Latest news with #Bandcamp
Extra.ie
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Extra.ie
Posthumous debut album from Dublin singer-songwriter Graham Mitchell announced
Following the tragic news of the death of Graham 'Milky' Mitchell back in February, friends of the Irish singer-songwriter have announced that his posthumous debut album is on the way. Loveable Mess will be released on July 25, and is available to pre-order now on Bandcamp, on 12″ 'milk white' vinyl and as a digital album. All proceeds from the album will be shared between several charities closely connected to Graham. 'Three months ago, the world lost a beautiful soul far too soon, Graham Mitchell from Raheny,' the Bandcamp page reads. 'Graham was not only a gifted singer-songwriter, but a radiant light to all who knew him. Graham has released several singles over the last few years, but this his first and only album, stands as a powerful testament to his dedication, talent, and deep love for music. 'Over the years, Graham poured his heart into every lyric and chord, carving out a space for himself in Dublin's vibrant music scene. From countless open mic nights in cosy pubs to late-night writing sessions, his journey was built on perseverance, humility, and authenticity. He touched many with his soulful voice and thoughtful lyrics, often drawing from life's joys and sorrows to create something truly moving.' Loveable Mess has been in the making for several years, and includes the previously released singles 'Who Came Up With Love?' and 'A Beating Soul'. The album is described as 'not only a celebration of his work, but a tribute to all his fans, friends and family whom he loved very much'. Graham, who passed away unexpectedly at home on February 20, had previously played on the Hot Press Y&E Series in 2020. Back in March, Damien Dempsey dedicated his performance of 'Chris & Stevie' to the late musician during his Windmill Live show, presented by Hot Press.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
3 new songs and 3 new albums to check out this weekend
Welcome to our weekly music post, where we spotlight our favorite new songs and albums. Hop in the comments and tell us: What new music are you listening to? Since the release of Laura Stevenson's last album, which came out in 2021, the singer-songwriter has earned a master's degree in music therapy. She's putting those skills into practice with her upcoming album, Late Great (out June 27). 'When I started this [music therapy] career path a few years ago, I kind of quieted my own healing relationship to music, because I honestly didn't have time, but this record is me getting back to it. This is me processing, and reconnecting with that part of myself, and it carried me through,' Stevenson explained in a press release. On 'Honey,' Late Great's first single, Stevenson turns her focus inward, vulnerably assessing the damage of a break-up. 'Elderberry Wine,' the new track from Wednesday (released, appropriately, on a Wednesday), leans more heavily into the band's alt-country side than their occasional dalliances with shoegaze. Singer and guitarist Karly Hartzman's gorgeous vocals are a Trojan horse hiding a deep pain at the center of the lyrics. ''Elderberry Wine' is about the potential for sweet things in life (love, family, success) to become poison if not prepared for and attended to correctly,' Hartzman explained in a press release. Earlier this year, guitarist MJ Lenderman announced that he would no longer tour with the band, though he'd continue to record with them in the studio. Suede frontman Brett Anderson doesn't want listeners to have any illusions about the Britpop band's upcoming tenth album, Antidepressants (out September 5). 'This is broken music for broken people,' Anderson said in a press release. 'Disintegrate' is the first single, and it's also the album's opening track. 'Come down and disintegrate with me,' Anderson sings in the arena-ready chorus, and it's so catchy that he almost makes the bleak lyrics sound appealing. Quit To Play Chess is a posthumous album from Cola Boyy, a musician, community organizer, and disability activist who died in 2024. Cola Boyy's disco-inspired sound (he called himself a 'disabled disco innovator') permeates Quit To Play Chess, which pairs his passion for bringing people together with groovy beats. 