year at Cargo, when he was joined by Damon Albarn, Baaba Maal, Natty and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, here.
Coleman plays two gigs later in the run, ahead of which Yoko Ono, former curator Patti Smith with A Silver Mount Zion, The Roots, Bobby McFerrin, Baaba Maal, Moby, Faith No More/Tomahawk lynchpin Mike Patton and Kieran Hebden & Steve Reid are amongst the thrills and spills on offer. Check back to our gigs section for selected reviews as the festival progresses.
musicOMH is looking for new music writers. ARE YOU ONE?
If you are, you'll want to thrill the world with your knowledge, innate good taste and opinions and you'll really, really like going to gigs and festivals and listening to albums.
Maybe you'll enjoy interviewing musicians and thinking up features. You'll certainly be able to write to a given house style, to a high standard of English, and you'll proofread your regular contributions.
If this sounds like you, drop me a line saying so, together with some recent URLs, your last three gigs and why you believe your writing should be published on musicOMH.
All this week on musicOMH we're running interviews with, features on and reviews of African artists, with new articles being published daily.
With Mali's Rokia Traoré headlining in London, Baaba Maal's first album in eight years out and Western Sahara's Group Doueh having just completed their first UK tour, it seemed timely to throw a spotlight on the continent's musicians and their works, from a mainstream, rather than a specialist, perspective.
This is the first time we've themed this site for a week, and there's a reason for it. African music in the media is ghettoised, confined to specialist publications, BBC Radio 3 and a smattering of newspaper columns. While the quality of these is often excellent, I don't see why it should be so separate, or why people who claim to love music seem so often to dismiss an entire continent, its people and their output as readily as they do. As Baaba Maal said in his interview with me, "African music... is just music. It doesn't belong to this part or this part. Music is something you share."
So we're running interviews with Maal, Amadou & Mariam (pictured) and Youssou N'Dour, features on the legacy of Fela Kuti and African music's huge influence on dance and classical works from the west, plus a preview of Malawi's Lake Of Stars festival which returns in October.
Reviews will include Traoré and Doueh live and coverage of new albums from Maal, Vieux Farka Touré, returning Tuareg desert tribesmen Tinariwen and the latest archive raid by Damon Albarn's Honest Jons label, this time delving into 1950s Congo. Most of this will be up by the weekend.
We've also collected together a selection of our African music related archive content, including reviews of Salif Keita, Angelique Kidjo, Tony Allen, Mayra Andrade, Ali Farka Touré and last year's Africa Express shows, amongst much else. You can access all this and more at the Africa Week index.
I'm well aware that this is but a snapshot of what African artists are doing. It is in no way meant to be comprehensive. But I do hope that at least it constitutes something of a rebalance.
Ah, June already - halfway through the year. So it's that time of the month when we take a look at the last four weeks and assemble a Spotify playlist for your delight and delectation, highlighting 50 of the best tracks of the month.
All of this month's tracks were released during May, either on an album, single or MP3 and as ever we've been (only slightly) hamstrung by Spotify's selection process (no Grizzly Bear yet? For shame, Spotify!). Yet from Dizzee Rascal through to Phoenix, Graham Coxon, The Maccabees and the Manics, it's been a typically varied month's listening here in OMH Towers.
To listen to the playlist, click here, and don't forget to leave us your comments below. For you poor people outside of Spotify's user reach, here's what's on our playlist this month:
Dizzee Rascal - Bonkers Kasabian - Fire Toddla T - Shake It St Vincent - Actor Out Of Work Esser - Leaving Town The Maccabees - Love You Better Junior Boys - Hazel Tiga - Shoes Graham Coxon - Perfect Love Passion Pit - The Reeling Jarvis Cocker - Leftovers Phoenix - Lisztomania Hypnotic Brass Ensemble - Hypnotic Thomas Truax - Twin Peaks (Falling) Gallows - The Vulture Flare Acoustic Arts League - Love Finds Andy Warhol Kleerup - Until We Bleed The Wave Pictures - I Thought Of You Again Alessi's Ark - Over The Hill Conor Oberst - Roosevelt Room Peaches - Mommy Complex God Help The Girl - Come Monday Night Marmaduke Duke - Silhouettes Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson - The Debtor Chairlift - Bruises Eg - Weird Friendless Kid Annie - Anthonio British Sea Power - Man Of Aran Green Day - Know Your Enemy Manic Street Preachers - Jackie Collins Existential Question Time Team Waterpolo - Room 44 Eels - My Timing Is Off Marilyn Manson - I Want To Kill You Like They Do In The Movies Fink - Sort Of Revolution Placebo - For What It's Worth Laura Izibor - From My Heart To Yours Iggy Pop - King Of The Dogs Little Boots - New In Town Deerhunter - Rainwater Cassette Exchange Speech Debelle - Go Then, Bye (Esser Remix) Tori Amos - Welcome To England Bloc Party - Signs (Armand Van Helden remix) Bob Dylan - Life Is Hard Son Of Dave - Nike Town Fanfarlo - Drowning Man Post War Years - The Red Room Nathan Fake - Basic Mountain My Latest Novel - All In All In All Is All Alec Empire - Control Drug Scott Matthews - Suddenly You Figure Out
Following their Crisis supporting gig with David Gilmour at the Union Chapel this week, Amadou & Mariam unleash Masiteladi, another infectious single from their Welcome To Mali album, on 29th June.
If by some unfortunate quirk of fate you've still to work out what all the fuss is about, we recommend these courses of action:
1) Catch them live, either at Glasto's main stage on the Sunday afternoon or supporting Blur at Hyde Park on 3rd July (if you're in the USA you might like to catch them supporting Coldplay on tour)
2) Join them, together with their artistic director Marc-Antoine Moreau, as they curate the fourth and final monthly residency for African music, L’Afrik C’est Chic, at the Jazz Café on 21st June. Special guests will be invited on stage for spontaneous jam sessions in a stripped down/unplugged set.
3) Read our forthcoming interview with the duo, which will be published as part of our Africa Week (much more of which soon)
Freeland, comprised of Adam Freeland + band, release new single Do You on 15th June, a week after the release of the album Cope™ (review to follow). Check out the video for Do You below.
In Freeland's words "The remit on this one was if Led Zeppelin were making electronic music what would it sound like? And this is what we came up with. Helped quite a bit by having Tommy Lee on drums, creating that big John Bonham style drum sound".
To celebrate the release of the album, Adam Freeland is giving away a mixtape. You can download it for free here.
Freeland play the Glastonbury and Glade festivals this summer.
For more info, check out their MySpaz.
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