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The Scandi-pop compendium has overtaken the Fab Four’s opus in the all-time sales stakes.

As NME report, ABBA’s Gold has leapfrogged Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to become the second biggest selling album of all time in the UK. According to the Official Charts Company, both albums have sold over 5.1m copies in the UK, but ABBA’s greatest hits collection has now inched ahead with 15,000 more sales.

The 1992 album assembles a host of the band’s best known material, including ‘Waterloo’, ‘Mamma Mia’, ‘Dancing Queen’ and a panoply of chirpy pop standards that your Mum’s probably krumped to at a wedding at some point. The disc already holds the honour of being the UK’s all-time highest selling CD, with over 4 million copies sold as of 2012.

The best-selling album of all-time in the UK is Queen’s 1981 Greatest Hits collection, with Adele’s megasmash 21 at No. 4 and Oasis’ (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? at No. 5. Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories is currently on 7/1 odds to become the biggest selling album of all-time in the UK by 2015. ABBA, of course, found fame performing at Eurovision; why not toast their achievement by casting your final vote in FACT’s Alternative Eurovision?

90’s rock revivalists Splashh will be releasing their debut LP, Comfort, on June 4th via Kanine Records in the US, but in the meantime the band has given everyone a taste to get them through with a single “All I Wanna Do” b/w “Today (Fade Away).” After hearing the a-side, we now get a stream of the equally strong b-side “Today (Fade Away),” which will also serve as the first single from the debut album. Stream it below.

Bankrupt!, the latest from Phoenix has been out for a bit now and one of the standout tracks is “Trying To Be Cool” that the band has been parading around to live television performances. Recently, San Francisco’s Silver Swans revealed their atmospheric reworking of the song taking away some of the “cool” vibes of the song in favor of a more relaxed vibe. You can stream the remix below and download it here.

London trio London Grammar released their first video for the beautifully morose “Wasting My Young Years.” In the visual, we see bodies floating around, most likely to symbolize in someway floating through life and wasting away their time on this planet to fit with the song theme. It is gorgeously shot in black and white with shakey camera movement. The Wasting My Young Years EP will be out June 16th through Metal & Dust Recordings.

Denmark’s MØ is proving once more she is no one trick pony with now her fourth song released “Waste of Time.” While she has been lumped in with several other female indie pop artists of the moment, MØ is slowly separating herself with the consistent quality of her songs to date. Listen to the track and watch a video for the song below. “Waste of Time” will be released on the 7th July 2013 through Chess Club Records/RCA Victor.

The 13th annual Billboard Music Awards took place at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. The ceremony featured performances from Prince and Miguel, among others.

Prince, who was honored with a Billboard Icon Award, performed “Let’s Go Crazy” and new song “Fix Ur Life Up”.

Meanwhile, Miguel performed “Adorn”.

And then this happened:

The Lonely Island have dropped another song and video off their forthcoming third studio LP, The Wack Album. Following “Spring Break Anthem” and “I Fucked My Aunt”, “Diaper Money” focuses on the alter-egos of Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer as they ironically champion the horrifying mid-life pressures of the married and family life. Despite the ridiculous over-the-top humor, it’s a pretty smart song, which, sans the whole fucking aunts thing, seems to be a trend for this album. Catch it below.

The Wack Album arrives June 11th via Republic Records. Guest contributors include Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga, Kendrick Lamar, Pharrell Williams, Green Day

Anthony Moore, best known as the house producer and singer Romanthony, has passed away at age 46. Romanthony’s death was confirmed by his sister Mellony Moore via Facebook. Moore reportedly passed away at his home in Austin, but the cause of death is unknown.

