That’s just music

The Smashing Pumpkins had uploaded a video (YouTube), which is giving some curious information about their new album, notably, it will be called “Oceania” and should hit the stores in September this year. As the band’s leader Billy Corgan had noted, the biggest amount of songs is practically finished and in the nearest time musicians will take it to the studio in order to finish everything. Curiously, in 2009 the band had announced the long lasting project titled “Teargarden By Kaleidyscope” which should totally include forty four songs; every finished song is getting uploaded on the Internet and is available for free. Songs from the latter album are appearing every few months since 2009 and seem to be absolutely awesome. Also, The Smashing Pumpkins did produce two mini-albums totally with eight songs from “Teargarden By Kaleidyscope”, and they’re planning to continue working with it in the future. This is the major reason why Corgan had labeled “Oceania” an “album within the album” because it appears to be as another half or side of the “Teargarden By Kaleidyscope”. In the following three years he wants to re-produce the band’s early albums with some rare bonus tracks, the first one will be “Siamese Dream” (1993) - it will hit the stores by the end of 2011, so all his promises already appear as something solid and truthful. “Siamese Dream” will be re-mastered, thus people shall most likely hear the new version, possibly with a lot of new technicalities and sounds.

Parts of George Harrison’s diary will be included into a book called “Living in the Material World: George Harrison”, which should hit the stores in autumn this year, said Contactmusic. These diaries, some letters and rare photographs were given out by his widow Olivia Harrison, and the whole idea of publishing is dedicated to the release of a documentary (it carries the same title as this book). Notably, the movie will be filmed and produced by Martin Scorcese himself; at the same time he had written a foreword, so readers may take a look at his words about Harrison. This great director had finished working on this film way back in May 2010 and the whole work took him nearly three years, but due to his other movie projects Scorcese didn’t rush anywhere. Olivia Harrison gave out a lot of rare video footages that didn’t appear in any other movies or television programs, thus fans or just those who are interested should get truly curious about an upcoming release. Scorcese was not the first director who was asking Olivia to share her archive, however, those others weren’t successful at all, she did not trust anyone except him and his talent. Most likely she was quite honest when dealing with other directors, Scorcese is definitely unique, possibly he is the only person who was capable of carrying out this job, so the best thing to do right now is just wait for the release and see it.

Organizers of the infamous Lollapalooza music festival had published the list of those bands that will participate in the event, so now it’s known that Coldplay, Foo Fighters, Muse and Eminem should headline the whole thing. Others include Cee Lo Green, The Cars, A Perfect Circle, Deftones, Ween, Arctic Monkeys and The Kills, so most likely nobody will get disappointed because this kind of variety must be truly appealing to literally everyone. Those who like industrial genre shall see A Perfect Circle and for instance hip hop fans will surely admire Eminem, in other words there will be no dissatisfaction and organizers had definitely foreseen it. It’s not new or strange to take out different genres and put them on one stage at a time, modern festivals do it all the time unless it’s managers want to loose money. Totally one hundred and twenty performers are planning to visit Lollapalooza-2011, which is marking it’s twentieth anniversary. This festival was invented by the Jane’s Addiction vocalist Perry Farrell and was carried out for the first time during the summer of 1991. Originally this event was taking place in many cities, but it didn’t include as many performers as today, however, the fact that it was not static often seems to be more appealing in terms of logistics, a lot of fans were not suppose to travel. In 1991 such legends as Siouxsie and the Banshees, Ice-T and Nine Inch Nails were presented, but the latter band was not considered to be legendary at that time.

Yet un-started Apple music service may be implemented earlier than another similar project planned by Google, noted Reuters relating this information to some anonymous sources in both companies. Apple’s project is almost done and may be ready to go on as soon as possible, thus Google should either make it’s own thing look even better or just get it finished in order to let it out before Apple, however, this is not going to happen. Apple’s service will enable it’s users to save music and later listen to it anywhere they may get an Internet access, but everyone should keep in mind one little fact, this is related exclusively to those music files that were purchased at the iTunes store. Currently Apple is talking to it’s numerous partners in order to receive an agreement which should enable them to spread/advertise music  in the way they’ve originally planned. According to the most recent rules users can download and save the same track only once, if the file was erased or damaged then it must be purchased again, money will not come back. All Things Digital blog insists on the fact that Apple was able to settle advertisement/spreading issue with two labels, but there is no exact information; it may be Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony or EMI. Today Reuters truly believes that Apple will make it first, and no other company can kick them out.

Infamous British musician and producer Brian Eno had announced his new studio album titled “Drums Between The Bells”. Eno’s official website is saying that this disk will be released by the Warp record label at the binning of July this year. At the same time anyone can listen to one of the songs called “Glitch” which is already located directly on the website. Curiously, he had decided to do what numerous musicians do today, the whole release should include regular CD version and vinyl, something what seems quite strange, but for some reason remains to be popular among those who like to collect it. Both releases will include two disks, one with Rick Holland’s texts, and another should be exclusively instrumental. Besides all of the presented formats the album may be available in the digital format too, so obviously modernity will be accepted alongside with vinyl artifacts. As Eno had recently noted, his co-working with Holland began sometime at the beginning of 2000, and their joint tracks were composed in 2003, however, none of them will be included into “Drums Between The Bells”. His previous album “Small Craft on a Milk Sea” was also produced by the Warp and came out in October last year; this album was his first co-operation with the latter label. Curiously, a lot of bands that who work with Warp (Aphex Twin, Autechre, Boards of Canada and Plaid) constantly use Eno’s ideas.

