Music news. Beyond the headlines.
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Julian Park can get distracted by a drum sound for an unreasonable amount of time. A strange synthesizer patch or a clever bit of sampling can send him down a rabbit hole that lasts most of an afternoon.
His tastes lean heavily toward house, techno, synth-pop, ambient, and experimental electronic music. He's fascinated by the relationship between technology and creativity, particularly the ways producers find new uses for equipment that wasn't necessarily designed to do what they're asking of it.
He's also surprisingly fond of restraint. A sparse arrangement with three perfectly chosen sounds interests him more than a production packed with layers that have nowhere to go. Julian enjoys pulling recordings apart in his head, figuring out what makes them tick, and occasionally realizing that the simplest explanation was the right one all along.
Prime Video doesn’t have Netflix’s giant music-documentary shelf, but the smaller selection has a surprisingly good hit rate. Better yet, the strongest titles here are included with Prime rather than sitting behind another rental fee. Prime Video’s included catalog rotates frequently. This list stays deliberately short and focuses on the…
CHVRCHES are back with “Roses,” their first original single in three years and the opening release of a new partnership with Futures Music Group, giving Lauren Mayberry, Iain Cook and Martin Doherty a different label home as their fifth album takes shape. The song arrived September 22nd, following 2023 standalone…
A producer can spend an hour searching for the next sound when the arrangement may need the opposite. Muting a kick for two beats, shortening a sustained chord, leaving the vocal alone after a phrase, or pulling a layer before a transition can change the shape of a track without…
Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black will return to London’s Roundhouse on October 21st for a one-night-only 20th anniversary concert led by original album producers Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi, with Jorja Smith, FLO, Yebba, Corinne Bailey Rae and Lianne La Havas among the singers taking on Winehouse’s songs. Announced September…
Taylor Swift isn’t finished with The Life of a Showgirl. Less than 24 hours after revealing “Patient Zero,” she has announced an expanded edition of the album containing four previously unreleased songs written during an unexpected return to the studio with Max Martin and Shellback. The Life of a Showgirl:…
South Korean prosecutors are asking an appeals court to overturn Kakao founder Kim Beom-su’s acquittal and sentence him to 15 years in prison over alleged stock manipulation during the 2023 battle for control of SM Entertainment. The request came September 23rd at the final hearing before the Seoul High Court.…
HYBE is taking its cinema festival worldwide for the first time, turning concert films, two live BTS broadcasts and an interactive K-pop screening into a weeklong theatrical event across more than 60 territories. HYBE CINE FEST 2026 will run from October 24th through October 31st in partnership with event-cinema distributor…
Robert Palmer’s estate has entered a wide-ranging partnership with Primary Wave Music covering the late singer’s publishing and recording catalogs as well as rights connected to his name, image and likeness. Announced September 23rd, the agreement gives the estate access to Primary Wave’s publishing infrastructure and marketing operation while the…
The United States and United Kingdom are producing far more top-tier artists than they did five years ago, yet their combined share of the world’s biggest performers has fallen sharply as music markets elsewhere expand even faster. New data from Chartmetric shows U.S. and UK artists accounting for 40.7% of…
AI music company GRAI has acquired Hangout, the social listening platform built around the idea that discovering music through another person can be more interesting than letting an algorithm choose everything. The acquisition closed September 22nd and will fold Hangout’s social-listening technology and music-industry relationships into a new streaming service…