Superstars Kanye West and JAY Z's collaboration ‘The Throne' will bring the WATCH THE THRONE tour to The O2 arena on Sunday 20 May 2012 as their only London date.

The longtime friends and music innovators inspired each other to new heights with their collaboration on WATCH THE THRONE recorded in person at various locations around the world. Over a year in the making and a truly global affair, the duo recorded in London and Bath in the UK, Abu Dhabi, Sydney, Paris, and New York City. The album features production from The RZA, The Neptunes and Kanye's longtime collaborator Mike Dean. The short list of featured vocals includes Frank Ocean, Beyoncé, Curtis Mayfield and Mr. Hudson. The lead track, "OTIS," brilliantly weaves Otis Redding's "Try A Little Tenderness.

Both JAY Z and Kanye West have each appeared as guests on the other's stage, and now they come together for never-before-seen performances not only from their collaboration, WATCH THE THRONE but also songs from their classic catalogue.

Second day of our Charalambides weekend with solo sets from Tom and Christina Carter and various collaborations. Dedicated to a vision of spiritual music (in all its forms) as transformative force, Charalambides sound is uniquely personal and consistent, even through some outwardly extreme shifts in tactics - song-as-mantra, interstellar voids full of silence, or howling, ecstatically-received gnosis.

CHRISTINA CARTER

Christina Carter was born in the bayou city of Houston, Texas in November of 1968, and co-founded the group Charalambides there in December of 1991. Ever since then, she has deeply mined her own vein of sound-as-music with voice, guitar (both electric and acoustic), piano, and keys. For the past several years, Christina has utilized extended improvisational guitar passages within and without song-medley structures; re-contextualized certain Charalambides songs within the spare single guitar/voice form that birthed much of the group's music; and recently, investigated 'the song' as a thing unto itself, specifically concentrating on 'the word'- both in her own lyric writing and her interpretions of the work of other lyricists.

In addition to performing extensively in the US, UK and Europe as a solo artist, Christina has played and recorded in various groups and duos with Black Forest/Black Sea, Maria Chavez (as Weird Cookie), Loren Connors, Chris Corsano, Dredd Foole, Sandy Ewen, Paul Flaherty, Gown (as The Bastard Wing), Shawn David McMillen, and Thurston Moore. She is also a permanent member of Scorces (with vocalist/pedal steel player Heather Leigh Murray).

Concurrent with her work as a musician, Christina has expanded her involvement in writing and visual art. Her poetry has been published by Digitalis Industries, The Ecstatic Peace Poetry Journal, Glass Eye, and Slow Toe Press. In 2007, her art piece Forever 21 appeared at Salon Mijangos in San Antonio, Texas as part of a concert/exhibit featuring Tom Carter, Warmer Milks, and Tetuzi Akiyama. Forever 21 was a labor of love and destruction: six of her handwritten diaries cut up painstakingly with scissors into miniscule pieces, which then filled a large yellow plastic shopping bag.

Christina currently resides in Austin, Texas. Her latest albums are the Charalambides album Exile (Kranky), the double LP reissue Texas Blues Working (Blackest Rainbow), and two solo CDRs: Trickster Who Is Like God (Many Breaths) and a reissue of Future In Past (Many Breaths), originally released on the Wholly Other imprint in 2002.

TOM CARTER

Tom Carter's solo electric guitar work sculpts a richly varied landscape of immensely-stacked grit and beauty, weaving interlocking strands of visceral melody into towering (and often high-volume) long-form drones.

Born barely south of the Mason-Dixon line, and just in time for the Summer of Love, Tom Carter led a decidedly non-hippy existence being shuffled around various farm and mining towns in Maryland and Ohio by his newspaperman father, before finally making his way to Texas in 1985, just in time to watch all the good hardcore bands die. Already obsessed with American pre-punk and British post-punk, Carter dove into the lysergically spiked musical waters of Texas with both feet, augmenting his guitar skills with unreliable instruments, cranky analog electronics, and disintegrating practice amps. Over the ensuing decades, he managed to forge his evolving ideas of complete tonal immersion (and the quest for the perfect fuzz tone) into a layered sonic toolkit of rough beauty and unrefined proficiency.

Best known for his work with acclaimed iconoclasts Charalambides, which he co-founded with Christina Carter in 1991, he has branched out into other collaborations since 2001, playing and recording with long-term projects Zaika (with Marcia Bassett) and Badgerlore (with Rob Fisk, Ben Chasny, Liz Harris, and Peter Swanson), as well as in frequent collaborations with Bay Area sound artist Robert Horton. Other fellow travelers have included Christian Kiefer, Paul Flaherty, Tetuzi Akiyama, Shawn David McMillen, Thurston Moore, Dredd Foole, Loren Connors, Pip Proud, Inca Ore, Jandek, Bardo Pond, Starving Weirdos, Ensemble Economique, Steve Gunn, Robert Millis, and Matt Valentine, among many others.

