The Nine Inch Nails guys are canceling their film composer music festival. Back in May, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, now known for their Oscar-winning movie scores as much as their NIN pursuits, announced the inaugural edition of Future Ruins, a fest focused on iconic film composers. The event was set to go down Nov. 8 at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center, but as the LA Times points out, it’s not going to happen.
In New York City today, federal judge Arun Subramanian sentenced Sean “Diddy” Combs to four years and two months in prison. The judge told Combs, “This is a serious sentence that reflects the gravity of your crimes and conduct.” Combs is expected to file an appeal immediately.
Megadeth announced in August that they were prepping one last album and a farewell tour. At the time, there were no specifics about when we might expect that all to play out, but now Dave Mustaine and friends have provided clarity. The album will be self-titled, and it’s coming in January. We get to hear lead single “Tipping Point” today.
A couple of days ago, Fucked Up made a big announcement. After nearly 20 years, they’re finally ready to finish their sprawling Zodiac series — the run of long, complicated, increasingly ambitious records, each dedicated to a different year of the Chinese Zodiac calendar. The final three installments will be spread out over five LPs, which means we’re looking at a year where Fucked Up will release ten extremely long works of grand-scale rock ‘n’ roll opera. The first of those ten works is out now, and it’s really something.
“I got mad questions for you,” said Kanye West. Fiona Apple said, “No.” Apple was supposed to be asking the questions. This was the whole thing. The two artists had never spoken before, and she’d never interviewed anyone. But here, Kanye West and Fiona Apple both had new albums coming out, so Interview put the two of them on the phone together. She asked him some fairly quotidian things — about speaking in public, about how much sleep he got, about what kinds of dreams he had. But Kanye West knew that he was on the phone with Fiona Apple, and he wanted to make a moment out of hit. Their mutual collaborator Jon Brion came up in conversation, and Kanye West told Fiona Apple, “I actually wanted to work with him so I could be like the rap version of you. That was one of my main goals.”
Last year, the great Baltimore post-hardcore band Truth Cult announced their breakup and played their final show. Almost immediately afterward, Truth Cult’s electric frontman Parris Roberts launched his new band No Idols. The No Idols demo came out about a week after the last Truth Cult show, and it sounds absolutely nothing like Truth Cult. The new band’s lineup also includes members of groups like Bib and Angel Du$t, and they make unhinged, passionate ’80s-style hardcore. They play fast and intense, with a ton of attitude, and they sound like a runaway train that keeps speeding up but never quite derails.
Weirs is an oft-morphing musical collective based in central North Carolina, whose performances reportedly have featured between two and 12 members. Diamond Grove, out today, is their second album and first for Philly’s esteemed Dear Life Records. Recorded two years ago in the titular Diamond Grove region in Brunswick County, VA, it’s extremely deserving of your attention, and perhaps even your dollars, on this Bandcamp Friday.
In a few weeks, the great Texan garage-punks Radioactivity will release Time Won’t Bring Me Down, their first new album in a decade. Time has not brought them down. When the band shared the title track last month, it was our favorite new song of that week. Today, we get to hear another one.
The music that Travis Egedy makes under his Pictureplane alter-ego has never fit comfortably into any bucket. In the very beginning, he seemed to exist on the furthest edges of the blog-house universe. Then maybe he was witch-house. Or maybe he was making rave music for warehouse noise shows. These days, he’s doing, what, gothed-out Euro-house? You can always hear connections in his music, but the combinations keep changing, and nobody else sounds like this guy.
Irish indie rockers Just Mustard do something really cool on their new track “Endless Deathless.” It’s a shoegaze song in a lot of ways, with bleary guitar effects everywhere. But Katie Ball’s lead vocal has a dreamy, mocking quality that reminds me of the generation of college-rockers and janglers that came just before the original shoegaze wave. The rhythm section, meanwhile, goes for a fast, busy herky-jerk attack that comes off more as OG post-punk. So we’re going with at least three different genres of underground rock here without quite lining up with any of them. I like that. I like that the song is good, too.