The gambling has paid off: tickets for the TWO Coachella festivals (spread over two week-ends with the same bill) were sold-out really quckly.

148 bands were asked, contractually no doubt, to do exactly the same show, at the same place, revisiting the same dressing room, same backstage and playing to 100.000 people, again. It's kinda hard to redo a performance and get excited you know ? Apparently, some bands even pushed the envelope to redo exactly the same jokes...It's a new combination: bands are expected to play the same things, taking away a vital part of excitment and no doubt some felt (even more) like a product.

What is fascinating is how the event happened also elsewhere, for people who weren't there. Livestreams were very well organized, pristine sound and images, and the Youtube Coachella channel enjoyed more than 7 millions views...I actually saw M83 from the confort of my own home, 15.000 kms away, live. That kind of coverage is bound to be imitated and probably bettered by other festivals. Are we seeing here the beginning of a trend as it makes more people aware of the festival > more hits on the festival's website > more viewers for the...

Are we not having a "Twelve Monkeys" moment ? That excellent Terry Gilliam movie was showing how Bruce Willis is being send back to different moments in time to search for the single moment or event that had change the curse of the planet.

Well, in 2011/2012 we have been witnessing a few events that may well show the beginning of something new too: people visibly want free data and content from the internet and they are very unhappy about having their use of the internet being controlled...

Some has to do with the desire of the people to have things available to them for free or at the lowest price possible but also as fast as possible: information is instant and global, and so distribution must be too...But there's also greed and companies running into spaces where money can be made out of loopholes in laws: we had the FBI organizing a gigantic coup on Kim Dotcom's MegaUpload multinational operations (which seems to fold down completely such are the procedural irregularities staining the case).

Politically, things have moved too: you have the Pirate Party in Germany who has claimed no less than 9 % of votes in Berlin (that's 15 seats!) , you have...

Our article on Kraftwerk and their 8 Moma concerts did create quite a wave and lots of interest as there seem to be many people out there agreeing on the idea that maybe baby, Kraftwerk still playing live while no new songs have come out in decades was a bit on the exploitation side, while others claimed it's perfectly ok to do so, and many maney bands do it.

Our point was also about the idea that an artist needs to be creative or somehow he degrades its own work. But it isn't easy for an artist to be able to create years after years and still have relevant things to say, especially in pop music where things last for two seasons then go rotten...

Karl Bartos was responsible inside Kraftwerk for most of the now-classical melodies and since he left the famous Dusseldörf band, he hasn't really stopped, whether it's in releasing albums on his own, producing and working with Bernard Summers (New Order), teaching at the Berlin University Of The Arts, develop a free Iphone app, Karl has move on and keep working. In fact, a new album is due to be out later this year or early 2013...

Recently on tour in Sweden, StereoKlang has met the man and asked him a few...

In an intruiging research done by the two members of the Clique Research Cluster (Eire), two astute researchers (Conrad Lee and Pádraig Cunningham) have combined datas extracted from Last.FM listeners living in more than 200 different cities across the globe.

Some very interesting patterns came out of this and more particulary the fact that some cities seem to lead the way in terms of music listening habits and ability to lead trends. And the internet is probably responsible for this as big cities used to be the essential places if you wanted to see/hear a band: now, all you need to do it tune in your favorite streaming platform...

For instance, Montreal seems to lead the way in North America when it's about indie music and the other cities at the tip of the iceberg are Toronto and Los Angeles while New York is a distant 10th. Even more surprsing is Richmond being suddenly catapulted as 5th more important US city as far as music trend setting are concerned. Maybe its influential college radio is key to this position ?

For Hip Hop, Atlanta leads the way in front of Toronto, once again, but surprisingly enough, LA is very low in this chart. Somehow, and they...

Universal has acquired EMI recordings a few months back but the EU hasn't yet declare the sale to be holy in its books.

On March 23rd 2012, the EU has announced it launches an official investigation in the sale of EMI recordings to giant major Universal by CitiGroup. The EU has apparently some very serious questions on the quasi-monopole position Universal would find itself in if the sale gets approval: Universal would then be about twice the size of its nearest rival and that would seriously cause competition problems on the market as the EU wants to ensure consumers will still have choice with large offer of music whether in physical or digital formats.

