Following a live streamed listening party, the band announced that the album was available immediately via Apple Music and at midnight on Spotify. The release has seen record stores up and down the country get ‘Cavalcade’ in their racks this morning. Indie stores have an exclusive pressing of the album, which includes a flexi disc – Rough Trade have an exclusive white version of the disc and other UK Indie stores have a green flexi disc.

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The flexi disc is also available in red, dependent on where you live. The album itself is a bizarre and triumphant collection of work – Black Midi fully flesh out the territory they explored on debut, Mercury Nominated ‘Schlagenheim’. The drumming of Brit Schooled prodigy, Morgan Simpson is a staggering highlight throughout; his unmatched talent holds the album together as he whips the frenzied instrumentation of Black Midi into line. ‘Cavalcade’ shows massive growth and dimension in sound, Black Midi have played a blinder with this new record.

The album has a varied vinyl pressing, you can pick up ‘Cavalcade’, pressed on black vinyl with the aforementioned flexi-disc, or you can grab a beautiful picture disc of the album. Furthermore, Black Midi are undertaking a lengthy UK, European and US tour. The band are kicking off with a number of socially distant shows, opening at Hackney Church where they will play back to back shows, including a matinee. The Black Midi socially distanced show kicks off tomorrow (28th May).

It’s quite the cast list, Frank Carter And The Rattlesnakes take prime spot on the line-up poster – a band who’s unique brand of fearsome punk will surely go down a treat with festival goers. Second on the bill are Sports Team, a band who are really reaching the peak of their powers.

Sports Team have a great new track out ‘Happy (God’s Own Country’), as well as a compilation of rarities, demos and unreleased material ‘Plant Test’ that’s due out this week. The Night Cafe and Mercury Prize nominees The Big Moon are also high up the bill.

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Further down the poster, some fresh-faced, exciting post-punk bands. Courting, fresh off the back of their debut EP ‘Grand National’ are set to appear as well as deep tan, who’s own debut EP is due to drop in a number of weeks. Feet, Just Mustard and Life are all set to appear – it’s quite the line up.

Indie lads The Clockworks also make up the bill, plus Grandma’s House and The Orielles. A busy lineup then – make sure you get yourself a clash finder, because the sheer volume of superb bands means that it is going to be impossible to catch everyone!

There are bands for everyone here, as the festival celebrates their 15th birthday. There are well over 70 artists on the bill, plus the festival have announced that they have 100 + more artists yet to be announced. Standard and VIP tickets are already on sale and will be shifting fast on the strength of this line up!

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The live stream itself was a beautiful celebration of British music. Mercury Prize winners, Wolf Alice and Michael Kiwanuka opened the day with brilliant sets – Wolf Alice coming live from the stone circle, playing a mix of new and old. Kiwanuka played in a hastily erected tent (it wouldn’t be Glastonbury without some rain, right?) and George Ezra performed a short set in front of a crackling and popping camp fire.

IDLES made a classically rabble rousing racket inside a storage shed, thunderous post punk played out in front of cars, welding and twisted steel. HAIM brought their brand of indie pop along, plus some gurning bass-face for good measure. Stalwarts Coldplay performed in front of the Pyramid Stage and there were some superb spoken word pieces from Kae Tempest, Jarvis Cocker and PJ Harvey.

blur and Gorillas frontman, Damon Albarn played an eclectic mix of his back-catalogue, with a leather jacket clad orchestra. He stuck mostly to ballads and piano lead soft tracks, but performing under a giant moon, Albarn looked right at home.  Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood’s new outfit, The Smile, played an interesting set of new tunes and the night was rounded off by Jorja Smith and some brilliant DJ performances from DJ Honey Dijon and a brilliant set from Róisín Murphy.

Overall a superb night of fun, unfortunately blighted by technical issues for so many. The event kicked off on Saturday morning, but many fans were unable to watch the show – a whole host of technical issues plagued Live At Worthy Farm from the start. Many fans were met with messages of “invalid codes”, or streams that refused to connect. Both Glastonbury and Drift Live were met with a torrent of angry tweets and Facebook comments from furious users, who had payed £20 a pop for a ticket to the event.

Weller’s sixteenth studio LP, ‘Fat Pop (Volume 1)’ showed Weller at his best – Paul’s eclectic mix of genre bending is truly a sight to behold on this album. ‘Cosmic Fringes’ is post-punky, there are elements of traditional Mod-style post rock, as well as brazen power-pop, plus a tribute to the legend that is Iggy Pop, on the track ‘Moving Canvas’. PW recorded ‘Fat Pop’ over the last twelve months, making sure he had a busy lockdown.

