Cuando lo vivas, lo entenderás.

Bizitzen duzunean, ulertuko duzu.

When you live it, you will understand.#BilbaoBBKLive pic.twitter.com/4Icf5nZhPd

— Bilbao BBK Live (@bilbaobbklive) November 28, 2023

The festival, set in the mountainous Basque city of Bilbao in Northern Spain, will run from 11 July to 13 July 2024. The annual event can trace its origins back to 2006 and is held on a special complex built specifically for the festival on the slopes of Mount Cobetas. Last year’s edition featured the likes of Artic Monkeys, Florence and the Machine, Idles, Róisín Murphy and Pavement, and cemented the festival as one of the best on the European music festival circuit.

Watch the music video for the classic track “Firestarter” by The Prodigy below:

Big beat pioneers The Prodigy will make Bilbao BBK Live their fourth summer festival appearance, after it was announced that they will be playing Reading and Leeds 2024 along with Hellfest and Isle of Wight festival. Meanwhile the festival is scheduled to be cult trip hop collective Massive Attack’s only summer outing, with the group last performing at Connect festival in Edinburgh in the summer of 2022.

Watch the music video for “Unfinished Sympathy” by Massive Attack below:

Canadian indie rock outfit Arcade Fire are also set for a busy summer after attaining headline slots at not only Bilbao BBK Live 2024 but also Shaky Knees in Atlanta and both South American editions of Lollapalooza in Brazil and Chile.

Watch the music video for “The Suburbs” by Arcade Fire below:

See below for the full line-up of Bilbao BBK Live 2024:

Airu, Alvvays, Arcade Fire, Cymande, Death From Above 1979, Derby Motoreta’s Burrito Kachimba, El Columpio Asesino, Ezra Collective, Floating Points, Folamour (A/V), Jimena Amarilo, Jordan Rakei, JPEGMafia, Jungle, Khruangbin, Los Bitchos, Massive Attack, Mulatu Astatke, Nerve Agent, Noname, Overmono, Parcels, Queralt Lahoz, Ralphie Choo, Sen Senra, Shinova, The Prodigy, Underworld, Zea Mays.

Tickets for the event will be available for general sale this Friday 1 December from 9am and will be available to purchase here.

Photo credit: Sharon Alagna

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The genre defining group has been a staple of modern music since their formation in the early 2000s, after several line-up changes, the band have continued to pioneer experimental rock music. The group’s current line-up consists of founding member and lead vocalist Win Butler, original member and multi-instrumentalist Régine Chassagne, Richard Reed Parry, Tim Kingsbury and Jeremy Hara. The band’s enduring legacy is often equated to the uniquely musically talented band members.

We is the group’s sixth studio album and was released on 6th May 2022 via Columbia Records, the album is the last full release to feature former member Will Butler who left the group last year. Members Butler and Chassagne co-produced the release with English engineer and producer Nigel Godrich, known for his work within the rock world, Godrich has worked with some of the genre’s biggest names including Radiohead, Beck and Pavement. So far the album has sired two singles, “The Lightning, I II” was the first track to be released and “Unconditional  I (Lookout Kid)” was released on 27th April 2022.

Elsewhere within the charts, pop singer Sigrid has also garnered great career success. The singer’s second studio album debuted at number two within the UK charts, How To Let Go was released on 6th May 2022 via Island Records. The album has sired four singles including “Bad Life”, the singer’s collaborative release with Bring Me the Horizon. The Norwegian singer’s debut album was released in 2019, Sucker Punch was a critical success and reached number four within the UK album charts. The 25-year-old singer spoke to Officialcharts.com concerning her chart placement, “I actually can’t believe it. I beat myself, and I couldn’t be prouder! Thank you so so much to everyone listening to the album, it really means the world to me and the rest of the team.”

Late last month, Arcade Fire made headlines when they performed in the UK to re-open Camden’s iconic venue KOKO. On 29th April 2022 the beloved live music venue re-opened its doors to a resounding roar of relief, the historic building closed temporally for a restoration project worth over £70 million. Music fans felt that it appropriate that musical giants Arcade Fire would Christian the venue’s rebirth, the gig also marked the band’s first UK show in over a decade.

 

 

 

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The band excited fans everywhere when they announced the dates for their global tour, The We Tour kicks off on 29th July 2022 with a set in Montreal. The group’s worldwide concert series comes to Ireland on 30th August and continues into the UK with a set at Birmingham’s Utilita Arena on 2nd September 2022. Tickets are available to purchase now and have been selling out first after the band confirmed the addition of a second show in Dublin.

Arcade Fire We Tour UK dates

30/08/2022 – 3Arena – Ireland
31/08 – 3Arena – Ireland
02/09 – Utilita Arena – Birmingham
03/09 – AO Arena – Manchester
05/09 – OVO Hydro – Glasgow
08/09 – The O2 – London

Click here for tickets.

