Apparently Canada has a problem with ATLiens. While trap star Young Jeezy no doubt hails from a decidedly more gangsta corner of rap, it’s not every day he has to stop a show due to folk popping off shots. Yet, somehow, in Canada of all places, just that has happened. Twice. In a row.

The first event was the most dramatic, with concert goers getting into a fracas at the Sound Academy in Toronto. This led to gunfire, with one man seriously injured, rushed to the hospital with several gunshot wounds to the chest. Not surprisingly, Jeezy stopped and canceled the show.

Now the Toronto Sun is reporting it didn’t end there, with his next show – last night – at the London Music Hall in Ontario also descending into violence. Police were forced to invade the venue as shots again broke out, with two men taken to the hospital, one in serious condition.

Apparently not all is well in Canada. Maybe they’re tired of being the brunt of the joke and thought they’d show an American gangster how Canada can get down. Imagine if, rather than West Coast/East Coast, we have a Canada/US beef on our hands. Just kidding, but at least it’d end Drake’s career. Hopefully the rest of Jeezy’s tour will go on untarnished by gunfights, but stay tuned in case further absurdity ensues.

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that PETA took umbrage to Kanye West’s “Tell PETA my mink is dragging on the floor” quip on new DJ Khaled track “Theraflu.” The song presents Ye at his most acerbic, so it’s no shock that he’s ruffling some feathers, but most would have thought his shot at Wiz Khalifa and Amber Rose’s engagement would more quickly attract responses.

Vice President of PETA, Dan Matthews, mouthed off on the eternal upstart of a rapper, flinging out, “What’s draggin’ on the floor is Kanye’s reputation as a man with no empathy for animals or human beings… Kanye can’t help making himself look like an idiot, whether at an awards show or a fashion show, he and his girlfriend look like pathetic creatures from a shabby roadside zoo.”

Ouch. One imagines Matthews isn’t all too familiar with hip hop culture, and amusingly enough, the “girlfriend” he refers to is likely Ms. Rose (in fact, PETA attacked the former couple in early 2010). If only he knew. Think we could have one of the sillier rap beefs in recent memory on our hands? With former parole officers beefing with white hipster chicks from California, that’s really saying something. Knowing Kanye, expect some sort of response on his next release, no matter how long it takes (think about how long he held onto the South Park grudge).

What do you think, did PETA react too harshly to a joke, or is it time to take the hip hop world to task for their obsession with fur?

From our sister-site — The Film Stage:

The best albums tell stories. Not always in a strictly narrative sense — unless we’re talking about something like The Wall — but, through whatever means, deal with a recurring set of ideas, concepts, conflicts, and the time in which they were recorded. Name a truly great collection of tunes; there’s probably something “else” going on there.

So I don’t remotely question the motives detailed in Variety‘s story, those being plans to craft a feature film based on Bob Dylan‘s 1975 classic Blood on the Tracks. An (often scolding) ten-song experience about love, commitment, and hatred for someone close to you Tracks is also widely, widely cited as a public expurgation of marital strains with the songwriter’s then-wife, Sara Dylan. (Who’s also the obvious inspiration behind his great love song, “Sara,” and probably some bootleg recordings my brain can’t think of right now.) Songs such as “Tangled Up in Blue” — or, my God, the incredibly furious and accusatory “Idiot Wind” — tell compelling stories about finding love and, eventually, realizing it’s worth nothing, all while creating lucid, sometimes surreal imagery. So, yes, there is something cinematic to be mined here.

(Dylan, it should be said, often denies any connections to his marriage at the time; it’s nigh impossible to take this as truthful. Among other things, just look toward a famous quote from his son, Jakob: “The songs are my parents talking.”)

Rodrigo Teixeira and Fernando Loureiro of RT Pictures will be producing, and hope to find “a filmmaker who can create a classic drama with characters and an environment that capture the feelings that the album inspires in all fans.” No surprises there, though about, say, a million questions exist on my part, some of the primary being: Is this a straight narrative or a musical? In the case of the latter, do you devote chapters to each song? Is it a period piece? How do you handle “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts,” which Dylan once tried to make into a feature himself? Who is Richard Gere going to play?

It goes on and on — and some of them pertain to personal concerns, too — but I’m, nonetheless, already excited about what this project could yield. Maybe it’ll even get people to dust off their old copies — or, better yet, give Blood on the Tracks a spin for the first time.

How do you feel about a film finding its source in this album? Do you see any true potential here?

Well, this has come as something of a surprise to say the least. Swedish electronic duo Air France have today revealed that they will no longer be creating music together. After releasing the beloved EPs On Trade Winds and No Way Down in 2006 and 2008 respectively, the duo never seemed to get it together to release a full length.

Nevertheless, this split comes as a shock seeing as the duo had been dropping hints that they would release an album in 2011, and after that never materialised (aside from the great single “It Feels Good To Be Around You”) they said they were planning a mini-album for 2012. Now it seems that that will not happen.

The duo have left a long and heartfelt message about their highs, lows and the split on their website. A snippet of it is below, but you should really read the entire thing.
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This really brings a damper to our day. When White was asked about the chance of a White Stripes reunion during an interview with NME he responded,

“Absolutely no chance. I couldn’t see any reason to ever do that. I’m not the kind of person that would retire from baseball and come out of retirement the next year. I mean, if we went to all the trouble of telling people we’re done, we meant it, you know?”