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Pieced together at his home studio, Weller has been able to take his time over ‘Fat Pop’ – he’s created a project that is truly his own and it shows. The entire album has a real sense of confidence and joy throughout, Weller is at the top of his game and he isn’t shy about it.

Weller had some considerable competition, US rapper J Cole’s latest offering ‘The Off Season’ ran the Modfather close, but Weller’s brand of power rock prevailed. “To have people like an album and want to buy it is never taken for granted by me, so to have it go to Number One makes it even more special” said Weller, speaking on the achievement. Paul Weller has now had a number one album in five different decades, a pretty considerable achievement for the veteran rocker.

Weller has been in the news for some less rock n roll reasons, Gallagher junior (Liam) fired off a series of tweets, some of which took aim at the star of The Jam – “Weller’s full of shit as well. Porcelain mod father – can’t wait to bump him.”

The live streamed performance is one hell of a beast, Kerr’s sultry bass groves sound gigantic, his bright orange Fender Jag is slung low round his shoulders whist drummer, Ben Thatcher grooves along thunderously. The band are accompanied by glamorous backing singers and a keyboardist – the arrangement comes together really nicely, Royal Blood sound like a band full of confidence and it really shows. You can watch the performance bellow, the band are in fine form and rock out with superb visuals accompanying them.

Kerr is decked out in a suitably glam pink shirt, coiffed hair and boots, he looks energetic and has perfected the “rockstar” image. His counterpart, Ben Thatcher dons his trademark snapback and sits behind a beautiful kit, complete with the ‘Typhoons’ artwork on the kick skin.

‘Typhoons’ earned Royal Blood their third successive number one album, garnering a great deal of critical acclaim from fans and critics alike. The band shared a wonderful, orchestral version of ‘Limbo’, a single from the chart topping record.

The duo are set to play a number of massive shows, stopping off at arenas up and down the country. It’s a huge tour for the pair, they will be bringing their brand of disco influenced hard rock to a town near you. They’re bringing fellow rockers The Amazons with them, which is sure to delight fans across the nation.

The band have announced that ‘Origin Of Symmetry’ will be remixed and released on June 18th, just short of 20 years from the original release date of July 17th 2001. The band are yet to make a comment on the new release, aside from some cryptic social media posts. Muse have worked with long term collaborator, producer Rich Costley on this project

On it’s original release, ‘Origin Of Symmetry’ garnered a positive critical reception on its release, many fans regard the band’s sophomore album as their strongest work – the band play more guitar based rock, before their endeavours into electronic and synth sounds.

The  band have dropped a remixed version of “Citizen Erased”, which you can check out below. The 20th anniversary reissue is getting a snazzy vinyl release, orange and yellow clear vinyl plus remastered and remixed audio, as well as a reimagined front cover, depicting the original cover in a post-apocalyptic style.

Away from Muse, frontman Mat Bellamy is due to release a collection of solo material for record store day. The collection is called ‘Cryosleep’ and is pressed on a limited edition picture disc: the collection will include ‘Pray’ from the Game of Thrones soundtrack, as well as Bellamy’s single ‘Tomorrow’s World’, ‘Fever’ (by supergroup The Jaded Hearts Club), plus a cover of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ by Simon and Garfunkel.

The track list for Muse’s new album is below, they’ve even included ‘Futurism’, a track that was originally included on the Japanese release.

Side M
1. ‘New Born’
2. ‘Bliss’
Side U
3. ‘Space Dementia’
4. ‘Hyper Music’
5. ‘Plug In Baby’
Side S
6. ‘Citizen Erased’
7. ‘Micro Cuts’
8. ‘Screenager’
9. ‘Darkshines’
Side E
10. ‘Feeling Good’
11. ‘Futurism’
12. ‘Megalomania’

The track is blistering, chaotic and quintessentially Black Midi. The band are able to arrange a variety of chaotic noises and sounds to culminate in a fantastic track  – the build up to ‘Cavalcade’ has been an exciting one and Black Midi aren’t showing any signs of stopping.

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They have also announced the details of a ‘Cavalcade’ listening party, which the band will be hosting. Premiering live on YouTube, the world will get their first taste of ‘Cavalcade’ at 7pm BST on May 26th. This listening party will give fans the chance to hear ‘Cavalcade’ a couple of days prior to the official release date.

But that’s not all, Black Midi have announced a ‘golden ticket’ competition. One vinyl copy of ‘Cavalcade’ will contain a golden ticket, with quite the list of prizes. The winner can choose one of three prizes: either a free performance from the band at an event of their choice; a day in the studio with the band for a creative collaboration; or guestlist spots for two people for all future worldwide black midi headline live shows for 10 years.

