New York-raised rapper DOOM – formerly MF Doom, also known at various times as Viktor Vaughn, Zev Love X, King Geedorah, Metal Fingers, and the Supervillain – is known mainly for being wilfully odd. He wears a metal mask on stage, parades an interest in comics and cartoons that borders on the obsessive, and recently…

Providence, Rhode Island is notorious for its Mob connections, and also for housing the world’s largest termite (it’s 58 feet long and nicknamed the Big Blue Bug.) The city is also home to the members of The Low Anthem. The band have recently been at the centre of considerable hype, supporting Bruce Springsteen, Ray LaMontagne…

The fortunes of the musical ‘side project’ have on the whole been somewhat mixed. For every Raconteurs there’s a Mike and the Mechanics; for every Damon Albarn, an Alex James. (You might remember English football shout-a-long ‘Vindaloo’, but Fat Les’s follow-up single, ‘Naughty Christmas (Goblin In The Office)’, never hit quite the same..

-Savath y Savalas’ is one of the numerous monikers assumed by hip-hop polymath and inveterate musical knob-twiddler Scott Herren, aka Prefuse 73, aka Delarosa and Asora, aka Piano Overlord. Herren is far from the first musician to declare multiple identities – let’s not forget that Kool Keith transformed himself into a -time-travelling gynaecologist’ – but…

For love songs, Rennie Sparks has said, ‘Triteness is really a problem.’ Sparks is half of the Handsome Family, with her husband Brett. Their songs have in the past tended to be more about aeroplane disasters and bloody killings – they’ve been called ‘the Gomez and Morticia Adams of country music’ – than the transcendent…

The Phantom Band are apparently named because they couldn’t decide on a name. The group cycled through handles of such varying crappiness as Robert Redford, Son Of and Wooden Trees before settling on their current insubstantial moniker. And this chronic indecisiveness seems to extend to their music, too. They describe their chosen genre as -Proto-Robofolk’,…

Ninja TuneThe Qemists got started, their record-label bio explains, when their three members ‘were playing in a rock band by day, and producing and DJing Drum ‘n’ Bass by night, which led to an inevitable conclusion: why not do both at the same time?’ Well, to be honest, there are lots of reasons. But most…

Kanye West’s use of Auto-Tune on his new album sparked an online war of words between the hip-hop star and his fanbase. But just what is Auto-Tune and why does it court controversy so?…
The entries on Kanye West’s personal blog are mostly just pictures of expensive accessories. Recent posts include links to a solar-powered