'Tell me, is there Hennessy in heaven? / If not, I'm gonna nosedive straight to hell,' he sings on 'Babylon,' giving listeners a good idea of what made him such a magnetic presence both on stage and in real life. Bandcamp put together an excellent tribute to Cola Boyy that features interviews with his friends and musical collaborators like Mac DeMarco and Juan Wauters, and it highlights how special and unique he was as an artist, and what a loss it is that he's no longer with us. Good news: Stereolab is back, and they're just as weird and hard-to-define as ever. It's been 15 years since Stereolab's last album, 2010's Not Music, after which the band disbanded to work on other projects. Now, they've returned with a new album, Instant Holograms On Film. If song titles like 'Electrified Teenybop!' and 'Esemplastic Creeping Eruption' are any indication, Tim Gane and Lætitia Sadier haven't lost a bit of their cerebral spark in their time apart. Edgar Wright's 2021 documentary The Sparks Brothers shined a long-overdue light on the relentlessly innovative band Sparks, who have been consistently releasing music since 1971. MAD! is the 25th album from the duo, which consists of brothers Ron and Russell Mael. The Maels' uncanny ability to reflect the current moment has always been one of their best magic tricks, and it's present here on songs like 'A Little Bit Of Light Banter,' in which a couple pointedly refuses to talk about any difficult topical issues in favor of putting their heads down and not making a fuss. MAD! reflects a world that's out of alignment, filtered through an absurdist lens. It's everything you could want from a Sparks album. More from A.V. Club 3 new songs and 3 new albums to check out this weekend A zippy episode of Duster steps on Elvis' blue suede shoes Roy Wood Jr. says no one at The Daily Show could really explain the Hasan Minhaj controversy
Sydney Morning Herald
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
He's an alcoholic with several degenerative conditions. And he will make you dance and cry
Jim E. Brown's gone AWOL, nowhere to be found. 'Damn it, Jim,' his beleaguered tour promoter, Andy Burns, on hand to connect our Zoom interview, says after several unsuccessful attempts to track Brown down on his phone. 'I mean, this is very on-brand,' he adds with a resigned laugh. Look, it wasn't unexpected. As his songs – anthems such as I'm An Obese Alcoholic, I'm Naked in My Room Huffing Nitrous Balloons, and I Know I'm Going to Die of a Stroke – suggest, Jim E. Brown is battling demons. As his Bandcamp bio helpfully explains, 'Jim E. Brown is an alcoholic and has several degenerative conditions.' The same time a day later, Brown's found. He's backstage at a venue in Milwaukee, about 30 minutes from a headline slot, with an Old Fashioned in one hand and a Miller High Life in the other. 'There's also an entire refrigerator filled with beers, which I'll show you right now because you're a journalist and you need to see these things,' he says, swinging his laptop across the room to reveal a hefty stash. 'I'll need all of it before the end of the night.' Dressed in a mustard turtleneck and a grey blazer, he looks as dejected as he does on the cover of his 2021 debut, Jim E. Brown Sings His Songs. 'I'm so sorry about yesterday,' says Brown. 'I'm just deeply suspicious of the news media and I feared you were going to slander me. But Andy convinced me that it would be good to do this interview.' Burns first brought Brown to Australia last year, when the pair toured the country together for three weeks. 'My memory is a bit shoddy from alcohol abuse, but I remember the incessant squawking of the birds in Katoomba, which was very disturbing to me. I didn't really like that,' says Brown. Beyond a 'pie floater' he had in Adelaide, he didn't like much about Australia. 'I can't say I really like Australian people, they're a bit weird,' he says. 'But people all over the world are weird and I don't really like anyone, so it was alright.' If, by this point, this all sounds like some sort of Kaufman-ian shtick, that's because it is. Jim E. Brown comes from the same grand tradition as Mojo Nixon, Weird Al Yankovic, The Darkness or Jimothy Lacoste, musical acts who straddle the line between silly joke and sonic transcendence. According to his own lore, Brown was born and raised in East Didsbury in Manchester, the day before 9/11. It should be noted, there's a lot of Brown lore: three volumes of his autobiography Brown On Brown, and three subsequent memoirs (Holiday with Mrs. Higgins, Shattered, and Brittany's Burden, which tells the story of his relationship with a sober woman he met on Loosid, the sober dating app). 'And I'm working on my new book, which is as yet untitled,' adds Brown. 'It's a memoir about the time I spent living in the cage in Greg's basement.' What does that mean? 'Some bloke called Greg locked me in a cage in his basement and I wrote a book about it,' he says. Music was an unexpected career for Brown. 'As an alcoholic with several degenerative conditions and as an obese person who eats excessively, I'd been using alcohol and food to ease the pain in my life for so long, and I still do that,' he says. 'But then I discovered that music and poetry and the written word could also ease some of the pain, provide a bit of catharsis, so I started doing music for that reason.' Brown was 19 when he started releasing music. How old is he now? '19,' says Brown. 'Still 19?' I ask. 'Yes,' says Brown, stifling a chuckle with his hand. It's one of the few times I'll get a peek at the ridiculously dedicated man behind the act. In the internet age, mystery seems impossible, but whoever's behind Jim E. Brown is committed. Reddit seems to agree he's some guy from Philadelphia, a 40-something ex-animation filmmaker named Max Margulies. 