Music news, reviews, comment and features | guardian.co.uk

Latest news and features from guardian.co.uk, the world's leading liberal voice

09/02/2010 03:29 PM

Hurts: Happiness

Hurts have the backstory and the image down pat, but the songs just don't stick, says Alexis Petridis

Anyone concerned about the veracity of information found on the internet might look long and hard at the case of the Wanky Balls festival. According to a recent feature in the Independent, this was the name under which The Big Chill started life, before understandably rebranding itself. Alas, the Wanky Balls festival existed only in the mind of an online mischief-maker: here was an object lesson in not just copying your information from Wikipedia without checking it first.

Some coverage of the Mancunian duo Hurts has had what you might call a touch of the Wanky Balls about it as well. At first glance, they appear to be another in a line of 80s-inspired pop wannabes. Their videos resemble a Guinness World Records attempt to cram as many Thatcher-era visual cliches into three minutes of film as possible: you watch the trenchcoat-clad figures trudging through snowy Mitteleuropean cities and women in black cocktail dresses and fascinators throwing meaningful shapes by swimming pools, and you are gripped by the certainty that Max Headroom is about to appear and start walking like an Egyptian. But Hurts claim their sound is actually inspired by an early-90s Italian genre called disco lento, which according to its Wikipedia page, featured "heavily electronic, slow emotional ballads".

The world of Italian pop is often wildly alien to British audiences: until recently, hardly anyone here knew about the bizarre 80s cult of cosmic disco, which involved northern Italian DJs playing reggae, Heaven 17 and Mike Oldfield records at the wrong speed. Peculiar as it sounds, cosmic disco existed, which doesn't seem to be something you can say about disco lento. Every internet reference to it appeared around the same time Hurts began to get attention. Some of the artists they cite are real – it's testament to the weirdness of Italian electronic pop that there really was a singer who called himself Gazebo and had hits called I Like Chopin, Ladies! and Trotsky Burger – but none of them described their music as lento. Others don't check out at all.

Depending on your perspective, their invention of a genre either places Hurts into a grand tradition of pop theorists and pranksters – such as the KLF and the ZTT label in its Paul Morley–helmed heyday – or smacks of dressing up something to appear more cool and interesting than it actually is. Certainly, there's nothing particularly weird about Hurts' music, unless you count a brief hidden track featuring an opera singer doing his nut, or the fact that elsewhere, it frequently recalls an area of pop's past previously unrevived: the glossy, late-80s sound of Go West, Climie Fisher and Johnny Hates Jazz. There are boom-clank electronic rhythms, dramatic orchestral synth stabs and the kind of impassioned mid-Atlantic vocal style in which emotional emphasis is signified by the appearance of an extra letter "a" on the end of words ("I found another girl to mess-a me around," cries singer Theo Hutchcraft, like one of those puppets that advertises Dolmio, but in the throes of a romantic crisis) and someone called Chew is continually addressed. Sometimes Chew's absence is mourned: "Here I am without Chew." On other occasions, Chew is cruelly dismissed: "I need to forget about Chew."

What Chew make of a Johnny Hates Jazz revival may dictate your feelings towards Happiness as a whole, although it's worth pointing out that's not the only thing the album evokes. Hurts' big idea involves welding post-Oasis mass singalong choruses to electronic pop. It's not a bad idea, but nor is it a particularly novel one, which explains why Happiness also regularly brings to mind both Robbie Williams and the sort of material a TV talent show finalist might dish up on their debut album, the former impression bolstered by a lot of self-obsessed lyrical soul searching in which Hutchcraft announces he needs Chew to help him resist various dark temptations, the latter by the presence of Fame Academy winner David Sneddon among the songwriters.

In fairness, when it works, it pushes buttons with an undeniable accuracy. Wonderful Life and Better Than Love would be fantastic pop songs whether they were by a Simon Cowell-approved moppet or a pair of arch, 80s-obsessed postmodernists. When the songs are flimsy and commonplace, as on Sunday and Illuminated, the constant striving for booming sonic grandeur begins to grate – every track sounds like a climax, and, as is common knowledge, all climax and no build-up is bound to end in frustration – and all but the most ardent Johnny Hates Jazz fan might start to wonder what the point is.

You get the feeling Hurts have spent more time making their backstory interesting than their music, which is a shame: pop music could do with more theorists and pranksters. But there's no point in theorising if the songs don't stick: that way lies a VIP ticket to Wanky Balls.

Rating: 2/5

09/02/2010 12:51 PM

An unexpected Prom date with Beyoncé and her Single Ladies

What happened when Mark-Anthony Turnage brought R&B to the conservative hallows of the BBC Proms?

It began with a bang: skirling woodwind and dissonant brass fury. Nothing that unusual for a BBC Proms world premiere. But then audience members at the Royal Albert Hall last Thursday suddenly sat up. Some rooted through their programmes, looking vainly for confirmation; others glanced around in disbelief. Were they hearing this right? Was the esteemed BBC Symphony Orchestra really playing Beyoncé's Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)?

The piece in question was Hammered Out, by 50-year-old British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage He is well-known for his love of jazz, funk and soul, and had promised influences from James Brown and Tower of Power. The only clues that this piece might carry anything more concrete were coy hints in interviews with BBC Radio 3 – "there are a couple of hidden things, but I'd quite like other people to find them out rather than me saying them" – and his publisher – "this is my most R&B work to date".

Turnage told me he put the Beyoncé reference in as a nod to his young son, Milo, who loves dancing to Single Ladies, but it's more than just a quote. Indeed, the riffs and rhythms of the pop source infect every aspect of the orchestral work.

So was it really that hidden? Every audience member I've spoken to spotted the reference immediately. Yet, surprisingly, Turnage says he thought it would go largely unnoticed. To an extent he was right: none of the press reviews mention Beyoncé, although critics may have assumed that their ears were deceiving them. In rehearsals some of the younger players made the spot, but agreed to keep it to themselves. In the event, the Proms audience were hipper than even Turnage gave them credit for.

The post-publicity became a minor online sensation: those same concertgoers used the BBC iPlayer to post comparisons on Facebook, and soon Turnage/Beyoncé mash-ups began appearing on YouTube. The composer is amused and surprised by the coverage the piece has received, but it was a perfect internet storm: a punchy, subversive and entertaining countercultural meme that travelled easily across blogs and Twitter feeds. Possibly a first for contemporary classical music.

From the jazzy Blood On the Floor (1996) to his forthcoming opera, Anna Nicole (based on the life and death of glamour model Anna Nicole Smith), Turnage has rarely missed an opportunity to subvert the mores of the classical establishment with influences from the popular end of the musical spectrum. Hammered Out receives its American premiere in Los Angeles on 13 November with the LA Philharmonic. The word is out now, and it will be interesting to see how the audience at the Disney concert hall reacts to this particular cross-cultural mix.

09/02/2010 12:20 PM

Guns N' Roses v Reading and Leeds festival: round three

Axl Rose continues his war with festival organisers, insisting on Twitter that bosses were to blame for his band's late start

Days after Guns N' Roses' curtailed sets at Reading and Leeds, Axl Rose is still berating festival organisers for ignoring "the natural flow of events". Having already demanded an apology from bosses who cut short his band's performances, the singer is now trying a different tack. "Why book us?" he asked. "If we're not wanted ... we're fine with going elsewhere."

Rose's latest tweeted comments are an escalation from those earlier this week, when he claimed to have had a "deal in place" to play beyond the curfew. Now, the Guns N' Roses chieftain has penned a tirade, running into several paragraphs, against organisers of the Leeds and Reading festivals, suggesting the interrupted shows were part of a plan "to line someone else's pockets or for fictitious tabloid fodder". "Having the fans of our show penalised for how the event was ran," he wrote, "seems a bit draconian and more than unfair." While there's no more talk of the alleged "deal" – a claim organiser Melvin Benn has denied – Rose now maintains that the band was on time.

"Our start times at the Reading and Leeds festivals factually had nothing to do with us," he wrote. Instead, he insists, the other bands played too long. "We went on within our contracted and documented changeover time-period ... If you are aware of our changeover time, the average length of our show and the general nature of how these types of festivals run all of which are no big secrets ... why book us?"

However, there are no reports of serious tardiness by Queens of the Stone Age, the band that performed before Guns N' Roses on both nights. But at Reading, Guns N' Roses' first chords rang out 58 minutes after their scheduled start-time; at Leeds, 35 minutes. This doesn't seem to bother Rose. "I didn't organise, arrange, authorise, have knowledge of or was even consulted about ... these shows til after the fact," he said. Furthermore, by cutting short their set, Rose claims organisers jeopardised the safety of fans. "Why ... risk having it go bad for everyone?" he wrote. "That's where true recklessness and negligence at both the fans and our expense would seem to be."

"God forbid we would force ourselves on anyone," Rose later claimed. "It's not that kinda party." On Tuesday night, Guns N' Roses played Belfast's Odyssey Arena. The concert started 43 minutes late.

09/02/2010 10:26 AM

Lauryn Hill 'closer' to releasing first studio album in 12 years

Ex-Fugees singer says she is excited about the future, after spending more than a decade out of the spotlight

Lauryn Hill is "getting closer" to releasing a new album, she said this weekend. At one of her first American gigs in years, the ex-Fugees singer said she is "excited about what the future holds". Twelve years after the release of her first – and only – solo studio album, "it's time", she said.