Recently, Carter has focused on his work with free-rock improvisers Eleven Twenty-Nine (Carter, Marc Orleans, and Michael Evans) as well as his solo performances and recordings, which have increasingly featured visual components- including collaborations with filmmakers Martha Colburn and Margarida Garcia. He currently lives in New York City.

Following last year’s acclaimed debut performance at the Wigmore Hall, the mesmerising vocal ensemble Trio Mediaeval and the innovative trumpet player Arve Henriksen return to London to reprise their unique collaboration, bringing together Norwegian folk music, medieval music, contemporary classical and even a few moments of improvisation.

"Following last year’s acclaimed debut performance at the Wigmore Hall, the mesmerising vocal ensemble Trio Mediaeval and the innovative trumpet player Arve Henriksen return to London to reprise their unique collaboration, bringing together Norwegian folk music, medieval music, contemporary classical and even a few moments of improvisation."

Superstars Kanye West and JAY Z's collaboration ‘The Throne' will bring the WATCH THE THRONE tour to The O2 arena on Sunday 20 May 2012 and Monday 21 May 2012 as their only London dates.

For this project, music icons and pop culture visionaries JAY Z and Kanye West joined their extraordinary talents to form the group ‘THE THRONE' and released the most anticipated album event of 2011, WATCH THE THRONE. On Monday 8 August last year, THE THRONE'S extraordinary once-in-a-lifetime, Platinum selling Roc-A-Fella / Def Jam Recordings / Roc Nation album collaboration, WATCH THE THRONE, debuted at number 1 and has garnered several Grammy nominations.

The longtime friends and music innovators inspired each other to new heights with their collaboration on WATCH THE THRONE recorded in person at various locations around the world. Over a year in the making and a truly global affair, the duo recorded in London and Bath in the UK, Abu Dhabi, Sydney, Paris, and New York City. The album features production from The RZA, The Neptunes and Kanye's longtime collaborator Mike Dean. The short list of featured vocals includes Frank Ocean, Beyoncé, Curtis Mayfield and Mr. Hudson. The lead track, "OTIS," brilliantly weaves Otis Redding's "Try A Little Tenderness."

The production is classic Kanye West soul, with the two MCs trading couplets over a sample manipulated the way only West can. "Sounds so soulful, don't you agree?" intones JAY Z, and the two launch into a treatise on swagger, claiming their rightful place at the top. Since the track's release, the flood of praise for the track has been nothing short of deafening. Entertainment Weekly declares the track "the most well-executed rap song of the year." "Otis" can be streamed at watchthethrone.com/otis.

Both JAY Z and Kanye West have each appeared as guests on the other's stage, and now they come together for never-before-seen performances not only from their collaboration, WATCH THE THRONE but also songs from their classic catalogue.

BOTW presents Choir of Young Believers in London

Tickets available from http://birdonthewire.ticketabc.com/events/choir-young-believer/

<img src="http://cdn.last.fm/presents/tumblr/amaranthe-550x400.jpg"; alt="some_text"/>

Last.fm and Spinefarm Records are proud to present Swedish metal band Amaranthe who will headline a potentially ear-splitting night at the Relentless Garage. Support comes from label-mates Dynazty and Soen (playing their first ever UK show).

Tickets are £10 and can be purchased <a href="http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/user?region=gb_london&query=detail&event=501530&referral_id=mfg&interface=mean"; target="_blank">HERE</a>

LM.C will be back to your country!!

In the years since her tragic death, folk-rock icon Sandy Denny has emerged and been cited by many, including Mojo and Uncut magazines, as Britain’s finest female singer songwriter. Her legendary song Who Knows Where the Time Goes has been recorded by as diverse a range of artists as Cat Power, Nina Simone and Judy Collins.

The comprehensive re-issue of all Denny’s recordings in recent years, has seen her reputation continue to grow, and this very special performance showcases for the first time her entire musical legacy taking in her work with Fairport Convention, Fotheringay, her solo career as well as new songs discovered in Sandy’s archive and completed by Thea Gilmore on her acclaimed album Don’t Stop Singing.

This special show brings together and reveals sandy denny’s work for a contemporary generation but also a new generation, who are beginning to understand her contribution and significance, as new artists such as Laura Marling, Cat Power, Joanna Newsom and Florence Welch are likened to Denny or cite her as a major influence.

Alongside the completed archive, former colleagues and friends and young admirers will interpret work that has a particular resonance for them. Denny’s contemporaries including Maddy Prior, Jerry Donahue and Dave Swarbrick will perform alongside new generation artists Thea Gilmore, Lavinia Blackwall, Blair Dunlop, Sam Carter and diverse contributors such as PP Arnold and other special guests. They join members of Bellowhead, who form the core of a house ‘super group’, for a wonderful musical revelation of the lady described by Richard Thompson as ‘the greatest British female artist of her generation’.