'People have said that to me at shows, but I don't understand it,' says Brown. 'It's a bit weird. I don't go up to people saying, 'I heard you're from this place that you said you're not.' I take it at face value what people say. 'The mistrust galls me,' he adds. 'But it's alright, because they'll usually buy some merch, give me money, and then they say I heard you're actually this or that, and I say, 'Oh right, I don't know', and I move on. And then I take the money to the pub and I get pissed.' How does Brown account for the fact that, in the real world, Margulies is credited as the sole composer and writer on all his songs? 'I don't know who that is. I've not heard of him,' he says. 'I don't handle the publishing or anything like that, so I don't know the names. Also, you really can't trust what you read on the internet, you know?' Who am I to poke any further at the facade? Especially when the music is this good, songs that make you wanna dance, cry and possibly even get a medical check-up (see My Urine is Foamy, Do I Have Kidney Damage?). As a born and bred Mancunian (falsely, but still), Brown's sound understandably draws from Manchester's post-punk and baggy tradition. Drum machines and synths shimmer like a crap New Order. He wails like the Fall's Mark E. Smith, if Smith was a shame-ridden depressive. He rhapsodises like John Cooper Clarke, if Clarke was raised on YouTube brain rot. 'Never heard of them,' says Brown. 'People ask me about that all the time. They say, do you like Mark E. Mark or whatever his name is or the Smiths, and then I get confused, like which Smith is it? I've not listened to any of that music. My favourite artists are Coldplay, Kraftwerk and Phish. I'm also quite keen on Owl City. You know that song, Fireflies?' Loading It was Brown's album Shame – released last Christmas, and featuring the singalong I'm Quitting Prozac to Continue Drinking – that became an unlikely online breakout. Last year, Burns toured the US with Brown, where he noticed a sort of 'Jim E. mania' taking hold. 'People were stopping him in the streets,' he says. 'He just hit the luck of the algorithm.' Brown – or is that Margulies? – can't believe his music allows him to tour the globe. 'I mean, if I were to listen to something, the very last thing would be a Jim E. Brown album, that's 100 per cent sure,' he says. 'So I'm surprised, because it's all a bit shit to me.'
The Age
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
He's an alcoholic with several degenerative conditions. And he will make you dance and cry
Jim E. Brown's gone AWOL, nowhere to be found. 'Damn it, Jim,' his beleaguered tour promoter, Andy Burns, on hand to connect our Zoom interview, says after several unsuccessful attempts to track Brown down on his phone. 'I mean, this is very on-brand,' he adds with a resigned laugh. Look, it wasn't unexpected. As his songs – anthems such as I'm An Obese Alcoholic, I'm Naked in My Room Huffing Nitrous Balloons, and I Know I'm Going to Die of a Stroke – suggest, Jim E. Brown is battling demons. As his Bandcamp bio helpfully explains, 'Jim E. Brown is an alcoholic and has several degenerative conditions.' The same time a day later, Brown's found. He's backstage at a venue in Milwaukee, about 30 minutes from a headline slot, with an Old Fashioned in one hand and a Miller High Life in the other. 'There's also an entire refrigerator filled with beers, which I'll show you right now because you're a journalist and you need to see these things,' he says, swinging his laptop across the room to reveal a hefty stash. 'I'll need all of it before the end of the night.' Dressed in a mustard turtleneck and a grey blazer, he looks as dejected as he does on the cover of his 2021 debut, Jim E. Brown Sings His Songs. 'I'm so sorry about yesterday,' says Brown. 'I'm just deeply suspicious of the news media and I feared you were going to slander me. But Andy convinced me that it would be good to do this interview.' Burns first brought Brown to Australia last year, when the pair toured the country together for three weeks. 'My memory is a bit shoddy from alcohol abuse, but I remember the incessant squawking of the birds in Katoomba, which was very disturbing to me. I didn't really like that,' says Brown. Beyond a 'pie floater' he had in Adelaide, he didn't like much about Australia. 'I can't say I really like Australian people, they're a bit weird,' he says. 'But people all over the world are weird and I don't really like anyone, so it was alright.' If, by this point, this all sounds like some sort of Kaufman-ian shtick, that's because it is. Jim E. Brown comes from the same grand tradition as Mojo Nixon, Weird Al Yankovic, The Darkness or Jimothy Lacoste, musical acts who straddle the line between silly joke and sonic transcendence. According to his own lore, Brown was born and raised in East Didsbury in Manchester, the day before 9/11. It should be noted, there's a lot of Brown lore: three volumes of his autobiography Brown On Brown, and three subsequent memoirs (Holiday with Mrs. Higgins, Shattered, and Brittany's Burden, which tells the story of his relationship with a sober woman he met on Loosid, the sober dating app). 