Jump in to this week on Qwest TV, featuring the most interesting pieces of recent news from the music we love, and the best new content to enjoy on our video streaming platform!
Miles Davis
The Prince of darkness is the name on everyone’s lips right now for a number of reasons.
His ‘lost album,’ Rubberband, is due for release on September 6 via Rhino, having originally been recorded in 1985. Buzz has been growing steadily for a few months and more tracks from the LP are starting to be heard far and wide. “Paradise” is the latest single to drop, a Caribbean-inflected joint that features the vocalist Medina Johnson.
Birth of the Cool, which was already premiered at Sundance this year, will open in New York and L.A. later this month. It is a portrait that pictures an artist deeply connected to music theory, someone who could traverse genres, all the while balancing anger as a response to racism, and the beauty he saw in music, and in the world.
Thom Yorke
Fresh off the release of his June solo album, ANIMA, the Radiohead frontman is taking his pieces and pulling them through prisms provided by Extendo, Equiknoxx, Mark Pritchard and Clark.
The album, which was accompanied by a Paul Thomas Anderson-directed short on Netflix, will get the remix treatment on a new EP that combines for separate versions of the track “Not the News.”
Burna Boy
Continuing his ascent into worldwide recognition, the Nigerian’s gaze looked outward on his album African Giant (released on July 26) while his message remained anchored from within: from Africa. Indeed, he has shunned clumsy Western categorizations of African music, claiming that only Fela Kuti does Afrobeat (he is the grandson of Fela’s manager), and especially, denouncing the use of ‘world music,’ preferring to describe what he does as Afro-fusion – a blend of Nigerian heritage with US hip hop, UK grime, dancehall, pop and more.
African Giant has well and truly hit the spot, signalling as Sheldon Pearce described in Pitchfork, that Africa will not be marginalized. This week it was announced that the release has earned the highest spot ever for an African album on the UK Album’s Chart.
Hot on Qwest
This 2016 date at the at Baloise Session in Basil, Switzerland, is a captivating performance complete with Rodrigo playing slide with a beer bottle. There’s really nothing quite like this act.
Joachim Kühn opens with his own composition, “Research Has No Limits,” and continues with “Come as It Goes.” It is the journey of an adventurous piano that favors romantic colors, woody sound, round notes, and unbridled phrasing.
After ending Weather Report in 1984, Joe Zawinul went back on the road with a new group where he reunited with three members from the former group: bass player Victor Bailey, drummer Peter Erskine, and percussionist Robbie Thomas, Jr.
Head over to the Qwest TV streaming platform for great concerts, documentaries and rare archive material.
