You’re bound to find a whole dumpster full of blog posts and articles today marking the fifteenth anniversary of the death of Kurt Cobain. Within those pages and pages of paragraphs you’ll find everything from genuine sorrow to half-hearted memorials of an event, rather than a person. My own sentiments lay somewhere in the middle.

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Spinnerette has set June 2 as the release date for their much-anticipated debut album. The self-titled SPINNERETTE album will be released on Anthem/Universal Music Canada (UMC), the country’s leading music company, and includes thirteen new songs written by Brody Dalle and produced by Alain Johannes. This is the first Brody Dalle helmed full-length release since The Distillers’ 2003 Coral Fang album. Read more

The Psychic Paramount: America’s greatest current rock band, no questions asked. More than so many flake-out noise combos or whatever, these guys seriously go for it with their playing, pushing themselves into new, unprecedented worlds of heaviness. Not like heavier than everything before, but certainly heavy in a new way. I dig on Times New Viking and some of the other neu-no-fi rockers that are running around the nation today, but PP manage to sound blown out and perfect and hi fi and overwhelming in a way that no bedroom rocker could dream of. Hmm now that I think of it, this is exactly what Black Flag’s “Process of Weeding Out” would be if it was seriously impeccable instead of awesomely questionable.

Marion Brown “Sweet Earth Flying”: I cannot get enough of this fucking record. The best of fusion’s polytonal, Rhodes-heavy expansiveness is perfectly cut with some truly free post-fire music out-jazz. Brown was such a sick melodic player… a cool follow up to the promise of Ornette Coleman’s proto weirdness. And the piano solo is so beautiful, definitely the best Debussy-vibin’ I’ve heard this side of Monk’s catalogue.

The Bug “London Zoo”: This gets heavy play in the van, duh. “Pressure” was my shit, but this is so much thicker and more intense. Some people declared it boring, but I think they just missed the emotional complexity and creeping dread that runs through the whole album. There’s a lot to unpack here, and some sick bass to boot. Serious.

Notorious B.I.G. “Ten Crack Commandments”: I mean, this is so obvious but fuck it. There are few things as nice as finishing a show with some serious rap music, and this one is a true top contender. Funny as fuck, especially when he makes fun of you for thinking you can employ a functioning credit system with crackheads. Psht forget it, indeed.

Thank You: We are touring with them, and they are great. The This Heat reference gets thrown around a lot when talking about this band, and I can see it in a sense. Well, pretty much just for that track “Horizontal Hold,” like if you took that and ran with it, adding whatever the fuck you felt/feel like along the way. Few bands today are going with sound fundamentals as hard as these guys are; churning and explosive, totally beautiful.

Long before Steve Jobs decided DRM free music really did make sense, Amazon was offering up unrestricted MP3′s for the same price that iTunes was selling their caged versions. Apple finally saw the light and eventually lifted the restrictions, demolishing the only downside to making the iTunes store your primary digital music source. Today, Apple decided they liked handicapping themselves after all and announced their new pricing structure. It looks a little something like this:

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Damn, I’m feeling old with this week’s podcast. I’ve been meaning to do a podcast with all of the new “elder” bands that have released metal albums in the past year. Well, here it is. Some of the finest batch of new songs from bands who have been around a lot longer than you have.

• Conquest – Judas Priest (Nostradamus)
• More Than Meets The Eye – Testament (The Formation Of Damnation)
• Meet Your Maker – Metal Church (This Present Wasteland)
• English Rose – Motörhead (Motorizer)
• To Mother Earth – Gamma Ray (Land Of The Free II)
• Kicked – Annihilator (Metal)

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Here are 5 great artists that Senon Williams of Dengue Fever says you should check out:

• Sinn Sismouth…60′s and 70′s era Cambodian Psych Rock. He was called the Elvis of Cambodia, but he was more like the Dylan because he wrote such amazing songs.
• Nelson Slater….Velvet Underground Era NYC songwriter. One splendid album, “Wild Angel”. I think he must have been a weirdo.
• Radar Bros….The best band in the world. Songs as deep as the Ocean. Melodic and soaring sounds.
• Charlie Wadhams….A Nick Drake of today. Music you just want to get next to.
• John Prine….The words are so good the music is a bonus.

The documentary film Sleepwalking Through The Mekong, will be released on
April 14, 2009.  The package features a DVD and a CD soundtrack.

http://www.myspace.com/denguefevermusic

In an open letter on Stereolab.co.uk Pikey states:

Dear All,

As we recently made #51 with Emperor Tomato Ketchup in the Amazon 100 Greatest Indie Rock Albums of all Time we feel that our work is done for the moment.

We have had to cancel the last two shows that we were scheduled to play, apologies to all that had bought tickets, and there are no plans to record new tracks.

Duophonic are working on the release of Chemical Chords 2, we also have plans for a new Switched On and remastering of the back catalogue.

We are are all going to have a bit of a rest now after nearly 19 years and work on a few other projects.

The website will still be updated and disks released but there won’t be any new Stereolab product for a while.

Cheerio
Pikey

I had a lot of comments on my podcast last week with the inclusion of Cursive’s From The Hips. Well, it appears that the band is really pushing this one. They’ve got a video now and it’s pretty decent. Enjoy.

Welcome students old and new…Beginning today, and every Wednesday Thursday until the sun blazes the Earth, the staff shall pay homage to the most classic indie albums of all time. No countdowns, or top 100 lists, just a weekly gaze into the Music Emissions vault. Let the education begin…

Fugazi is a band from Washington, D.C. They have released seven albums and though on hiatus currently, they are widely considered to be pioneers of the DIY movement. Constantly pushing for concert pricing fairness, and punk rock ethics. Self managed, the band releases all their material through Ian MacKaye’s own Dischord Records.

Arguably their best record, and one of the best indie music album’s in history is Repeater. Have a gaze at Dennis Scanland’s review from March 0f 2003.

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The Living Things are enjoying the release of first album in four years entitled Habeas Corpus. They took a moment to tell us some of their favorite albums at the moment.