The new Gorillaz album, plastic beach is out next week, and the video for ‘Stylo’, the first single to be drawn from was posted on YouTube yesterday – featuring an El Camino driving, sunglass toting, Bruce Willis. Bruce proceeds to chase the 3D animated crew across the California desert in a Mad Max style chase ending in true Hollywood style. We can’t embed the video, but you can watch it here, and check out the intro to their Plastic Beach concept below:
We posted a while back about Gil Scott-Heron’s forthcoming album, and it’s proven to be a very interesting piece of work. Utterly heartfelt and honest, you can hear the age and frailty in his voice as he recounts deeply personal experiences. His sense of meter and rhythm are unfaded, and the quality of his writing has lost some of its agression, but none of its fire. Strongly reccomend pouring a long drink and sitting down to listen to this one.
You can listen to the album it right here thanks to the wonders of the internet:
It’s been literally decades since the progenitor of hip-hop released anything, so we’re interested to see how this new work is received.
Christmas looms, and with it the prospect of a new X-Factor winner’s Christmas No.1 – and as we reported Susan Boyle’s recently released album has broken sales records all over the place, selling 411,820 copies in the first 3 days, beating the combined sales total of the rest fo the top 5, and dragon-punching Leona Lewis from the top spot all the way down to 5th place in the UK charts. The big prize is the top slot in the USA charts, and given the amount of hype surrounding the impending American release, it seems like a safe bet that Susan will knock Jay-Z off the podium in time for the stockings to go up over the fireplace.
If we do get another number one single from the upcoming X-Factor winner, then the high-waisted hero of Sony’s catalogue will have guided not one but two artists to the number one spot; even though Susan dropped out of the X-Factor competition, she still signed a contract with Simon’s record label. If he can just face down the chagrin of knocking off a charity single (Children in Need currently have the number one single) then Mr. C will have a lot to laugh about this Christmas. If you want to keep updated on how sales are going in the USA this Winterval, here’s a link to some live stats: http://www.hitsdailydouble.com/sales/salescht.cgi
Birmingham, England rock band Editors achieved their second consecutive No. 1 debut on the new U.K. album chart yesterday, while pop vocalist Alexandra Burke scored a new singles bestseller.
“In This Light and On This Evening” (Kitchenware), Editors’ third album, entered at the summit, just as “An End Has A Start” did in July 2007. U.K. rapper Chipmunk, who had last week’s No. 1 single with “Oopsy Daisy” (Jive/Sony Music Entertainment), followed up with a No. 2 start for the album “I Am Chipmunk.” With Madonna’s “Celebration” (Warner Bros.) down 2-3, there was also a new entry at No. 4 for Shakira’s “She Wolf” (Epic/Sony Music Entertainment).
Last week’s No. 1, Barbra Streisand’s “Love Is The Answer” (Columbia/Sony Music Entertainment), fell to No. 7. Female pop band the Saturdays opened at No. 9 with “Wordshaker” (Fascination/Polydor/Universal), while British R&B star Taio Cruz, recently No. 1 for three weeks in the singles chart with “Break Your Heart” (4th & Broadway/Universal Island), came in at No. 14 with his second album “Rokstarr.”
On the other hand Alexandra Burke who had the Christmas No. 1 last year with “Hallelujah” only days after winning the 2008 series of “The X Factor”, made it two chart-toppers from two singles as “Bad Boys” (Syco Music/Sony Music Entertainment), featuring Flo Rida, went straight to the chart peak with sales of 185,000 units, according to the Official Charts Company – the biggest weekly sale for a single this year. Burke’s debut album “Overcome” is released in the U.K. today (Oct. 19).
R&B star R. Kelly has plans to finish the album Michael Jackson was supposedly working on before his death in June. In an interview with Blackvoices.com, Kelly said that he and the King of Pop had been speaking not long before Jackson’s death about helping complete the album.
It was Kelly who penned one of Jackson’s biggest hits, the ballad “You Are Not Alone.” The platinum-selling single was the first record to debut at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 when it debuted in 1995.
