The terms of the deal will see the entertainment giant divest some of its venues and allow third-party ticketing companies to use Ticketmaster

Live Nation appears to have reached a settlement with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) in relation to the latter’s antitrust lawsuit against the entertainment giant.

The suit, originally filed in 2024, claimed that Live Nation, parent company of Ticketmaster, has a market monopoly over the live events industry. The company owns around 460 venues globally, and at least 150 of those are located in the US. Its ticketing arm, Ticketmaster, also accounts for 80 percent of the primary ticketing market for major concert venues across the US.

The government’s suit aimed to break up the two companies and split…

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Applications for the UK Artist Touring Fund will be open from 11 to 20 March

A new fund has been established in the UK to provide financial support to touring artists.

The Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) is behind the new initiative, dubbed the UK Artist Touring Fund, which is designed to support anyone who’s experienced financial problems from touring this year. Eligible artists will have access to up to £7,000, or a maximum of 40 percent of total tour expenditure.

The fund is open to artists of all genres, and individuals from marginalised communities are encouraged to appeal for support. Applications are open from 11 to 20 March.

To be eligible for financial support, UK-based artists must have performed shows before October 31 this…

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From Norwegian hardcore royalty to one of the few flying the flag for the Alabama underground, via returning Dublin favourites and yet another essential demo from the relentless Shrewsbury scene, Noel Gardner returns once more with his guide to new punk rock

Draümar, photo by Sigrun Sæbø Åland

Hold tight for some hot new pop and metal sounds, shoehorned into this punk and hardcore column on a subcultural technicality, and because this is my little genre-slippage fiefdom. But first, some textbook Straight Hedge bangbangbang fodder: every general interest music website needs a review of Draümar by Draümar, Oslo hardcore royalty. Static Shock have foisted this LP on us, not too long after doing likewise with the debut 7” by member-related band Assistert…

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Okkyung Lee + Explore Ensemble

Signals

Commissioned by London’s Explore Ensemble, South Korean cellist, improviser, composer Okkyung Lee pulls out all the stops, building impossible architectures out of piano stabs, whistling woodwinds and electronic augmentations

Signals by okkyung lee

If you’ve recently listened to Okkyung Lee’s just like any other day (어느날), take a minute to collect yourself and reset expectations before diving into the South Korean cellist’s new record. While Lee’s 2025 collection of charming and bright-eyed, keyboard-focused ambient miniatures wouldn’t feel out of place in pastoral passages of a JRPG soundtrack, Signals, a commission by London’s Explore Ensemble, is stark, grave, and sharply abstract from first note to last.

The first sounds we hear, in fact, on the opener ‘Siwan’ (named for pianist…

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John Grindrod discovered his sexuality in the streets of Croydon, always looking up the tracks to London, and argues that no other artist articulate this tension between city, suburbia and LGBT+ lives quite so beautifully as did Messrs Tennant and Lowe. This BST comes with a Pet Shop Boys Suburbs vs City playlist exclusive to our Subscriber Plus supporters.

Pet Shop Boys’ Suburbia video, credit Eric Watson

I’m sat on the floor behind my dad’s armchair, chunky headphones on, listening to a new 12” my brother has bought. Our music centre lives in a compartment on an MFI divider unit, beside my parents’ collection of records, cassettes and videotapes. It’s December 1985, and while outside is the low-energy sprawl of a Croydon…

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New Age Doom featuring H.R.

Angels Against Angels

With Bad Brains frontman H.R. in tow, serial collaborators New Age Doom fuse metal, hardcore, punk and reggae into new forms of spiritual music

Angels Against Angels by New Age Doom featuring H.R.

For a band that has always cultivated a unique and idiosyncratic sound, New Age Doom appears to have fully mastered their craft on Angels Against Angels. The album demonstrates a confident command of arrangement and atmosphere, tactically marshalling diverse musical elements while seamlessly integrating multiple genres. At the same time, it advances a spiritual message rooted in equality, love and truth. 

Sparkling with elements of jazz, experimental, electronic, progressive rock and dub, the record is elevated further by the unmistakable vocals and lyricism of H.R….

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From working with Brian Eno to playing with The Contortions and The Bloods, Adele Bertei had a front-row seat to New York’s infamous No Wave scene. She talks to Elizabeth Wiet about noise, melody, and why the fertile ecosystem of Downtown NYC couldn’t come about today

Adele at CBGBs. Photo: Julia Gorton

As a critic, I’ve never had a particular knack for analogy. But if tasked with describing the sound of No Wave, I might liken it to a strung-out saxophonist falling down the steel steps of the Delancey-Essex subway station. Its affect I might liken to a panic attack. Whereas punk was propelled by anger, No Wave found fuel in that interstice where anxiety explodes into doom.

Often derided as noise or…

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The recordings were all later reworked for the band’s 1993 album In On The Killtaker

Fugazi have shared a collection of previously unreleased recordings that they produced alongside Steve Albini in late 1992.

Albini Sessions (Benefit For Letters Charity) collects 12 tracks that the band later re-recorded to appear on their 1993 album In On The Killtaker. The songs, engineered and mixed by Steve at Electrical, are exclusively available as downloads on Bandcamp, and can be listened to below.

Fugazi have released the recordings in aid of Letters Charity, a not-for-profit organisation that aims to support families experiencing poverty, which Albini and his wife, Heather Whinna, supported before the former’s passing in 2024. Purchase the release here.

A press release expands on how the…

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THE BLACK LIGHTS takes place in the seaside town this June

Manchester venue The White Hotel has added 30 acts to the lineup for the debut edition of its new Blackpool festival THE BLACK LIGHTS.

The weekend-long event will newly take in sets from Kali Malone, Klein, Valentina Magaletti, Russell Haswell, Lee Gamble, Jennifer Walton, Afrodeutsche and Iceboy Violet, among others.

They all join the previously announced likes of The Caretaker, Factory Floor, Moin, Joanna Robertson, Space Afrika, Blackhaine, Kode9, Evian Christ and Mica Levi on the bill for the festival.

THE BLACK LIGHTS will take place from June 26 to 28, 2026. Find more information here.
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Though it’s almost impossible to separate 90s Norwegian black metal from the controversies surrounding its progenitors, says Dan Franklin, a new box set offers an opportunity to reappraise Darkthrone’s superb body of work on its own terms

In his novel The Third Realm, Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard writes about a fictional black metal band called Domen. The band never records and only rarely plays live – in secret, in the middle of nowhere. They create a “cacophony of the most incredible noise”. Domen song ‘And Long Was I Dead’ opens with the line “I was the cockerel that crowed in the ground”. Elsewhere in the book, another black metal band is murdered in a ritualistic killing. A new, baleful star…

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