Tag Archives: music-features

Record labels don’t get much more cult than Svart. Based in Turku, Finland, and primarily devoted to the country’s metal scene, the imprint has unearthed many underground treasures in recent years, including early-Nineties efforts from esoteric death-metal crew Demilich and their more stripped-down contemporaries Rippikoulu. But even in this context, …

From the beginning, Brockhampton had an ending in mind. It’s unconventional — and slightly macabre — for a boy band to have their breakup planned out in advance, but knowing when to bow out always seemed smarter than imploding. “We’ve talked about it since before we even put out Saturation …

Few respond to “How are you?” more honestly than Noel Gallagher. The Oasis songwriter is about to break down a recent set he performed in Dublin with his current band Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, but he wants to be real first. “You want the honest answer?” he asks. “I’m …

Brian Eno strongly believes he saw the flight path overhead of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human to travelinto space, when he was 12. “I was very excited by it,” he recalls now. But within a few years he lost his interest in space travel. By the time Neil Armstrong …

There’s nothing dated about “Drone Before Parlor Violence,” a recently released track by the arty Connecticut hardcore outfit Jeromes Dream. The song’s blend of clenched aggression and airy melody sounds perfectly at home today, in an era where bands like Deafheaven and Torche have effectively razed any remaining barriers between …

In a video interview uploaded to YouTube in February, Joe Budden, a former major-label rapper who is enjoying a popular second career as a podcast star, tried to recruit 2 Chainz to lead a strike in hip-hop. “You don’t think we need a union?” Budden asked. “You should be our …

When Martha sat down to write one of their trademark bruised-heart anthems for their next album, they wanted to think of a scene that’d illustrate their tale of “someone,” as drummer Nathan Stephens-Griffin puts it, “who’s going completely off the rails through heartbreak and has just gone off and is …

Erasure singer Andy Bell has found a new life as the star of a series of stage productions in the U.K. as Torsten, a mythical being who has lived for over a century, Bell has embraced the opportunity to showcase a varied vocal range and untapped emotional passion. The character …

The music industry has longed thrived on its diversity. A rich assortment of hip-hop, rock, country, R&B, classical, indie, electronic, and a million and one subgenres in between. “A rich assortment,” however, comprehensively fails to describe today’s most influential music companies — which are increasingly eating into one another’s core …

Since Prince‘s death, activist and CNN commentator Van Jones has worn a purple tie for his TV appearances and has seen other people do similar things. “We’re just trying to signal we’re still loyal to the throne, even though the throne is empty now,” he says. That’s because the artist …