Treasures from the archives of the late Suicide frontman Alan Vega and his widow, Liz Lamere, will come out in the year ahead. The first will be a solo album, Insurrection, that Vega recorded in the late Nineties, and its latest single, “Cyanide Soul,” sounds as unsettling as Suicide’s Seventies recordings. A mechanical rhythm propels its way through Vega’s and Lamere’s icy, synthy atmospheres as Vega whispers in a menacing way about cyanide. It’s just as eerie as “Mercy,” the first track to be released from Insurrection,...
- 5/8/2024
- by Kory Grow
- Rollingstone.com
“This little song [is] from Bruce Springsteen,” Suicide frontman Alan Vega tells a Paris audience in 1988. The audience, which has gathered to hear the duo’s minimalist electro-rock songs like “Ghost Rider,” promptly boos him. “Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey,” he retorts with his trademark New York snarl, “It’s our version of it. We’ll fuck it up. Don’t worry about it. ‘Born in the U.S.A.'” Then Vega’s partner, keyboardist Martin Rev, kicks into a melody that sounds nothing like the Boss’ epic riff, and...
- 4/5/2023
- by Kory Grow
- Rollingstone.com
“Nightclubbing,” the first-ever documentary about the legendary New York City nightclub Max’s Kansas City, which from 1965 through 1981 was a hotbed for the city’s rock, glam, punk and new wave scenes, has announced a series of screenings across the globe in July and August.
The film — the full title of which is “Nightclubbing: The Birth of Punk Rock in NYC” — will screen along with another doc from Chip Baker Films, “Sid: The Final Curtain,” which is a brief documentary about the late Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious’ final concert, which took place at Max’s.
“Nightclubbing” is the sixth music documentary from Spanish filmmaker Danny Garcia (others include “The Rise and Fall of The Clash” and “Rolling Stone: The Life and Death of Brian Jones” about the group’s founder and original leader). It premiered at the Dock of the Bay Film Festival in San Sebastián, Spain last month...
The film — the full title of which is “Nightclubbing: The Birth of Punk Rock in NYC” — will screen along with another doc from Chip Baker Films, “Sid: The Final Curtain,” which is a brief documentary about the late Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious’ final concert, which took place at Max’s.
“Nightclubbing” is the sixth music documentary from Spanish filmmaker Danny Garcia (others include “The Rise and Fall of The Clash” and “Rolling Stone: The Life and Death of Brian Jones” about the group’s founder and original leader). It premiered at the Dock of the Bay Film Festival in San Sebastián, Spain last month...
- 6/22/2022
- by Jem Aswad
- Variety Film + TV
A recently rediscovered song by Alan Vega called “Muscles” is getting a new life on a just-released posthumous album, Mutator.
The track is cold, grimy, echoey, and unsettling, as any track by the late Suicide frontman ought to be, as he sings about “life in the Rainbow Room” and yelps wildly. Vega, who died in 2016, recorded the song and the rest of the album between 1995 and 1996 with his longtime collaborator Liz Lamere but ended up shelving it; the music recently resurfaced in what is now known as the Vega Vault.
The track is cold, grimy, echoey, and unsettling, as any track by the late Suicide frontman ought to be, as he sings about “life in the Rainbow Room” and yelps wildly. Vega, who died in 2016, recorded the song and the rest of the album between 1995 and 1996 with his longtime collaborator Liz Lamere but ended up shelving it; the music recently resurfaced in what is now known as the Vega Vault.
- 4/23/2021
- by Kory Grow
- Rollingstone.com
Sacred Bones has released another new Alan Vega song, “Fist,” from the late Suicide frontman’s upcoming lost album, Mutator, out April 23rd.
“Fist” finds a unique balance between mesmerizing and abrasive — locked in a steady drum groove with one synth swirling languidly while the other whirrs with a relentless fury. Vega’s vocals, drenched in echo, add another hypnotizing layer to the song.
In a statement, Vega’s frequent collaborator and partner Liz Lamere said of “Fist,” the “relentless forward movement of the music coupled with Vega’s battle...
“Fist” finds a unique balance between mesmerizing and abrasive — locked in a steady drum groove with one synth swirling languidly while the other whirrs with a relentless fury. Vega’s vocals, drenched in echo, add another hypnotizing layer to the song.