'And I'm working on my new book, which is as yet untitled,' adds Brown. 'It's a memoir about the time I spent living in the cage in Greg's basement.' What does that mean? 'Some bloke called Greg locked me in a cage in his basement and I wrote a book about it,' he says. Music was an unexpected career for Brown. 'As an alcoholic with several degenerative conditions and as an obese person who eats excessively, I'd been using alcohol and food to ease the pain in my life for so long, and I still do that,' he says. 'But then I discovered that music and poetry and the written word could also ease some of the pain, provide a bit of catharsis, so I started doing music for that reason.' Brown was 19 when he started releasing music. How old is he now? '19,' says Brown. 'Still 19?' I ask. 'Yes,' says Brown, stifling a chuckle with his hand. It's one of the few times I'll get a peek at the ridiculously dedicated man behind the act. In the internet age, mystery seems impossible, but whoever's behind Jim E. Brown is committed. Reddit seems to agree he's some guy from Philadelphia, a 40-something ex-animation filmmaker named Max Margulies. 'People have said that to me at shows, but I don't understand it,' says Brown. 'It's a bit weird. I don't go up to people saying, 'I heard you're from this place that you said you're not.' I take it at face value what people say. 'The mistrust galls me,' he adds. 'But it's alright, because they'll usually buy some merch, give me money, and then they say I heard you're actually this or that, and I say, 'Oh right, I don't know', and I move on. And then I take the money to the pub and I get pissed.' How does Brown account for the fact that, in the real world, Margulies is credited as the sole composer and writer on all his songs? 'I don't know who that is. I've not heard of him,' he says. 'I don't handle the publishing or anything like that, so I don't know the names. Also, you really can't trust what you read on the internet, you know?' Who am I to poke any further at the facade? Especially when the music is this good, songs that make you wanna dance, cry and possibly even get a medical check-up (see My Urine is Foamy, Do I Have Kidney Damage?). As a born and bred Mancunian (falsely, but still), Brown's sound understandably draws from Manchester's post-punk and baggy tradition. Drum machines and synths shimmer like a crap New Order. He wails like the Fall's Mark E. Smith, if Smith was a shame-ridden depressive. He rhapsodises like John Cooper Clarke, if Clarke was raised on YouTube brain rot. 'Never heard of them,' says Brown. 'People ask me about that all the time. They say, do you like Mark E. Mark or whatever his name is or the Smiths, and then I get confused, like which Smith is it? I've not listened to any of that music. My favourite artists are Coldplay, Kraftwerk and Phish. I'm also quite keen on Owl City. You know that song, Fireflies?' Loading It was Brown's album Shame – released last Christmas, and featuring the singalong I'm Quitting Prozac to Continue Drinking – that became an unlikely online breakout. Last year, Burns toured the US with Brown, where he noticed a sort of 'Jim E. mania' taking hold. 'People were stopping him in the streets,' he says. 'He just hit the luck of the algorithm.' Brown – or is that Margulies? – can't believe his music allows him to tour the globe. 'I mean, if I were to listen to something, the very last thing would be a Jim E. Brown album, that's 100 per cent sure,' he says. 'So I'm surprised, because it's all a bit shit to me.'
Scoop
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
Nadia Reid Surprises Fans With Free Release Of 2011 EP 'Letters I Wrote And Never Sent' On Bandcamp
Manchester, UK – 20 May 2025 New Zealand musician Nadia Reid has delighted fans by suddenly releasing her long-lost 2011 EP, Letters I Wrote and Never Sent, available now on Bandcamp as a free or pay-what-you-can download. The EP, which had previously been unavailable to the public, marks a special moment in Reid's career. Written and recorded when she was just 20 years old, Letters offers a raw and intimate glimpse into her early songwriting. The collection features five tracks, including the title song ' No Good Talking Man,' which showcases Reid's signature blend of heartfelt lyricism and haunting melodies. In a heartfelt note to fans on her Substack, Reid shares, 'I've always been a little shy about these early songs, but they're a part of my story. I want to give them to you now, as they are.' She describes the EP as a snapshot of her musical journey, capturing the spirit and vulnerability of her beginnings. Fans can access ' Letters' now on Nadia Reid's Bandcamp page, possibly for a limited time, as Reid states "Felt sentimental. Might delete later." The EP is available to download for free, or for a contribution of their choice. Reid is about to embark on a string of European summer dates, including Glastonbury Festival and Green Man, followed by a UK September solo tour and New Zealand & Australia shows with her band in December.