“I recorded five joints for Michael Jackson,” Kelly said.
“This studio here is where Michael recorded. And we had been talking on the phone about his new album, and I was going to finish what Michael was doing at the time. We’re going to get it out though. Michael liked the way I would try to sing the songs just like him.”
The U.K. recorded music business held up reasonably well in 2008 with trade value down by 5.3% to £894 million ($1.368 billion) and retail value down by 6% to £1.308 billion ($2.002 billion), according to new figures from trade body the BPI. That compares to falls of 13% and 15% for, respectively, trade and retail value between 2006 and 2007.
In 2008 album sales were still on the decline by 3.2% by volume while at the same time digital album sales was up 65% from 2007. Digital albums by Coldplay, Duffy and Kings of Leon each moved more than 100,000 units last year.
The figures also show that 109.8 million single tracks were downloaded in 2008, a 41.6% year-on-year increase. Digital tracks now account for 95.3% of the singles market.
“The rapid growth of the digital market is clear evidence that British record companies have the business models in place to deliver music to fans online,” said BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor in a statement.
“The impressive fact that one pound in every ten is earned online shows that labels are leading the way in the entertainment world in developing digital services.”
He added: “BPI’s research also shows that U.K. record companies invest 21% of turnover on sales in A&R expenditure – identifying and developing new musical talent – over the last three years.”
Rock was still the dominant genre in the albums market, representing 35.7% of sales, while pop increased its share from 22.3% to 25.3%.
In the retail sector, specialists still dominate the albums market, with HMV the market leader with a 24.1% share by expenditure. Tesco is the biggest mass merchant with a 10.5% share, while iTunes has 5.7% total market share in the U.K. and dominates the digital album market. The Internet home delivery services, including Amazon and Play.com, account for 17.6% of the market.
For singles, iTunes’ share of expenditure is up to 65.7% of the market, while unit share is 71.8%.
Research also shows that 7.2 million MP3 players were sold in 2008, with a third of the U.K. population now owning one. Almost a third (28%) of 16 to 24 year olds listen to music at least weekly on a mobile phone, with one in 10 using services such as Spotify and Last.fm at least once a week.
Source: Billboard
Coke first previewed a new album during Midem in January which collaborates members from Gnarls Barkley, Fall Out Boy, Panic At The Disco and Gym Class Heroes. Now Coke has properly debuted tracks in TV ads, while also being heavily promoted online and sold through iTunes.
Over at MusicAlly they have pointed out that the new U2 album (No Line On The Horizon) is currently on Amazon’s US Mp3 store for only $3.99. However, because we are based in the UK there is nowhere we can get this album for so cheap, until now. Tesco has taken the step forward and is now selling the new U2 album in a week-long deal for ony £3.97.
This shows that the digital music store price wars are about to heat up! However, you will notice that iTunes never seems to get into these price wars.
Huge, gritty basslines, new wave and electro guitars and songwriting join up with buzzing guitar hooks in a grungey Nirvana style to back up a weird, caterwauling vocal. An album both spiky and approachable, this has got more depth to it than is at first obvious, especially in terms of production. Look forward to a second album, hopefully before too long. I bet whoever played guitar and keyboard is a wonderful person, and is an asset to his company, wherever he works, and deserves a raise.
Memotone is somewhere between Lemon Jelly and the Cinematic Orchestra, which for a one man act, recording on an 8 track and a laptop is a pretty incredible achievement. William Yates has put together a bewilderingly large array of instruments into a really crystal clear, deep and textured soundscape, blending live instruments, samples, glitchy computer noises and sound effects like air raid sirens, lairy kids arguing in corridors and canned laughter. There are odd moments of humour and unease, drifting clouds of sound, sharp beats that bring you back to your senses and then drop away again to let warm, live double bass lines pour into your ears and build into complex little sonic poems that wrap back to the beats. I really like it. If I wasn’t already listening to it, I would buy a copy. In fact, petition him to get vinyl pressed, so I can buy a copy.
http://www.myspace.com/williamyatesmusic
<– Buy it on iTunes
<–buy it on iTunes