In a statement, Vega’s frequent collaborator and partner Liz Lamere said of “Fist,” the “relentless forward movement of the music coupled with Vega’s battle...
- 3/23/2021
- by Jon Blistein
- Rollingstone.com
Sacred Bones Records has released “Nike Soldier,” the first offering from an upcoming lost album from late punk pioneer Alan Vega. Mutator is set to arrive April 23rd.
The album comprises recordings Vega made with frequent collaborator and wife Liz Lamere during sessions that took place in New York City between 1995 to 1996. In 2019, Lamere and Vega’s friend and confidante, Jared Artaud, discovered the tapes and set about mixing and producing Mutator.
“Nike Soldier” isn’t exactly a new Vega cut — an earlier version was released in 2015 on a 10-inch vinyl single from Fuzz Club,...
The album comprises recordings Vega made with frequent collaborator and wife Liz Lamere during sessions that took place in New York City between 1995 to 1996. In 2019, Lamere and Vega’s friend and confidante, Jared Artaud, discovered the tapes and set about mixing and producing Mutator.
“Nike Soldier” isn’t exactly a new Vega cut — an earlier version was released in 2015 on a 10-inch vinyl single from Fuzz Club,...
- 2/24/2021
- by Jon Blistein
- Rollingstone.com
Billy Idol has always pushed the boundaries of chronological time, starting with the anachronistic 1970s punk look he pushed all over 1980s MTV. Idol turned 65 on November 30th, three days after the release of Miley Cyrus’ new album, Plastic Hearts, which features a brand-new duet with him on the excellent track “Night Crawling,” reviving the synth-punk sound of his classics. In an interview on an episode of our Rolling Stone Music Now podcast, Idol looked back at some of his formative moments and more. Some highlights follow; to hear the entire episode,...
- 12/1/2020
- by Brian Hiatt
- Rollingstone.com
Here’s a partial list of musicians we lost in the 2010s: Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, Chuck Berry, Ornette Coleman, B.B. King, Etta James, Whitney Houston, Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Prince, Merle Haggard, Kitty Wells, João Gilberto, Ravi Shankar, Tabu Ley Rochereau, David Mancuso, Amy Winehouse, Abbie Lincoln, Gil Scott Heron, George Jones, George Martin, George Michael, Allen Toussaint, Donna Summer, Phife Dawg, Prodigy, Adam Yauch, Heavy D, Captain Beefheart, Robert Hunter, Gregory Isaacs, Johnny Otis, Big Jay McNeely, Levon Helm, Kate McGarrigle, Guy Clark, Pete Seeger, Ralph Stanley, Gregg Allman,...
- 12/11/2019
- by Will Hermes
- Rollingstone.com
“Where I come from, nobody thinks they’re ever gonna leave,” Kali Uchis tells Rolling Stone. “Most people don’t leave to tell the story,” she adds enigmatically, “so I’m telling you today.”
Inside her hotel room in New York’s SoHo neighborhood, the 25-year-old singer lays out her origin story. She lounges in a white plush robe, canary-yellow stockings and fuzzy slippers, speaking fondly of the Andean foothills of Colombia where she spent much of her youth. A trace of saudade washes over her face when she recalls her teen years in Alexandria,...
Inside her hotel room in New York’s SoHo neighborhood, the 25-year-old singer lays out her origin story. She lounges in a white plush robe, canary-yellow stockings and fuzzy slippers, speaking fondly of the Andean foothills of Colombia where she spent much of her youth. A trace of saudade washes over her face when she recalls her teen years in Alexandria,...
- 7/24/2018
- by Suzy Exposito
- Rollingstone.com
NEWSFilm scholar V.F. Perkins, author of the essential book Film As Film (1972), has died at the age of 80.The BFI in London has announced Black Star, the UK's largest celebration of black screen actors, to run October 17 - December 31, 2016.Consummate Hollywood director Garry Marshall, best known for Pretty Woman, Runaway Bride and such television productions as Happy Days and Mork & Mindy, has died at 81.Filmmaker and Mubi team member Kurt Walker and filmmaker Isaac Goes are launching online film exhibition space Kinet, "catered to the dissemination of new and boundary pushing avant-garde cinema." Kinet's first program, which begins next week, includes Masha Tupitsyn's epic Love Sounds.Recommended VIEWINGThe feature debut of Canadian director Isiah Medina, 88:88, which received its global online premiere on Mubi last spring, is now streaming for free.An English-subtitled, behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of Johnnie To's excellent thriller, Three.The teaser trailer for...
