XL Recordings

Well, this was unexpected. Perhaps coming to terms with the fact that increasingly few people give a shit about the Grammys, the Recording Academy tonight announced its list of nominees for the 51st Annual Grammy Awards, and those nominees were...shockingly relevant. (Read the whole list HERE.)

You know who got the most nominations? Lil Wayne! He's up for eight Grammys! That's right, not the Eagles or Bob Dylan or John Legend or U2 or some boring old fart your dad likes. Lil Wayne! Pretty risque move, Grammys. I like it.

While it would be pretty awesome if the Grammy for Album of the Year went to an album with THIS FUCKING COVER, it probably isn't going to happen, as Weezy has some pretty stiff competition in that category: Coldplay's Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends (which will probably win) Ne-Yo's Year of the Gentleman (!), Robert Plant & Alison Krauss's Raising Sand (which will win if Coldplay doesn't), and-- hey why not?--Radiohead's In Rainbows. Yes, Lil Wayne and Radiohead are competing for Album of the Year. Please dear god, let those two pair up for one of those collaborative medley things that the Grammys always do. Please!

But you know what's even crazier? M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" is up for Record of the Year! It totally won't win (it's up against Coldplay, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Leona Lewis, and Adele), but can you imagine if...

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Conservative leader David Cameron gave US President-elect Barack Obama gifts of albums by The Smiths, Lily Allen, Radiohead and Gorillaz when they met in July, it has emerged.

Kate Nash, Radiohead's Ed O'Brien and Blur drummer Dave Rowntree are among the artists hoping to establish a new committee dedicated to give bands in the music industry more of a voice.

Stanley Donwood, the artist who has crated the artwork for all Radiohead's album and poster artwork since 1994, has launched a new record label, Six Inch Records.

Colin

what we might be listening to in the office,
`'what office?`'
`'you know, at work"
"oh.. right. is that what you call it?"..........

1. One Ting (Dabrye Remix) >King Midas Sound >Cool Out (Dabrye / Flying Lotus Remix)
2. Serious Times (Truth + Soul Vocal Version) >Gyptian >These Are Some Serious Times
3. Indian Thick Jawns feat. P.E.A.C.E >Diplo >Florida
4. The_Dark_Side_Of_The_Sun_2000_And_One_Remix_>Modeselektor
5. Pathwayz >Digital Mystikz
6. Double Checked > Sascha Funke
7. Bad Boy Lick A New Shot >Ninjaman, Bounty Killer, Beenie Man and Ninja Ford
8. Ick Muss Aus Dit Millieu Heraus >Paul Kalkbrenner
9. harrowdown logic jump rmx
10. Air (Featuring Doom) >Dabrye >Two/Three
11. Angels And Demons At Play >Sun Ra
12. Press The Trigger >Poison Chang >Rumble In The Jungle
13. South Rakkas Crew Remix >The Bug >Poison Dart
14. Encoded Flow (Featuring Kadence) >Dabrye >Two/Three
15. Pussyole (Old Skool) >Dizzee Rascal >Maths + English
16. >John Adams eerrrr... stuff

Have you ever been annoyed when you hear a song on the radio or in a TV show and when you go to iTunes to download it, you find it's not available? If so, you've come up against the problem of a staggered release, an old standard that is becoming increasingly problematic for the music industry.

An example of staggering occurred just the other weekend when Leona Lewis performed a cover of Snow Patrol's Run on The X Factor. With so few music shows remaining, it's arguably the most influential show for pop acts to promote their wares. It has more than 10 million viewers and featured songs often show up in the charts the following week, even if they're not a new release.

That Leona Lewis performed on X Factor was no surprise since she's signed to Simon Cowell's Syco label and is a former winner of the competition. What was surprising, though, was that her version of Run was not available, unbundled, on iTunes - and won't be until December 8. Yes, Syco (a Sony imprint) scored a No 1 with the Deluxe album in its first week of release last week - so if this was a cunning plan to shift albums instead of singles, it worked. But the question is: how many fans did this manoeuvre alienate and how many of them ended up going to torrent websites to download the track since it wasn't available to...

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One day there will be no more In Rainbows videos, but fortunately that's probably a ways off. Here's another entry in aniBoom's Animated Music Video Contest, all the finalists for which we posted here a while back. Watch as Kota Totori moves a frantic character through a strange psychedelic world.

[from In Rainbows; out now on ATO]

Three Radiohead videos will premiere on Myspace Music in the coming weeks, with the clip for 'Weird Fishes' appearing online today (November 21).

Radiohead have announced a handful of tour dates in 2009.

Do singers - or lyrics for that matter - mean much to jazzers? And should they? As a quick scan of the current London Jazz festival's packed programme reveals, jazz remains a
predominantly instrumental music, despite the fact that when it makes its rare incursions into the world of chart hits or mainstream acclaim, it's usually because a singer has taken it there. After all, you don't have to be one of the cognoscenti to have heard of Jamie Cullum, Norah Jones or Diana Krall - or their giant predecessors Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan.

In general, however, singers have mostly been peripheral to a music dominated by the sax sounds of Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, the trumpets of Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, or the pianos of Thelonious Monk and Keith Jarrett. The message seems to be that these artists have said more by those means than words ever could.

It's not a simple issue, however. The imaginative British
saxophonist Iain Ballamy was one of the jazz musicians invited to participate in the Guardian's Radiohead-cover project, and in discussing the venture afterwards, he rather unexpectedly revealed that when he improvises on a familiar song, he likes to bear the lyrics in mind, and to avoid sax-phrasing that scrambles the meanings, or the way the words would have been sung. Even the members of the edgy free-improv ensemble Trio VD thought about the moods suggested by...

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Photo by Kirstie Shanley

That one band Radiohead has been trickling out 2009 dates for a minute now, at roughly the rate of one new confirmation per week. Today the number of official gigs rose to three, which seems a magic enough quantity to warrant a news story and a few lame jokes on the matter, no?

So there you have it: Radiohead, rather good band, will make their way to Mexico and South America in March of 2009. The three confirmed dates right now include two in Mexico City and one in Santiago, Chile (their first performance in the country), with engagements in Argentina and Brazil planned but not yet finalized. At Ease points us to another fansite report that suggests a third Mexico City date (March 17) may arise as well.

In other news, Radiohead members Ed O'Brien and Phil Selway are due to turn up on Neil Finn's new record, while Thom Yorke can be heard on Björk's good cause-boosting "Náttúra" single, out now.

Oh right, lame joke. Uh, here's a good one.

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