Weekly Music News Roundup

Following another such announcement two weeks ago, Blue Note Records has announced a large list of catalogue deletions. Check out the list of cuts, which includes a number of classic jazz and blues artists.

You can get a free download of an Aesop Rock / Jeremy Fish audio/video collaboration of “Tomorrow Morning” from Definitive Jux.

Trent Reznor has strongly reprimanded the US military’s use of Nine Inch Nails‘ music during the torture of overseas detainees.  According to Reznor, any realistic legal options will be “aggressively pursued, with any potential monetary gains donated to human-rights charities.”

Experimental and occasionally psychedelic folk group Akron/Family will release a new album, its fourth overall, for Dead Oceans / Secretly Canadian in April. It will mark the group’s first effort for Dead Oceans and first as a three-piece.

Stoner-metal bad-asses High on Fire have signed a deal with Koch Records, which will release a new studio album sometime in 2009.  Before that happens, Relapse will release Live from the Relapse Contamination Festival on January 6.

The transition of Conan O’Brien to Jay Leno’s old job has created an opening for a new house band on Conan’s old show, which was deftly soundtracked by the Max Weinberg 7. Good news for hip-hop and funk fans: The Roots will handle the duties on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

In an interview with Billboard, guitarist Tom Morello states that there may never be another Rage Against the Machine album.

Idiosyncratic rapper Busdriver recently compiled a list of his top ten albums (not limited to 2008) for LAist.com. Portishead‘s long-awaited third album tops his rankings.

The RZA releases a new selection of tunes for Afro Samurai, an animated series for Spike TV, on January 27.  The soundtrack marks the first release from Wu Music Group, a new label co-run by RZA.