- Fantômas
– Unpredictable super-group Fantômas will perform on New Year’s Eve at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall, where Mike Patton, Buzz Osborne, Trevor Dunn, and Dave Lombardo will have their only US performance of The Director’s Cut. Ipecac label mates Tipsy and Zach Hill perform as well.
– Exceptional Estradasphere guitarist Jason Schimmel takes his Orange Tulip Conspiracy on a short West Coast tour in November.
– On his MySpace page, producer extraordinaire Jon Brion released “Croatia,” a streaming standalone tune that carries a bit of Balkan flavor.
– For the second straight year, charming oddball folk rapper Tim Fite will release a free EP, this one called Ding Dong Ditch, available for one day only on Halloween. The Halloween-themed effort will be available through www.timfite.com.
– Starting today, a Doomriders / Disfear split 7″ is available to pre-order from Deathwish Inc. The heavier-than-thou groups will play two weeks of European shows together in November.
– MySpace has posted a full streaming video of Ben Folds Five‘s recent one-off reunion performance of The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner for its Front to Back series.
– On Monday, enigmatic Icelandic songstress Björk released “Nattura,” a single available through One Little Indian. The song encourages support for the Nattura campaign, which seeks to provide eco-friendly options to Iceland.
– London’s freak disco/metal collective Chrome Hoof has set a pair of rare performances in France for Halloween and November 1.
– February 17, 2009 marks the release of Animals in the Dark, the ANTI- debut by raspy folk singer William Elliott Whitmore. As of Thursday, Whitmore joined Murder by Death for a month-long US tour.
– Wired has dug into the world of internet radio alarm clocks, devices that can wake you up using a directory of more than 11,000 worldwide internet radio stations. They can also use your flash / external hard drive to play your choice of tunes.