German electro-punks Atari Teenage Riot had something of a zeitgeist moment in the mid-90s by blurring hardcore punk, jungle, noise, and bloodcurdling screaming, turning all that stuff into a hyperspeed mush that basically forced you (well, me) to stop doing your homework and run around your bedroom screaming, "Deutschland! Has gotta! Dieeeee!" The one time I saw them live, they exited the stage to a wall of white noise so loud it made my stomach hurt. They were something to behold.

Atari Teenage Riot were signed to the Beastie Boys' Grand Royal label and toured with the likes of Beck, Rage Against the Machine, and the Wu-Tang Clan. The group has been effectively disbanded since founding member Carl Crack died of a drug overdose in 2001. But NME reports that the group will reunite, with founders Alec Empire and Hanin Elias joined by late-90s member Nic Endo and new recruit CX Kidtronik, who has worked with Saul Williams.

According to Alec Empire's website, Atari Teenage Riot have several tour dates lined up for Europe this summer. NME reports that on May 17, they'll release the new single "Reactivate" on their own Digital Hardcore label. It may very well have some screaming on it.

Beck's Record Club is arguably the best reason to make sure you're regularly checking the man's website. Record Club is a project wherein Beck rounds up a few of his friends, famous and otherwise, and records a cover version of an entire album in one day. He then posts the results to his website one song at a time.

Thus far, he's done the Velvet Underground's The Velvet Underground and Nico with Nigel Godrich and Giovanni Ribisi, Leonard Cohen's Songs of Leonard Cohen with MGMT and Devendra Banhart, and, most recently, Skip Spence's Oar with Wilco, Feist, and Jamie Lidell. And the next one should be a hell of a thing.

In a post on her Twitter earlier this afternoon, St. Vincent leader Annie Clark revealed that she'd recorded a Record Club with Beck, Liars, and Brazilian tropicalia legends Os Mutantes last week: "It will be online soonish. Serious fun." She did not reveal which album that particularly badass crew had recorded. But given the level of talent in this mob, the result would be worth a listen even if they were taking on Ugly Kid Joe's America's Least Wanted. (Or, hell, especially if they were taking on America's Least...

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Jamie Lidell, the celebrated singer and electronic musician known for his unique, soulful voice and funky, improvisational live performances, has enlisted an all-star group of collaborators for his upcoming album "Compass," due May 18 on Warp Records.

If you've ever seen electro-soul whiz Jamie Lidell live, you know the guy can deliver ample amounts of ecstatic joy. It just feels good to be in the same room as him. So it makes a lot of sense that talented people including Beck, Feist, Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor, Daniel Rossen, and Chris Bear, Wilco's Pat Sansone, legendary R&B drummer James Gadson, soul belter Nikka Costa, Beck keyboardist Brian LeBarton, and producer/songwriter Gonzales would want to help out on Lidell's new album. That album is titled Compass and due out May 18 courtesy of Warp.

This isn't the first time Lidell has worked with Feist (he contributed to The Reminder sessions) or Beck, who got Jamie (and Feist and Wilco and Gadson) to sing and play on his most recent Record Club covers project. Compass was recorded at Hudson Studios in Los Angeles (where Beck and Lidell teamed up to write and produce some songs), Hollywood's Ocean Way Recording, New York City, and Feist's ranch in Ontario's Niagara Escarpment (where Feist helped write and sang background vocals, while Chris Taylor did some producing, mixing, and bass clarinet playing). Expect dates for a full-band Lidell tour soon.

Stream the album's title track below:

Photo by Autumn de Wilde

Yesterday morning, Beck and Charlotte Gainsbourg stopped by the California radio station KCRW, performing live in the studio on the station's famed "Morning Becomes Eclectic" show.

Below, you can watch a video of Beck and Gainsbourg doing "Heaven Can Wait", their bouncing, ramshackle duet from Gainsbourg's IRM album, which we hit with a Best New Music this morning. They look so relaxed! And you can listen or watch the whole session here.

Billboard Bits serves up the best bite-sized nuggets of music news and gossip every afternoon.

New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Portugal, Indonesia, the U.S., and Mexico are all about to become a little bit more twee. Because Scottish indie pop moppets Camera Obscura are going to tour all those places in the coming months.

Cam Ob's Pacific Rim tour kicks off this week, and it includes a Tokyo show with a band called OGRE YOU ASSHOLE, which is obviously awesome. After that, Camera Obscura will hit Portugal and Indonesia before arriving on American shores in April. We've got all their dates below.

