Adding one more flick to his IMDB profile, Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr. (a.k.a. Common) will be starring in the newest Terminator flick due in 2009. Common will star as a freedom fighter saving the world, kicking ass, doin’ chix, and drinking whiskey out of his bible flask*, while the lead role goes to Josh Brolin (not the governor of California).

On the music front of things, Common will be dropping his eighth album, Invincible Summer June 24, and it’ll be produced by The Neptunes and Mr. D.G. Substantial guest appearances on the album include Cee-Lo and Santogold. Billboard reports that the new album sounds "techno-inspired," while Common himself said that "This is the type of music [he] felt was missing from [his] body of work."

Still, Common is an eclectic sonuvabitch, and with techno hip-hop albums and Terminator roles, you wonder where this guy finds balance.

*Possible true. Most likely not.

It’s been a long nine years since Merge released First Imaginary Symphony for Nomad, the debut full-length by The Music Tapes. That’s the bad news. The good news is that The Music Tapes, a.k.a. Julian Koster — best known for his saw work and creative vision for Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea — will keep it to nine, as he has announced the release of a brand, possibly spankin’ new LP, Music Tapes for Clouds and Tornadoes, due August 19 on Merge.

Part tape collage, part indie pop, and singing saws all around, The Music Tapes’ music definitely has a lot of heart — yet it doesn’t sound completely human. Why? Because Koster is as much an inventor as a musician. His band consists partially of E6 friends, but primarily of musicians that he created, including the 7-foot-tall metronome, Static the television, and the Clapping Hands Machine. And he’s even created new members for Music Tapes for Clouds and Tornadoes, such as the Orbiting Human Circus Tapdancing Machine. According to Koster:

I just find the imaginary more real than the physical. Magic, the way we find things beautiful, the light behind eyes, kindness, and how we want to serve and protect the things we care about — these things seem like the real foundation of the world to me. I hope that the songs on this record can be more than just postcards from a world, but an invitation to it, to anyone at all who may find such a place comforting and nice.

In addition to Clouds and Tornadoes, The Music Tapes are quietly working on a few other projects, including the release of the much-anticipated 2nd Imaginary Symphony for Cloudmaking (which is done, just awaiting release), a film project, and an as-yet untitled album featuring Koster’s father on flamenco guitar. Meanwhile, Julian, along with Static the Television, the 7 Foot Tall Metronome, and some sentient buddies, are scheduled to perform August 15 at Athens Popfest 2008. I hope the 7 Foot Tall Metronome malfunctions and kills someone in the crowd. Wouldn’t that be hilarious?

In the meantime, you can check out this video for "Minister of Longitude" and listen to "Majesty."

Last year, for the first time, the human race became more urban than rural. Soon, more than half of the world’s population will live in urban centers. Some will point to a rise in development among third world countries, some to megacities getting mega-er, and still others to the sustained and stable nature of urban rents for people and businesses. It’s all hooey. The real reason peeps have congregated to metropolitan areas rather than staying in the sticks was to align themselves in time to see Russian Circles on their forthcoming tour! It’s not that the heavy trio are only playing monster municipalities, but they ain’t playing Arrowsic, ME or Fredonia, KY. Nor does it look like they will anytime soon. Poised to be one of the most acclaimed riff ‘n’ smash albums this year, Station (out this week on Suicide Squeeze), is a brusque and aggressive display of power that is deliriously satisfying.

Here is the tracklisting for Station and a list of towns that Russian Circles will be tearing apart in the very near future.

Station...

1. Campaign
2. Harper Lewis
3. Station
4. Versus
5. Youngblood
6. Xavii

...to stations:

05.10.08 - Chicago, IL - Subterranean #
06.03.08 - Iowa City, IA - Picador $
06.04.08 - St. Louis, MO - Bluebird Theater $
06.05.08 - Kansas City, MO - the Riot Room $
06.06.08 - Denver, CO - Marquis $
06.07.08 - Salt Lake City, UT - Burt’s Tiki Lounge $
06.08.08 - Boise, ID - Neurolux $
06.09.08 - Seattle, WA - Neumos $
06.10.08 - Portland, OR - Doug Fir Lounge $
06.11.08 - Chico, CA - Café Coda $
06.12.08 - San Francisco, CA - Slim’s $
06.14.08 - Pomona, CA - The Glasshouse $
06.15.08 - Los Angeles, CA - Troubadour $
06.16.08 - San Diego, CA - The Cashbah $
06.18.08 - Phoenix, AZ - The Clubhouse $
06.20.08 - Austin, TX - Red 7 $
06.21.08 - Fort Worth, TX - Lola’s Saloon$
06.22.08 - Houston, TX - Rudyard’s $
06.23.08 - Baton Rouge, LA - Spanish Moon $
06.24.08 - Birmingham, AB - Bottle Tree $
06.25.08 - Atlanta, GA - The Drunken Unicorn $
06.26.08 - Chapel Hill, NC - Local 506 $
06.27.08 - Wilmington, DE - Harmony Grange $
06.28.08 - Cambridge, MA - Middle East Upstairs $
06.29.08 - Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg $
06.30.08 - Baltimore, MD - The Ottobar $
07.01.08 - Buffalo, NY - Mohawk Place $
07.02.08 - Detroit, MI - Magic Stick