It’s a massive prize for any Black Midi fanatic, there are some superb and unique prizes up for grabs! The band have also announced extra dates for their lengthy US tour, 2020 and 2021 are shaping up to be a busy year for the band as they have a long UK tour in the diary, including some socially distant shows, plus European dates.

Speaking to The Project (an Australian TV show), Noel said: “The legacy of the band is set in stone… if people have seen us, they’ll understand what all the fuss is about. If you didn’t see us, then that’s tough cos I’ve never seen The Beatles or the Sex Pistols.” 

Fans, as well as Liam Gallagher have poked, prodded and goaded Noel in attempts to reunite the legendary band, all with no such luck. Gallagher added: “People ask me that question on a daily basis and I can only say to you that, I just don’t feel like it. When you’re in a band, it’s an absolute compromise so no I don’t think I could come up with an idea and then run it by four people and then six weeks later, somebody knocks it back because their cat’s got a cough so I like to march to the beat of my own drum. Oasis is done I’m afraid.”

There you have it, “Oasis is done”. It’ll strike pain into the hearts of lads in Adidas Originals and dads with Paul-Weller-haircuts worldwide. Noel has enjoyed reasonable success with his High Flying Birds, recently announcing a best of record, ‘Back The Way We Came: Vol 1′, which is due out on June 11th – the release also has a snazzy Record Store Day vinyl release, split black and yellow vinyl.

Younger brother, Liam, is also doing well under his own steam. With two albums under his belt, plus a new single, Liam appears to be doing just fine without Noel. LG is booked for a number of festival appearances across the UK, including a massive headline slot at Reading and Leeds.

Stage times for the event have been revealed and what a line up it is. The evening is set to kick off with Wolf Alice, who are gearing up for the release of album three, ‘Blue Weekend’ Followed swiftly by Mercury Prize winner Michael Kiwanuka, who’s self titled album was a real highlight of 2019. Another singer-songwriter in the shape of George Ezra joins the fray just before 8pm. His melancholic, pop ballads are sure to fit the early evening vibe. Drink anyone?

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Post-punk Bristol boys IDLES are next, sure to jolt you out of your seat after two, soothing crooners. Fresh from album three, number one record, ‘Ultra Mono’, IDLES are sure to bring the noise. BRIT Award stars Coldplay and Haim follow, they’re sure to be (virtual) crowd pleasers as the sun goes down.

blur and Gorillaz frontman, Damon Albarn is the next performer – his unique genre-bending career is sure to bring about a quality performance. Jorja Smith and a “Special Guest” follow, this is the real big slot to fill, prime headliner time, so I’m sure we’ll get a big name to fill the gap.  Kano and DJ Honey Dijon takes over form midnight, as the drinks flow and the DJ-sets begin to take hold.

Irish singer-songwriter Róisín Murphy rounds off the night. Her fantastic sounds will get the lighters swaying before we head to bed. Just as we edge nearer to venues re-opening, a big night of music, dancing, cans and bands is exactly what we need to get in the party mood.

Coming from the legendary Abbey Road studios, Royal Blood have recorded an excellent version of ‘Limbo’- the band are surrounded by an orchestral accompaniment, providing a brilliant backdrop. The track itself is jammed full of synths, before the band come in with Ben Thatcher’s thunderous drums and Mike Kerr’s sludgy, sexy bass parts.

Kerr wealds a sparkly Fender Jag, his slim frame draped in a suit jacket and jeans with a nifty pair of boots (with quite the Cuban heel)- he looks every inch the rockstar he has always threatened to be. He and Thatcher gurn and grin at each other as they rock out, they look like a band in real synergy with one another – you can tell how much fun they’re having.

Royal Blood are fresh off of their third consecutive number one album – quite the hattrick, elevating them to a considerable status in the rock world. Royal Blood’s third studio album, ‘Typhoons’ has somewhat divided fans: the disco sound is a stretch from their hard rock beginnings, but the band balance their influences thought the record.

They have a mega UK tour inbound, as well as a number of festival appearances up and down the country. 2021 and 2022 are set to be busy times for the Brighton boys. They’ve secured tour support from indie big-hitters The Amazons, who’s brand of hard hitting, in your face rock will surely be a hit with Royal Blood’s legion of dedicated fans. The pair are set to play a number of UK arenas, which is a huge measure of sucsess, it doesn’t feel like it was all that long ago that Royal Blood were tearing the roofs off of sweaty, sticky, small venues.

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