Hill played all four dates of this summer's Rock the Bells festival tour, performing a mix of tracks from The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and Fugees songs. Performing alongside guests such as Beyoncé, Alicia Keys, Jay-Z and Mary J Blige – not to mention Hill's children – she brought a new, "jazz-like" approach to much of the old material.

"I have to upgrade [songs] a bit so that they're still exciting, fresh and new," Hill told MTV News. "I'm not sure if the audience really understands. We need, or at least I need, a certain amount of spontaneity, a certain amount of improvisation at every show ... It's that unknown, that literal X factor that makes every show different, and something I want to continue to do."

Hill's use of the word "continue" shouldn't be taken for granted. She disappeared for much of the past decade, retiring into the arms of her family. Although she has played sporadic concerts, a European tour was cancelled in 2009 due to "health reasons".

"There's been such a long period of time where I haven't been able to communicate where my mind is, where my consciousness is, where my ideas are," she explained. "This is an athletic discipline. You gotta be in shape to do it mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically. But it's time."

09/02/2010 04:59 PM

Behind the music: Awal keeps digital royalties from going awol

Artists Without a Label, started by two musicians formerly signed to Polydor, are tackling the murky issue of digital royalty payments – and revealing some startling disparities

There was a time when the best outlet for a disgruntled musician or record producer to vent their frustration with record labels was message boards and blogs. But when Kevin Bacon and Jonathan Quarmby endured problems with their record label, the pair decided to do something constructive. Instead of taking to the internet for a moan, they set up Artists Without a Label, a venture designed to help artists navigate their careers without, you guessed it, a label.

Bacon started out as a bass player in a band called ComSat Angels, who signed to Polydor (now part of Universal) in 1979, making three albums for the label. "After we started Awal, we asked Universal if we could sub-license the albums and release them digitally, but Universal wouldn't allow us to do it," says Bacon. The band eventually saw a press release stating that Polydor had started a smaller label to re-release "classic" albums digitally – ComSat Angels records included.

"We thought: 'That's interesting, it was a deal that was signed in 1979, with no mention of digital.' I don't remember signing an 'any of the formats that will ever be invented in the universe' clause," says Bacon. "We'd give them a call – not to stop them, but to find out how much we were going to get paid per download, as digital was not included in the original deal." The band were told the rate would be 9% of 90% of the sales price per download – minus a 20% "packaging deduction". Exactly how these figures are reached remains a mystery, as Polydor have yet to respond to queries.

The band also asked if Polydor could send them a royalty statement, as they hadn't seen one in 20 years. The label representative asked for their bank details, to pay them the money. Then all went quiet. Despite numerous subsequent phone calls and emails, the band has yet to receive a penny.

Yet Bacon calls that a minor gripe compared to the disparity of digital royalties: bands often only get 8% royalties on digital sales, as compared to an 18% royalty rate on physical records. ComSat Angels had a typical deal for their era: 16% royalties for vinyl, a 15% further deduction for cassettes and a 25% deduction for "packaging and new development costs". "Pink Floyd got a 2% royalty rate on their original catalogue," says Bacon. "Now, because digital is a new format, you don't get the full royalty. That's why you still don't see some of the big older acts on iTunes."

Quarmby says Awal was called in to Terra Firma (owners of EMI) to help them digitise tracks that had been gathering dust in the cellars of EMI in the UK and the Capitol Records building in LA. "Their vision was amazing. They wanted to make previously unheard tracks available to the public and for synchs (advertising, soundtracks etc)," says Bacon. "But what they hadn't realised was that their relationships with their artists were terrible." They brought in lawyers to sift through the contracts and, to their frustration, learned they'd need the artists' permission to digitise the old tracks – and the artists refused.

Quarmby, an ex-artist and record producer himself, says he and Bacon initially saw Awal as a resource for themselves and their friends who had also felt cheated of fair royalty payments. They drew up simple one-page contracts (traditional record contracts are usually hundreds of pages long) that were short term and let the artists retain ownership of their music. "Now, this is fairly common," says Quarmby. "But when we started four years ago, people said: 'That's not a good business model. If you don't have any rights, how can you sell the company?' Which, of course, wasn't our aim."

In addition, Awal developed a transparent way of reporting sales. Their clients can see, on their accounts page, exactly how many records they've sold, as early as the day after the sale. They also provide data of which geographical territories those records have been sold in. Their newly launched utility BuzzDeck also tracks radio play, social networking comments and streams, all to "help artists understand their business – and it is a business for most of them".

Just don't call them a label, Bacon and Quarmby insist. "Do we invest in artists? Sometimes we can't help it. We don't promise to do a lot of marketing, but we'll help empower our clients with lots of information."

Acts such as Arctic Monkeys, Editors, Moby and Jay Sean have used Awal before signing with traditional labels. "We're not against record labels," says Bacon. "For the right artist at the right time, they're still a good option. The thing is, they could've marched into the digital age hand in hand with the artists. They did pretty much the opposite. Instead, they went and did all these deals with digital stores, not necessarily passing on the money to their artists, allegedly – well, the fact is, we just don't know. 

"We do know, from where we're sitting, that you can pass on the data in a far more transparent way," Bacon adds. "These days, you can use your mobile phone in the middle of Africa and right away you can find out how long you've been on it and what you've been charged. With us, artists know exactly what they get. They know what they're going to get paid and when. The labels can't tell us what we'll get from Spotify, cause they don't know yet. For God's sake, they're not trying to decipher the human genome."

09/02/2010 12:59 PM

Wiley's Ustream is more addictive than any music journalism

Fancy seeing Wiley jogging in the park? Arguing on the phone? Sitting around in a vest? He's been filming himself for the last few days and we can't take our eyes off it

"Your day will pass and you'll just be another person on the internet" – Wiley, on Ustream, two hours ago.

Right now one of Britain's most talented, eccentric and least appreciated musicians is broadcasting live to an audience of 192. He's been on-screen for the best part of the last two days and is – whether he knows it or not – helping to kill the practice of music journalism stone cold dead.

Wiley, a notoriously unpredictable grime producer and MC, has been filming himself for the last 48 hours and has provided more great quotes than you could squeeze into ten years of PR-led junkets. From advice on how to break the music biz ("Wiley's quite human, 'cos actually he puts his ear out and he listens to more than the others do. No-one don't show Skepta shit, because you know he don't give a shit and he won't listen.") to musings on religion ("Just wake up and live your life until you're dead. People get excited – 'We don't eat bacon. We don't eat that or this. We eat soya meat sausages. SOYA MEAT SAUSAGES'. Don't hype about bacon or beef or whatever. Fuck's sake bruv.") to his thoughts on hip hop today ("Eminem is the best battle rapper signed today. Mike Skinner though, he might make Eminem stop and listen.") this is Wiley – constantly honest, weird, dumb and, ultimately, just plain exciting.

In the last ten minutes he's given out his personal email, previewed snippets of works-in-progress and conducted business meetings over the phone – right now he's chatting about working with Nicki Minaj and Giggs. Before that he took the camera out to the park, left it on the grass and jogged off just to "see if anyone will nick it". Nothing I write can do it justice. Nothing can stop me watching.

You can't predict Wiley. The man who impulsively gave away the whole of his last album (and more) via Twitter because of a management tiff might get bored with Ustream as quickly as he logged onto it. So catch him while you can because this is the most open, frank profile of a musician you're going to see for a very long time.

09/02/2010 04:35 PM

Video exclusive: The Bees - I Really Need Love

The retro rockers' latest video recreates the hippy dippy vibes of a psychedelic 60's happening

09/02/2010 06:16 PM

Tito Burns obituary

Jazz bandleader turned pop manager and booking agent

Tito Burns, who has died of prostate cancer aged 89, was one of the last of a generation of British jazz musicians, including Pete King of Ronnie Scott's club and the northern swing trumpeter Ernie Garside, who successfully made the switch from performance to management and promotional roles. Burns made a particularly high-profile job of it. He initially represented his former colleagues in jazz after 1955, but then managed several British rock acts, including the young Cliff Richard.

Nathan "Tito" Bernstein was born in north London and began performing as a semi-pro accordionist during the 1930s. He combined a sharp ear for the phrasing of many popular idioms with a relaxed swing and a natural leader's drive. His first gig was with Felix Mendelssohn's Hawaiian-influenced group, followed by work with the Cuban bandleader Don Marino Barreto, the tango pianist Lou Preager and the Trinidadian clarinetist Carl Barriteau.

By 1941 Burns was leading his own band at the Panama club. Though his musical career was diverted by service with the RAF in the far east, he continued to play as part of the RAF regiment sextet. After being wounded, he became a radio broadcaster for the Allied forces' Radio SEAC in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). He joined the West Indian "rumba king" Clarrie Wears after demobilisation in 1946.

It was from 1947 that Burns's career as a leader took off. The new generation of British jazz players was fascinated by the commercial and artistic balance struck by the American "bop for the people" band of saxophonist Charlie Ventura, which combined the songlike lyricism of the swing players with some of the new intricacies of bebop. Burns took to this formula at once, and developed his own bop technique for the accordion.

