The Music Tank

Here is a dope-brand-new video form Kardinal Offishall whose building up to the release of his next album Mr. International. Directed by Chris G.

Foxy Shazam have released the first song off their upcoming Warner Bros. debut album entitled ” “Unstoppable.” The album is set to come out sometime in spring.

The track of the same name is available now at iTunes (who have a web based interface now by the way) . The track will also be featured during this Sunday’s Super Bowl game, though I don’t know in which context it will be played.

The White Stripes have announced the release of a new box set. “Under Great White Northern Lights” is set to be released on March 16th and will ncluded a DVD of a documentary bearing the same name, a DVD of the 10th anniversary show, double LP/CD of 16 live tracks, exclusive 7 inch vinyl, silkscreened print, and hardcover book of photography.

Trailer:

Video:

Seems like “tagged commercial” rapper David Banner is hooking up with “underground extraordinaire” producer 9th Wonder for a soon to be released Mixtape project titled Death of a Pop Star. The mixtape should follow soon but until then you can’t test the waters with the track Slow Down right below also available for download.

Download David Banner – Slow Down (prod. 9th Wonder).mp3

Well it looks like 2010 releases are on the right side of the track. One of the first album that is catching our attention is the return of the psychadelic animated group Gorillaz. The band will follow up 2005’s Demon Days with their third album Plastic Beach. As always, Gorillaz will surroung themselves with numerous guests inlcuding Mos Def, Snoop Doog, De La Soul & Lou Reed amongst others.

The first single Stylo feautring Mos Def & Bobby Womack will be made available for download on January 26th but you can hear it over here. Plastic Beach will be released March 9th. Look below for the full tracklisting.

1. Orchestral Intro
2. Welcome To The World Of The Plastic Beach (feat. Snoop Dogg and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble)
3. White Flag (feat. Kano & Bashy)
4. Rhinestone Eyes
5. Stylo (feat. Bobby Womack and Mos Def)
6. Superfast Jellyfish (feat. Gruff Rhys and De La Soul)
7. Empire Ants (feat. Little Dragon)
8. Glitter Freeze (feat. Mark E Smith)
9. Some Kind Of Nature (feat. Lou Reed)
10. On Melancholy Hill
11. Broken
12. Sweepstakes (feat. Mos Def & Hypnotic Brass Ensemble)
13. Plastic Beach (feat. Mick Jones & Paul Simonon)
14. To Binge (feat. Little Dragon)
15. Cloud Of Unknowing (feat. Bobby Womack)
16. Pirate Jet

The Bled has a brand new MySpace page with 2 new songs from their upcoming Rise Records release “Heat Fetish”.

The album will be available March 2nd but you can pre-order it on their MySpace.

OK Go’s new album, Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, drops next week on Jan 12th. In the meantime, the band is touring Europe:

01/11/2010 Norwich UEA Norwich, UK
01/12/2010 O2 Academy Birmingham Birmingham, UK
01/13/2010 Shepherd’s Bush Empire London, UK
01/14/2010 Concorde II Brighton, UK
01/16/2010 O2 Academy Sheffield, UK
01/17/2010 O2 Academy Liverpool, UK
01/18/2010 ABC Glasgow, UK
01/19/2010 Nottingham Rescue Rooms Nottingham, UK
01/21/2010 AB Box Brussels Brussels, BE
01/22/2010 Melkweg Amsterdam, NL
01/25/2010 Werkstatt Cologne, DE
01/26/2010 Nouveau Casino Paris, FR
01/28/2010 Vega Musikkenshus Copenhagen, DK

The EP released alongside the Playstation 3 game God of War III, titled God of War: Blood & Metal, was announced to be released two weeks prior to the game, on March 2.

On it, you will find five previously unreleased songs from five Roadrunner artists that are exclusive to and recorded for this release. The artists contributing tracks include Killswitch Engage, Dream Theater, Trivium, Opeth and Taking Dawn.

Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy stated, “Dream Theater recorded an exclusive instrumental track for inclusion on the soundtrack. This is the first time in 24 years that we’ve written and recorded a song for anything other than one of our own album, so we’re up for the challenge and excited to have been asked!”

A brand new video from Freeway + Jake One is out for their single Know What I Mean. The rapper and producer are hooking up for a full length LP titled Stimulus Package due out in February.

Here is the brand new video for the ill Mos Def song Supermagic off The Ecstatic.

