Kendrick Lamar @ Leeds Festival (Gary Mather / Live4ever)
Our recap of the main stories we featured during the past seven days includes the reveal of new album plans from Kendrick Lamar and Hot Chip.
Kendrick Lamar has confirmed the release of Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers on May 13th via some old-school desktop folders.
“I spend most of my days with fleeting thoughts,” the contents of one reads. “Writing. Listening. And collecting old Beach cruisers. The morning rides keep me on a hill of silence.”
“I go months without a phone. Love, loss, and grief have disturbed my comfort zone, but the glimmers of God speak through my music and family.”
George Ezra will follow his big outdoor concert at Finsbury Park in London this summer with a UK and Ireland arena tour during September and October.
The tour has been arranged to start in Liverpool on September 13th, and will move on to Cardiff, Manchester, Newcastle, Birmingham, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Belfast, Dublin, Nottingham and Sheffield.
To go with the tour announcement a new single from Gold Rush Kid, Green Green Grass, has been shared.
Nick Cave will put out a collection of spoken word pieces set to music on vinyl and streaming services in the spring.
Produced by Cave along with Luis Almau, it also brings another collaboration between the Bad Seeds songwriter and Warren Ellis.
“While in lockdown I wrote a number of psalms, or small, sacred songs – one a day for a week,” he reveals.
Hot Chip by Matilda Hill-Jenkins
Hot Chip have been writing and recording new material at their Relax & Enjoy studio in London and will release their next album Freakout/Release on August 19th.
A staple of their live set for a while now, the band cite Beastie Boys’ classic Sabotage as a chief inspiration for their new record and how, ‘the idea of being out of control is always there in dance music, in a positive sense’.
“By the time we were able to be back together, we were turning on a tap and having a lot of ideas being poured out quite quickly,” Alexis Taylor says, while Joe Goddard adds that they assembled at Relax & Enjoy without any particular grand plan but a definite mood for improvisation.
Unholy Affliction is the latest single from Sophie Allison’s forthcoming new Soccer Mommy album Sometimes, Forever.
Meanwhile, after completing European and North American tours earlier this year, Allison will be back in the UK for more tour dates in the late summer.
There’s also a gig in Ireland on June 28th backing HAIM at Trinity College in Dublin.
Graham Coxon and Rose Elinor will play their first show together as THE WAEVE at London’s Lexington venue on Wednesday, May 4th.
Once that maiden gig is completed, Transgressive Records are then planning to release the duo‘s debut track Something Pretty the following day.
“We are greatly looking forward to unleashing our new sound live at the Lexington,” the pair have said.
