DMA’S – Delete

DMA’s haven’t released their debut LP yet and they’ve already found mass success … in Australia. That is all about to change, however. The Australian trio — Tommy O’Dell, Matt Mason and Johnny Took — are on the verge of conquering the U.K., the U.S. and perhaps all of planet Earth. They’ve tackled the air waves back home in Australia and sold out their first national tour; their single, “Delete,” was recently added to BBC Radio 1; they will be playingSXSW; Zane Lowe is a fan; and they’re part of the recently announced Coachella lineup, where they seem poised to be a breakout act.

Read the rest of this article at buzzbands.la

Foals seem to be taking the minimalist approach to their videos this album cycle ’round. Hell, they even got freakin’ Nabil to direct a narrative, and it was largely just a simple breakup story. The rest of them have been strictly performance-based, from their one for “Mountain At My Gates” (Nabil again) to their series of CCTV sessions. So it should come as little surprise that their new clip for What Went Down track “Birch Tree” is a simple hang-out-with-the-band-in-LA affair, directed on Super 8 by Dave Ma. But at least it looks like they had a good time!

Read the rest of this article at Stereogum

The Hour – No One’s Going To Heaven

With the kind of sequence of sounds that leads off “No One’s Going To Heaven”, the debut track from mysterious new act The Hour, you know you’re getting into something special. Aside from the video they’ve shared, all we know about the act is that they’re from the UK (Annie Mac just played the track on BBC 1 Radio) and that they shared their number, 07508425274 (it’s a UK one). So, if you’re not satisfied with only hearing their one track below, hit them up, and if you do, let us know what they say.

Read the rest of this article at Hillydilly

Back in July The Chemical Brothers released their first new studio album in five years, Born in the Echoes, via longtime label Astralwerks. Now the British electronic duo has shared a video for “Wide Open” (which has vocals by Beck). Dom&nic, who have worked with The Chemical Brothers before, directed the clip, feature features a dancer as she slowly transforms into something more translucent. Watch it below.

A press describes the making of the video as such: “Dom&nic’s vision was to merge the mechanical and organic, having been inspired by procedural cellular structures;  their VFX Team created a full CG model of the dancer, Sonoya Mizuno, comprising of 107 individual anatomic rigs, as well as bespoke tools to allow the seamless transformation which happens during the dance.”

Read the rest of this article at Under The Radar

Surfacing this week on Taso’s new EP is a track he made with Teklife founders Spinn and Rashad before the latter passed away. Rashad was “the Jimi Hendrix of the MPC,” says Taso, a reference to footwork’s go-to production tool, the MPC sequencer-sampler.

Read the rest of this article at Hype Machine Stack

Paul Kantner 1941-2016

PAUL LORIN KANTNER – who died yesterday (January 28, 2016) aged 74 – was the bespectacled beatnik heartbeat of Jefferson Airplane and, later, Jefferson Starship.

Already a veteran of the San Francisco folk scene when he teamed with singers Marty Balin and Grace Slick and lured his folk buddy guitarist Jorma Kaukonen into the embryonic Airplane, he would become one of the key figures of the Haight-Ashbury counterculture axis, with his band, along with the Grateful Dead and the Quicksilver Messenger Service, headlining December 1966’s landmark Human Be-In in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, the precursor to what would become known as 1967’s Summer Of Love.

Arguably, they were the most eclectic and unpredictable of the SF groups, maintaining the volatile Balin-Slick vocal attack and a mindblowing weave of jazz, folk, rock and political strands. But for all their disparate influences and competing impulses they were indubitably powerful, and in Slick they boasted one of rock’s most fearsome instruments. Critic Leonard Feather may not have meant to be flattering when he described their Monterey Jazz Festival performance of 1966 as having “all the delicacy and finesse of a mule knocking down a picket fence” but advertisements for exciting rock’n’roll don’t much more succinct.

Read the rest of the story at Mojo

DJ Khaled’s Journey of Success Started Long Before Snapchat

“He was quiet.” Imagine that. Of all the words in all the land one could use to describe DJ Khaled, Gary Holzenthal chose “quiet.” It would have been less jarring to learn that his best friend was a llama. “We have had our fair share of characters, but as far as I remember, at least in the workplace, Khaled wasn’t one of those guys,” Holzenthal says. He doesn’t remember how exactly the then-18-year-old came to work at Odyssey Records, Holzenthal’s tiny store in the Carrollton Shopping Plaza in Mid-City New Orleans. But he does remember hiring him. The year was 1993. Khaled was skinnier, but not skinny. Baggy clothes hid a lumpy frame, and his eyes, coffee black, looked slightly melted, microwaved until just warm. Holzenthal pulled him aside to fill out some paperwork his first day on the job. “OK, give me your name.” “My name is Khaled Khaled.” “What do you mean ‘Khaled Khaled’? What’s your last name?” “Khaled.” “Well, what’s your first name?” “Khaled.” “So when I write the check out to you, I’m writing Khaled Khaled on the check?” “Yes, sir.”

Read the rest of the story at Miami New Times

Massive Attack: ‘There was always someone out there ready to bash your head in’

Backstage at the Dublin Olympia Theatre, down a corridor decorated with a painting of Phil Lynott so hideous it appears to have been painted by someone with a longstanding personal grudge against the late Thin Lizzy frontman, Massive Attack’s dressing room is tiny, scruffy and stiflingly hot. In its confines sit Robert “3D” Del Naja and Grant “Daddy G” Marshall. The former is voluble and intense, the latter friendly but even more laconic than he was the last time I met them, in 2009, a state of affairs I didn’t think was possible. “Why don’t you say something?” asks Del Naja plaintively, at one juncture: “I don’t want to say anything,” frowns Marshall, famously no great fan of the interview process. “I’ve got nothing to say. I don’t need to talk about anything.”

Glamour is in very short supply in the dressing room, unless you count the large framed photo of David Bowie – with whom Massive Attack once collaborated on a version of the jazz standard Nature Boy – exuding insouciant cool on the Olympia’s stage, and a large wicker basket that has just been delivered, containing champagne, Guinness, a recipe for black velvet cocktails and a card welcoming them to Dublin. “It’s from U2,” Marshall says.

“A very nice gesture,” Del Naja agrees, reading the card. “‘Best of luck.’” He frowns. “We need it. We need all the fucking luck we can get.”

Read the rest of the story at The Guardian