- 7/20/2016
- MUBI
In his continually eccentric series of extracurricular activities, Steven Soderbergh has posted a black and white version of Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark. Here's what he has to say about why:
"So I want you to watch this movie and think only about staging, how the shots are built and laid out, what the rules of movement are, what the cutting patterns are. See if you can reproduce the thought process that resulted in these choices by asking yourself: why was each shot—whether short or long—held for that exact length of time and placed in that order? Sounds like fun, right? It actually is. To me. Oh, and I’ve removed all sound and color from the film, apart from a score designed to aid you in your quest to just study the visual staging aspect. Wait, What? How Could You Do This? Well, I...
"So I want you to watch this movie and think only about staging, how the shots are built and laid out, what the rules of movement are, what the cutting patterns are. See if you can reproduce the thought process that resulted in these choices by asking yourself: why was each shot—whether short or long—held for that exact length of time and placed in that order? Sounds like fun, right? It actually is. To me. Oh, and I’ve removed all sound and color from the film, apart from a score designed to aid you in your quest to just study the visual staging aspect. Wait, What? How Could You Do This? Well, I...
- 10/1/2014
- by Notebook
- MUBI
If you're a fan of "Drive," you may be familiar with the bands who delivered some of the neon-slicked tunes — Chromatics ("Tick Of The Clock") and Desire ("Under Your Spell") — but you might not know the name behind them: Johnny Jewel. He co-wrote those two songs, produced some of the other key tracks and was pretty much instrumental in providing the sound (along with Cliff Martinez's score) that became part of they key textures of the film, and it looks like Ryan Gosling really appreciated his work as well. Speaking with Noisey, he revealed that he's currently writing music for "How To Catch A Monster," the actor's directorial debut starring Christina Hendricks, Ben Mendelsohn, Eva Mendes, Saoirse Ronan and "Doctor Who" star Matt Smith. "It’s more doo-wop, disintegrated rockabilly mixed in with industrial sounds. So we’ve been listening to a lot of Alan Vega and the Shangri-La’s,...
- 7/24/2013
- by Kevin Jagernauth
- The Playlist
Getty James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem in January
LCD Soundsystem played what was billed as the band’s final show ever Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, throwing what frontman James Murphy called “one big last party.” The show was packed with hits, spectacle and plenty of friends.
(The concert at Madison Square Garden capped off a week where the band had already played four shows—storming through three-hour sets—at Terminal 5. The earlier dates were added after tickets for...
LCD Soundsystem played what was billed as the band’s final show ever Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, throwing what frontman James Murphy called “one big last party.” The show was packed with hits, spectacle and plenty of friends.
(The concert at Madison Square Garden capped off a week where the band had already played four shows—storming through three-hour sets—at Terminal 5. The earlier dates were added after tickets for...
- 4/4/2011
- by Kimberly Chou
- Speakeasy/Wall Street Journal
Luke Haines has confirmed further details of his upcoming Outsider Music Volumes 1-50 project. As previously announced, the ex-Auteurs frontman will release 50 individual "new albums" on September 1, each consisting of approximately half an hour of live music. "Drawing from a pool of 15 new songs Luke Haines has recorded 50 individual live performances on to 50 CDs," an official statement read. "Song titles include: 'The Art Supergroup', 'Jesus Is Right On', 'The Angel Of The North', 'Enoch Powell', 'Me And The Birds', 'The Art Superheroes' and 'Alan Vega Says'. "Instruments played (sometimes simultaneously) (more)...