The National is thinking about creating a tribute album, which is going to be dedicated to The Grateful Dead, noted Rolling Stone. The guy who is controlling this project is the band’s bassist Scott Devendorf, and the rest of musicians is planning to prepare one cover song; currently they’re looking at many of them, but most likely “Box of Rain” and “Unbroken Chain” will be chosen out of the rest. Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver and composer Steve Reich had announced their presence too, so The National will not be alone with their one song. Devendorf had also said that he is contemplating on inviting some unexpected bands such as Crystal Castles and maybe some more of their kind. The whole project should be charitable and practically all the gained money will be given to the non commercial fund called Red Hot Organization, which is working on bringing public attention to the problem of AIDS. Today The National’s discography includes five studio albums, the latest one “High Violet” came out in May 2010, it was warmly applauded and was able to sneak onto a third place at the Billboard 200 list. This band seems to be the one which likes to cover others and it’s not happening just because they don’t have their own material, such bands do it either for fun or in order to bring some attention to those musicians who had left the stage a long time ago.

Radiohead is going to spread it’s new single “The Butcher/Supercollider” in a digital format for free, noted Gigwise. Musicians had decided to send a letter with this information to everyone who had recently purchased their latest album through the Internet. The release of the latter single on vinyl(!) was dedicated to the Records Store Day; in 2011 this event was celebrated on April 16. This curious single was extremely limited, and the band is not even planning to release more of it, so no hopes whatsoever. Radiohead guys had finally produced their eighth studio album “The Kind of Limbs” in February 2011, this record was announced only a few days before it was released in a digital format. CD’s came out just a little later in March this year. This album contains merely eight songs, and it’s total length sums up to thirty seven minutes. Eventually numerous fans began to suspect another half due to the album’s limited size, however, the band is not even contemplating to continue any sort of work with it. Strangely, fans are often believing something what musicians are not doing at all, or in contrast musicians sometimes expect their fans to act in some way the latter will never act. Most likely Radiohead is thinking more about it’s future record and hopefully it will be out sometime during the following year.

Organizers of the Glastonbury-2011 festival had published the full list of those who are going to participate at the event this year. The whole list can be seen at the festival’s official website. As it was previously said, Glastonbury-2011 is going to welcome such artists as Beyonce, Coldplay and U2. The latter was planning to do it during the previous year, however due to it’s leader’s (Bono) trauma they couldn’t perform. This year’s “Pyramid stage” (Glastonbury’s major stage) will be marked by such people as Paul Simon, BB King, Elbow, Wu Tang Clan, Plan B and Pendulum; other stages should welcome TV on the Radio, Primal Scream, Graham Coxon, Cee Lo Green, The Chemical Brothers and many more. Glastonbury-2011 will take place from 22 to 26 of June (all major performances are planned for 24 and 26, traditionally the second half). Tickets were sold out in October 2010; at that time not a single artist was officially announced, but every ticket went away just in a few hours, as it seems people truly admire this festival. Currently, it’s not concentrating merely on rock n’ roll, almost every genre of music is welcomed and possibly this is the main reason why so many folks wish to get there, in other words everyone can listen to something good. A lot of critics though constantly criticize it for being too vague and commercialized, but they’re missing the fact that public still enjoys it, and there is no reason to be jealous.

One of the Radiohead musicians Ed O’Brian had denied all the rumors that surrounded his band and it’s latest album “The King of Limbs”, noted BBC Radio 6. Particularly, many people believed that they’re planning to continue working with the latter release, thus some hardcore fans began to expect another half or second CD. “The King of Limbs” is so far the band’s latest album, which came out this year (digital format release - February 18, 2011, and CD release - at the end of March); totally it includes merely eight tracks, and this is the main reason behind these backdoor talks. Some fans just couldn’t believe that Radiohead will not continue any kind of work, the original material is simply too short and appears to be not typical according to the band’s previous standards of length. Another factor was based on the last song’s title “Separator”, in other words it could mean the division between two different, but somehow connected works. Also, the previous album consisted of two CDs, and according to many opinions Radiohead had enough material to produce more than eight songs. However, right now all of these ideas were completely disproved by O’Brien, so fans should not be expecting any sequel. “When we start a new record, we tend to start afresh. It’s kind of an evolutionary thing - only the fittest survive,” he had underlined.

An online store Amazon had improved it’s mp3 sales due to the newly started Cloud Drive music service, noted Billboard. This information was sent as an e-mail by Amazon to the major record labels, however, without any actual proves of how such sales rose up; there is no technicality. Amazon had started the Cloud Drive at the end of March this year by allowing it’s users to access some form of the ‘virtual hard drive’, which contains music files. They can upload music to that virtual space and later listen to it with the help of any computer, smart-phone or any other gadget which is based on the Android mobile operational system. At the same time Amazon is giving the free space of five gigabytes in order to store music, and if someone wants to expand this space up to twenty gigabytes then a user will have to pay 20$ per month. Additionally, if any user who had purchased the whole album (mp3 format only) will be allowed to possess another fifteen gigabytes without paying any extra money. Besides all of the above mentioned things, mp3 music that was bought at the Amazon store should be automatically saved by the Cloud Drive, but it will not be taken into an account of the free space given to the users of the latter service. This newly invented source is pretty cool and mobile by it’s gadget like nature and surely will be loved by many.