In January 1947 he formed the Tito Burns Sextet and recruited several of London's leading young modernists, including the guitarist Pete Chilver, the vibraphonist Tommy Pollard, the drummers Tony Crombie and Ray Ellington, and later the saxophonists Scott and John Dankworth. The repertoire included such contemporary jazz classics as Dizzy Gillespie's A Night in Tunisia, and while Burns kept the jazz content on a tight leash, the group's unusual yet highly accessible sound quickly caught the ear of the public.

The BBC producer Charles Chilton invited Burns to host its Accordion Club radio show, and the band developed a wide following. Scott was later to observe that "British bebop" did not begin in 1948 at the co-operatively-run Club Eleven as widely believed, but a year earlier with the formation of the Tito Burns Sextet. The group is generally credited with performing the first bebop tunes to be heard on BBC radio.

Burns married his longtime girlfriend, the jazz and session singer Terry Devon, whose elegant harmonising blended successfully into the group in the early 50s. Burns found it impossible to keep the band on the road with a jazz repertoire alone and was forced to introduce more pop material. His star soloists left to plough jazzier furrows, and though in May 1955 the leader attempted a last throw with an expanded group he named his New Big Orchestra, he called it a day the same year and moved into management.

Burns worked with jazz musicians at first, but in 1959 he became Cliff Richard's manager, and later acquired the Springfields (who included Dusty Springfield), the Zombies and Cat Stevens. He had learned to drive a hard bargain, and not all of his charges (notably the Searchers) came to view their professional relationship with him favourably, but Burns's time as a musician gave him a better understanding of his artists than most of his colleagues. Burns also served as a booking agent for the Rolling Stones, Roy Orbison and the Moody Blues.

In the late 1960s Burns became head of variety programming at London Weekend Television. He continued to give opportunities to promising jazz artists, such as the trumpet virtuoso Maynard Ferguson, whose band he signed to play on LWT's Simon Dee chatshow. An emerging American standup, Woody Allen, was also a Burns booking. He handled Simon and Garfunkel's 1970 shows at the Royal Albert Hall, as well as Bob Dylan's first European tour (Burns's hard bargaining was captured in DA Pennebaker's 1967 Dylan documentary Don't Look Back).

In October 1971, though he remained an LWT shareholder, Burns went into partnership with the Scotia leisure group to form Scotia-Tito Burns, an organisation dealing in music publishing, talent-spotting, recording, TV production, movie scores and concert and record promotion. He observed to Billboard at the time that launching a new performer in an increasingly eclectic showbiz environment "has got to give you sleepless nights, and probably ulcers as well. You've got to build your own stars."

In 1977 Burns was involved in the founding of what became the Brit awards, which were presented at the Wembley Conference Centre to artists who had made outstanding contributions to recorded music since 1952. He kept active in the business throughout the 1980s, primarily managing Victor Borge in his stage shows and voiceovers for Heineken lager TV advertisements.

He is survived by Terry, his daughters Linda and Sharon, and his grandchildren Josh and Ethan.

• Tito Burns (Nathan Bernstein), musician and promoter, born 7 February 1921; died 23 August 2010

09/02/2010 05:01 PM

New band of the day – No 859: Talay Riley

Though his sci-fi influenced auto-soul will not alter the future of R&B, Riley's photogenic looks and commercial hooks make the chances of success high

Hometown: East London.

The lineup: Talay Riley (vocals, music).

The background: As with yesterday's new act the Pierces, 20-year-old Talay Riley's striking good looks are not going to do him any harm whatsoever, especially considering the area he's operating in is commercial R&B, a medium historically popular with teenage girls, even when the artists in question are teeny and small, or rather, Tinchy and Tinie. Riley actually went to school with the Stryderman and is something of a force on the UK urban pop scene, having written songs for Chipmunk, including the No 1, Oopsy Daisy, and the top 10, Look for Me (which he also sang on), as well as touring with N-Dubz. Apparently, his cousin works for Rodney Jerkins at Darkchild Productions so that gave him an "in" with the likes of Ryan Tedder, the OneRepublic songwriter and producer with whom he has also worked, and he's been writing for Tinchy, Tinie, JLS, even Justin Bieber and Jamie Foxx.

He's the new Taio Cruz, basically – a photogenic all-singing, all-writing and producing one-man UK urban hit factory, a homegrown Timbaland, only one you could put a photo of on your bedroom wall without melting the paint. More than a behind-scenes type, though, he wants to be a star in his own right, so next month he's releasing his debut single, Humanoid. It's coming out on 10/10/10, although possibly not at 10 minutes past 10, the idea being to convey some sense of Riley as a cyber future-being – he's really into sci-fi and identifies with the creatures in Avatar. "I'm not saying I'm an alien," he says, "but [Humanoid is] about me being unique and coming from a different angle."

He grew up listening to Wiley, and did some rap/grime recording as a teen, but he hasn't assimilated any of Wiley's chilly "Eski" sensibility, nor does he have any of his or Dizzee's "freezing-cold flows" – he sings, his voice given the usual perfect robo-sheen. In fact, the Humanoid shtick is just a way of presenting himself as a machine-man built for pleasuring the ladies, and it doesn't extend to his other songs. By Make You Mine he's in typical romantic R&B territory, deploying the standard lexicon of L.U.V., pure Valentine's Day card pabulum ("Wanna make you mine, before we run out of time" etc). On Gravity, there are more cliches, this time about overcoming obstacles and "making it" in a harsh world. Riley's chances of success are high, though. His music lacks the rhythmic invention and tricksiness of the US R&B that inspired it (the almost-martial beat of Sergeant Smash comes closest), but it has the polish and commercial hooks of, well, all the other British auto-soul currently dominating the charts. Riley's no fool – he studied law and business at university and he's submitted a song for the next Beyoncé album – so fully expect to add him to the Taio/Tinchy/Tinie T-list.

The buzz: "Talay Riley has one impressive music CV for a 20-year-old"

The truth: He has the drive and determination of a droid, if not the cool aesthetic.

Most likely to: Confuse American restaurateurs into giving him a better table on the phone. ("Teddy Riley? Yes, sir, we have a wonderful booth in the corner overlooking the lake. Oh, Talay Riley, you say? Sorry, we're fully booked").

Least likely to: Alter the future course of R&B.

What to buy: Humanoid is released by Jive on 10 October.

File next to: Chipmunk, Labrinth, Taio Cruz, Tinchy Stryder.

Links: MySpace/Talay Riley.

Friday's new band: Mighty Mouse.

09/02/2010 12:27 PM

New music video: Cee-Lo Green – Fuck You

Cee-Lo Green cunningly used a sparkling Motown backdrop to infiltrate pop culture with potty-mouth language – now here's the video

You may know Cee-Lo Green from his days with hip-hop collective the Goodie Mob, or from his two solo albums, or, most likely, as the guy from Gnarls Barkley with the voice that could shatter glass from a hundred feet. This first single from his forthcoming album, The Ladykiller, showcases that voice in such a way that the initial sweary novelty value of the song title (which also makes up most of the chorus) disappears as he makes it sound almost joyful. Rather than wallow in self-pity after his girlfriend leaves him, Cee-Lo signals he's moving on in a modern way. Despite its title, expect Fuck You to be sung by everyone from teenagers on the bus and parents in the supermarket to your grandparents at a wedding.

09/02/2010 12:05 PM

Prom 62: GMJO/Blomstedt | Classical review

Royal Albert Hall, London

Visiting orchestras normally arrange themselves in a standard pattern at the Albert Hall, but there are occasional surprises. Although much of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester's set-up for Herbert Blomstedt was conventional enough, the double basses (a dozen of them) were placed as I've rarely seen them here: in a single line along the highest tier of the stage, behind all the brass and even the percussion.

With symphonies by Hindemith and Bruckner on the programme, perhaps Blomstedt had a particularly central European sound in mind, and wanted a firmly defined bass line underpinning it all. Certainly, perfectly terraced strings are one of the most striking features of the GMJO (all of whose members have to be under 26), and they were put to striking use in both works.

Hindemith's Mathis der Maler had the right kind of lithe urgency, if not a real sense of resolution in the closing pages, while Bruckner's Ninth combined moments of irresistible splendour and surging intensity with the occasional sense that everything was not unfolding as inevitably as it should. Blomstedt allowed little breathing space between the music's great paragraphs – a few longer silences, coloured by the Albert Hall acoustic, might have worked wonders.

The real treat, though, came between the symphonies, with baritone Christian Gerhaher's singing of Mahler's Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen. Even in such a vast auditorium, every word was perfectly focused, and Gerhaher can make the smallest inflection or the subtlest change of colour unlock a whole emotional world. Nobody does it better in German lieder, with more intelligence or greater beauty of tone.

To be broadcast on BBC4 tonight, and repeated on Radio 3 on 16 September. The Proms continue until 11 September. Details: bbc.co.uk/proms

Rating: 4/5

09/02/2010 11:23 AM

Sonos and Spotify offer new streaming service to European users

IFA 2010: premium customers can use music streaming service through home music service from end of this month. Meanwhile Sonos is replacing a number of faulty controllers for its systems.