“If we were forced to change our mind about that, I can only imagine… like if for some reason we went bankrupt or something or needed the cash, which would be a really sad thing, I would probably be issuing an apology along with the announcement of the show dates!”

At least you can still catch Jack White on tour. White’s upcoming solo album Blunderbuss is out April 24th via Third Man/Columbia.

[Via CoS / Toronto Sun]

Fans of HEALTH who have been waiting patiently for the Los Angeles band’s follow up to their 2009 album Get Color are going to have to wait a little longer, it seems. However, fans shouldn’t be disappointed because they’ll still be receiving new music from these experimental noise poppers.

It has today been revealed that the group is working with Rockstar Games to compose and score the music for the upcoming third installment in the Max Payne video game series. Rockstar’s soundtrack supervisor Ivan Pavlovich says that they are “really excited” to be working with HEALTH and that “they’ve brought a distinct energy and atmosphere to the game that perfectly fits Max’s dark story.”

The game comes out on May 15th and you can get a taste of how HEALTH’s soundtrack sounds by watching the trailer for it below.
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While it’s pretty much a given that the London Olympics’ opening ceremony will not match up to the extremely high standard set by 2008′s Beijing Olympics, it appears the organisers have an ace up their sleeve when it comes to closing the event.

Being billed as a “Best of British” concert, Blur, New Order and The Specials have been booked to play in Hyde Park on August 12th. Regardless of the fact that none of these bands have released an album in seven years (which makes calling this the “Best of British” a bit of a slight on some of the great young talented British bands out there at the moment turns out they will be adding more acts to the bill), this is exciting since it marks the first proper show that all of Blur will have played together in over two years. And, since any movement within the Blur camp is exciting at the moment, we’re pretty excited about this.

Following Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon’s airing of a new Blur song entitled “Under The Westway” at last night’s War Child benefit gig, the speculation can now commence about how many new songs they might have by the time we get to August. And what about the ever-elusive American tour? Could it be inching back into plausibility again? Only time will tell.

UPDATE: Tickets for the Closing Ceremony Celebration Concert go on sale this Friday (24th) at 9am GMT. They cost £55 plus £6.50 service charge and £3.50 processing fee (i.e. a ticket costs £65). You can get them from Ticketmaster UK.

If you’re on O2 you can get access to tickets 48 hours in advance (22nd February, 9am GMT) by doing the following:

BT customers have a 48 hour priority window to make their purchase for the Opening and Closing Ceremony Celebration Concerts. The priority window for the Closing Ceremony Celebration Concert opens at 09:00 on Wednesday 22nd February. BT customers need to log on to www.bt.com/londonlive with their account details to get their own unique password. Only one unique password will be generated for each customer account. BT customers can purchase a maximum of 6 tickets per customer account for the opening and Closing Ceremony Celebration Concert.

Photo by Philip Cosores

As Pitchfork have pointed out, Merrill Garbus and her tUnE-yArDs band are set to delve in soundtracking. They’ll play on the 23rd April, during the San Francisco International Film Festival, and will re-work some of their own tracks to provide an audio accompaniment to some classic Buster Keaton films (1920′s One Week, 1918′s Good Night, Nurse!, 1921′s The Haunted House, and 1918′s The Cook, to be particular).

Overall, that should equate to 88 minutes of music, so there’ll be plenty to hear. During the show they’ll be accompanied by local guitarist Ava Mendoza. Sounds like a fine way to spend an evening, if you ask me, and it’s not something you’ll likely see again, so grab your tickets now!

He’s back in California and on Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube.

He has uploaded a snippet of song called “Thanks James” “Home” and is asking for 50,000 followers on his Twitter in exchange for the full track.

There’s still many questions to be answered, but we know for sure that Earl has signed to a different management company than the rest of OFWGKTA and that he won’t be appearing on the new Odd Future tape.

Things are about to get crazy in Odd Future land. Stay tuned.

UPDATE 1: This Hodgy tweet leads us to think that something’s up. Perhaps it’s just tension over management. We’re not sure, but we’ll keep you posted on this story as it unfurls.

UPDATE 2: The new track, titled “Home,” is available here. From the looks of what we’re seeing on the Odd Future member Twitter accounts it seems like Earl isn’t in contact with any of them, and won’t be rejoining the group anytime soon. It’s definitely a strange situation.

“…serve as a place for developing labels to transform into developed labels”

I’m sort of at my wit’s end when it comes to new record labels, as it seems like every band, pr company, and blog has their own by now. But when influential and well-liked companies like Frenchkiss decide they want to add to their already amazing catalogue with a subsidiary label, I’m all ears. And although I’m fairly unfamiliar with what the Orchard have done in the past, the music and video company will help foster younger talent and highlight up and coming bands. It creates a potentially messy gray area in terms of what should be deemed an Orchard release and what should be a Frenchkiss release, and raises the question if bands on Orchard will eventually be signed to Frenchkiss. They have decided to name the collaboration The Frenchkiss Label Group (FKLG), which could itself be an imprint. In the big picture, these are relatively inane questions, but it will be interesting to see how the merger is handled. If done well it could be great, as any chance to champion smaller acts is a great idea. Here’s to hoping.