KOKO
LONDON
29TH APRIL

Pre-order ‘WE’ from our official U.K. store before Wednesday 20th April 4pm BST to get priority access to pre-sale starting Thursday 21st April 10am BST https://t.co/jozlr1tXdZ pic.twitter.com/TY6uymsQYN

— Arcade Fire (@arcadefire) April 19, 2022

Arcade Fire are currently in the middle of promoting their upcoming album, We. Since March fans of the band have been treated to singles and surprises galore, a lucky few were sent postcards marked from the band simply stating “We missed you” with a little snippet of musical notation from their upcoming singles “Lightning I, II” that would be released shortly afterwards. Since then, the group have aired a handful of new tracks across a couple of shows benefiting the Plus 1 Ukraine relief fund, and a surprise appearance at Coachella last weekend. All of these exciting updates come with the news that one of the band’s core members, Will Butler, amicably left the band. Despite this, the band are seemingly carrying on at full steam. You can pre-order the new album here, or check out the first of the new singles below.

For those unable to attend the show, the entire evening will be streamed live on Twitch on Amazon Music UK’s channel.

The triumphant UK return of Arcade Fire isn’t the only event being put on to reintroduce KOKO to Camden though, DJ Luciano will kick off the KOKO Electronic club night on the first weekend, Central Cee will also play 2 sets on May 1^st (at 4pm and 8pm), then once the opening weekend is over and done the venue will essentially continue along its merry way. Lianne La Havas, Chase and Status, and Pete Doherty are all penned to play within the first month, you can check out the full listings here.

Resting on a relaxed pop groove that shifts into a lush chorus of anthemic vocal harmonies, the song is said, per a press statement, to explore one’s search for comfort and longing for escape.

“I tried to make the lyrics a straightforward and honest description of an emotion I feel often—a drive for change coupled with despair: ‘I’m tired of waiting for a better day. But I’m scared and I’m lazy and nothing’s gonna change,’” Butler explained. “Kind of a sad song. Trying to tap into some Smokey Robinson/Motown feeling—’I’ve got to dance to keep from crying.’”

Generations will release September 25 and marks Butler’s latest solo studio effort since 2015’s Policy. Collaborating with Miles Francis, Sara Dobbs, and Julie and Jenny Shore, the LP was recorded and produced in the basement of his Brooklyn home. Its debut single, Surrender, was released back in July.

Also earlier in the summer, Butler revealed that Arcade Fire’s new album had been put on hold due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. With bandmembers split across Australia, America, and Canada, and no way of feasibly making the distance, recording had ground to a halt.

“Australia are having a crazy outbreak, the border to Canada is sealed right now… like, Jesus Christ. It takes more logistics to get together. It always took a certain amount of logistics, but right now it’s insurmountable,” Butler said at the time.

He didn’t sound confident that the record would be coming anytime soon and couldn’t determine how far along the recording process the band had got before the pandemic hit. “I’ll only know that when it’s done. Like, ‘Oh, half of it came from before [lockdown]’, or ‘None of it came from before!’. Who knows.”

“None of us quite have the file management skills for it to be creative at the moment.”

Ahead of the release, Parry released the first two tracks as a two-part single, ‘Sai No Kawara (River of Death)/On The Ground’, along with a brilliant and visionary film directed by Caleb Wood. Check out the songs below.

Billed as ‘a dreamlike journey of immersive, gently psychedelic songs’, the album was inspired by Parry’s travels in Japan following the Arcade Fire tour of 2008. For weeks after the shows had ended, Parry stayed in a Japanese Buddhist monastery – a place with the “biggest silence you’ve ever heard”, he said.

The Buddhist emphasis on quietism and contemplation runs deep in the first single, ‘Sai No Kawara’. Built on layers of delay-effect guitar, Mellotron-style keyboards and gentle acoustic strumming, the echoed-out vocals don’t enter for nearly four minutes. Parry’s lyrics are a sermon to silence, with lyrical content derived from Parry’s reading of ‘Japanese death poems’.

The second single is also an interesting one. Alternating between the blissed-out ambience of the first and tribal-style drum crunches, ‘On The Ground’ emerged from a nostalgic mystical experience the singer had in the Japanese forests around the Koya-Sān mountain.

“I told director Caleb Wood the story – of being alone in this magical environment of giant cedar trees and hearing a loud chorus of powerful harmony singing that sounded inexplicably identical to my late father’s folk band the Friends of Fiddler’s Green, who were the soundtrack to my entire childhood and upbringing”, he said.

Quiet River Of Dust will be his first release since 2014’s Music For Heart And Breath. True to its title, the LP was a fascinating experiment in neo-classical music in which the instrumentalists kept time with their heartbeats and breathing rhythms.

