Music News

Weekly Round Up: Friday 6th June

Friday 6th June, 2014 3:10PM

This week brought about a real mix-bag of tour news. US metallers Corrosion of Conformity have rescheduled this month's NZ tour, pushing it back to July due to the collapse of Australian promoter Redline Music. The changes also see the addition of a South Island date. Darkwave musician Cold Cave is bringing his People Are Poison tour to the antipodes, with two September dates in New Zealand before he jets over to Australia for the remainder of the tour. Also in September, the Compton rapper known as YG will be hitting Auckland for one show off-the-back of his recently released debut album My Krazy Life. And while on the subject of hip hop, the epic line-up for the Red Bull Sound Select Block Party has been locked in, and sees Flatbush Zombies, Azizi Gibson and Panama heading to the country later this month to perform with 11 local artists, across three Auckland venues for free (head over here for more info on how to get your hands on some tickets).

In other news, we were excited to hear that drone band Earth (who are here this month for a round of shows) have employed the gravelly voice of bluesman Mark Lanegan to grace their forthcoming tenth album. We were also interested to read about plans to make the late pioneering music critic Lester Bangs the subject of a one-man play, which is set to open June next year. Bangs portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the film Almost Famous, which has us wondering who would play the journalist in a New Zealand season of How To Be A Rock Critic. Speaking of theatrics, ahead of the release of his new album Jack White released a smashing new video for titular single 'Lazaretto', literally. It features glass shattering and guitars exploding riffs, and a strange tattoo of the Lazaretto album artwork. Closer to home, Dunedin group The Chills released a reworked version of their 80s classic 'Pink Frost' to better reflect the band's current line up. Have a listen and see if you like it as much as (or more than) the original. And finally, we got word that Auckland folk musician Simon Comber is heading to San Francisco to record under the new moniker Herriot Row, if you want to check out the new material head along fundraising gig next week.

This week's Caught Live is The Cure attempting to perform 'Why Can't I Be You' at BottleRock in Napa (where they had the plug pulled on them after they played past curfew)...