Videos
Following a series of teasers and videos, Queens of the Stone Age have released a 15-minute animated short film preceding the release of their upcoming album . . . Like Clockwork. The film follows a string of discomfiting clips the band has released over the past week, including an animated video last Friday for "My God Is the Sun."
The new film strings together several songs and combines them with images by artist Boneface and animator Liam Brazier for an effect that Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme describes in a release as "an audio commentary of a manic year."
The multiple passages in the video, which includes the full-length video for "My God is the Sun," follow a nightmarish logic. The first segment features a bandaged and bloodied man being dragged by some unknown force through a desert landscape as crows, rats and other scavengers look on hungrily. The man is levitated across a cliff and later free falls through an urban cityscape before the scene transitions to a carnival-esque character roaming dimly lit streets and alleys, windows shattering as the character passes.
. . . Like Clockwork, due out on June 4th, features contributions from Dave Grohl, Trent Reznor, Elton John, original bassist Nick Oliveri, Mark Lanegan, Arctic Monkeys singer Alex Turner and Scissor Sisters frontman Jake Shears.
In a clip we posted earlier we see Khuli Chana moments before receiving three SAMAs for Best Male Artist, Best Rap Album and Album of the Year for Lost In Time.
This clip sees an exhilarated Chana backstage moments after receiving his third SAMA for Album of the Year.
Khuli Chana finally got his moment to shine at this year's SAMAs as all the years of hard work finally paid off for the former Motswako protégé. He took home the coveted Best Male Artist, Best Rap Album and Album of the Year awards for Lost In Time.
Rolling Stone feature writer, Suede, caught up with Chana backstage only moments before winning his first award on the evening.
On Saturday night, the 11th May, youngster Toya DeLazy walked away with two South African Music Awards for Newcomer of the Year and Best Pop Album for Due Drop Deluxe – while Jax Panix scooped the Best Producer on the Friday night for his work on her album.
Rolling Stone features writer, Suede, caught up with DeLazy backstage shortly after receiving her 3rd SAMA and she had this to say about it: "When I look back now, all that hard work... playing at open bars, playing at pubs, carrying my piano on my scooter to go play somewhere... even though I wasn't even getting paid at all. All that investment was for that moment right now."
Renowned filmmaker Aryan Kaganof and RS correspondent Nobhongo Gxolo recently met up with American jazz pianist, record producer and Grammy winner Robert Glasper at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival for a chat about religion, politics, equality... and of course they also talked about the music.
"We're fighting to keep that spirit of what Hip Hop and the music really fundamentally is about – you know? Which is the message and the feeling, you know what I'm saying?", riffs Ben Sharpa in this short film by renowned documentary film maker Aryan Kaganof. The left field rapper recently performed tracks of his album 4DLS at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival with his crew, Pure Solid.
Two Door Cinema Club try to keep their heads out of the gutter in their new video for "Handshake." Behind sparkling synthpop, the Northern Irish alt-rockers enter a bizarre reality where people are murdered and their decapitated, still-lucid heads are used as bowling balls, making for a grisly league night.
"Handshake" is on Two Door Cinema Club's second album, Beacon. The band recently spoke to Rolling Stone about moving to different locations after living together during the recording of their two albums. "[It] feels like we're sort of gaining independence in a way," frontman Alex Trimble said. "For six, nearly seven years we've been a band and we're gonna be individuals doing our own things in our own homes; it's a privilege that we just haven't been able to enjoy."
After dropping their 2nd LP, Meir, in March of this year, Norwegian metal/punk outfit, Kvelertak, gathered all the footage from their recent album release tour in Europe (London, Cologne, Paris and Oslo) to create their latest video for the song "Kvelertak" (yes, they've named the song after their band).
"To direct my first music video with one of the best rock acts on the block is nothing less than a career high and a dream come true! For this video concept I travelled on tour with the band across europe to capture the (true) essence of Kvelertak", said video director Stian Andersen.
Kvelertak - Kvelertak from Roadrunner Records on Vimeo.
click to buy: http://smarturl.it/meirkvelertak
Last night, twenty-two years ago, Nirvana debuted an in-progress song called "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at the OK Hotel in Seattle. The group was weeks away from beginning work on Nevermind at Sound City Studios, and they had been hard at work writing new songs for months. "I was trying to write the ultimate pop song," Kurt Cobain told Rolling Stone in 1993. "I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies. I have to admit it. We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard."
The band didn't initially feel the song was anything special. "It was such a cliched riff," said Cobain. "It was so close to a Boston riff or 'Louie, Louie.' When I came up with the guitar part, Krist [Novoselic] looked at me and said, 'That is so ridiculous.' I made the band play it for an hour and a half."
Many others also compared the riff to"More Than a Feeling," and Cobain even sang a few lines from Boston's 1976 classic during the beginning of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at the Reading Festival in 1992.
The song broke them through to a mainstream audience in a way nobody could have expected. MTV played the video endlessly, and the attention helped them knock Michael Jackson off the top of the charts. Still, the group had a complex relationship with their most beloved song. "Everyone has focused on that song so much," Cobain said. "I think there are so many other songs that I've written that are as good, if not better, than that song, like 'Drain You.' On a bad night, I can barely get through 'Teen Spirit.' I literally want to throw my guitar down and walk away. I can't pretend to have a good time playing it."
That internal blowback was years away on April 17th 1991 at that tiny club in Seattle. Notice that some fan yells for "Free Bird" seconds before the song begins. There's one guy at every show making that tired joke, even at a hugely historical moment like that.
As part of his duties as official ambassador for this year's Record Store Day on Saturday, April 20th, Jack White and his label Third Man Records will open their very own Third Man Recording Booth in Nashville to the public. The refurbished 1947 Voice-o-Graph is the only public vinyl record recording booth in the world, and it will let fans record up to two minutes of audio that's cut to a six-inch phonograph disc. You can see singer-songwriter and Ranconteur Brendan Benson demonstrating how the Third Man Recording Booth works in the White-directed clip above.
"Actively venturing to your local record shop is one of those honors and privileges in this life that we just shouldn't take for granted," said White in a statement. "Certain beautiful experiences can only happen in the environment of a record store and I just thought that nothing could drive that point home more than a one-of-a-kind machine that lets you not only record your own vinyl record, but send it to anyone, anywhere in the world to share a song, poem, or private message with. I know those warm, scratchy tones send tingles up (and sometimes down) my spine. Even if you aren't instrumentally inclined, you could hold up an iPhone playing a song and sing along with the music and combine the best of all worlds tangible, digital and romantic."