Rivers Cuomo came out of tour bus accident in upstate New York with minor injuries on Saturday night while the band was going from Boston to Toronto.

Read more over at The Guardian:

Weezer were travelling to Boston after a concert in Toronto on Saturday night. At about 7:30am, the tour bus hit a patch of ice on the New York State Thruway. The back end of the vehicle slid out of control, according to CNN, pushing the bus on to the motorway median, over some reflective posts, then back across the highway. After breaking through the guardrail, it landed in a ditch.

Though Cuomo’s wife, two-year-old daughter and another passenger were uninjured, Cuomo and assistant Sarah Kim were both taken by ambulance to St Mary’s hospital in Amsterdam, New York. Kim was suffering from back pain.

Somalia-bred/Toronto adoptee singer-songwriter K’naan just got a huge stint of publicity. His song Wavin Flag, off his critically acclaimed Troubadour album, has been selected as the official anthem of the upcoming 2010 FIFA World Cup. I figure that this will be huge for K’naan’s career. The song has been somewhat modified (as you can witness in the embed video) but the message of hope stays unchanged.

Opeth will be celebrating their 20th anniversary next spring by doing 6 shows in selected cities around the world. At each show, the band will perform two sets for about 2 hours. The first set will feature the band playing the epic Blackwater Park album in its entirety. The second set will consist of mixed material from the band’s extensive catalog.

Here’s what Mikael Akerfeldt had to say about this :

”I can’t believe it, but…fuck…we’re celebrating 20 years!! 20 years I’ve been in this band, ever since I was 16! It’s insane! As far as I remember, we’ve never had a release party, never celebrated anything officially. Well, now is the time, you hear?

We’ve set up a string of shows, 6 of them actually, around the world. To say that they will be super-exclusive is beyond an understatement!
We’ve discussed the set list already and it seems like we’ll pull out a few songs we’ve never played before, some of which fans all over the world have been demanding to hear for years and years.

Our main agenda for these shows is to have “fun” whilst trying to blow your fucking minds, you could say business as usual, but really…it’ll be special, trust me! I can’t stress enough how exclusive this will be!

We will not add any more shows on top of the 6 that we’ve confirmed already, so please make up your mind early on whether you wanna go or not (of course you fucking do!) as I would assume there’s quite a few of our fans that might be interested in seeing a thing like this.

We’ll spend the better part of January-March rehearsing for this. All to make YOU fucking happy! OK, we’ll be tight, very tight indeed…come see us!
It’s a celebration!!!!

If you are lucky enough to live in these general area, I’d suggest you don’t miss this oportunity:

March 30th Stockholm, SWE – Cirkus
April 01st Essen, GER – Lichtburg
April 03rd Paris, FRA – Bataclan
April 05th London, UK – Royal Albert Hall
April 07th New York, NY – Terminal 5
April 09th Los Angeles, CA – The Wiltern

AOL Music is currently streaming Nonpoint’s upcoming acoustic EP “Cut The Chord”.

The band is currently working with producers Chad Gray and Greg Tribbett (Mudvayne, Hellyeah) on their new effort.

Back in the late 80’s, getting a publicist to put the good word out on your craft was not as easy or well seen as it is now today. Although most artists still use such staff, the trend is heavily gearing towards self-promotion with tools like personal blogs, facebook & Twitter. Call them precursors or visionaries but that’s exactly what The Native Tongues were doing some 20-odd years ago. The Native Tongues collective was the fruit of fellow artists landing a hand to each other as promoting each other.

Before continuing on the process of the Tongues, let’s tackle with a bit of the said roster. First off, you have the Q-Tip/Phife Dawg/Ali Shaheed trio (throw in Jairobi if you must) of A Tribe Called Quest. The Posdnuous/Dove aka Trugoy/Maseo trio of the plugs De La Soul, Dres & Mr. Man of Black Sheep, the Jungle Brothers, Queen Latifah, Monie Love, Chi Ali (R.I.P.) and then later on seen as the later additions, Common and Mos Def. Quite a lot to take in huh!?

The format of self/next-of-kin promotion resulted in many collaborations. That way, you would have a De La Soul song featuring Q-Tip (i.e.: “Saturdays (A Roller Skate Jam Named)”). You would also get the atypical posse cut featuring De La, Tribe, the Jungle Brothers (i.e.: “Buddy”). It is notable to say that the artists were following the Zulu Nation tradition with positive, afro-centric lyrics. It was all love!

You get the point. Let’s get to the meat of things: the ecstatic jams.

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