Tickets/info: www.atpfestival.com/events/beachhousevillageunderground.php

BEACH HOUSE are pleased to share details of their fourth album, Bloom. Like their previous releases it further develops their distinctive sound yet stands apart as a new piece of work. The landscape of Bloom was largely designed on the road, between the countless sound checks and myriad experiences of two years of touring. These ideas were later gathered and developed in Baltimore, where the band lives and works. Bloom was recorded in late 2011 at Sonic Ranch Studios in Tornillo, TX and mixed at Electric Lady in NYC. The band co-produced the record with Chris Coady.

The many layers of Bloom are meticulously constructed to ensure that each chord and melody performs its role to form a whole. Victoria Legrand states, “Bloom is a journey. For me, it is about the irreplaceable power of imagination as it relates to the intense experience of living. A bloom is only temporary... a fleeting vision of life in all of its intensity and colour, beautiful even if only for a moment."

http://www.atpfestival.com/events/ibymlondon2012.php

Friday 25th May - curated by ATP

SLAYER performing Reign In Blood
SLEEP
MELVINS
WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM
YOB
A STORM OF LIGHT

Saturday 26th May - curated by Mogwai

MOGWAI
DIRTY THREE
CODEINE
MUDHONEY
THE MUSIC OF CAN
HARVEY MILK
BILL WELLS & AIDAN MOFFAT
CHAVEZ
FLOOR
THE SOFT MOON
BALAM ACAB
ANTONI MAIOVVI
UMBERTO

Sunday 27th May - curated by ATP

THE AFGHAN WHIGS
EL-P
THE MAKE-UP
ARCHERS OF LOAF
THEE OH SEES
SLEEPY SUN
YUCK
TENNIS
TALL FIRS
FOREST SWORDS
DEMDIKE STARE
SISKIYOU
BLANCK MASS

It's January. It's freezing cold. So here is something to warm you up.....

May is not cold. But it is RAINING AWESOME BANDS at the Peel (sorry, that was awful...)

SET YOUR GOALS return to Kingston on May 25th

YES, one of Banquet's ultimate favourites are back in town for their EIGHTH Kingston sho. Always good dudes, always a fun show, we are delighted to welcome them back with some amazing support!

Make Do And Mend return to Kingston as main support. Awesome passionate melodic hardcore from Connecticut, we also stock a load of their merch too!

Also on the bill are the phenomenal SpyCatcher who were high on the Banquet top 12 albums for 2011 with their debut full length and Kent's Hildamay!

Look out for some possible Special Guests on this one too......

Tickets are priced at £10 - http://www.banquetrecords.com/peelgoals

Check out the Facebook event here:
https://www.facebook.com/events/357437754271980/

Please Note The Peel is a 16+ venue, VALID PHOTO ID will be required

In a three-part evening of pure Buzzcocks entertainment, they'll kick off with new and contemporary material featuring the current line-up of Pete Shelley (vocals / guitar), Steve Diggle (vocals / guitar), Chris Remington (bass guitar) and Danny Farrant (drums).

Part two sees Pete and Steve perform the United Artists 'classic years’ tunes, featuring the classic line-up of Shelley / Diggle and Steve Garvey (bass guitar) and John Maher (drums).

The evening's proceedings will be brought to a clamouring close in part three by Pete, Steve, and John, being joined on stage for the first time in over 33 years by original co-founder and front man, Howard Devoto, to close the evening by performing the four tracks featured on the band's debut 'Spiral Scratch EP'

The Centrifuge presents:

Orcas (Morr Music)
Rafael Anton Irisarri (Touch, Room40, Ghostly, Miasmah)
Benoît Pioulard (Kranky, Type, Desire Path)
Prima Mater (DJ set)

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Quite a last-minute show so please help us to spread the word! The Centrifuge Agency is delighted to be welcoming the critically-acclaimed Orcas for their first ever London show, fresh from the release of their widely praised debut album on Morr Music. This will be a very special evening with both band members, each respected and established in their own right, also performing solo sets.

Seattle’s post-minimalist composer Rafael Anton Irisarri plays his only solo UK show this year and Michigan’s Benoît Pioulard returns to London after recently enchanting a full house at Cafe OTO with his unique guitar and vocal explorations. Be prepared for an evening of Pacific Northwestern experimental guitar music, avant-folk songcraft and symphonic neo-classical ambience.

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ORCAS

Orcas is a new band by haze-pop auteur Benoît Pioulard and post-minimalist composer Rafael Anton Irisarri. Theirs is a style deeply rooted in personal variations on songform and ambient craft, and as a duo they bridge the furthest outlying aspects of their previous solo works.