- 8/27/2010
- by By Mayer Nissim
- Digital Spy
Part 3: From Kick-Ass to new digital technology
Kick-ass
Meet the new class of slacker superheroes
Although 2009 was notably free of Super- and Spider-Men, with only the underwhelming Watchmen to fill the gap, 2010 sees the return of the comic-book hero big time, but with a sneaky twist: next year's crop don't have a single superpower between them. First out of the gate is Matthew Vaughn's scabrous Kick-Ass, adapted from Mark Millar's graphic novel, about a teenage boy (played by Aaron Johnson), who dreams of being a masked vigilante and winds up crossing paths with real-life caped crusaders Big Daddy (Nic Cage) and Hit-Girl (Chloe Moretz), a ferocious, foul-mouthed father-and-daughter double act. Following that comes Edgar Wright's long-awaited Hot Fuzz follow-up Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, based on a series of comics by Bryan Lee O'Malley and starring Michael Cera as a lovelorn slacker who has to defeat...
Kick-ass
Meet the new class of slacker superheroes
Although 2009 was notably free of Super- and Spider-Men, with only the underwhelming Watchmen to fill the gap, 2010 sees the return of the comic-book hero big time, but with a sneaky twist: next year's crop don't have a single superpower between them. First out of the gate is Matthew Vaughn's scabrous Kick-Ass, adapted from Mark Millar's graphic novel, about a teenage boy (played by Aaron Johnson), who dreams of being a masked vigilante and winds up crossing paths with real-life caped crusaders Big Daddy (Nic Cage) and Hit-Girl (Chloe Moretz), a ferocious, foul-mouthed father-and-daughter double act. Following that comes Edgar Wright's long-awaited Hot Fuzz follow-up Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, based on a series of comics by Bryan Lee O'Malley and starring Michael Cera as a lovelorn slacker who has to defeat...
- 1/2/2010
- by Pete Cashmore, Will Dean, Priya Elan, Stuart Heritage, Bobbie Johnson, Malik Meer, Rebecca Nicholson, Alex Rayner, Sam Richards, Steve Rose, Kathy Sweeney, Richard Vine, Damon Wise
- The Guardian - Film News
LCD Soundsystem have announced plans to give their new single 'Bye Bye Bayou' away for free on their official website. A cover of the Alan Vega track of the same name, the first 20,000 people to register their details on the LCD Soundsystem site can download the song for free. A statement from the band reads: "Well, 'Bye Bye Bayou' totally leaked everywhere, which shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, since anything (more)...
- 10/23/2009
- by By Oli Simpson
- Digital Spy
It may not be on the forthcoming full-length album, but a new single from LCD Soundstystem will at least temporarily sate the masses. "Bye Bye Bayou," an Alan Vega cover, is being released, at first, exclusively as a 12" single to select record stores on Record Store Day, Nov. 7, via Dfa/Virgin. It goes wide to digital retailers and everyone else on Nov. 24. As previously reported, LCD's James Murphy told Facebook fans that a new album is due in March. Now, some of you may be wondering, what is a record store? Back in the day, people used to physically remove...
- 10/7/2009
- by Katie Hasty
- Hitfix
It was billed as a 20th anniversary tribute to Gary Lucas's band Gods and Monsters. The lineup was impressive to say the least. In addition to Gary’s band, with Lucas on guitar and vocals, Ernie Brooks (ex-Modern Lovers) on bass, Billy Ficca (ex-Television) on drums, Jason Candler (Hungry March Band) on Sax and Joe Hendel (Latest Show on Earth) on keyboards and trombone (how I love to see a trombone in a "rock" band!), special guests Alan Vega (Suicide), Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Band), Jon Spencer, Peter Stampfel (Holy Modal Rounders), and Gary’s collaborator in his Chase the Devil project, Dean Bowman. And of course, we can’t forget to mention Mike Edison (Sharkey's Machine), burning it up on theremin.
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- 6/13/2009
- by Ken Krimstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Primal Scream have recorded a cover of 'Diamonds, Furcoat, Champagne' to celebrate Alan Vega's 70th birthday. The track will be released on limited edition vinyl on the Blast First Petite label as part of a series in honour of the Suicide frontman. Singer Bobby Gillespie said: "Suicide songs are so perfect and fully realised that it was hard to pick one and reinterpret it in a personal way. "We chose 'Diamonds, Furcoat, Champagne' as we loved the lyric and also its sci-fi (more)...
- 2/12/2009
- by By Mayer Nissim
- Digital Spy
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