Links / Music
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The album I didn’t know I needed: Radiohead just released live recordings from their Hail To The Thief era, a somehow, somewhat impopular album of theirs that I love.
Thom Yorke said about it:
In the process of thinking how to build arrangements for the Shakespeare Hamlet/Hail to the Thief theatre production I asked to hear some archive live recordings of the songs. I was shocked by the kind of energy behind the way we played and it really helped me find a way forward. For us, back in the day, the finishing of this record was particularly messy and fraught, we were very proud of it but there was a taste left in our mouths, it was a dark time in so many ways. Anyway we decided to get these live recordings mixed (it would have been insane to keep them for ourselves) by Ben Baptie, who did an amazing job. It has all been a very cathartic process, we very much hope you enjoy them.
This’ll go into my heavy rotation immediately. The energy of this performance of There, There in Buenos Aires alone is tremendous.
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Tyler, The Creator sat down with a group of creatives to have a candid conversation about creativity, taking chances, and believing in the things you make. I must’ve watched this two weeks ago and—despite the sponsored element to this—found it very inspiring (as I do all of his output in recent years; Tyler is one of the artists I admire the most).
I loved how he mentioned the shift he noticed in how people perceived him, once he put “all songs written, produced and arranged by Tyler Okonma” on his album covers. It feels like his creative output has been unmatched since then.
How he created, marketed and released his latest album Don’t Tap The Glass—while on a worldwide tour of over 100 shows—is a testament to that.
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Why We Quit Spotify
№ 71Hearing Things, an independent music publication, on why they’ve decided to stop hosting their playlists on Spotify. The decision comes after Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s investment in defense startup Helsing and Spotify’s latest policy change, denying royalties to songs with under 1,000 streams.
I’ve long been on the fence about Spotify. The platform has become ever more convoluted, its business decisions increasingly indefensible. From a design and user friendliness point of view, there’s an exorbitant amount of friction, too.
It seems to me there’s a great big gap in the market that a forward-thinking, music-loving organisation could step into. Think... the 2025 version of Rdio?
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A special episode where Charlie Jermyn recites an essay he wrote for the first issue of TRANSCRIPT Magazine.
The reading is a written documentation of a ten hour experiment conducted in August 2021: a walk from Leiden to Amsterdam in search of creative enlightenment. Each hour is interspersed with music that reflects the landscape and circumstance he found himself in.
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I’ve been flip-flopping between Spotify and Apple Music myself, and can relate to this piece by Kyle Chayka. Changes to their apps in recent years have not favoured (album) listeners like myself. It’s fascinating and saddening to see one platform steer the way we consume music into a certain direction.
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I’ve been replaying James Blake’s latest album “Playing Robots Into Heaven” somewhat obsessively, and was reminded of this conversation he had with Brian Eno, for who he plays the music and who then provides him with his honest impression.
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A fantastic profile of Jonny Greenwood, best known for his work with Radiohead and The Smile, elaborating on his work as a composer of incredible film scores.
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Dan Charnas—who wrote Dilla Time, one of my favourite books of last year—digs around and highlights how a cassette tape titled Another Batch did wonders for J Dilla’s notoriety. "The sounds, signatures, and techniques that actually made Dilla influential all coalesced on Another Batch."
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After reading Dan Charnas’ book on J Dilla, I am even more convinced he belongs among the legends. This op-ed in the LA Times briefly explains why. If you’re a fan of J Dilla—or The Roots, or Thundercat, or Kamasi Washington, or Erykah Badu, or...—I highly recommend you read Dilla Time.
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As I watched Jerrod Carmichael’s latest special Rothaniel – which is really, really special – I was reminded of this conversation he had with Tyler, The Creator back in 2018. An interview unlike any other, and I’ve thought about it often since I first saw it.