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Mastodon's members have denied allegations of ill intent against them and plan to 'vigorously defend' themselves in the matter. Continue reading…

Gojira are not only keeping the cost low, but all proceeds from the show will benefit a local charity. Continue reading…

Here's what rock and metal musicians are saying on social media in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the attacks on Sept. 11. Continue reading…

The Brent Hinds estate has two bones of contention in their legal filing against Mastodon. Continue reading…

Fred Durst received a congratulatory letter from World Trade Center officials on September 10. Twenty-four hours later, the towers fell. Continue reading…

Here are 25 rock and metal songs that were written about the tragedy that struck when the World Trade Center was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. Continue reading…

Dogstar, Theory of a Deadman and Trans-Siberian Orchestra all announced significant tours this past week. Continue reading…

Back in January we talked to Anna Butterss, the LA-based bassist with too many cool affiliations to keep track of. (SML, Jeff Parker’s ETA IVtet, Makaya McCraven, Jason Isbell, boygenius, Neko Case, Flea… the list goes on.) Butterrs also makes solo albums, though as you might expect, they tend to feature a bunch of the other great musicians in their orbit.

The post Anna Butterss – “Ninths” appeared first on Stereogum.

Steven Wilson, a six-time Grammy Award nominee as a musician, songwriter, and producer, has laid out the details of his ninth studio album. Requiem for a Village lands via Fiction Records on Friday, Nov. 6, with a format spread that covers digital, CD, Blu-ray, 140g double-LP black vinyl, a 2x Oxblood 12″ vinyl edition, and a box set holding two CDs and a Blu-ray disc packaged inside a 96-page hardback book.

Where Wilson‘s well-received eighth album, 2025’s The Overview, pushed outward into the vastness of deep space, Requiem for a Village pulls the lens way in — down to a fictional, forgotten pocket of the British Isles that feels untouched by the modern world. It’s a place where Stanley Spencer paintings line the local gallery, where M.R. James and Algernon Blackwood stories fill the public library shelves, and where the Children of the Stones play out in the market square. Wilson steered clear of A.I. and any corrective studio tricks this time, leaning instead into organic instrumentation and letting imperfections stay in the mix rather than getting scrubbed out.

Described as intimate, ambitious and more than a little eccentric, Requiem for a Village carries a narration penned by XTC‘s Andy Partridge and read by David Tennant — known for Doctor Who, Broadchurch and Rivals. Longtime collaborator and multi-instrumentalist Randy McStine, drummer Russell Holzman , and vocalist Katherine Priddy round out the backing musicians.

The title track, “Requiem for a Village,” premiered today across DSPs and streaming platforms — a chaotic burst of frantic drums, a driving bassline, and jagged guitars that build into something like a soundtrack for the end of the world. A companion live performance video, the first entry in a planned Village Sessions series filmed with McStine and Holzman, also went up today on YouTube. Alongside all that, an exclusive clip of the album’s narration dropped earlier in the week, tied to a new website styled as a parish council page for the fictional village, stacked with song and lyric references and hidden Easter eggs for fans to dig through.

“I wanted to get back to a kind of music where you can hear the metaphorical thumbprints,” said Wilson. “Doubling down on the human gestures and flaws in the music, stuff that can’t be created using software. For example using only analogue synths with all their unpredictability, or not having instruments perfectly in tune. But it also lead to me picking up the violin, the oboe, or trying my hand on the drums — playing things I don’t really know how to play but getting something out of them that inspired me in ways I didn’t expect. Approaching the music with a sense of innocence and seeing where it took me. And where it took me was to the village.”

Wilson will give the album an early spin during a DJ set at London’s The Social (5 Little Portland Street, London, W1W 7JD) on Tuesday, Sept. 22. Billed as Songs From the Village, the set will trace the influences behind the record, pulling from the hazy textures of Boards of Canada and Demdike Stare, the eerie ragas of Third Ear Band, and the unsettling tone of British children’s television and broadcasts from the 1970s. Proceeds go to Here 2 Belong, a U.K. charity that supports care-experienced young people as they move into independent living.

The following month brings two already-sold-out shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall on Oct. 28-29 — Wilson‘s seventh time headlining the venue. The performances will feature new orchestral arrangements of The Overview alongside other material prepared specifically for the shows, backed by his band, the Parallax Orchestra, and the Sansara Choir under conductor Tom Richards. More live dates are expected to follow.

Requiem for a Village is available to pre-order here.

The post STEVEN WILSON Shares Title Track From Upcoming Album “Requiem For A Village” appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

There exists a certain species of electronic music that has been embalmed by its own admirers, preserved beneath enough black clothing, antique drum machines, and solemn references to 1981 that you half expect the Smithsonian to issue the next twelve-inch. Mercury Girl’s latest single Spirit Forward escapes that mausoleum because Aaron Pena sounds less interested in curating the past than in using its machinery to pick a fight with the present.

Pena, the Filipino American San Diego musician behind Mercury Girl, works with the familiar furniture of cold wave: stiff percussion, bass lines that keep walking even when the room feels empty, synthesizers that seem permanently one bad voltage spike away from collapse. Spirit Forward, however, has a wiry nervous energy that puts it somewhere between Black Marble’s private unease, the laboratory pop of Oppenheimer Analysis, Tom Vek’s angular minimalism, and the sideways rhythmic intelligence of Talking Heads. The bass carries most of the physical argument, a rubbery little engine repeating itself beneath chords that keep looking upward as though expecting an answer from a ceiling full of dead fluorescent tubes.

The question is the oldest one available: “What’s the meaning of all of this?” Pena understands that asking it in 2026 means pushing through advertising, algorithms, compulsory self-branding, endless feeds, and the faint suspicion that somebody has already converted your existential crisis into a subscription tier. Its beat suggests motion without destination, which turns out to be a useful musical equivalent for living inside a culture forever promising connection while quietly perfecting isolation.

“This song mirrors the frustrations I, and I’m sure many others, have had when trying to make sense of life and the meaning behind it, especially in a world so enveloped with distracting you from doing so,” says Pena. “We’re all fed ideas about who and what we should be; this song rejects those expectations.”

Pena recorded the material with vintage synthesizers and half-working sequencers, and you can hear the appeal of equipment that misbehaves, because human uncertainty sounds better when the machines possess a little uncertainty of their own. The arrangement has space, but never comfort; every open patch seems to leave another philosophical bill unpaid.

Listen to Spirit Forward below and order the single here.

Ahead of Mercury Girl’s debut album, A NuTone, Spirit Forward makes a persuasive case for Pena as a songwriter who understands that cold wave can still carry blood, doubt, humour, and the embarrassing human need to ask enormous questions while the drum machine keeps perfect time.

Follow Mercury Girl:

• Instagram
• Spotify
• Bandcamp

The post San Diego Coldwave Act Mercury Girl Shares Atmospheric Second Single “Spirit Forward” Ahead of Debut Album “A NuTone” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.