Internet music service Spotify has joined forces with Sonos, adding to the multi-room player's roster of web-based music partnerships as part of an industry-wide drive to get more people to pay for music.

Spotify's 500,000 paying customers - those on its £10-per-month "premium" service - will now be able to stream their digital library through a Sonos home entertainment system, provided they live in Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden or the UK. Because Spotify is still not available in the US, due to licensing issues with record labels there, Sonos customers there - one of its biggest markets won't be able to get it yet.

Sonos already has similar tieups with the international music service Napster, as well as Last.fm, Audble.com and Deezer.

John MacFarlane, chief executive of the California-based company, says the latest move is a "complete reinvention of the home stereo system", adding that "Spotify on Sonos has been the number one request from our European customers and we're thrilled to deliver it."

"It's great that people will be able to listen to Spotify whenever they want, wherever they want in their home," said Daniel Ek, Founder and CEO Spotify.

Sonos and Spotify customers with a ZonePlayer, Sonos S5 music player and a Sonos Controller – available either as a separate controller, or as a free iPhone app and soon-to-be-launched iPad app – will be able to use the service from late September.

"No money changes hands in this deal," MacFarlane told the Guardian. "We have a very good business in all areas Spotify sells in so it makes sense for both companies to make each other better. Spotify do a nice job on focusing on user experience and it streams really well."

He added: "The labels are putting more and more pressure on Spotify to move members to a paying service so that made more sense from their perspective. What's happening in the digital music landscape...the traditional players are now starting to embrace it and part of that is users paying for music. That's a trend that's only going to increase."

Spotify has garnered momentum in Europe, despite still not launching in the US after four years. Although it has forged licensing deals with labels including Sony and EMI, some songwriters still appear disenchanted with the service's ability to generate income for artists.

Patrick Rackow, chairman of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, told the BBC earlier this year: "At the moment, the amounts of money that are actually being received are tiny. That might be because there is no money there."

The streaming space is looking increasingly complicated. Sony yesterday announced its own move into the music streaming space with a subscription-based service centred around its Playstation 3 console.

Speaking at Berlin's IFA fair, the electronics manufacturer said the new "cloud-based" service would allow customers to download songs and HD movies over the internet and watch them on other web-enabled Sony devices, including TVs, laptops and music players.

• Sonos is offering a free replacement to owners of its newer CR200 touch-screen controllers affected by manufacturing defects. Some owners of the CR200 have found that parts of the screen become unresponsive. The CR200 uses a capacitive touchscreen.

In an email sent to owners, Sonos says:

"We have recently discovered a potential issue with a small number of Sonos Controller 200s (CR200) manufactured within a specific period. As a registered owner of one of these controllers, we wanted to let you know right away and inform you of our decision to extend your warranty."

"Specifically, a single area or areas of the touch screen may be unresponsive to normal touch usage. The reported failure rate, while low, does not meet Sonos quality standards. Therefore, Sonos is extending the product warranty for your Sonos Controller 200 for an additional year at no cost, in the event it fails in this manner."

Customers who have had problems with the CR200 should contact Sonos's support pages to organise the replacement.

09/02/2010 11:21 AM

Apple's Ping - a capsule review

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs ups company's social media game with Ping – a music recommendation and sharing feature that has been added to the latest version of iTunes

Apple has ditched the CD in the iTunes logo, upgraded its iPod range and revamped Apple TV, as we learned last night. Chief executive Steve Jobs also upped Apple's social media game with Ping – a music recommendation and sharing feature that has been added to the latest version of iTunes, iTunes 10.

Users with an iTunes Store login (there are 160 million of those worldwide, and they are the engine behind Apple's money-making content machine) can now click the 'Ping' tab in iTunes, create a profile and begin following and being followed by like-minded music fans.

However, initial reviews of Ping have not been flattering. No-one I follow had a good word to say about it:

@Moleitau: OK, Ping is terrible so far *apart* from being able to follow Rick Rubin and find out he digs Arvo Pärt

@Matt B: wow, Ping's personal artist follow recommendations are terrible.

@scobleizer: "The Who." Fail. "Beatles." Fail. "Elton John." Fail. Just what kind of musician IS in Apple's iTunes Ping? @myspace wins.

@DamoBiddles just downloaded iT 10 and 'ping' - monstrous. buggy. evil. Also seems weird being built into an application UI. not great so far.

Photo by striatic on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

A music-orientated social network is a great idea because Apple has a captive and very active audience among its iTunes user base. Privacy settings are simple – share everything with anyone, share a bit with people you approve or don't share at all. Where Twitter is all things to all people, Ping could become the default network for music chatter – gig reviews, album recommendations and so on – one of those niche social networks we thought might take off a few years back.

But there are problems, and not just that recommending Katy Perry and US to everyone is not a good idea. At startup, you can only pick three genres of favourite music; I picked singer-songwriters, blues and alternative. Where would you classify Katy Perry under those? Because that's what I was served up. Those of us used to Last.fm, among others, expect far more from music recommendation.

It is a strange experience using a social network locked within a tab of an already-busy programme. If I wasn't already (occasionally) using iTunes for music there would be zero incentive for me to use Ping at all. And I use iTunes more for apps than music... where's the social network for apps?

Apple's modus operandi seems fundamentally opposed to the nature of social networking, which is all about openness. Without importing existing networks from Twitter or Facebook (inviting friends through Apple Mail is not enough), there's a significant investment of time needed to set Ping up. Now social networking is more mature, there's less appetite for putting in that groundwork – and why should we have to when our networks already exist? Look at the success of Twitter, built on third-party development and off-site interaction. Ping could have pulled in existing intelligence about artists and public profiles of followers. It could have populated user profiles with your most listened-to tracks; a few album covers aren't enough for data-loving music fans. It could have thrown up the most listened to or downloaded tracks through iTunes in real-time. Buy Songkick or something, FFS. Where is everybody?

It's static, detached, and outdated. Perhaps we'll revisit it when it grows up.

A poor effort, Apple.

09/02/2010 10:45 AM

Pogues guitarist calls farewell tour a 'marketing ploy'

Phil Chevron posts on band's website to criticise suggestions that this year's Christmas tour will be their last

The Pogues have announced a "farewell tour" for the UK, much to the consternation of their guitarist. Phil Chevron has blasted notices for the goodbye tour, calling it "a marketing ploy" by others in the band. "This claim does not come from me," he wrote on the group's website, "and I will neither be supporting it nor discussing it."

The seven-date tour begins in Glasgow and ends on 21 December in Brixton, with reported Irish gigs earlier in the month. These concerts will close the band's 28th year, and their ninth since frontman Shane MacGowan re-formed the folk-punk rabble-rousers. But despite the flier's unequivocal "Farewell Christmas Tour" tag-line, the Pogues don't exactly seem ready to say farewell.

Not long after Chevron's grumpy post to the official message-board, bandmate Spider Stacy popped in with a clarification. "This is the last Christmas tour for the foreseeable future," he wrote. "That's not to say we won't be showing up at festivals here and there or maybe even the odd gig around the UK and Ireland and certainly in Europe. But we're tired of dragging our weary, freezing carcasses around these drowning islands every December, so we're going to give it a rest before you get tired of it, too. Go and see the Libertines. They're the best."

But Chevron clearly doesn't agree with his bandmate. "As you can see, opinion is not uniform on the matter," he wrote. "Spider is using the royal 'we' here." Stacy responded: "Using the royal 'we'? God forbid a band member would come on these pages and do something like that!"

Later, Stacy reappeared, trying to calm the Pogues' tremulous fans. "Don't get yer kecks in a twist," he wrote. "Take a deep breath and flick back a couple of pages and read slowly. Does it say we're splitting up? No it doesn't. And sorry to disappoint but there's absolutely no internal arguments going on, spirits are high in the Pogues camp." Indeed, spirits are so high they seem almost icy. Perhaps a break is not a bad idea.

09/02/2010 10:00 AM

The Irish island that drums to its own beat

Every year the little-known island of Inis Oírr attracts drummers from all over the world to its bodhrán summer school, for a unique insight into Ireland's traditional music

09/02/2010 09:56 AM

Film Weekly gets down with SoulBoy and seeks out Secret Cinema

This week, Jason Solomons discovers the heated passion for soul music in the chilly north of England as revealed in SoulBoy, a coming-of-age tale tracing the musical awakening of a young man during the mid 70s. Lead actor Michael Compston, who made his name in Ken Loach's Sweet Sixteen, talks about spending a nervous month perfecting his dance steps. We also have two signed copies of the superb SoulBoy soundtrack to win.

Jason also talks to Fabien Riggall, the founder of Secret Cinema, which hosts screenings of classic films in strangely appropriate locations. Ahead of a mystery screening at Alexandra Palace, Riggall discusses the motivation behind Secret Cinema and the growing popularity of experiencing film outside the multiplex.

Plus, Xan Brooks joins Jason to review some of this week's other releases, including Dinner for Schmucks, starring Steve Carell and Paul Rudd, and Certified Copy, starring Juliette Binoche.