“This type of collaboration between experimental pop musicians can too often devolve into aimless fancywork and tech shenanigans, but Meluch and Irisarri have crafted a genuine, coherent album that conjures immense shadows and immense depths worthy of its namesake.” – Pitchfork Music.

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RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI

“Irisarri embodies the hybrid genre…the new kind of composer, who exists in an undifferentiated welter of pop, techno, and classical.” – Pitchfork (USA)

Rafael Anton Irisarri is an American composer, multi-instrumentalist, curator, producer and interdisciplinary artist. He is predominantly associated with post-minimalist, drone and ambient music and has been exploring textural electronics for over half a decade. Irisarri’s recorded output captures an essential vision of floating tones, deep pulsing bass and textured Gaussian curves. His use of ostinato phrases taps into minimalist ideals, whilst his use of atmospheric layers of reverb suggests a more cinematic quality. In all, Irisarri’s compositions are deeply emotive and epic to the point of being symphonic.

He is also known as the main member of electronic shoegaze act The Sight Below, and one half of the critically-acclaimed new duo Orcas with…

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BENOIT PIOULARD

Since a young age, Michigan resident Thomas Meluch has been fascinated with the sounds of nature and tape decay—through almost a decade of recordings, he has fostered an infatuation with a sort of sonic density that combines remnants of pop song structures with the lushness and unpredictability of field recordings. A veteran drummer of a half dozen bands, Meluch chose guitar and voice as the primary instruments for his work as Benoît Pioulard. He began documenting field recordings and his own lo-fi compositions on dictaphones, discarded stereos and four-track machines in the mid 1990s, later focusing on highly limited CD-R and cassette releases of his experimental, folk-influenced songs for friends and family.

Over the last two decades New Mexico based husband and wife duo Brett and Rennie Sparks (aka The Handsome Family) have recorded a series of albums that has established them as one of America's finest songwriting partnerships and has seen them hailed as "country music's answer to the White Stripes" and by Greil Marcus as "the Beatles of the folk world". Until relatively recently this married couple of twenty years were a well kept secret but a punishing tour schedule and word of mouth has meant sell-out concerts across the UK and Europe, extensive coverage in the national press, the patronage of Ringo Starr on USA chat shows, and high profile appearances on top rated BBC TV and radio that include The Culture Show on BBC 2, The Jonathan Ross Show, Andy Kershaw's award winning world music program for Radio 3 and Later With Jools Holland. More recently they appeared in Jim White's Searching For The Wrong Eyed Jesus - an award winning Deep South travelogue for Arena that found them discussing in the back of a car (as only Brett and Rennie could) the meaning of faith and spirituality, and performing When That Helicopter Comes in the middle of a swamp.

In addition the band have had songs covered by artists such as Andrew Bird (The Giant Of Illinois) Cerys Matthews (Weightless Again) and Christy Moore (So Much Wine/Peace In The Valley) and joined the likes of Nick Cave, Rufus Wainwright and Linda Thompson for Hal Willner's Came So Far For Beauty - a musical celebration of the songs of Leonard Cohen that has so far been performed in Brighton, to over ten thousand people in Dublin, NYC, and for three sell-out nights at the Sydney Opera House. They have also appeared in I'm Your Man - a feature documentary examining the work of Cohen and cropped up in several works of fiction and appeared on The Oyster Band's The Big Session live project - winner of 'best group' in Radio 2's 2005 Folk Awards.

New album Honey Moon (their eighth) is a collection of love songs written in celebration of their twentieth wedding anniversary but as this is the Handsome Family it'll be a collection of love songs like no other before. It's out now on Loose Music.

Girls announce their return to the UK and Europe with a string of dates. Kicking off in the UK with their biggest headline show to date at Forum in London on Monday May 28th, they’ll also play three shows in France and at Primavera Festival in Spain.

On sale 07/02/12!

http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/user/?region=gb_london&query=detail&event=491398&referral_id

Much loved London trio Saint Etienne are back this spring with their first album in seven years and will embark on a full UK tour in May – including a date at the world-famous London Palladium on 28th May 2012.

An antidote to landfill indie and the R&B-goes-to-Ibiza choking the charts, it’s a full on celebration of pop. The album contains a dozen uptempo slices of electro-pop which they have concocted with Richard X.

‘Tonight’ will be the first single from the album and is all about the primal and atavistic pull that all good pop music exerts, about how the unadulterated thrill of a great band or gig can sometimes feel like a hotline straight to your heart.The track is produced by Xenomania lynchpin Tim Powell (Girls Aloud, Kylie, Sugababes), and mixed by Richard X.

The new album will mix perfectly into a new live set with the band’s classic hits such as He’s On The Phone, Only Love Can Break Your Heart and Nothing Can Stop Us.