Tag Archives: music-features

When Tom Gabriel Fischer looks back on his first band, the pioneering black-metal group Hellhammer, he still sounds rattled by the cold reception they got. “We were ridiculed,” he says in a low and sincere tone. “We weren’t taken seriously.” When the trio formed in the early Eighties, underground metal …

In 2017, the Nigerian artist Joeboy released a gliding cover of Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” — a twisty-turny take on the original, where Joeboy slips into double-time cadences during the verses, making the beat seem flat-footed in the process. At the time, Joeboy was unknown and unsigned. But one …

On Friday morning, Chance The Rapper‘s young and cherubic face loomed over my Spotify, without any new music attached. Earlier this week, he announced that his cult classic mixtapes, 2012’s 10 Day and2013’sAcid Rap, were joining the rest of his discography on all major streaming services after years of confined …

I saw Roky Erickson in performance for the last time on September 5th, 2017, at Rough Trade Records in Brooklyn. It turned out to be the best of the many Erickson shows I saw over almost three decades. I was not in the right space/time quadrant to see His Enduring …

This time around, punk rock is reborn in Dublin, Ireland; an American experimental institution comes to a striking end; and two archival releases affirm, again, that there is still astonishing music out there from the Sixties and Seventies that has never been heard before — and great stories to go …

Spotify has worked hard to improve its reputation amongst artists. The company has forged close ties with everyone from Shawn Mendes to Camila Cabello and Justin Timberlake in recent years – not long after it was being publicly harangued by the likes of Thom Yorke for both its business model, …

It took Montero Hill a few tries to perfect the art of going viral. “I was doing Facebook comedy videos, then I moved over to Instagram, and then I hopped on Twitter,” the 19-year-old says. “That is where I really was a master. That was the first place where I …

The standing ovation seemed to come as a shock. At last month’s Sundance Film Festival, Wade Robson and James Safechuck were teary-eyed as they faced the applause, following the premiere screening ofLeaving Neverland, an excruciatingly immersive documentary that accuses the late Michael Jackson of sexually molesting them as young boys. …

Outlaws are often solitary figures — the stranger come to town, the loner on a long night drive. Just as often, though, the outlaw is part of a larger group, whether it’s a gang, a band or a family. It’s that second kind, cast out of society but far from …

What were the Blues Brothers (with Jim Belushi) doing headlining the Super Bowl‘s halftime show in 1997 — while most of the actual soul and R&B singers they imitated were alive and well? (James Brown was there — as a “special guest.”) Why in the world was E.T. hanging out …