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The National to Begin Recording Soon

The National
Jason Tate

In a new interview with Pitchfork, The National mention that they are set to begin recording their new album soon.

Dessner said of the studio, “We need a new home because everybody is scattered,” since frontman Matt Berninger now lives in Los Angeles and Bryce splits his time between the Catskills and Paris. He adds that he’s “been really, really working hard on the National stuff now, so that’s mainly, almost every day,” and that they will “do the whole record there, because it’ll just be fun and a good feeling.”

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The Street Artist Behind Blink-182’s New Album Art

Blink 182 - Full Car
Jason Tate

NME interviewed D*Face, the artist behind Blink-182’s latest album artwork:

“But those first ideas that I sent, they said ‘nothing’s really doing it for us.’ [see above and below for the rejected album artworks] There was an illustration, however, that I’d worked on about a year and a half ago that I’d parked up and not got round to finishing. I looked at it and thought how California, to me, is about driving, the birth of the hot-rod and that whole lifestyle – so it made sense if it had a car in it. So that was the first checkpoint for me where I realised it was working. I sent that idea over and Matt [Skiba] and Travis were like ‘that’s the one. That the shit!’ But, to be honest with you, Mark [Hoppus] was like ‘I’m not so sure…’ – so it wasn’t straightforward, let’s put it like that!”

Seeing some of the rejected art ideas is pretty cool, but I’m definitely more of a fan of what they ended up with.

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Inside Pandora’s Fight with Spotify and Apple Music

Jason Tate

John Paul Titlow, writing for Fast Company, looks at Pandora and their attempt to fight back the big streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music:

By shifting toward on-demand subscriptions, Pandora is hoping to add a new, much deeper layer of data and understanding to its artificial brain. By creating artist-based stations and thumbing songs, listeners can teach Pandora a lot—but behaviors like saving albums and listening to them on repeat or adding individual songs to playlists are vastly more informative (as Spotify and Apple already know). Right now, if you’re obsessed with the new Rihanna album, Pandora has no idea. These are the types of blind spots the service needs to fill in, especially if it wants to target superfans with special perks.

Data is just as crucial when it comes to selling concert tickets.

I’m fascinated by the idea of big music data and how it can find the perfect next band or album for a listener. I think Pandora is smart to be moving into trying to tie their music service into other things like selling concert tickets. But, I’m bearish on the company as a whole. They’ve been relegated to what is basically a feature in other apps and there’s no reason to pay for something you already get in a good enough fashion somewhere else.

Review: Saosin – Along the Shadow

Saosin - Along the Shadow
Jason Tate

This first impression was originally posted as a live blog for supporters in our forums on May 3rd, 2016. First impressions are meant to be quick, fun, initial impressions on an album or release as I listen to it for the first time. It’s a running commentary written while listening to an album — not a review. More like a diary of thoughts. This post has been lightly edited for structure and flow.

Let’s take a listen to the new Saosin album. Same thing goes as before — spoilers abound, I reserve the right to change my opinion as time goes on. I’ve got multiple beers sitting in front of me, and I’m hitting play and just going to type out my thoughts as I listen.

Read More “Saosin – Along the Shadow”

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