Sound Check's Blog (492)

A peak into the totally rad life of AFROPUNK Rock Goddess, Militia in her ROCK GODDESS RECAP. In this installment Militia is just, YA KNOW, having a slice of pizza with Depeche Mode, NBD.

by MilitiA, AFROPUNK Rock Goddess…

Cee-Lo reportedly said that the new Goodie Mob album will be like "Public Enemy on acid". 'Age Against the Machine' is the band's first album in 9 years and will be released on June 18. Are you looking forward to the release?…

When I first heard “The Mo(u)rning” by Akua Naru with Drea d’Nur, I felt like the song was holding me in its arms. That was Akua doing…

What's old is new again! Producer LAKIM went through his…

Are you psyched for the new Baby Baby record? Of course you are. My informal poll of everyone sitting in front of my laptop, with a sample size of 1, showed that 100% of people are way into Baby Baby. (Eat your heart out, Nate Silver.) Their new record Big Boy Baller Club doesn't drop until this summer, but they just taped an acoustic session of the new track “Best Franz”as part of Blue Indians “Acoustic Alley” series.…

"Next week De La Soul will independently issue their first song and video in nine years, "Get Away (feat. the spirit of Wu-Tang)," in the first of the hip-hop group's planned series of…

Long Beach based Free Moral Agents started as a solo project for Mars Volta keyboardist Isaiah Ikey Owens before becoming a full-fledged band in 2006. Their last full record “Control This” dropped…

The Oxymorrons are moving on up! The new video for their latest single "Alone" drops April 9th on MTV Buzzworthy. We've got a few behind the scenes photos and think it's looking pretty cool. Check below…

The face of CoverGirl is also now the face of Essence (for the month of May, at least) and we couldn't be happier for her! Because if you're going to do the "flawless beauty" issue, the choice of Janelle Monae is pretty obvious, because the girl is wonderful! Grab the issue…

New supergroup alert! TEN are Thomas Pridgen (The Memorials, ex-Mars Volta), Eric McFadden (P-Funk) and Norwood Fisher (Fishbone). They promise music of the rock, funk, punk variety".

"T.E.N. released a limited-edition EP on April 1st, 2013, (...) featuring songs from their recording session at Hyde Street Studios, which was the first day the…

Shoegaze tends to live and die on its atmosphere, so it's refreshing to hear a band like Brooklyn's Maquina Supervium actually put as much stock in melody as on atmosphere. “Far Away,” the first single from their debut record Tomorrow and the Celestial Geometries, is naturally cloaked in some serious reverb and a constant drone of feedback. But underneath the paint-peeling guitar is something minimal, melodic, and even beautiful. The track has a post-punk propulsion…

We've recently been a little obsessed musician/producer/madman Adrian Younge and his project "Adrian Young Presents Venice Dawn". However, Younge may best be known for editing and scoring the 2009 cult classic film Black Dynamite, as well as proving music for the Black Dynamite…

and it was AWESOME. Naturally, our girl Janelle killed it with a little help from The Roots. Check the video …

Groove to this: Bahamadia is back y'all! Badass as ever. And the track is 11-minute long :). She recorded it on her smartphone. DIY all day.

Have you heard the news? Andre 3000 will cover Amy Whinehouse's ‘Back to Black’ for the soundtrack of the upcoming adaption of 'The Great Gatsby'. The soundtrack will be executive-produced by Jay Z and Beyonce will also be on the track. The news was reported by E! Online: "The new flick, directed by Baz Luhrman, stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan and Tobey…

Like Lianne La Havas? We do too. And she's bringing us a classy way to jam to her songs "Elusive" and "Gone". Double your pleasure with this 2 part short film, that is touching, unique and generally cool as hell; just like our girl Lianne. Check 'em…

You hear a lot of artists say things like “If I don't make it by the time I'm 25/27/30 I'm going to hang it up.” It ends up being a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy standing on two faulty premises: 1. that artists have either “made it” or are starving, and 2. that creativity has an expiration date. The cult of 27 is strong in a lot of minds. (as I get closer to 30, I admit I feel kind of ridiculous for every minute of my life wasted comparing the timeline of my successes to…

So I was starting to write about 'We Are The Lucky Ones', the debut album from Electro-funk/neo-soul/Afro-pop/glitch/RnB singer Tecla and my opening line was going to be about how the only genre she doesn't touch on is French Cabaret, and then I got to the stunning ballad “Moi” and that went pretty much out the window. This is a preposterously ambitious debut from a preposterously talented woman. Her sound melds the electronic and organic into a captivating cyborg. Synths burble…

The New York snow's melting, and spring's finally here. Celebrate with some new music from Houston, TX's American Fangs (unless you're in a polar/glacial region, in which case the snow melting is obviously a very very bad thing and we're all doomed). We featured the lyric video before, and they've made their new single “Pomona” available as a free download.