09/01/2010 09:45 PM

Tom Service on the great opera scam

'Beware the tenor with a new Rolex'

The time has come, in this week of lifting the lid on cricket corruption, to reveal the virus at the heart of classical music, the canker in the operatic apple. For years, those of us in the business have tried to keep quiet about the existence of those shadowy men who sidle up to you before curtain-up at Covent Garden, La Scala or the Met and whisper in your ear: "Ten to one Juan Diego Flórez misses the 6th top C in Ah! Mes Amis"; "Twenty-five to one Angela Gheorghiu drops her tiara in act four"; "Fifty to one Bryn Terfel drops a word in his final solo".

These tantalising offers are just the tip of an iceberg of classical music betting that is the black economy of the industry. Ever wondered how it is that the Royal Opera House or the Met can afford Erwin Schrott, Anna Netrebko or Renée Fleming and their ludicrously inflated fees? The head honchos of the houses are all in on the action. They will drop into rehearsals and gently hint that it might be a good idea for Schrott to crack on the top note of Non Più Andrai during the third performance of Figaro; that if Netrebko were to miss an entry in the third act of Manon – well, these things happen; that Fleming messing up the finale of La Traviata would be quite understandable.

It's been going on for decades. Remember the furore when Pavarotti missed a top C at La Scala and was booed? An opera-singing accident? Nothing of the sort: that cracked note guaranteed La Scala stayed in business, and lined Pavarotti's already voluminous pockets. Roberto Alagna fleeing the stage at Aida in Milan a few years later? Just another singer prepared to take the fall for a brown envelope stuffed with used notes.

So beware the soprano who messes up Porgi, amor in Figaro and is sporting a new Chopard necklace the next time you see her; the tenor who cocks up an aria and ends up with a chunky Rolex on his wrist. As the whistleblower, I'm naturally an incorruptible observer of this operatic cesspool. But if anyone wants 20-1 on Tom Allen forgetting his lines in the first act of Così at Covent Garden, come and see me before curtain-up.

09/01/2010 06:29 PM

Sony Qriocity service takes on Apple iTunes with streaming music and video

Subscription-based Sony Qriocity service to be available in UK though PlayStation 3s and other Sony devices this year

Sony has embarked on an ambitious challenge to Apple's iTunes, promising to launch a music and video streaming service in the UK by the end of this year.

The subscription-based service is to be based around the PlayStation 3 console. Sony said that customers would be able to download high-definition movies and songs over the internet and watch them on other web-enabled Sony devices, including its TVs, laptops and digital music players.

With Amazon also thought to be aggressively planning a web-based subscription service, which would stream old films and TV shows, the online TV-on-demand market is about to expand dramatically.

The Japanese electronics giant revealed its plans in Berlin today at the start of IFA, Europe's biggest consumer electronics show, shortly before Apple was scheduled to make its own announcement in San Francisco.

Fujio Nishida, Sony's president for Europe, said that the new "cloud-based" service would let consumers take their music wherever they went, from PS3 to PC to smartphone. He also indicated that the system would learn users' tastes and automatically find music they liked – something already provided by services including Last.fm.

Sony's plan involves a major expansion of its Qriocity (pronounced "curiosity") service, which currently only offers video on demand in the US. Nishida said it would launch in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy in the autumn.

Music streaming will be added to Qriocity by the end of this year.

Sony promised "millions of songs", but did not specify which record labels will be involved.

The announcement was light on some key details – notably pricing. Full rollout will also take some time. Initially the service will just work on new network-enabled Bravia TVs, Sony Vaios and the PS3.

Nishida also did not list which films and TV programmes will be available over Qriocity. According to one report, however, several Hollywood studios are already signed up, including 20th Century Fox, MGM, The Walt Disney Company, and Warner Bros.

Restricting the service to Sony products may damage take-up, and the company appeared to indicate that it will open it up over time.

"Eventually this will be open to third-parties who can deliver a variety of high-quality digital content to Sony customers and others,"

Nishida said.

There are about 54 million registered PS3s in use worldwide, giving Sony a sizeable target audience for its new service. But Apple has already built up a very strong position, with the 10 billionth song being downloaded from iTunes earlier this year.

The move comes three years after Sony decided to abandon an earlier music streaming site, Connect Music. This, too, offered a wide selection of songs for downloading, but users were restricted to using Sony hardware and software to listen.

Nishida also offered a cautiously upbeat view of Sony's current trading in Europe, saying he could see some green shoots despite the "challenges" facing the region.

"In Europe, we have just enjoyed our best three months for the last few years," he declared.

09/01/2010 05:30 PM

Apple press conference – live coverage

Apple is expected to announce "social streaming" for iTunes, an update on iPods and (possibly) more on AppleTV. Stay with us from 6pm.

7.16pm: Looks like we're all wrapped up here. Let's have a run through of what Apple has announced today:

• Ping, a social network for music, is built inside iTunes. Available on iTunes 10 desktop app and iOS apps, users can follow their favourite artists and other 'Pingers', view their stream and converse around music. Available immediately.

• AppleTV cut in physical stature and price, to $99. Available later this month, AppleTV will no longer store your media – it will be based on renting content and streaming media from connected devices. Fox and ABC are on board from launch with more to be announced in the future; renting a HD TV show will set you back 99 cents, $4.99 for a first-run HD movie.

• A whole new range of iPods, including an iPod Touch with front and rear-facing cameras and FaceTime. The rear-facing camera will be be able to record HD video content.

• iOS4.1 available from next week for iPhone and iPod Touch, including a new Games Centre and many a bug fix.

Thanks for joining us, keep the discussion flowing.

7.13pm: Martin takes to the piano for a closing rendition of Yellow. His little girl's called Apple, remember. All clicking into place now.

7.10pm: Jobs: "We started doing music stuff for a really simple reason: we love music. And even though we're more successful now than when we started, that hasn't changed one bit." Jobs introduces Coldplay's Chris Martin (!!!!) on stage to perform, Mr Johnson has been royally ditched by the polo-necked one.

7.08pm: "Strongest line-up of iPods ever," Jobs sums. "Ping is going to be really popular, very fast, because 160m people can turn on as soon as they want, starting today."

7.06pm: Price of AppleTV was $299 – users said they wanted something more affordable, now lowered to $99. Available later this month, pre-order today.

7.02pm: Jobs now giving a whistlestop tour through the new AppleTV interface.

On "AirPlay", coming in November with iOS4.2: can stream content from an iOS device to an AppleTV.

6.58pm: Rotten Tomatoes review site also integrated with AppleTV. Can also stream music, photos and video from own computer via the AppleTV box set.

6.56pm: ABC and Fox on-board from launch, other broadcasters should follow, Jobs hopes. You can also stream Netflix and YouTube content through your AppleTV.

6.55pm: Here's the news on AppleTV content: $4.99 to rent first-run HD movies, day and date they come out on DVD. Get cheaper as time goes on. To rent HD TV shows: 99 cents.

6.52pm: AppleTV customers also don't want to manage storage, Jobs says, or syncing to their computer.

So here's the announcement on 2ndGen AppleTV: One-fourth the size of previous iteration, palm-sized, HDMI connector, wifi and ethernet connector. All HD when available, all rentals (no purchases) – that's the new model. No storage because of rentals.

6.50pm: "One more thing..." time: AppleTV.

Introduced four years ago, "never been a huge hit, nor has any other competitive product." But the people who have them love them, Jobs says.

So what's new to AppleTV? They want HD, they want Hollywood movies and TV shows, they want to pay lower prices for content, they don't want a computer on their TV.

6.47pm: All activity based around artists and performance can be seen by your followers, whom you can automatically accept as followers or moderate case-by-case.

Ping is also available on iPhone, iPod Touch (there's a new button in middle of iTunes app). "Social network for music, created by Apple, built into iTunes."

And it's available today...

6.46pm: Ping has an interface very similar to Facebook's, with the lingo of Twitter. But all is based around music artists.

6.44pm: "Be as private or as public as you want. The privacy is super easy to set up," says Jobs. Over 17,000 concert listings; Ping is available for sign-up to more than 160m iTunes users.

6.41pm: To reiterate, Apple has launched a social network for music, dubbed Ping.

You can "follow" updates from your favourite artists. "Social music discovery," says Jobs. "Follow and be followed" – you (seemingly) opt-in to being followed by other people and "set up a circle of friends."

6.39pm: Announces iTunes 10: a new logo (ditched the CD), "more elegant and simple". The iTunes store's biggest focus is discovery: what are my friends listening to? Favourite artists up to? Concerts? Email? There must be a better way.

Ping – social network for music. "Facebook and Twitter for music" – social network all about music built into iTunes.

6.37pm: Here's the iTunes news: people downloaded 11.7bn songs from iTunes, over 4.3m TV episode, 100m movies, 35m books, and over 160m accounts with credit cards and one-click shopping.

6.35pm: So a new array of iPods so far. Has Jobs got anything else up his sleeve? (Currently running through the new iPod adverts).

6.33pm: Edit videos on the iPod Touch with iMovie app. Can make FaceTime calls between iPhone 4s and new iPod Touch. 8GB for $229, 32GB for 299, 64GB for $399. All available next week, pre-order today.

