Author: Matt Doria

NME

After teasing the completion of his eighth studio album in March, John Mayer has taken to Instagram with the promise of an official announcement on the horizon.

Mayer wrote in an Instagram Story today (May 14), “I know many of you have been waiting patiently for my next album…

“I assure you it’ll all fire up very soon.

“I’ll put it like this: every day you have to go without my new music is another day I can work harder to make sure it gets heard by as many people as [sic] might enjoy it.

“I hope you’ll think it’s worth the wait.”

Back in March, Mayer confirmed that work on his next solo album had been completed, with a single being prepared for release. “My album is recorded, mixed and mastered,” he declared in a TikTok video. “I’ve just been chilling and sharing it with friends for the past couple of months.”

The new record will follow his seventh LP, ‘The Search for Everything’, which was released in 2017.

Mayer has been anything but quiet since his last longform offering, though. The Connecticut native released his platinum-certified standalone single ‘New Light’ in 2018, followed by ‘I Guess I Just Feel Like’ and ‘Carry Me Away’ in 2019.

Watch the video for ‘New Light’ below.

He’s also collaborated with a string of genre-diverse artists in recent years, including R&B trendsetter Khalid on the track ‘Outta My Head’, which appeared on Khalid’s acclaimed second album, ‘Free Spirit’. Other guest spots include three Travis Scott songs from the 2018 album ‘Astroworld’, two cuts with singer-songwriter Daniel Caesar on his 2019 album ‘Case Study 01’, and a track with the late Mac Miller on the 2018 ‘Swimming’ record.

Most recently, Big Sean revealed that he’s sitting on three unfinished tracks with Mayer, stating in a recent interview with NME that, “John and James Fauntleroy did a 17-hour lock-in session. I linked up with John one other time after that but we really gotta link back up soon. There’s at least two or three great ideas there.”

In addition to his musical efforts, Mayer is reportedly nearing a deal to host his own talk show, expected to launch on the Paramount+ streaming service. As reported in April, the show would feature performance segments and interviews with “musicians, artists and other cultural figures in a setting designed to look like an after-hours club”.

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NME

In a bid to encourage punters to vaccinate themselves against COVID-19, the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado will offer patrons free doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

9News reports that Red Rocks staff, in partnership with the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment, will dispense 100 doses of the vaccine to concertgoers at its upcoming events, with the initiative starting yesterday at a show headlined by EDM stalwart Diplo.

The jabs are being handed out on a first come, first serve basis, and those who take advantage of the offer will also receive a voucher for concessions and a t-shirt commemorating Red Rocks’ 80th anniversary.

“The entertainment industry only works when people are able to gather together, and a healthy audience is vitally important at Red Rocks,” said Red Rocks spokesperson Brian Kitts. “We’re making it easy to come to a concert and leave knowing that our fans have protected themselves, their families and their fellow music lovers.”

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is one of three COVID-19 vaccines approved in the US, alongside those from Pfizer and Moderna. At the time of writing, approximately 265million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine (brands disregarded) have been dispensed in the United States.

According to the New York Times, there has been an estimated total of 32.9million cases of COVID-19 in the US since it was first reported, and 584,000 deaths.

Though cases certainly aren’t as rampant as they were in the later months of 2020, the global coronavirus pandemic continues to wreak havoc on the entertainment industry. In the UK, the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) has warned MPs that 75 percent of the nation’s nightlife venues face bankruptcy without government assistance.

Earlier in May, a survey found that 75 percent of punters were happy to return to live music events if they sported COVID-safe certifications.

Several high-profile figures in the music and art worlds have urged their fans to get vaccinated, such as Demi Lovato, Annie Lennox and Britney Spears.

To that extent, country music icon Dolly Parton actually helped fund Moderna’s development of their COVID vaccine, donating £716,000 ($1million USD) to Nashville’s Vanderbilt University medical centre.

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NME

Skrillex has debuted a genre-bending new track, ‘Too Bizarre’, with vocals courtesy of hip-hop trailblazers Swae Lee and Siiickbrain.

• READ MORE: Skrillex Interviewed – 10 Things To Know About ‘Recess’

The track comes hot off the heels of Skrillex’s first single since 2019, ‘Butterflies’, which dropped last Tuesday (May 11) and features contributions from Four Tet and Starrah, who is also on vocal duties.

Watch the video for ‘Too Bizarre’ below.

Driven by a tight, distorted electric guitar line, ‘Too Bizarre’ furthers Skrillex’s recent trend of eschewing the glitchy, bass-heavy EDM he broke into the mainstream with at the dawn of the 2010s.

It’s not an entirely novel sound for the LA-based electro titan, however – before pioneering the dubstep boom with records like ‘Bangarang’ and ‘First Of The Year’ – Skrillex, real name Sonny Moore, was the lead vocalist in post-hardcore outfit From First To Last. Moore reunited with the band in 2017, releasing the single ‘Make War’.