Quiet River Of Dust – out September 21st

The album, co-produced by Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter, is due for release on July 28^th through Columbia Records. The album has been subject to a series of hints from the band from as early as 2015; In a September 2015 interview with NME, Will Butler appeared to confirm that the record was in its early stages:

“We’re all itching to play music together and start recording things,” he said. “We’re basically in the demo and play together phase, and historically that’s led to realizing that, surprisingly, we’re 30 per cent into a record, so we’ll see if that happens.”

The project has been the subject of multiple teasers from the band, which has included hiding boxes of cereal throughout Dublin, offering fans who tracked down the boxes admittance to an afterparty following their performance at Dublin’s Malahide Castle. The track-list for the album was officially released yesterday following a series of anagram hints on Twitter and can be viewed below:

Everything Now:

01 Everything_Now (continued)

02 Everything Now

03 Signs of Life

04 Creature Comfort

05 Peter Pan

06 Chemistry

07 Infinite Content

08 Infinite_Content

09 Electric Blue

10 Good God Damn

11 Put Your Money on Me

12 We Don’t Deserve Love

13 Everything Now (continued)

In support of the new album, the Canadian indie-rockers have also announced a full European and North American tour with The Kooks slated for the summer and autumn season. A full itinerary of European dates can be viewed below:

07/01 – Roskilde, DK @ Roskilde Festival

07/02 – Berlin, DE @ Wuhlheide

07/04 – London, UK @ York Hall

07/05 – London, UK @ York Hall

07/06 – Manchester, UK @ Castlefield Bowl

07/09 – Belfort, FR @ Eurockéennes Festival

07/11 – Linz, AT @ Ahoi! The Full Hit of Summer

07/15 – Carhaix-Plouguer, FR @ Vieilles Charreus

07/17 – Milan, IT @ City Season Festival

07/18 – Florence, IT @ City Season Festival

07/19 – Nyon, CH @ Paleo Festival

Pre-orders of the album, featuring a limited edition ‘Day Version’ LP with bonus tracks as well as a ‘Night Version’ on coloured vinyl and alternative packaging, can be purchased here.

The band has recently teased at new music, as well as releasing surprise single “Everything Now’, available to buy on vinyl at Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona, which they are headlining on Saturday, June 3rd.

Stay tuned for Infinite Content pic.twitter.com/Q6OW6XCow4

— Arcade Fire (@arcadefire) May 31, 2017

In addition to all this, Arcade Fire has added two London dates to their tour, where they will play at York Hall, on the 4th and 5th of July.

Full tour dates can be seen below.

Wed 7th June: Scunthorpe Baths Hall

Thurs 8th June: Edinborough Corn Exchange

Sat 10th June: Isle Of Wight Seaclose Park

Tues 13th June: Belfast Ormeau Park

Weds June 14th: Dublin Malahide Castle

Tues July 4th: London York Hall

Weds July 5th: London York Hall

Thurs July 6th: Manchester Castlefield Bowl.

The Montreal band have won six Juno awards before for their music, but this time they are being honoured at the annual awards evening for raising over $9.6million for the Haitian people, as well as for being actively involved with the training of volunteers.

Arcade Fire singer and multi-instrumentalist Régine Chassagne, who is also married to lead vocalist Win Butler, was born in Quebec to parents of Haitian origin. Her parents emigrated from Haiti to escape the dictatorship of François Duvalier in the 60s.

“It is an honour. We are very thankful,” Chassagne said in a statement about the awards. “It helps us continue the work.”

The band began their humanitarian efforts in Haiti back in 2006 when the band donated $1 for every ticket sold to Partners in Health, a nonprofit organization that “strives to achieve two overarching goals: to bring the benefits of modern medical science to those most in need of them and to serve as an antidote to despair.” Since then Régine Chassagne has also co-founded the Haiti Charity KANPE in 2010, and Chassagne and Butler have even announced plans to release a Haitian themed restaurant in Montreal.

The news was revealed by the London quartet on their Facebook page, with the group revealing that the organisers had “let them down”. The statement in full is below.

“Devastated to report that Blur won’t be performing at BDO in 2014. It’s a shock that it has come to this.
Only 8 weeks to go, the band feels that with the constantly shifting goalposts and challenging conditions of the organisers, they can’t let it drag on any longer and want to make this announcement, to be clear to Blur fans that they won’t be there. We’ve done our very best to work with the organisers and considered every option to make it happen, but they’ve let us down and let everyone else down too.”

The festival, which is set to tour the country between January and February of next year, is still going ahead with other headliners Pearl Jam and Arcade Fire set to go ahead with their performances. AJ Maddah, one of the investors in the festival spoke to fans on Twitter yesterday, saying “Am trying to find out [what’s happened] myself. Far as I know BDO gave into every demand within the possibility of curfews & public safety. Everyone at BDO is absolutely devastated and confused by this turn of events. All we can do is to replace them and bring you the best show possible.” A replacement headliner is already in the works, with Maddah saying, “We’re working on that now. We have a list of targets and are making contact with them all, everyone at BDO will be working through the night to find replacement.” An announcement is set to be made in the coming days.