6.31pm: New iPod Touch is thinner, retina display (4x pixels, 326 ppi, 24bit colour, LED), Apple A4 chip (powers the iPhone), 3-axis Gyro, iOS4.1, front-facing camera with FaceTime. And a rear camera with HD video recorder.

6.30pm: 8GB iPod Nano for $149.

iPod Touch news: most popular iPod, as of the past 12 months. Number one portable game player in the world. Outsells Nintendo and Sony portable game players combined, 50%+ market share in US and worldwide.

6.26pm: Rotatable screen on the new iPod Nano, introduced to a solitary "whoo!" from the California crowd. That went better in rehearsal, clearly.

6.25pm: Almost half as small, almost half as light as its fifth generation predecessor – the new iPod Nano with 24hour battery life.

6.23pm: Fifteen hours of music on the 5thGen Shuffle: $49, available in five different colours.

On the Nano 6thGen: smaller, no clip wheel, touchscreen, "multi-touch" screen.

6.21pm: Bringing back the buttons to iPod Shuffle 4thGen, even smaller than 2ndGen: has voiceover and playlists, too. And a clip, importantly.

6.19pm: Here's the biggie: iPods.

How many sold? 275m. Secret to its success: never rested on our laurels, says Jobs. "This year we've gone wild."

New design for every single model of iPod. "Biggest change in iPod lineup ever".

6.19pm: iOS4.2 comes out in November, free update for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

6.17pm: Jobs demo's printing: looks very smooth.

Bit of a biggie: AirPlay is AirTunes, allowing you to stream audio and video over wifi devices.

6.15pm: Next week iOS4.1 will be available.

Sneak peek at 4.2 (which will come later this year for iPad). Multitasking, folders, games centre, wireless printing, "AirPlay".

6.14pm: New game out later this year from Epic Games. Invites on stage the president, Mike Capps to introduce.

MC: codename for this new game is Project Sword, social integration. "Project Sword is a gorgeous action packed RPG adventure. Everything you see is in realtime."

6.09pm: Games centre new and built in with iOS 4.1: APIs for developers. "All about multiplayer games," challenge friends, compare scores, discover new games. Apple moves into mobile social gaming.

6.08pm: 250,000 apps on App Store, 25,000 iPad apps.

First big(ish) announcement:

iOS 4.1 to include: Proximity sensor bugs fix, bluetooth bugs fix. Adds high dynamic range photos, HD video upload over wifi, TV show rentals and a game centre.

6.06pm: New iOS activations per day: 230,000 per day (new activations). If we counted upgrades (hints at Android) that would be a lot higher.

Over 6.5bn apps in App Store. 200 apps downloaded every second.

6.05pm: How many iOS devices shipped? 120m since launch.

6.05pm: iOS news: "a revolution in touch and apps," says Jobs.

6.04pm: Over a million people are visiting in some stores around the world.

6.04pm: Really cool stuff to show us, says Jobs. Update on new retail stores first off: Paris, Shanghai and London.

London store update: "beautiful, restored old building. Lot of restoration required." Not so much a retail update then, Steve.

Covent Garden was the 300th Apple store in the world, in 10 countries. Soon to open first store in Spain.

6.00pm: Jack Johnson fades to mute and we begin. Steve Jobs enters stage right to whoops and hollers.

5.58pm: "Switch your phones to silent, please," asks a mystery voice from behind the black curtain. On the projector comes the scene from California, lots of happy-looking folk sharing jokes and listening to Jack Johnson.

5.54pm: 99-cent rentals of movies through iTunes? According to "people familiar with the matter" cited by Wall Street Journal. Fox and ABC are said to be the companies on board:

"Some of these people said Fox agreed to participate in 99-cent rentals for a short period of time, and agreed to the lower-cost price only for broadcast shows it both produces and airs, such as "Glee," "Bones" and "Lie to Me." The Apple proposal won't affect cable shows such as FX's "Justified," or Fox network shows, including "American Idol," for which Fox doesn't control the digital rights.

"According to the people familiar with the matter, part of the calculus for Fox is that News Corp. wants Apple's help with other digital projects, including the iPad version of The Wall Street Journal and a digital news offering known inside News Corp. as the "Daily Planet," the name of the fictional paper in Superman comics."

Five minutes to go...

5.49pm: Would you believe it? Sony has moved to trump the Cupertino company's announcement(s) from its temporary hovel at Berlin's IFA fair.

Sony will offer a cloud-based media streaming service on Playstation 3s, Bravia TVs, Blu-Ray players and Sony's personal computers. Initially it will stream movies, with music to be added by the end of this year, reports the BBC.

Any more before Apple takes the stage in 10 minutes?

(In other news: it's filling up here at the UK press screening in Barbican. Not as many MacBooks as you might expect. Friendly-looking, yellow-shirted staffers saunter round with purple placards, directing media and guests to their seats. Free water and free wifi await. How's it looking from the comfort of home?)

5.40pm: To cover all bases, The Inquirer is hedging its bets on Apple announcing an update to AppleTV (not before time, I hear you grumble):

"[...] Amazon has made an announcement that would appear to be a spoiler for Jobs' dreams. It will be offering a subscription service that will deliver TV shows and movies over the Internet, which sounds jolly similar to the rumours and speculations we've been hearing about Apple's ITV plans.

"The Internet retailer has pitched a web-based subscription service to several major media companies, including NBC Universal, Time Warner, News Corp and Viacom. Amazon's video content subscription push is a challenge to rivals such as Netflix, Google's Youtube, and if Jobs announces it, Apple."

5.36pm: With 20ish minutes until kick off (6pm UK time), speculation is mounting.

The Financial Times cites sources inside the media industry when it says Apple will increase the amount of time customers can sample singles in the iTunes store from 30 seconds to 90 seconds. Users will also be able to make purchases direct from web pages, rather than opening the iTunes application, the FT predicts.

Hello and welcome. Web stream or no web stream, sit back and enjoy our minute-by-minute coverage live from (the UK screening of) Apple's California press conference.

Speculation about what Apple could announce ramped up a gear last night, with the company announcing it will *stream* the announcements online – but only to devices running its own operating systems. Is "social streaming" now almost certain to be visited on iTunes?

Here's our own Charles Arthur:

"This looks very likely, given Apple's $85m purchase last year of Lala.com, which it closed in May. Why purchase it to close it? Lala would stream music to users' PCs, for a price. And for years people have been talking about the likelihood of iPods getting streaming, or some sort of Napster-style subscription service. But while selling iPods was a good business, subscriptions weren't (witnessed by the failure of so many companies that tried to offer it).

"It's only now, as those other streaming services have started to make it into a viable business - one enabled by apps on phones and computers - that Apple seems interested. After all, at present the money paid to those services goes to Spotify or we7; why, you can see the Apple execs reasoning, shouldn't Apple get a slice?"

Apple could also announce a price cut to AppleTV – Steve Jobs's "hobby" – which has underwhelmed the market since launch.

The Financial Times predicts an update to iTunes will allow 90-second streaming of singles in the iTunes store, as opposed to the 30-second clips it currently allows.

Gizmodo pontificates about the possible launch of an iPod Touch with front-facing and rear-facing cameras, saying such a device would be a "ninja assassin squad against a whole range of other middling gadgets".

Let the predictions begin. Leave yours in the comments below...

09/01/2010 04:49 PM

Radiohead lend their music to fan-made live DVD

Thom Yorke's band said to be impressed with edited concert footage filmed by 50 fans in Prague last year

Radiohead have thrown their support behind a fan-made live DVD, providing the hi-fi soundtrack to Czech film-makers' amateur shots. The British band provided audio masters to the makers of Prague DVD, a DIY concert film shot on 23 August 2009.

While the project website has been overwhelmed by traffic, samples of the Prague film have been uploaded to YouTube. It's a strangely communal document, collecting the viewpoints of more than 50 camera-people – each with a cheap handheld Flip camera. "A group of Radiohead fans descended on the Výstaviště Holešovice exhibition hall in Prague to capture the band perform, using as many different angles as possible," explain the film-makers. Recalling the Beastie Boys' groundbreaking Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!, the footage is scattered, inconsistent and frequently electrifying.

Radiohead reportedly love it, giving film-makers the soundboard recordings that would make or break the movie. If you manage to access the Prague DVD website, you can download the entire set for free, including a version for the iPhone. Czech Radiohead fans can even obtain a free CD. "Strictly not for sale," reads the site. "By the fans, for the fans. Please share and enjoy."

Although Radiohead issued a live CD in 2001, they have not released a concert film since 1995's Live at the Astoria. In 2008, the band shot a 10-song acoustic set for Nigel Godrich's From the Basement series; this was made available as an iTunes download.

Radiohead are currently working on their eighth studio album.

09/01/2010 04:22 PM

Does Nicolas Jaar's music defy description?

The New Yorker blends electronic music with Ethiopian jazz and South American rhythms, but refuses the ethno-techno tag. So how to describe his debut single, The Student?

What do you call Nicolas Jaar's music? The 20 year-old American may be closely associated with New York's Wolf + Lamb label, but the music he makes has only a tangential relationship with house or techno. For his debut release, The Student (you can listen to his music here), Wolf + Lamb had to request Jaar underscore this crumbling meditative piano piece with a beat, to give it dancefloor traction. Meanwhile, the man himself often takes his live club sets down to a jarringly slow 70bpm, interested, as he is, in creating atmosphere and emotional resonance, rather than physically moving the crowd.

