Friends say he has a remarkable way of turning any place into a sacred chamber. | | | | Blood Orange at Coachella, April 14, 2019.
(Frazer Harrison/Getty Images) | | | | | | “Friends say he has a remarkable way of turning any place into a sacred chamber.”
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| | rantnrave:// One-fifth of the people who stream music apparently are driving 80 percent of the streaming's industry profits. If the music business begins to cater to their tastes, it's easy to see how there would be room for markedly fewer artists to ever be heard by those 20 percent, who might in turn make room for even fewer artists as the cycle continues. If this is our musical future, one should hope that an artist like DEV HYNES is one of the few allowed the opportunity to engage with these listeners. I received numerous texts from friends at Coachella with videos of BLOOD ORANGE playing a magnificent acoustic rendition of NEIL YOUNG’S "HEART OF GOLD" Sunday afternoon. Hynes is a singer, songwriter, composer and producer, and Blood Orange is his current project. The Young cover made me recall another amazing moment in his career. In August 2018, I saw Blood Orange perform at LINCOLN THEATER in Washington, DC. In the middle of his set, he broke into a dance that was part PRINCE, part DIDDY, part POSE, and it was everything. I knew I had witnessed something special. A gifted creator reaching another level of brilliance. "I ain't do this often," Hynes wrote on INSTAGRAM about that moment, "but honestly the love I felt last night in DC really hit me to my core. I felt a warmth and safeness I haven’t felt in any setting for a long time, if ever?” I’m generally a huge fan of whatever Hynes happens to be making—be it writing songs for SOLANGE, composing with PHILIP GLASS, or producing his own music under various names. I once described him to a friend as “the kind of creative I wish I was, in that he has the precise multitude of talents available to make deep, undefinable emotions, sentient.” The directness of Neil Young's original "Heart of Glass" gives an open look into the heart of a man whose creative spirit is larger than his body. On Sunday afternoon, Dev Hynes owned up to the weight of that spirit. It was a perfect song at the perfect time. At present, Spotify users choose to listen to DRAKE roughly 2500% per month than Blood Orange. In an era where streaming may be more a judgment of rampant popularity than of timeless quality, one hopes that artists like Hynes and streaming music fans can strike a balance with each other.
| | | - Marcus K. Dowling, guest curator |
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| | | falling off the lavender bridge |
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| "I just do my own thing, and I take it all with a grain of salt." | | |
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| One roadie’s guide to surviving nomadic life in the hardest-partying business on earth. | | |
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| A not-so-nostalgic look back at Woodstock (no, not that one) told by the people who were there to watch a generation burn it all down. | | |
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| New episode of Rolling Stone Music Now podcast looks at the Hollywood’s latest obsession with rock & roll. | | |
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| Raffi has opinions on Bernie, Trump, climate change, and immigration, and he isn’t shy about sharing them. Just don’t call him “political.” | | |
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| Every songwriter and musician distributing their music should know what they are and why they matter. It will help you avoid a lot of grief down the road. | | |
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| In recent years, so-called 'stream-ripping' has been labeled the music industry's most serious piracy threat. Interestingly, however, new figures suggest that the number of people engaged in the practice appears to be on the decline. But what are sites like YouTube, Spotify, and Deezer doing to help that progress along? | | |
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| In this PopMatters exclusive, legendary Motown songwriter/producer Valerie Simpson and the musicians behind "The Boss" recall how Ashford & Simpson brought Diana Ross back to number one. | | |
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| Best known as one London’s most radical and expressive music venues, the recently shuttered Total Refreshment Centre is also home to a self-built recording studio in which much of the capital’s resurgent jazz and experimental music has been forged. | | |
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| Los Angeles Review Of Books |
| Pop music has always been a particular way into cultural memory. Springsteen is perhaps our nation’s most beloved or reviled — depending on your tastes — archivist of cultural sentiment. | | |
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| | | life is sweet! nice to meet you |
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| On a clear afternoon in February, Scarub and I pulled up to an unassuming house in Richmond, California -- a neighborhood 12 miles Northwest of downtown Oakland. Armed with a few cameras, rolls of film, and a composition notebook containing interview questions, I knocked on Del The Funky Homosapien’s peep-hole-free front door. | | |
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| The whole thing is littered with references to the End Times. | | |
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| What insiders say will be the future intersection of music and technology. | | |
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| A new study highlights huge gender disparities at the top of the biggest labels. | | |
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| With performances from rising Spanish star Rosalía, Chilean singer Mon Laferte, regional Mexican titans Tucanes de Tijuana and one later today from Puerto Rican trap star Bad Bunny, Latin music has had its biggest-ever presence on the Coachella stages this year. | | |
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| What kind of crazy, f***ed-up world do we live in where a Korean boy band sings to track and blows away every performance on "SNL" this year? One in which Blackpink has been the highlight of Coachella so far. I mean you want to hate BTS, on principle. | | |
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| Most music streaming services cost around $10 a month for millions of songs -- but about one-fifth of subscribers determine the vast majority of payouts. | | |
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| What often starts as a passion for sharing and writing about music can turn into a career. | | |
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| The live streaming platform is getting into game development. | | |
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| An oral history of the famed “cultural laboratory” beloved by New York City’s downtown elite. | | |
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| | | | | | | I want to live / I want to give / I've been a miner for a heart of gold. |
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