Author: Press Room

Russian Circles’ music has always made the case that riffs can tell a story. Throughout a career that spans over two decades, the instru-metal pioneers have pushed their sound in various directions—sometimes flirting with the textural, atmospheric approach of post-rock, but more often using stark arrangements to put their beefed-up riffage in the forefront. That’s the path  Russian Circles take on Nine, their ninth album, and one of the trio’s heaviest and most riff-forward to date.It doesn’t take long for Russian Circles to establish Nine’s forceful tone. On “Empath,” the album’s second track, a series of death and thrash metal…

Jhené Aiko’s first album in six years, Westside Whimsy, is out now, and with it comes a new verse from Kendrick Lamar. Listen to the duo’s “So Good” below.The track continues a partnership that began on Lamar’s 2010 mixtape Overly Dedicated, long before either artist’s mainstream breakthrough. In 2013, a year after Good Kid, M.A.A.D City., Lamar contributed a verse to “Stay Ready (What a Life)” from Aiko’s debut EP, Sail Out. Until today, that seemed to be where their paths diverged, though Playboi Carti paired verses by the two of them on “Backd00rs” from last year’s Music. Other guests…

Georgia’s Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis spent over two years trying and failing to conflate YSL (Young Stoner Life) Records with a street gang. Willis, who cut her teeth wielding the state’s racketeering laws to prosecute schoolteachers, claimed (often through the use of lyrics, social media captions, and tattoos) that YSL was a front for “Young Slime Life,” a gang associated with the Bloods. She alleged a violent conspiracy that indicted 28 co-defendants, including YSL artists Gunna, Yak Gotti, and Duke, along with label head Young Thug, but failed to win convictions on the most serious charges. Still, Willis claims…

“I never actually wanted to be a DJ,” Simon Green, better known as versatile electronic producer Bonobo, recently told Mixmag. “It just kind of happened by accident.” Now, after 26 years spent exploring the nuances of downtempo and house music, he wants off the album-tour hamster wheel. Distance in Static is likely his last Bonobo album, he says—at least “in a traditional sense.” The British musician recently moved from Southern California to Japan and is eyeing film scores, art installations, and modular string quartets with Miguel Atwood-Ferguson as potential next steps. But for all his ostensible desire to stretch, he…

In his 20s, when Nate Amos was uploading his every musical impulse to Bandcamp, he released a particularly out-there tranche of songs focused on “technology corrupting nature,” he told the Guardian recently. He soon came to understand this noisy spell as a symptom of anxiety and depression: “The beauty was in the unknown, because I was having such a hard time with the known.” The newer work that’s made his name as This Is Lorelei is tellingly lucid by contrast, the work of someone who can now look discomfort dead on and make it beautiful.It doesn’t take a leap to…

The creators of South Park have issued an apology for the extensive delay of their upcoming movie with Kendrick Lamar – telling fans that they “still believe in the project”. In early 2022, it was revealed that Kendrick Lamar would be producing a live-action comedy film in collaboration with the creators of South Park, Matt Stone and Trey Parker. The following year, it was confirmed that besides producing, Parker would also direct the live-action movie. Virtually no information about the film has been shared since then, although it has been confirmed that Dave Free of Lamar’s label PgLang will co-produce,…

The show celebrated the 30th anniversary of Jay-Z’s debut album, Reasonable Doubt During Jay-Z’s headlining concert in Paris on Thursday, Justin Timberlake and Pharrell Williams joined him on stage as surprise guests. The packed show at Stade de France, the country’s largest stadium, was a continuation of Jay-Z’s 30th anniversary celebrations commemorating his debut album, Reasonable Doubt, dubbed “Jay-Z30.” Timberlake delivered a performance of “Holy Grail,” which features his vocals for Jay-Z’s 12th studio album Magna Carta Holy Grail. Timberlake also sang “Until the End of Time,” his duet with Beyoncé that was included in the deluxe edition of 2006’s FutureSex/LoveSounds. Williams,…

A California appeals court has rejected Jay-Z‘s attempt to revive his extortion and defamation lawsuit against the Texas lawyer who filed the stunning, since-dismissed complaint accusing the music mogul of raping a 13-year-old girl. In a 24-page ruling obtained by Rolling Stone, the appellate court said attorney Tony Buzbee did not act with malice when he briefly represented the woman who accused Jay-Z, whose legal name is Shawn Carter, of sexually assaulting her alongside Sean Combs at an afterparty for the MTV Video Music Awards in 2000. “The record contains no evidence Buzbee accused Carter of raping Jane Doe while…

Harry Styles has announced the “final” cities that he will play at as part of his ‘Together, Together’ tour, taking place in 2027 – and support comes from Kylie Minogue, LCD Soundsystem and more. The new dates come as part of his ongoing ‘Together, Together’ tour, which has so far seen him play a record-breaking 12 shows at London’s Wembley Stadium, as well as dates in Amsterdam, São Paulo and Mexico City. He is now playing an impressive 30 nights at New York’s iconic Madison Square Garden venue, which kicked off at the end of last month and has so…

Gilla Band have tackled “poverty of speech linked to mental health conditions” and schizophrenia on their blistering new single ‘Alogia’. The band are due to release their upcoming album ‘Pugnello‘ on September 25 via Rough Trade Records – pre-order it here. They kicked things off with their first new song in four years, ‘Giraffe’, followed by the abrasive ‘Placeholder’. Now, they’ve taken it up a notch with the jittering ‘Alogia’. Complemented by Kiely’s tortured vocals, it sees the narrator descend from fantasising about a life with “steady structure, routine and purpose” into a brutal breakdown, repeating syllables over and over until they…