"I never really made club music until I started playing in clubs," explains Jaar (pronounced "jar"). "For me, electronic music didn't equal dance music." Indeed, this young producer, around whom there is currently the sort of excitement that the nascent Villalobos or Aphex Twin once enjoyed, has some deeply idiosyncratic ideas about clubs and club music.

Jaar talks of dance music accelerating and shrinking through the 1990s; increasing in speed but narrowing its emotional range, in the process becoming a one-dimensional, escapist soundtrack. The attitude, he says, was: "Let's forget about 'the system', because capitalism won." Personally, he sees nightclubs as forums for a far richer, far more variegated experience.

As befits the son of Chilean visual artist Alfredo Jaar, he explores clubbing at a conceptual level. Clubs, Jaar feels, are about escape, but there is a sadness implicit in that "separation and forgetting". That people need nightclubs is an indictment of ordinary day-to-day life. "Everyone who goes to a club is heartbroken, I think. You can take that two ways. They're heartbroken, so they want to forget. Or they're heartbroken, so let's give them an ambience where they can be heartbroken." Better still, why not give them both? Jaar has talked about his desire to create "rhythmic anguish": music that you can dance to, with uncomplicated joy, but which is full of melancholy "above the bass".

Moreover, if clubs are places for breaking free, then, says Jaar, the soundtrack should reflect that structurally. "If the music, within itself, is about breaking and separation, then the club experience becomes meta, bigger, and it's very fulfilling." He pauses: "Maybe. I'm trying it out."

Little wonder, given that modus operandi, that Jaar's music refuses easy categorisation. Where others, aged 14, would have heard Villalobos's Thé Au Harem d'Archimède or Trentemøller's The Last Resort and simply tried to mimic them, Jaar wants to match them. He aspires to the originality of the former, and the emotional heft of the latter. Indeed, it's entirely different influences: Erik Satie, Keith Jarrett or Mulatu Astatke's Ethiopian jazz, that are useful reference points for Jaar's most extreme music. Tracks such as The Student or Dubliners are fraught reveries, ambient enigmas, auditory hallucinations of fumbling, tumbling double-bass; stark, poignant dabs of manipulated piano; chirruping percussion and environmental noise. Danceable rhythms and yearning voices drift in and out of the mix, almost whimsically, like restless ghosts in the machine.

If, in rhythmic terms, such tracks tantalise, the likes of El Bandido or Mi Mujer deliver. They have a funk impetus, a loose, fluid grooviness, a radiant and distinctly Latin American rhythmic lightness. Yet, even then, Jaar's music retains an otherness. His unlikely club hit, Time for Us, is what? A screwed, slow-mo R&B banger? "Things might have to slow down for us to be conscious of them," says Jaar, "as opposed to making them so fast we're just escaping with them."

Of course, some people don't buy it. Non-believers have dismissed Jaar's work, and its "world music" elements, as a lazy continuation of the La Mezcla ethno-house trend. Jaar, who grew-up in Santiago de Chile, insists such sounds are encoded in his DNA: "I lived in Chile, I have French and Arab heritage. The last thing I have is American or German electronic influences. I don't know how to make techno. I don't know how to make that perfect kick." For the record, he describes the welding of "ethnic" samples to western beats as: "Literally, the most disgusting thing that can happen to music. It's colonisation all over again."

When the Inès album arrives in October, on Clown and Sunset – Jaar's collaborative label with his Russian and Ethiopian friends, Nikita Quasim and Soul Keita – there will still only be 20 or so of his tracks in circulation. Completed between university classes (comparative literature at Brown University) and gigs at Fabric and Berlin's Bar 25, they, none the less, already constitute a fascinating body of work.

Jaar thinks it's "humbling" anyone should care, and is so carried away with the hype that, naturally, he's thinking about staying at college, and doing a master's degree. Clearly, he is a musician apart. But are you excited by Jaar's music? And, if not, which young bloods are rocking your world?

09/01/2010 03:46 PM

New band of the day – No 858: The Pierces

Balancing ballast with beauty, these two sisters from Alabama offer a rocked-up folk take on Fleetwood Mac

Hometown: Birmingham, Alabama.

The lineup: Catherine Pierce (vocals, guitar), Alison Pierce (vocals, guitar).

The background: The Pierces aren't new as such, but they may well be new to you, and that's no indictment of your ability or inclination to hunt down the obscure and unknown – it's just a fact. The US duo's first three albums weren't made widely available over here and precious little was written about them, to the extent that Polydor, which has just signed them, are going to be presenting them as a Brand New Act.

Anyway, ass-covering justification for their inclusion here today aside, what are the Pierces like? Well, they're a couple of Alabama girls who sound quite a bit like Stevie Nicks/Fleetwood Mac. What, today again? That's right: yesterday's pair, Tamaryn, did shimmery shoegazey things to the Mac/Nicks' witchy oeuvre, while the Pierce sisters offer a rocked-up folk take on the same. This is less an indicator of Fleetwood Mac's huge influence – although they've probably been referenced more times in this column these past few years than the Stones and Beatles combined – merely evidence that when women of a certain artistic disposition bearing guitars approach a mic, more often than not they will produce a sound like this. Not everyone can achieve it – Courtney Love, for example, attempted an album of edgy MOR on Hole's Celebrity Skin, with mixed results – but when it works there's nothing better.

Not that the Pierces are leftfield types or avant-gardists doing arch, knowing things to the Fleetwood Mac catalogue. They're not an indie in-joke or exercise in pastiche. They do come from an arty, bohemian place – their mum and dad were Viz Modern Parents-style hippies who home-schooled their children – and they do now live in New York, but they're not Williamsburg hipsters. This is roots music with ambitions towards adult contemporary – one of them sang on the Ryan Adams album Heartbreaker. There is credibility here (TV syncs for Gossip Girl and Dexter hint at the Pierces' lyrical quirks), but the point isn't to score points on the cool-o-meter. It's to sell vast quantities of records.

They're like Lady Antebellum, only with lush production and gorgeous melodies. So actually not that much like Lady Antebellum. Their forthcoming album has been produced by Coldplay's bass player, Guy Berryman, and also features the band's drummer, Will Champion. We could quite happily die without hearing another Coldplay record (except Viva La Vida, and even the provenance of that tune is in doubt, as was widely reported), but that band's rhythm section has given the music substantial heft, allowing the girls to balance out ballast with beauty. What this essentially means is a song like You'll Be Mine, their next single – mooted for early 2011 release – satisfies the Pierces' penchant for 70s radio melodies while meeting the exigencies of contemporary production. Now all the girls need to do is have affairs with Berryman and Champion and they've got the material for their very own Rumours right there.

The buzz: "The perfect background music to an amusement park created and run by Tim Burton. Wonderful, whimsical, eclectic and soaring" – Michael Jones, blogcritics.org

The truth: Their early music was quirkier and folkier, but their new stuff is mainstream, streamlined Radio 2-friendly MOR in excelsis.

Most likely to: Sell out.

Least likely to: Worry about selling out.

What to buy: Love You More is released by Polydor on 25 October, followed by You'll Be Mine early next year.

File next to: Fleetwood Mac, Lady Antebellum, Dixie Chicks, the Heartthrobs.

Links: myspace.com/thepierces.

Thursday's new band: Talay Riley.

09/01/2010 03:10 PM

Video: Villagers: How I wrote ... Set the Tigers Free

Mercury-nominated Irish singer-songwriter Conor O'Brien visits our studio to play a his song Set the Tigers Free

09/01/2010 03:04 PM

Captivating Arcade Fire video shows what HTML5 can do

It keeps crashing on me, but I've had enough of a blast to be inspired - it's the heavenly Arcade Fire video built in collaboration with Google and director Chris Milk.

The Wilderness Downtown combines Arcade Fire's We Used To Wait with some beautiful animation and footage - courtesy of Street View - of your childhood home - made all the more poignant for me because it was bulldozed a few years ago.

Thomas Gayno from Google's Creative Labs decsribed it on the Chrome Blog: "It features a mash-up of Google Maps and Google Street View with HTML5 canvas, HTML5 audio and video, an interactive drawing tool, and choreographed windows that dance around the screen. These modern web technologies have helped us craft an experience that is personalised and unique for each viewer, as you virtually run through the streets where you grew up."

The Chrome Experiments blog explains each technique, including the flock of birds that respond to the music and mouse movemens, created with the HTML5 Canvas 3D engine, film clips played in windows at custom sizes, thanks to HTML5, and various colour correction, drawing and animation techniques.

I've watched thousands of videos thanks to the curse of the viral video chart and nothing has come close to this for originality, imagination and for that inspired piece of personalised storytelling.

There's plenty more inspiration on the Chrome Experiments blog; Bomomo is pretty slick, and Canopy is hypnotic.

09/01/2010 02:57 PM

30 years of 4AD

Record label 4AD have been working with some of the biggest names in music since 1980. We look at the artists who helped make the indie label so influential

09/01/2010 12:59 PM

Ask the indie professor: Are gender stereotypes still present in indie music?

