Blink-182 Score First #1 UK Album

Blink-182
Jason Tate

Blink-182 score their first #1 album in the UK.

Blink-182 landed their first U.K. No. 1 album with California (BMG), according to today’s new data from the Official Charts Company. […] California achieved chart sales of 24,000 in the week ending last night (Thursday). It’s Blink 182’s seventh studio album and eighth to chart in the U.K., in a 16-year span that also included 2005’s Greatest Hits. Their previous best showing before the new release was Take Off Your Pants And Jacket, which reached No. 4 in 2001.

Ontario Opens Second Largest North American Vinyl Pressing Plant

Jason Tate

Kerry Doole, writing for FYI Music News, looks at a new vinyl pressing plant opening in Ontario. The plant will be the second largest in North America:

The company has been pressing vinyl in Prague since January, filling orders for Universal and Sony Canada plus some independent labels. “In phase one we can do 4.5 million units out of the Burlington plant plus 2 million from the Czech plant,” says McGhee. “We’ve already put phase two into motion and that is adding five new automated presses. That’ll put us over the 11 million mark, making us the second largest plant in North America. We’ve already bought a plant in the US based in the Midwest and there’ll be a west coast plant so we’ll have three in North America.”

Albums in Stores – July 8th, 2016

Jason Tate

It’s an interesting week for releases — not a whole lot I’m dying to check out. I’ll give that Biffy Clyro album a spin and the new Switchfoot is pretty good. I’ve heard good things about Frameworks from Drew, and I’ll see if that The Avalanches record sits at all. If you hit read more you can see all the releases we have in our calendar for the week. Hit the quote bubble to access our forums and talk about what came out today, what albums you picked up, and to make mention of anything we may have missed.

Read More “Albums in Stores – July 8th, 2016”

Blink-182 Talk With Spin

Jason Tate

Rachel Brodsky of Spin sat down Blink-182 to talk about the band’s latest album, their relationship with Tom DeLonge, and the future of the band:

I think when people are jumping on top of each other’s ideas, it elevates it a lot more than me going into the studio and working on something all by myself for a while. By that point, you become so entrenched with what you’ve written that it’s hard to step back from that. We were working so quickly in the studio that Matt would be seeing something and say, “Is that good?” and I’d go, “Yeah, that’s awesome,” and he’d say, “Is that good?” and I’d say, “That could be better.” I need that feedback, too. Everybody was pushing each other, and it was just a much better result.

Unreleased Sufjan Stevens Apparently Found in Dumpster

Sufjan Stevens
Jason Tate

Apparently an unreleased Sufjan Stevens album was found in a Brooklyn dumpster. Michelle Geslani, writing for Consequence of Sound:

“I used to work next door to Sufjan’s studio in Brooklyn,” an anonymous poster recounted on Reddit yesterday. “One day, while he was renovating the place, he threw a bunch of stuff into the building’s dumpster. I salvaged this…as far as I know, I don’t think it’s ever been released.”

And from an interview with the album’s finder, via Stereogum:

I deleted the Reddit post because I felt awful about sharing the album after Asthmatic Kitty’s spokesperson kindly asked me not to. That was definitely a misstep on my part. I should have respected his wishes. On the other hand…this is trash we’re talking about. Publicly available trash. I didn’t Frankenstein the album together; it was right there, perfectly intact, complete with a clean-cut square of album art and a track listing. After discovering that it was never released, and reading the desperation from Sufjan fans who really wanted to hear this little piece of his history, I decided it best to allow Stalker to live through the self-multiplying preservationists that make the internet what it is. The alternative was a sad, quiet death for an album that I think shows a wonderfully playful side of Sufjan’s early career.