Ben Harper has released “Black Beauty”, an original song for the 2020 film ‘Black Boys’.

Listen to it HERE.

“It was an honour to have been asked to write a song for this culturally vital documentary,” Harper said. “After watching ‘Black Boys’ and discussing it in depth with [director] Sonia Lowman, I went immediately to work on composing ‘Black Beauty.’ I am old-school and still love getting players in a room together, so a production of this scale during a pandemic was challenging, with quarantine. I was fortunate that the incredible musicians in my circle have taken it upon themselves to become circumstantial recording engineers, and thanks to modern recording technology and some FaceTime sessions, I was able to work by sending tracks back and forth over the Internet.”

A film for this historic moment in a nation still struggling to rectify its racist legacy, ‘Black Boys’ illuminates and celebrates the full humanity of Black men and boys in America. It is a love story exploring the body, mind, voice, and heart through intimate, intergenerational conversations and stories.

At the intersection of education, criminal justice and sports, ‘Black Boys’ reveals the emotional landscape of racism—of how it feels to walk through the world seen as something to be feared. Deeply moving and profoundly beautiful, ‘Black Boys’ serves as a rare glimpse into the emotional landscape of Black men and boys, illuminating their full humanity, vulnerability and resilience.

More info on the film can be found via Variety HERE.

In October of last year Harper released the new album Winter Is For Lovers, a record that is in many ways a culmination of Harper’s entire musical life. The intimate and ambitious solo recording is his first-ever entirely instrumental project, comprised of 15 original compositions that seamlessly flow together, imagined as a symphony for guitar.

Watch just Ben and his Monteleone lap steel guitar perform Winter Is For Lovers in its entirety at The Folk Music Centre, the famous music shop that his grandparents opened in the late 1950s in Claremont, CA, HERE.

The music heard on Winter Is For Lovers is deeply ingrained in Harper’s DNA and leads directly back to aforementioned Folk Music Centre. The shop and community centre has hosted music legends of all stripes, many of which Ben met while working there. Some of the album’s many musical inspirations were visitors, including John Fahey, the godfather of the American Primitive movement, slide guitar master Taj Mahal, who Ben would later study with, plus the likes of Leonard Cohen, Jackson Browne and more.

WATCH: AVENGED SEVENFOLD, AND MORE, IN NOFX’S NEW VIDEO FOR THEIR FIRST SINGLE, “LINEWLEUM”

SINGLE ALBUM OUT FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26
VIA FAT WRECK CHORDS

Fat Wreck Chords and longstanding California punk band NOFX are excited to announce Single Album, the band’s 14th full-length album, due out on Friday, February 26. Boasting 12 new tracks and recorded at Motor Studios in San Francisco with Bill Stevenson and Jason Livermore (Rise Against, Alkaline Trio, Teenage Bottlerocket), Single Album is their most personal album to date.

Check out the new video for the lead single “Linewleum,” and get the nitty gritty from the fat one himself:

“I have no idea why “Linoleum” is THE NOFX song that is covered by so many bands while other NOFX songs get hardly any attention. “Linoleum” wasn’t a single, it had no video, it got no radio play, and most importantly, it didn’t even have a chorus!!! All popular songs have choruses! WTF! So, One night I stayed up till 4:00 am checking out all the different versions on YouTube. Watching hundreds of bands from over 28 countries (mostly Indonesia) doing “Linoleum” was a humbling experience for me. So I decided to write a song that was a shout out to all those people that learned those four chords and remembered the non-rhyming lyrics. Then I asked the biggest of all the bands (Avenged Sevenfold) to play some leads on the song. Then M Shadows suggested we do a video together. Then I figured I should put all of the bands in the video. Well, I couldn’t fit all the bands, but I picked a bunch of cool ones! A song about not playing a song that’s not a hit song with a video about other bands covering the song! This is why I love punk rock writing punk songs. Rules out the door!”

Watch the music video for “Linewleum” on YouTube HERE
and stream the track on all platforms HERE

Nearly 40 years in, what else is there to say about NOFX?

And aside from the occasional negative headline, how can one of the pioneers of SoCal punk—a style hardly known for experimentation—surprise anyone these days?

The answers lie on Single Album (Fat Wreck Chords, Feb. 26), NOFX’s 14th full-length studio album. There’s the nearly six-minute post-hardcore opener (“The Big Drag”). The meta sendoff for the band’s best-known song (“Linewleum”). The reggae-inflected song about a mass shooting (“Fish in a Gun Barrel”). Even a piano ballad (“Your Last Resort”).

It is, as frontman and bassist Fat Mike repeatedly describes, “a dark album.” That wasn’t the original intent. By early 2020, NOFX—which includes guitarist El Hefe, guitarist Eric Melvin, and drummer Smelly—had written and recorded enough songs for a planned double album to be released that fall. Like so much about 2020, those plans changed.

“When you write a double album, you write differently,” Mike says. “I was writing really different songs, and some fun songs, but you have to make a double album interesting enough to listen to the whole way. I wanted to make a perfect double album, and I didn’t accomplish that. So I decided to just make a single album, hence the title.”

Recorded at Motor Studios in San Francisco with Bill Stevenson and Jason Livermore (Rise Against, Alkaline Trio, Teenage Bottlerocket), Single Album pares down the roughly 23 songs NOFX tracked. “I just kept adding songs,” Mike says. “I was maybe a little out of my mind.”