Romanthony launched his career as a producer in New Jersey, and ran his own label Black Male Records in the early 90s. He released four of his own records over the years: Romanworld (1997), Instinctual (1999), Live in the Mix (1999) and R.Hide in Plain Site (2000). Romanthony was perhaps most widely known for his collaborations with Daft Punk as a vocalist on the songs “One More Time” and “Too Long”. In a 2001 interview with Remix Mag, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo of Daft Punk said:

“We met him at the 1996 Winter Music Conference and became friends. What’s odd is that Romanthony and Todd Edwards [who is featured on the "Discovery" track "Face To Face"] are not big in the United States at all. Their music had a big effect on us. The sound of their productions

Libyans started playing in Boston in 2007, and have since become a staple in punk communities locally and nationally, playing self-booked shows at basements, warehouses, zine libraries, and other DIY spaces regularly over the years. In 2010, the band released a debut record A Common Place, which they will now follow up with Expired Language in August via Sorry State Records. The first single is “Rite Of Passage”, a hardcore-spirited melodic punk track that conveys a sort of universal rage through its abstract lyricism about subverting societal traditions: “It’s stubborn, blunt, old fashioned, some archaic rite of passage,” shouts singer Liz Panella. “You’ll hear no language only common grunts and double standards.” Below, you can stream the track and check out a video by bassist Aaron DeMuth, too.

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Shoegaze 4-piece Surfing recently relocated from Virginia to Bushwick. They’ve thoughtfully timed the release of their upcoming EP, due out at some point this summer. In the meantime, you can add the first single to your pre-summer playlist, the fine-tuned dream-pop track “Hollow Sparrow”. Check it out below.

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by Bill Pearis

Fred Armisen & friends / Stefon & Seth / Kanye & Ben on SNL

Even without Kanye's musical appearance, last night's Ben Afleck hosted Saturday Night Live season finale was especially eventful (and teary) as it was the final show for three long-running star players: Bill Hader, Fred Armisen and Jason Sudekis.

Fred got his farewell moment via a sketch featuring his punk character Ian Rubbish who performed song called "It's Gonna Be a Lovely Day." His band featured fellow departing castmembers Hader and Sudekis (and Taran Killam, sure to be a big player next season), and then he welcomed a cavalcade of musical talent onstage, including his Portlandia costar Carrie Brownstein, Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, Dinosaur Jr.'s J Mascis, Aimee Mann, Michael Penn, and the Sex Pistols' Steve Jones. With a chorus of "It's been alright, I've had a lovely night," it was a nice little sendoff. Video of that is below.

Hader got his sendoff moment, as expected, as Weekend Update nightlife correstondent Stefon, where anchor -- and soon to be Late Night host -- Seth Meyers finally gives in to his advances. "Weekend Update" also featured a surprise appearance by former co-anchor

Romanthony, an influential house producer and singer best known for performing the vocals on Daft Punk's single "One More Time," has been reported to have died earlier this month.

The artist, born Anthony Moore, reportedly passed away at his home in Austin, Tex. on May 7. As Chicago's 5 Magazine points out, Romanthony's sister Mellony Moore confirmed the passing in a Facebook post on May 9, and friend/collaborators like Boys Noize, MikeQ and Daone Remmidy (better known as Eve Angel) have all taken to social media to confirm the news and express their grief. The cause of death has not yet been confirmed. - [Billboard]

A few streams and videos are below...

Continue reading "house music legend Romanthony, RIP" at brooklynvegan

"Yahoo's board of directors has approved a $1.1-billion cash acquisition of blogging site Tumblr. A deal could be announced as soon as Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday." [LA Times]

Continue reading "Yahoo might be buying Tumblr" at brooklynvegan

Kanye on 'SNL'

Kanye West has had a busy weekend. On Thursday (5/16), he played a private show at Roseland for Adult Swim where he performed a few new songs. He also, as is his wont, let loose one of his stream-of-conscious rants, this time mostly about celebrity culture. You can watch video of that below.

One of the songs Kanye performed at Roseland was new track "New Slaves." A video for that song made its debut on Friday night (5/17), projected at, according to maps on Kanye's website, 66 locations around the world. Nine of them were in NYC, including two in Williamsburg: one being outside the Bedford Ave L stop, and the second on the Wythe Hotel, and there's video of the former below.

The song, which features a sample of 1969 single "Gyöngyhajú lány" by Hungarian rock band Omega and vocals from Frank Ocean, will feature on Kanye's follow-up to 2010's My Dark Twisted Fantasy which is, according to Pitchfork, titled Yeezus and has appearances from Daft Punk, Skrillex and more.

This activity was all centered around Kanye's appearance on Saturday Night Live's season finale hosted by Ben Afleck. (The teaser videos are below.) He performed "New Slaves" and debuted another new song, "Black Skinhead," and video of those, along with the other clips mentioned in this post, are below.

Co...