Camera Obscura:

01-18 Auckland, New Zealand - Monte Cristo Room
01-19 Wellington, New Zealand - San Francisco Bathhouse
01-21 Sydney, Australia - Beck's Festival Bar (Sydney Festival)
01-22 Brisbane, Australia - The Zoo
01-23 Melbourne, Australia - Corner Hotel
01-25 Perth, Australia - The Amplifier
01-28 Tokyo, Japan - Fever *
01-29 Tokyo, Japan - Fever ^
02-27 Santa Maria da Feira, Portugal - Antonio Lamoso Teatro
03-20 Bandung, Indonesia - The LA Light Indiefest
03-21 Yogyakarta, Indonesia - Java
04-03 Iowa City, IA - Blue Moose Tap House (Mission Creek Festival)
04-04 Madison, WI - High Noon Saloon
04-05 Chicago, IL - Lincoln Hall
04-07 Lawrence, KS - The Bottleneck
04-08 Norman, OK - Meacham Auditorium (University of Oklahoma)
04-09 Austin, TX - Emo's
04-10 Denton, TX - Hailey's
04-11 Houston, TX - Warehouse Live Studio
04-13 Mexico City, Mexico - Lunario

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From the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" to Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance", great music videos are bursts of sound and vision that leave an indelible impression. Director's Cut is a Pitchfork News feature in which we chat with music video directors about their creations. The men and women behind the camera are often overlooked in today's YouTube era, but this feature aims to highlight their hard work while showcasing the best videos currently linking around the internet. A little behind-the-scenes dirt couldn't hurt, too.

Director Keith Schofield is the prankster behind Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beck's wonderfully random video for "Heaven Can Wait" from Gainsbourg's new album IRM. Schofield is responsible for the viral phenomenon "SFW XXX", which creatively censored classic porn clips with some well-placed animation, and the BPA's "Toe Jam" video, which creatively censored naked people with some well-placed black bars. (Watch those clips and more at his website.)

There's no censoring necessary for "Heaven Can Wait", but it's no less mischievous than his previous work. For the video, Schofield embraced the contextless stream of images constantly cycling through the internet and turned it into something joyous and a little unsettling. The result involves Charlotte Gainsbourg holding a baby in a hot dog costume and Beck playing Super Nintendo with a dude in a horse mask. In our interview, Schofield talked about...

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Photo by Andy Eisberg

Yesterday brought the sad news that Memphis garage rocker Jay Reatard had died at the age of 29. As the news circulated, many artists and indie music figures who knew or admired Reatard expressed their feelings about his death. Below, we've collected the thoughts of many of those people.

UPDATE: Jay Reatard's website has posted his cover of Nirvana's "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle". It was recorded in May for a tribute to Nirvana's In Utero album. Jay played all the instruments.

Prefix points out that in addition to the many written tributes, No Age have posted a photo tribute on their blog, and Beck's website is streaming Reatard's cover of the Beck song "Gamma Ray".

-- Deerhunter/Atlas Sound frontman Bradford Cox: "Jay was what few people have the capacity to be. He created an undeniably classic album that contained so much pain transferred to tape in such an explosive way that it made you feel different after hearing it. He was transgressive and honest. His flaws were something he focused on and overdubbed and distorted until they made you forget who he really was-- a person with feelings and a good heart. He loved music and worked hard from a young age to...

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Front page photo by Martyn Atkins

In the early 90s, Johnny Cash signed to Rick Rubin's American label and began releasing the American Recordings series of albums. Produced by Rubin, the American Recordings were stark, stripped-down, mostly acoustic meditations on the more apocalyptic side of his persona. Cash covered Beck, Nick Cave, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Soundgarden, Danzig, and, of course, Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt". And he cemented his reputation as one of the reigning badasses in American music history-- not that that rep really needed much help.

Four of these albums came out before Cash's 2003 death. Another, American V: A Hundred Highways, emerged posthumously. And on February 26, American/Lost Highway will release American VI: Ain't No Grave, the final volume in the series. February 26 would have been Cash's 78th birthday.

Rick Rubin produced this volume, just as he did all the others. And once again, Cash covers a whole lot of other people's songs. This one will include Cash's versions of Sheryl Crow's "Redemption Day", Kris Kristofferson's "For The Good Times", Tom Paxton's "Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound", Bob Nolan's "Cool Water", Ed McCurdy's "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream", J.H. "Red" Hayes and Jack Rhodes's "Satisfied Mind", and Hawaiian monarch Queen Lili'uokalani's farewell song "Aloha Oe". It'll also include a new Cash original called...

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