# record release show with Call Me Lightning
$ Daughters

Dan Deacon is nearly finished recording Bromst, the follow-up to last year’s spastic Spiderman of the Rings. He’s currently in the studio with his buds, putting the finishing touches on the album, which has actually been in the works for quite some time now. In fact, Deacon began work on the album before Spiderman was even released! Fucked up, I know! I could hardly believe it either when I first heard the news, but I sure believe it now. Sometimes, you just have to have faith, you know? I actually feel kind of bad that I was a non-believer at first, but better late than never. I’ll definitely be more receptive next time. That I promise.

Carpark is tentatively planning to release Bromst either late September or some time in October. (BUT WHAT ABOUT THE TRACKLISTING.) In the meantime, check out Deacon’s video for "Okie Dokie," and good luck finding a copy of Wham City Box #1 (TMT News). At least you have a chance to check out his summer tour.

05.22.08 - London, UK - Dot 2 Dot Festival 05.24.08 - Nottingham, UK - Dot 2 Dot Festival 05.25.08 - Bristol, UK - Dot 2 Dot Festival 06.05.08 - Lyon, FR - grrrnd zero 06.06.08 - Cherbourg, FR - Festival Terra Trema 06.07.08 - Paris, FR - Festival Villette Sonique / Parc de la Villette 06.09.08 - Lisbon, PT - TBA 06.11.08 - Munich, DE - Orangehouse 06.12.08 - Leipzig, DE - Zoro 06.13.08 - Berlin, DE - West Germany 06.14.08 - Galway, IE - Future Days Festival 06.26.08 - Brooklyn, NY - McCarren Pool with Devo and Tom Tom Club 07.06.08 - Denmark - Roskilde Festival 08.09.08 - London, UK - Field Day Festival 08.16.08 - Hasselt, BE - Pukkelpop Festival 08.31.08 - Stradbally Estate, Ireland - Electric Picnic Festival

[Photo: Frank Hamilton]

I know a band with a lot of leisure time, and it ain’t Lightning Bolt! (Because they’re recording a new album in the studio right now.) It’s Nine Inch Nails, and I know this because, well, they released yet another album online via their website, a quick "follow-up" to Ghosts I-IV (TMT Review). Titled The Slip, the 10-song release contains "The Discipline," a single that also garnered headlines like "Nine Inch Nails release free single!" when the band posted it on its website a couple weeks back (as if no band had ever done that before).

Take it, Trent:

as a thank you to our fans for your continued support, we are giving away the new nine inch nails album one hundred percent free, exclusively via nin.com.

the music is available in a variety of formats including high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE. your link will include all options - all free. all downloads include a PDF with artwork and credits.

for those of you interested in physical products, fear not. we plan to make a version of this release available on CD and vinyl in july. details coming soon.

And, similar to Ghosts, The Slip, has been released under the awesome Creative Commons license.

The Slip tracklisting:

1. 999,999
2. 1,000,000
3. Letting You
4. Discipline
5. Echoplex
6. Head Down
7. Lights in the Sky
8. Corona Radiata
9. The Four of Us Are Dying
10. Demon Seed

Length: 43:45. Check the tourdates here.

In addition to Jonathan Richman’s assertion that Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole, the chameleonic Cubist was good for a quote or two, too. Speaking about the still-life paintings of Cezanne, he said, “If there were not anxiety behind those apples, Cezanne would not interest me any more than Bouguereau.” The same thing can be said about the music of Ray Raposa, who plies his trade under the guise of Castanets (minus the Bouguereau thing). Although he often adds a deft dose of experimentation to his brittle beauties, it is what is not on display that is so admirable and intriguing. There’s always tension beneath the sparse but passionate surface.

Few labels embrace the audio/visual relationship quite like Asthmatic Kitty Records. Not that long after issuing their first DVD collection Encyclopedia Asthmatica, which details the rich history of the label from early, charming (I won’t say amateur) works to full-bloom works of art, comes the announcement of Tendrils, a DVD of Castanets cover songs to be released May 22 by the label. In keeping with his own declaration that “The recorded version of the song is not necessarily the definitive version of the song,” Raposa sees his songs interpreted by a host of friends and past collaborators, including Phosphorescent and members of The Dirty Projectors and Vanishing Voice, as well as original vids by director Mia Ferm. Pre-orders and orders will come with a download card for an exclusive new Castanets EP.