Indie likes to pride itself on having an enlightened sense of gender relations. But that doesn't stop female audience members from being groped at shows

I've often thought that indie kids try to purport a more enlightened sense of gender relations between themselves (the boys and the girls dress really similarly, for example). Is this the case, and is their subculture some kind of equality-based utopia? Or are gender stereotypes still present but instead played out in a different way?
GuidedByVeal

Without a doubt, indie has a more enlightened sense of gender relations than many musical genres. You can see this in a number of areas, such as pioneering co-ed bands (Pixies, Arcade Fire, Lush, the White Stripes, Elastica, My Bloody Valentine, Quasi, Slowdive, the xx , Autolux, Beach House, the Kills, feel free to carry on) and the blending of gender-coded imagery where androgyny has been consistent in clothing and physicality. Blur didn't write "Girls who are boys, who like boys to be girls, who do boys like they're girls, who do girls like they're boys" for nothing. Androgyny can even been seen in the common use of falsetto by male singers as a higher register is usually associated with femininity. The blending of gender imagery is common in rock and pop, but the central value of equality, even between performers and audience has made humanist gender relations the ideal in indie.

However, in practicality, indie does not exist in some parallel universe. I can't tell you the number of times I've seen female musicians ignored in interviews. Additionally, female spectatorship and fanship is sexualised. There is an assumption if you are female at a show that you are sexually available to performers. Just earlier this year, on Jeopardy (a popular game show in the US), university student Lindsay Eanet said she would like to be a music journalist like the fictional character William Miller (from Almost Famous, based on the experiences of Cameron Crowe writing for Rolling Stone). The host said, "Oh, so you want to be a groupie?" As she explained that she wanted to be a professional journalist, he once again mouthed to the camera "groupie". Of course, it implies all female professionals are there to get guys in bands (like this is such a hard thing – seriously, you don't need to work in the music industry to get laid). This assumption that audiences are filled with sexually overwhelmed girls is belied by the fact that for rock and metal as well as for indie the audiences are disproportionately male. 

At indie shows, you still see gender distinctions in distribution patterns and activities. Women tend to stand right at the front and by the speaker stacks, rarely in the central area where dancing might happen. Groping is absolutely taboo, yet women are still loathe to crowd surf because it only takes one jerk in an audience to violate a woman which limits her ability to participate in audience activities available to males. During my research I've been told by countless women that they refrained from crowd-surfing and most of them (including myself) had been groped at shows (interestingly, both men and women came to my defence – this is a typical tale from many female audience members). After that happens, they often chose a different location or move further back so it won't happen again.

The restriction of female participation was part of the rationale for stopping stage diving and discouraging crowd-surfing. British indie has been – and still is – consistently and significantly more egalitarian in terms of gender relations than America. In the noughties, when indie aesthetics overtook alternative music in the US, it ostensibly produced more female equality. The musical points of reference moved from "aggressive" to "fey" and "effeminate" – in line with UK bands of the 1980s and 90s. With indie, the feminine body and voice replaced the punk rockism of grunge and Riot Grrrl.

However, even in 2006, when Pitchfork reviewed my book on the culture of indie music, the writer actually talked about my cleavage! Always something you want to include in a review of a female author's book. I'd like to say it's a big topic that needs more discussion, but if I did that, someone might call me a tease.

If you have a question for the indie prof, please leave a comment below or email her at theindieprofessor@gmail.com

09/01/2010 12:48 PM

Prom 61: Hansel and Gretel | review

Royal Albert Hall, London

Laurent Pelly's 2008 Glyndebourne staging of Hänsel and Gretel has seen some action. Initially issued for cinema release, it was revived for this year's festival, relayed to a big screen in Somerset House, London, and has now been brought to the Proms in a semi-staged version directed by Stéphane Marlot. The event also marked the long-anticipated Proms debut of conductor Robin Ticciati.

Pelly's cardboard-city production inexplicably removes all the magic from Humperdinck's fairytale masterpiece, leaving Ticciati and the London Philharmonic to try to put it back. Semi-stagings can work wonderfully, but this one missed the visual and dramatic intensity of the opera house. Only the humorous touches worked, in particular William Dazeley's entrance as the drunken father, staggering through the packed arena before clambering up through the percussion section, or the witch's cottage, a Royal Albert Hall built from junk-food packaging. But one or two belly laughs cannot anchor an entire opera, particularly where the production cuts so squarely, if not deeply, against the grain.

Conversely, where concert performances allow an often welcome focus purely on the music, the preservation here of Pelly's hyperactive stage direction prevented Lydia Teuscher (Gretel) and Alice Coote (Hansel) from making their vocal presence fully felt. When they were allowed to remain still and just sing – for example, in the prayer at the end of the second act – one sensed how much we were missing.

Thankfully, Ticciati again proved himself to be the young wizard of recent legend. He has a wondrous touch in this piece, bringing out not only the light and shade in this often unutterably beautiful score, but all the shades in between. The occasional untidiness aside, his sureness of pacing restored to the experience both the menace and magic that the staging so sorely lacked.

Rating: 3/5

09/01/2010 10:13 AM

Slipknot to release new album following bassist's death

Masked metalheads confirm they will continue as a band – but won't replace bassist Paul Gray who died earlier this year

Despite the death of bassist Paul Gray in May, "there will be another Slipknot record", drummer Joey Jordison promised this week. While the horror-rock group is still reeling from Gray's death, Jordison insists Slipknot "will return" with new music.

"We're still dealing with the passing of Paul, God rest his soul," Jordison told the Des Moines Register. "[But] Paul would never want us to not make another Slipknot record." Gray was found dead on 24 May, at a hotel in Urbandale, Iowa. The medical examiner ruled his death the result of an accidental overdose of prescription painkillers. Earlier this month, Gray's widow gave birth to the couple's first child.

"Life is definitely a lot more precious now," Jordison said. "Music right now, really, when I play it, it's like I'm playing it for all the people that I've lost ... [Paul] was my musical soulmate." Although the band have been on hiatus since Gray's death, Slipknot will release a new concert DVD on 28 September. (Sic)nesses was recorded at the 2009 Download festival in Leicestershire, in front of 80,000 fans. "I won't remember my name when I'm 85, but I'll remember that show," Jordison said.

Although Slipknot will soldier on, Jordison insisted that Gray won't be "replaced". The remaining eight members will make up for his bass parts themselves. "We'll get to that point when we get there," Jordison said. In the meantime, the drummer is touring with his Murderdolls side-project, and Slipknot DJ Sid Wilson will soon release his first solo album. "When the time comes, forces will bring [Slipknot] back together again," Wilson told Billboard recently. "You can't predict magic. It just summons itself and pulls you all together."

09/01/2010 10:07 AM

New music: Lady Gaga – Living On the Radio

The lampshade-wearing singer reveals a new song about the toils of being a global pop phenomenon

Of the few things we know about Lady Gaga, we can be sure of the following: she has been on the road a fair bit over the past year; her songs can be heard on the radio; and she loves being famous. So it's no surprise whatsoever that the Gags has turned her songwriting attention to these three things. "Living on the radio, that's my dream", she sang on stage in Minnesota last night, before describing a life of "caviar, champagne and sold-out shows". Cryptic stuff, right? Live, the song proved to be a melancholy piano ballad, but we're willing to bet our last pair of Alexander McQueen 10-inch heels that Living On the Radio will come with a banging, Euro-pop backing track by the time it's released.

09/01/2010 09:00 AM

Radio head: Dave Lee Travis and friends are still out there

Dave Lee Travis and friends are still out there, discovers Elisabeth Mahoney

Several things happened in quick succession when the news broke that Simon Bates is to join Smooth Radio as breakfast show host in January. The Our Tune theme tune lodged itself in my mind, and wouldn't be shifted.

Wafts of radio nostalgia floated over me; it feels as if I heard most of Bates's Radio 1 mid-morning shows, from 1976 to 1993. I hopped in a taxi and David "Kid" Jensen was on Capital Gold, the first time I've heard his voice for years.

And then I found myself wondering whatever happened to Bates's one-time Radio 1 stablemate, Dave Lee Travis. That hasn't happened for years, either.

The Hairy Cornflake is alive and well and presenting weekend shows on Magic 1161. His East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire audience is diminutive compared to the glory days of Radio 1, but you sense they're fond of him and his "wack-wack-oops" sound effect.

It's a blast from the past as a listen, and you'd think Alan Partridge had never happened. The opening jingle features a woman purring: "I've got nothing on. Except Dave Lee Travis." It's the sort of show where, when a caller asks if he can say hello to someone, Travis lets him do the dedication and then says "No!" Hilarious.

He is paired with a sidekick, "Dangerous Dan", who is as dangerous as cotton wool. His role is to repeat what DLT has just said, but with a jaunty question mark. "Phones," says DLT. "Phones?" says Dan. "Yes, that black thing there," says DLT. "It's called a phone."

Together, they work through some unpromising topics ("Which animals would be good for which jobs?") and some sparky input from listeners.

I enjoyed the vigour with which they contributed body parts for DLT's virtual Frankenstein project. One woman offered "two stone of excess fat"; another donated her freckles. "You can have my backside," said a third, with a terrifically ripe old cackle.