How so? “I was pretty high on drugs that year,” he adds. While fans may wonder what else is new, Single Albumcasts the frontman’s habits in a surprisingly harsh light. While “Grieve Soto” eulogises beloved Adolescents founder Steve Soto, it takes a meta turn when Eric Melvin warns Mike to be “cautious, more respectful, less obnoxious.”“Birmingham” has what people in recovery call “a moment of clarity,” when he realised he was an addict.

“That was a clarity moment in my life when I was by myself, and the sun’s coming up, and I’m scraping cocaine off the floor, like, ‘Eww, gross. I shouldn’t be doing this,’” Mike says. “So what did I do? I ordered more.” After being hospitalised with a bleeding ulcer—a terrifying experience that caused him to vomit blood—Mike entered rehab in fall 2020. He promptly wrote another new album while there and has been sober since.

Unsurprisingly, Single Album represents his most personal work to date. Heartbreak permeates “I Love You More Than I Hate Me” and “Your Last Resort.” “Fuck Euphemism” dives into Mike’s sexuality for a “pronoun bar fight.” “Doors and Fours” is a grim look into the early ’80s LA punk scene, when dozens of people—many of them Mike’s friends—overdosed on a prescription drug combo. “The Big Drag” is a personal vow to make the most of life, even when it undeniably sucks. “It’s one of my favourite NOFX songs ever. I don’t get sick of listening to that song,” Mike says of “The Big Drag.” “No measure is the same length. Every time a new chord change happens, there’s a different rhythm to the guitar. The bass never stays on one note. You’re not sure when the chords are going to change because they always change at a different point.”

In other words, it’s unpredictable—just like NOFX. Turns out there is a lot to say about them, even after all this time.

Fat Wreck Chords will release Single Album on Feb. 26, 2021.

Pre-order Single Album HERE (limited coloured vinyl)

NOFX – SINGLE ALBUM OUT FRIDAY FEB 26 Single Album track-listing 1. The Big Drag 2. I Love You More Than I Hate Me 3. Fuck Euphemism 4. Fish in a Gun Barrel 5. Birmingham 6. Linewleum 7. My Bro Cancervive Cancer 8. Grieve Soto 9. Doors and Fours 10. Your Last Resort

Following the recent release of his new album Sensationalized, Sydney-based artist Wade Jackson shares the accompanying video to his lead single ‘Nightlife’. The visuals come ahead of Jackson’s album launch at Sydney’s Moshpit this Thursday 14 January, with special guests and Broke Stone Records’ label mates Lewis Goldmark & Magnetic Heads. The album launch will also be live streamed on Thursday 14 January at 8PM AEDT via Zenn. Live stream passes are on sale now here.

Jackson began predominantly worked in music theatre and writing screen plays. Given things weren’t going so well he decided to use his musical chops to write his debut album Goodbye Rain, Hello Sunshine in 2012 which he later recorded with producer Liam Judson (Belles Will Ring, Cloud Control to Major Tom, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever Dream). Touring Australia widely, he took a break to write Whiskey Alpha Delta Echo in the fall of 2013, again co-producing with Judson. The album was picked up on a licensing deal from a Spanish label generating a European tour.

After returning from Europe, with wind in his sails and sales he started work on the follow-up, Crown & Cathedral which unfortunately was disliked immensely by his Spanish fan base citing “there’s too much synthesiser”, a mistake that Jackson did not learn from and continued to use on the follow up album, The Ghost Searches Beside Me. The LP was recorded and mixed by Jackson with his new set of skills he was forced to learn after going broke from investing all of his money into a music documentary he made with friend and well known Australian band manager and industry stalwart, Greg Carey. Waiting – The Van Duren Story was screened around the world and well received.

Now, Broken Stone Records are thrilled to have released Jackson’s fifth album titled Sensationalized.

As Jackson details of the album “Sensationalized was written and recorded during the Covid-19 lockdown in Sydney. The theme is based around a fictional complete city breakdown, exaggerated reality. An almost apocalyptic, dystopian city with different scenarios played out by different characters in a diary/self reflection style.

This was also reflected in the music I was listening to: Joe Walsh – Barnstorm, Joni Mitchell – Hejira, Lewis Baloue – L’amour, Peter Koppes – Manchild or Myth. All these records for me have a real reclusive feel and felt comforting whilst alone during lockdown.”

Lewis Goldmark is the new project from Belles Will Ring frontman, Liam Judson. This time we have chilly guitars, glowing synths, along with Judsons’ unique melodicism all coming together to form dystopian lullabies.

Magnetic Heads is the multi-member project of JD Miller. Once upon a time a collection of jangling 12 string pop ballads, now songs about game theory and coming of age, the loss of youth and the power of community delivered with a straight face and a brutalist cold wave aesthetic.

Listen / Buy / Download Wade Jackson – Sensationalized: https://wadejackson.lnk.to/sensationalized

UPCOMING SHOWS

Wade Jackson ‘Sensationalized’ Album Launch + Live Stream
with special guests Lewis Goldmark & Magnetic Heads
Thursday 14th January at 8PM AEDT
Moshpit, Erskineville – SOLD OUT
Live stream passes on sale now here.