1. Rain Will Come (Dave Longstreth)
2. Remix On Post Apocalyptic Music (G. Lucas Crane)
3. This Is The Early Game (Golden Ghost & Silver Spokes
4. Jump Cuts And Hip Hop (John Chavez)
5. Strong Animal (Sayard Egan and Angel Deradoorian)
6. Dirty Jokes & Billiards (Jesse Ainslie)
7. Sway (Marla Hansen)
8. Lost Lyrics (recited by Matt Lorenz in Farsi with Polish subtitles)
9. Three Months Paid (Jesse Ainslie)
10. Interlude At Miller’s Pond I
11. Night Is When You Can Not See (Tucker Dulin and Ben Piekut)
12. Interlude At Miller’s Pond II
13. Noise Prelude To City Of Refuge (Ray and G. Lucas Crane)
14. On Genre/Spaces (Ben Piekut)
15. And the Swimming (Phosphorescent)

Well, you can call him Ray, or you can call him Jay... um, on second thought, you should call him Ray because that is his name! Ray being Ray Raposa, Castanets’ one steady soul, who will be playing a bunch of dates, with Meg Noe in tow. Go and see these, Euro buuuu-ddies (and you can call me Pauly Shore).

05.02.08 - Haarlem, Netherlands - Patronaat
05.03.08 - Offenbach, Germany - Hafen 2
05.04.08 - Lille, France - La Malterie
05.05.08 - London, England - Windmill
05.06.08 - Hove, England - Greenhouse Effect
05.07.08 - Manchester, England - Dulcimer
05.08.08 - York, England - The Basement
05.10.08 - Coventry, England - Taylor John’s House
05.11.08 - Nantes, France - Cafe Grimault
05.12.08 - Rennes, France - 1929
05.13.08 - Paris, France - Le Point Ephemere
05.15.08 - Basel, Switzerland - Kaserne
05.16.08 - Düdingen, Switzerland - Bad Bonn
05.17.08 - Ravenna, Italy - Hana Bi
05.18.08 - Trieste, Italy - Tetris
05.19.08 - Zagreb, Croatia - Kset
05.20.08 - Maribor, Slovenia - Pekarna
05.21.08 - Prague, Czech Republic - Skutecnost
05.22.08 - Berlin, Germany - Schokoladen
05.23.08 - Hamburg, Germany - Übel und Gefährlich #
05.24.08 - Bremen, Germany - Spedition (Guterbahnhof)
05.25.08 - Cologne, Germany - Kulturbunker-Mulheim
05.26.08 - Trier, Germany - Ex_Haus
05.27.08 - Amsterdam, Netherlands - Paradiso
05.28.08 - Utrecht, Netherlands - Ekko

# Stereo Total

Oh, shit! Insipid enemy pop music has infiltrated your brain, triggering a meaningless obsession with sing-song melodies and catchy, vapid lyricism that makes you both docile and boring as hell. Is it too late for you? Probably. But look! Here comes bad-ass musical vigilante Patti Smith, arriving live, on the scene to save your soul from the black hole of Vampire Weekend CD-Rs from which there is no return. And by her side? None other than Bloody Valentine/upcoming ATP curator Kevin Shields.

Their master plan: take two live recordings of sold-out performances of The Coral Sea, Smith’s posthumous tribute to friend and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, dust ’em off, shine ’em up, and inject them into your C-G-D chord progression-loving veins.

The double-disc is set to be released July 11 on the duo’s own imprint, PASK, and will be the first official issuing of the 2005/2006 recordings of the two London shows. Now, this ain’t no pussyfooting around. Shields and Smith are serious about emotional resuscitation, and you best not let them down. Dealing with Mapplethorpe’s terminal illness by way of frenzied spoken-word prose and backed by a climactic storm of drone and noise, Coral Sea is an epic elegy of what can only be described as "a kind of screaming requiem." Nineteen years after Mapplethorpe’s death, Smith’s performance is as raw and anguished as ever, which should move your cold heart to feeling a little compassion, a little distress, a little empathy — anything? No? You selfish bastard, you.

Well, kids, you know the ol’ saying, "A Time for every purpose under heaven," right? (You know, Ecclesiastes 3.1? Ring a bell? Helloooo?!? What the heck are they teaching you in school, anyway!?!). Well, whatever, never mind. Either way, it just means that everything has its proper time and place in a sort of "grand plan" that we have no control over. It’s supposed to be comforting or something.

And apparently, sometimes the current "time under heaven" just happens to be set aside for the purpose of, you know, siphoning some bottom-of-the-barrel cash for an aging ’60s-’70s folk-rock band named The Byrds. Neat how that works out, huh?

