Blossoms – At Most a Kiss

As results of the BBC Sound of 2016 poll arrived back in November, one act stood out among the list of mostly solo artists and producers creating future R&B, pop and grime. Blossoms, a Stockport five-piece with long hair, leather jackets and guitars, are an indie band, the kind who look, sound and swagger as if emerging bleary-eyed from Koko’s Club NME in 2005.

Read the rest of this article at The Guardian

Hello Operator are set to release their debut single ‘Stephanie’ on Ignition Records’ singles imprint Ignition 45’s on 8th January 2016. The track will be available to stream and download from 4th December 2015

Hello Operator draw influences from the likes of The Black Keys, Rage Against the Machine and Metallica giving them a raw and heavy take on rock ‘n’ roll music. ‘Stephanie’ is a hard-hitting debut; think crushing riffs, big melodies and crashing cymbals.

The band, who hail from York, formed in 2014 and caught the attention of their local BBC Introducing which landed them a slot at Reading/Leeds festival the same year. Since then, the band have gone from strength to strength.

In April 2015 they were picked up by Check On Talent, which subsequently led to the band signing with Sony/ATV Music Publishing Ltd and working with Ignition Records’ Ignition 45’s label.

Read the rest of this article at Trebuchet Magazine

Anderson .Paak – Come Down

Anderson .Paak‘s 2015 ascent deserves a celebration. “If I get too high now sugar come on, I might never come down,” the California singer yells on his latest single, the triumphant “Come Down”. It’s not a warning so much as a promise that .Paak isn’t going anywhere. “Come Down” is raw funk: a shifty bass line and shuffling drum loop propel the song. Early in the track, Hi-Tek flips a sample carrying the Israeli national anthem and reinvigorates the melody later with a wailing guitar on the fade-out. .Paak is in command though, and he leads the charge like a latter-day James Brown folding in contemporary hip-hop sensibilities.

Read the rest of this article at Pitchfork

On the heels of Kanye’s Good Friday release “Real Friends,” Erykah Badu offers her remix “Trill Friends: Badu Whodini rough mix.”

It is just as amazing as you think it would be. Badu is no stranger to the remix as she closed out the year with her version of Drake’s blockbuster hit “Hotline Bling.” Badu’s rendition “Cel U Lar Device” dropped right before she released her Drake inspired mixtape But You Cain’t Use My Phone.

“Trill Friends: Badu Whodini rough mix” picks up where Kanye left off and speaks on some friends that maybe shouldn’t be friends. She remixes some bars from Whodini’s “Friends, the word we use every day but most times we use it in the wrong way,” and even uses a few of her bars from other songs to drive the point across: “If you don’t believe in the love you’re missing a good thing, because I’m genuine, genuine yeah.”

Read the rest of this article at Rollingout

London-based, Zimbabwe-born Rationale is back following the release of his debut EP Fuel To The Fire with incredible upbeat offering, ‘Something For Nothing.’

“Something for Nothing’ is a groove-based disco-tinged love song written about someone I know,” he explains. “I was listening to a lot of Prince and watching Marvin Gaye/ Quincy Jones documentaries around the time I wrote it. I’m a big bass-line fan so when I wrote this one, I knew exactly where I wanted to take it.”

Read the rest of this article at The 405

David Bowie’s last days: an 18-month burst of creativity

For more than a decade before his death David Bowie seemed to disappear. Beset by ill health after an on-stage heart attack in 2004, he largely withdrew into a life at home in New York, becoming a ghost in the city where he had lived for a quarter of a century.

Yet as the world comes to terms with his death this week, admirers are digesting a remarkable late burst of creativity, a dramatic 18-month flourish capped by an apparently exquisitely well-crafted exit.

At 69, Bowie reasserted himself both as a musician – Blackstar, the album released two days before his death, is topping charts around the world – and as a questing creative figure whose vision is still playing out on the New York theatre stage.

How did Bowie pull this off from the penthouse duplex he shared with wife, Iman, and 15-year-old daughter, Lexi, in the Nolita section of downtown Manhattan?

The singer’s encroaching frailty meant he kept his life local. The theatre where his play Lazarus is running is no more than a few minutes walk away; Magic Shop, the studio where he recorded albums Blackstar and The Next Day, is even closer, on Crosby Street.

Read the rest of the story at The Guardian

The Tao of Starman: David Bowie in His Own Words, Throughout the Golden Years

David Bowie did hundreds of television, magazine, and newspaper interviews during his half-century career — from a stunning 1972 Melody Maker interview in which he proclaimed he was gay, and a legendary 1974Dick Cavett Show interview where his cocaine abuse and exhaustion were evident, to a candid 1976 Cameron Crowe interview for Playboy, and on through a funny, revealing 2002 GQ cover story.

Although Bowie didn’t always seem terribly pleased while doing an interview, and hadn’t given one in more than a decade before his death, there’s enough wit, wisdom, and advice present in what he left behind to last us a lifetime. In his early days, his willingness to give an inflammatory quote about anything controversial turned him into a celebrated misfit philosopher, a beacon for the disenfranchised. But as time went on, Bowie often seemed uncomfortable discussing some of his earlier exploits, and deflected questions with genteel humor and self-deprecation.

Although modest about his own accomplishments (because he disliked looking backward), Bowie was incredibly self-aware, which led to eloquent soundbites that spoke to what it meant to be an artist and to live a creative life. Above all, he was ferociously smart and curious, which kept interviewers on their toes and made conversations feel more like provocations than anything. He left us with a guidebook on how to live life on our own terms, a master at embracing the cutting-edge while never losing sight of the present moment.

Here are the must-read dispatches from Ziggy’s home planet.

Read the rest of the story at Vulture