A few days ago, Martin Mills (he of Beggars and 4AD famous label) spoke to CMU and talked about the multiple dangers of having a market being dominated by one huge company: that would be a problem not only in the physical market (shelves in shops and magazine front covers would be under serious pressure to feature Universal artists first) but that would also suffocate the offers and sustainability from other labels. Another point made by Mr Mills would be that, if pop artists would benefit from being signed on...

Who would have think that Kraftwerk, the elegant german band initiated by the two rich kids Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider (soon join on percussion by the two middle class workers Wolfgang Flür and classically trained Karl Bartos) would have sold out 8 consecutive shows at the Moma museum in New York City in less than an hour ?

There's no doubt that Kraftwerk is one of the most important group in the history of music, period. But one can doubt about its real actual legacy when, 50 years after it's been created, Kraftwerk is now the sole lawyers-powered trademark of Ralf Hutter who shows himself on stage in his fluo pyjama and three rather anonymous musicians. We're a far cry from the uber creative nucleus that were Hutter-Schneider-Bartos-Flur between Radioactivity (1975) and Electric Cafe (1986) before Kraftwerk somehow began to slide down in a different mode punctuated by the immense love of cycling that was Hutter's addiction. Back then, a normal day at Kling-Klang studio (their Dusseldorf hide-out) would see them cycling during the afternoon, going to have an ice-cream at daybreak and start long, loooong nights in the studio. Somehow, this immensely slow...

I really wasn't looking forward to it: sitting in a movie theater looking at Sean Penn, whom i really like as an actor, impersonating Robert Smith, the archetype gothic fixture, had to be above what i can take. The snippets I've seen (Penn talking all so slowly and seemingly having problems thinking straight, Penn walking, or rather moving extremely slowly, with his wheeled luggage) didn't fired me up at all. On the contrary.

And i was wrong ! I was wrong ! From what seems to be a totally impossible scenario (a washed-up has-been rockstar in his fifties tries to find the nazi prison guard of his departed father he hadn't seen in 30 years) comes up a very beautiful and tender movie in one of the most difficult genre there is: the tragicomedy. Beautifully filmed, patiently edited too as it never feels out of rythm, "This Must Be The Place", by italian director Paolo Sorrentino, is a complex and intruiging 2 hours charm that shows how great an actor Sean Penn is, how music can be a strong catalyst, how a road-movie always work when done with heart, how the most incredible scenario or basic idea can be transformed in something great when creativity meets cleverness and...

Just like russian dolls, when you thought you were for ever at last rid of Dakota Fanning as the de-rigueur-white-face-eerie-young-girl, there pops up her sister, Mary Elle Fanning, looking as white as her older sister, just like if the Fanning parents had bought a stock of acrylic white paint and immerged their entire family in it...

Francis Ford Coppola, who directed total chef d'oeuvres like Apocalypse Now, Godfather but also great movies like Rumble Fish and Cotton Club, has had it with Hollywood and since 2000 has decide to produce and finance his movies himself . His latest movie, Twixt, pictures Val Kilmer as a rather failed writer going into a small town to promote his latest and uninteresting book about witches. Of course, things will happen there and being 2012 it involves of course vampires and errie soundtracks that all look to Danny Elfman. Twixt also has Tom Waits, Bruce Dern and Joanna Whalley on the bill. So, it can't be bad.

There's a very interesting interview of Francis Coppola where he sums up a few ideas which begin to surface here and there about what may become of the real place of the artist in this new digital era. He's saying that his...

The good news is: the US RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has announced the 2011 sales figures and they are not bad: the Music Industry weighted $7.01 billion and music shipments went up 0.2 percent - a first since 2004. Digital sales account for 50% of it but the odd thing is that bloody vinyl that won't just die as, wow, LP sales were 5.5 million and the, i'm trembling while writing this, 45rpm doubled its market share !

Quite amazing in this era where most of us don't even know the names of all the bands featured in our mp3 player, isn't it ? And to double the fun, we celebrated a few days ago the 45 years anniversary of the most well known record cover ever: Sgt Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles.

Originally conceptualized as being a band playing music by The Beatles, that cover was very expensive for the times. The picture was done by Michael Cooper but Peter Blake did the actual cover and all the cuts and repainting. The illustrious sleeve shows The Beatles looking at The Beatles, surrounded by celebrities and iconic people of the era: you have the obvious (James Dean and Marilyn Monroe among others) but also the strange ones...