And so, never ones to ignore the subtle forces of heaven, the influential L.A. psych-jangle-folk pushers are gearing up to release a recording of their 1971 appearance at London’s Royal Albert Hall. This historic (?) concert features the then-lineup of Roger McGuinn, Clarence White, Skip Battin, and Gene Parsons.

The recording itself is seeing the light of day courtesy of founding (and only constant) member Roger McGuinn’s private collection. And don’t look now folks, but he’s got plenty more where that came from. "We’ve carried these tapes around for 30-something years. We just never paid much attention to them. Bob Irwin (from the Sundazed record label) came down, and he’s a genius at discerning these things. He could look at a box, and go ‘Oh, this is that, and so-and-so was there, this is wonderful.’"

Irwin has taken additional tapes from McGuinn’s archive and is hoping to release them in the subsequent future (a.k.a. whenever money is tight).

Meanwhile, the release of this particular ancillary monument to fast-fading baby-boomdom is slated for June of this year, though the final release date will most likely be determined by asking God what He thinks...

It’s hard to keep up with C. Spencer Yeh’s projects. I always feel one step behind him. Maybe it’s because he’s consistently releasing high-quality music at a dizzying pace, or maybe it’s because I had to chew off one of my legs to get myself out of a bunker in ’Nam, but whatever the case, thank god for the internet. Not only did I find a plastic leg on eBay (that matches my skin tone even!), I’ve been exposed to tons of fetishes that I didn’t even know I had. Who knew I was so into footjobs!

Which brings me to the internet website of Burning Star Core, Yeh’s most-acclaimed, well-known project. Ignoring his many recent releases, let’s concentrate on what’s coming up: First and foremost, Burning Star Core has a new album out on Hospital Productions (run by Dominick Fernow, a.ka. Prurient), with the LP and digital downloads on Plastic Records. Titled Challenger, the album will be a bit of a departure from his previous work, as it’ll have more emphasis on composition (melody, field recordings, etc.) than improvisation. According to Yeh:

I felt I was working while very much in the rapture of these feelings. Though in I was committing these emotions to sound, I was pretty engrossed in this project in a discreet manner, and I can’t say I didn’t end up allowing the project itself to influence my ‘real life’ decisions instead of what should be the healthier reverse.

Check out the video for "Beauty Hunter," a track off Challenger, here.

Additionally, Burning Star Core will receive reissue treatment for Physical Culture (on Chondritic Sound) and a 10-inch reissue (on NO-FI). He also plans to release a few more things on Hospital, including a CD titled Inside The Shadow, a couple 7-inches, and if we’re lucky, some footjob fetish videos with a cameo appearance from Chris Corsano.

Finally, dates:

05.02.08 - Cincinatti, OH - Feralmade (Milk Money lit mag release party)
05.10.08 - Riga, Latvia - Sound Forest/Skanu Mezs Festival
05.12.08 - Riga, Latvia - Academy of Arts (discussion/workshop)
05.12.08 - Amsterdam, The Netherlands - DNK
05.16.08 - New York City, NY - Knitting Factory (No Fun Fest)
05.23-24.08 - Hasselt, Belgium - Kunstencentrum (Open Circuit Festival)
05.28.08 - Cincinatti, OH - Art Damage Lodge

Check out the details of these shows at C. Spencer Yeh’s MySpace.

[Photo: mtt-r]

Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz, various British supergroups) has announced plans to release his first solo album in nearly five years. To call it a “solo” album would perhaps be a misnomer, however, as there will be somewhere in the range of 80-130 musicians participating, a move sure to upset Polyphonic Spree members everywhere. After close analysis, the math remains unclear to me. Albarn told BBC 6Music: “This one’s got about 80 or 90 musicians on it – something in that region” but also mentioned “It’s got a 100-piece Chinese choir on one of the tunes, so that plus the orchestra probably goes to about 120 or 130 people." Whatever.

Albarn has not released a title for the album but has announced it will feature “a monkey or two... at least” and that the lyrics will be entirely in Mandarin. If this sounds familiar to you, maybe it’s because you’ve been following his work with Jamie Hewlett and Chen Shi-Zheng, Monkey: Journey to the West, an adaptation of a Chinese opera. First staged in 2007, the opera will makes its U.S. debut May 22, with 17 more shows May 23 - June 8 for the 2008 Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina.

It’s unclear whether or not Albarn’s new album is related to the opera, but he did tell BBC 6Music that "It’s not an opera [though]; it’s a proper record." Confusing. In any case, what is Damon Albarn’s deal with lower primates?

When asked about his extreme prolificness — that is, working on solo material on top of at least three other major bands at any given time — Albarn stated: “It’s nice that things kind of stick around a while, so it gives the impression that there are lots of things, but I do one thing at a time generally.” He added, “I have only two arms, two legs,” officially laying all doubts to rest.

Albarn’s new album is due for release this July.