"At 2 a.m., sitting up and contemplating our loss during my child's wake, I found myself reflecting on all the major news events that had left their mark on me through the years and the helplessness I sometimes felt to change anything. Writing the last verse was the most difficult and personal thing I've done."
With our music, I particularly like to be on the extremes of things. So if it's supposed to be pretty in your face, I like to be fairly in your face. And then at the same time, if it's kind of warm and gentle, I like that to be as warm and gentle as possible. I'm interested in those juxtapositions and making those, that's how we want it to come across.
I've done more books now, I think, than Shakespeare, sort of. I had a right laugh writing my first book, and people liked it, so when the chance to write another came up, I thought why not? I've got even more mad tales to tell.
Vernon's upbringing in Surrey was typical of many children born in the mid-1940s: he sang in his church choir, listened to the jazz and show tune LPs his parents owned and was bowled over by the arrival of rock'n'roll, responding most strongly to the likes of Little Richard, Fats Domino and Larry Williams.
Perhaps it's fitting that Al Bowlly's death is as well-remembered as his life, or rather, as his voice. After all, his most celebrated appearance in popular culture wasn't physical, but spectral. In Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980), when Jack Torrance enters the ballroom and the ballad titled Midnight, the Stars and You (1934) plays, the film reaches one of its most memorable moments.
David Bowie's childhood home at 4 Plaistow Grove in Bromley, South London, is set to be restored and opened to the public by late 2027. After the V&A East Storehouse David Bowie Centre opening (find designboom's previous coverage ), the modest terraced house, where Bowie lived from the ages of 8 to 20 (1955-1967), will be transformed into a public heritage site and creative hub for young people, offering workshops focused on artistic skills, confidence-building, and self-expression.
I wrote most of this song in December of 2005, we came together as a band a few months later. Ezra [Koenig] wrote pretty much all of the lyrics on our debut album, but this song was an exception. I was interested in creating a piece of music that was built around a cello, a kick drum, and a vocal that told a story. Robyn's 'Be Mine' was an inspiration.
The best song to play at a party It depends what stage of the party you are at. Early doors it would probably be I Heard It Through the Grapevine by Marvin Gaye. As the night wears on, I'd work through Prince, the Stones and Bowie, and when it really kicks off, Phat Planet by Leftfield, Born Slippy .NUXX by Underworld, and Ascension [Nic Fanciulli remix] by Gorillaz featuring Vince Staples, which is an absolute banger.
Two years after parting ways with Republic Records, James Blake will release Trying Times, his first independent studio album, on March 13 via Good Boy Records. "Death Of Love," the lead single with the London Welsh Male Voice Choir, is out now. Listen to it below. The 12-track LP features contributions from UK rapper Dave and Los Angeles-based vocalist Monica Martin. Blake first teased Trying Times to fans three days ago, through the website tryingtimes.info.
Dry Cleaning singer Florence Shaw likes to keep some distance between her vocals and the rest of the band. Shaw's curious confidences, spoken-word confessions, and bemused monologues appear to have only a passing relationship to the propulsive rhythms and brittle riffs that frame them. That dissonance can be striking at first, but it grows restrictive-stark contrast can only take you so far.
After seven solo albums, Tempest had begun thinking about working with others, and so the night before the recording session, he and Chatten repaired to Albarn's studio and wrote their verses together, responding to each other. It seemed to work really well, he says: A true collaboration. Nevertheless, he concedes, the actual recording of Flags proved to be quite the baptism of fire.
"A couple of years ago, I listened to a true crime podcast about a little-known singer-songwriter who had home-recorded her own wildly original music in the late 1950s and had then gone missing in the 1970s," says Carr. "That was the first time I had heard the name Connie Converse and within a week I had listened to her songs a thousand times.