Both ‘Too Bizarre’ and ‘Butterflies’ follow the 2019 release of Skrillex’s ‘Midnight Hour’ EP, and are expected to feature on his long-awaited second album. Skrillex released his debut full-length effort, ‘Recess’, in the first half of 2014, and has been teasing a follow-up regularly in the years since.

Swae Lee is set to release his second album, ‘Human Nature’, in the latter half of 2021.

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NME

Fucked Up have completed the ninth instalment in their ongoing Zodiac series with ‘Year of the Horse’, featuring guest vocals from indie-rock stalwart Julien Baker on the fourth track.

• READ MORE: The best hardcore albums of all time

The sprawling 26-minute track, split up into four “scenes”, ebbs and flows between the gristly hardcore Fucked Up are beloved for, melodic arena rock and passages of ethereal keys and trumpets.

Baker joins a cast of vocalists each ducking in and out of the track, including the band’s frontman Damian Abraham and drummer Jonah Flaco, Eidolon, Tuka Mohammed and Maegan Brooks Mills.

Listen to ‘Year of the Horse – Act Four’ in its entirety below.

‘Year of the Horse’ – which also features a guest spot from The National frontman Matt Berninger – was released in full today (May 7), with all four parts combining to span a monolithic one hour and 34 minutes. The effort follows 2017’s ‘Year of the Snake’ as the ninth instalment in the Canadian sextet’s Zodiac series, released periodically to coincide with the Chinese New Year. The series began in 2006 with ‘Year of the Dog’.

Initially exclusive to Bandcamp, ‘Year of the Horse’ will be released physically on Friday August 20 via Tankcrimes. In addition to a double LP and CD release, a heavily shortened version of the project will be offered on a unique 5-inch vinyl.

Fucked Up’s most recent album, ‘Dose Your Dreams’, landed in 2018. NME praised the offering in a four-star review, dubbing it an “intriguing embrace of the experimental, with this elaborate double record adding psychedelia, digital hardcore and, yes, doo-wop to the band’s already-cacophonous wall of noise”.

Baker released her third album ‘Little Oblivions’ in February. In a four-star review, NME’s Will Richards noted that, “Her pain and fury can be tough to hear, and there’s no tidy closing resolution to falsely declare that it’ll actually all be fine. Baker’s bravery in simply laying it out this way suggests that if you dig deep enough into yourself too, there’s some light to be found at the bottom. It’s a start, at least.”

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NME

The estate of controversial rapper XXXTentacion – real name Jahseh Dwayne Ricardo Onfroy – has announced the release of five non-fungible tokens (NFTs) featuring previously unreleased material in partnership with New York-based crypto-collectible upstart YellowHeart.

Watch a short teaser for the XXXTentacion NFT collection below.

Spearheading the release is the late rapper’s manager Solomon “Sounds” Sobande and his estate, overseen by his mother Cleopatra Bernard. In addition to previously unseen concert footage, the collection will include five songs from XXXTentacion’s extensive catalogue, all of which were published to his personal SoundCloud page but remain officially unreleased.

“Although they were all big on SoundCloud, we never had the opportunity to monetise them or bring them off platform,” Sobande told Rolling Stone, noting that the final compilation of tracks offered was decided after surveying “a bunch” of hardcore XXXTentacion fans.

“Some of these songs aren’t even on his SoundCloud page anymore. There are just the remnants of them being reposted. These were the songs that built his career and led up to the explosion he had.”

• READ MORE: The story of SoundCloud rap in 15 seminal songs

On the topic of whether XXXTentacion himself would have been on board with his art being monetised as an NFT, Sobande continued, “X was all about going straight to his consumers and fans. He would’ve went in depth to do something new, cool, and customised.

“I’m sure he would’ve made music just for this. For him, the record label stuff, distribution stuff, and all that stuff was extra. He just wanted to get the music out, touch his fans, and have a relationship with his core audience. There’s so much red tape you have to cut and go around when you’re trying to do an album, and you wouldn’t necessarily have to do that if you were doing an NFT.”

The NFTs will also feature exclusive artwork designed by Stephen Bliss, notable for his work on the Grand Theft Auto series – of which XXXTentacion was a noted fan.

NFTs have become a lucrative source of income for musicians in the past year, with many high-profile artists jumping on the bandwagon to offer fans ownership of rare digital collectibles. Recent offerings include an alternate music video for the late MF DOOM’s ‘Dead Bent’, a series of trading cards from kawaii-metal band Babymetal, and a collection of unreleased images from the last official photoshoot with Kurt Cobain.

YellowHeart is the first dedicated platform for music-based NFTs, founded as a ticketing service in 2017. The XXXTentacion collection will be the first offering on YellowHeart’s newly launched NFT marketplace. The company previously worked with rockers Kings Of Leon to release their latest album, ‘When You See Yourself’, as an NFT.

XXXTentacion was shot to death in Florida on June 18, 2018, aged 20. His estate authorised the release of two posthumous albums, the most recent being ‘Bad Vibes Forever’ in 2019. In NME’s review, Kyann-Sian Williams said the release featured “some really great tracks”, noting that “even if you do hate XXXTentacion, you cannot deny his influence on modern rap”.

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