Even voorstellen – Widowspeak – Roses

april 26 “no driver” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ao2cxCdGR0

march 26 “IF YOU CHANGE” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS1YGiW4EM8

LIVE:

10/12 wilde westen/kortrijk
11/12 aff/hasselt

Now, NYC duo Widowspeak have announced their new album Roses, due out June 5th via Captured Tracks. Lead single “If You Change” captures everything that’s made the long-running group a staying force, from its breezy guitars to the impossibly rich chorus, there’s a timeless quality imbued with the twang of a Lynchian roadhouse band.

On the single, vocalist Molly Hamilton says she “thought about the fear of change, and when things (situations, objects) feel stuck in time because of a fear of ruining them. You always hear “mint condition” as though it is as an asset, but it also means that thing hasn’t been used, lived with, loved. It never gets to fulfill its destiny.”

The longtime duo of Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas, Roses arrives as Widowspeak’s seventh album. One of many bands to crop up in a fertile New York City music scene over 16 years ago, they started out shuffling gear between venues now-since shuttered (Glasslands, Cake Shop, 285 Kent, Death By Audio to name a few) and their practice space in Monster Island Basement (now a Trader Joe’s). Widowspeak is now a married couple, working day jobs in their own off-season. Robert is a carpenter, Molly a waitress. Roses is populated not with dramatic overtures but with the backdrop of the minutiae and repetition of daily acts.  Small observations before, during, and after work: the ritual of pouring water for customers, catching a cold on your day off.  Daydreaming about winning the lottery, or maybe realizing you already won.

They recorded the album last January at the Old Carpet Factory on the Greek island Hydra: a studio in an old house tucked into the village’s steep hills.  It’s quiet there in winter, when the tourists have all gone home. Longtime touring members Willy Muse, John Andrews, and Noah Bond serve here as the players.  Roses was then taken home and slowly, lightly tinkered with, before being deftly mixed by Alex Farrar at Drop of Sun Studios, and mastered by Greg Obis at Chicago Mastering.

“Incidentally one of my favorite childhood books is “The Velveteen Rabbit” and growing up we had this VHS copy of Meryl Streep reading it over Ken Burns-esque slow-panned illustrations,” shares Hamilton on the playful video. “It’s sort of burned into my mind.  Even now, I can hear her voice saying “I am real!”  My sister ended up getting me a copy of it on vinyl, which is incredible.  Maybe I’ve also been thinking about it more now because we have a board book version we read to the baby. But, the point of the story is that only through being loved can something become “real”... and that’s sort of how the video came to be what it is.”

Across the ten tracks that make up Roses, intimate spaces and stages of love are captured with a nostalgic, vaseline-coated lens. If music can simultaneously be naturalistic and noir, saturated and lush, that is Widowspeak.  This is a band that knows how to set a scene.

There’s dream and power pop, a little Stones, maybe some Petty, open and languid ballads with the twang of a Lynchian roadhouse band… Perhaps you hear REM, Yo La Tengo or Cat Power. A little Neil Young in Hamilton’s references to working at the diner.  The magic of the band is, still and always, the interplay between Molly and Robert in their two leading roles: her languid, textured voice and his visceral guitar playing. And as producer, Robert captures the ephemeral magic of a band finding a song in the studio: something that still bears traces of the directness of Molly’s voice memos and the dense guitar tapestries of the demos. The rough-hewn marks of the tools are still evident, the noise kept in. 

“Can’t hold too tight or I’ll have nothing, Like a candy melts in your hand.” As the album closer  “Hourglass” contemplates the fleeting nature of something, anything, it illustrates what is most true about Widowspeak.   At the heart of it, their music is special because it is real: most of all for the people making it. Fragile and temporary, and worthwhile… like love itself.

Tracklist:

1. The Hook
2. No Driver
3. Roses
4. If You Change
5. Wondering
6. Angel Number
7. Soft Cover
8. Heaven is Waiting
9. Actor
10. Hourglass

Even voorstellen – Glen Hansard – transmissions east (vol 1)

Don+t Settle - Transmissions East & West
22-song career retrospective across two volumes featuring live reinterpretations of some of his most cherished songs recorded live at Berlin’s historic Funkhaus.
Transmissions East (Vol. 1) out 24th April on Plateau/Secretly Distribution.
Transmissions West (Vol. 2) to follow later in the year.

April 26 “wreckless heart” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QASMbZSs-II
March 26 “down on our knees” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMwnH6do3iw
“my little ruin” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN47yDn2rlo

Febr 26 Watch the live performance video for ‘Didn’t He Ramble’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82U9CCjlcJA

LIVE 16.05.26 - De Roma – ANTWERP

Don+t Settle - Transmissions East & West is an expansive collection featuring live reinterpretations of some of his most loved and cherished songs from across his solo career, as well as his work as the the frontman of The Frames and half of the Oscar winning duo The Swell Season.

Friday 24th April 2026 will see 10 of these tracks released first as Transmissions East (Vol. 1).

Hansard and his band recorded the album over two nights in April 2025 in front of a dedicated audience at Berlin’s historic Funkhaus–an expansive former East German radio facility–and in many ways, it encapsulates multiple things at once: a career retrospective opus, a ‘Best Of’ collection, a live record, and a new studio album.

The inspiration for Don+t Settle - Transmissions East & West came from a memorable rain-soaked outdoor performance at Zuiderparktheater in The Hague in summer 2024, when Hansard invited audience members onstage during a storm, creating an impromptu communal experience that would help to shape the record’s concept. Transmissions East  (Vol. 1) is the first release in a two-volume set with the 2nd, Transmissions West (Vol. 2), appearing later this year.

Both volumes feature no vocal overdubs, second takes, autotune, or editing–brilliantly showcasing the breadth of Hansard’s talents and songwriting. In all, Don+t Settle - Transmissions East & West feels like an important demarcation point in an already storied career, with Hansard looking backwards within his creative path while he moves forward–‘transmissions’ both from his past and to his future.

Hansard today shared his new version of “Didn’t He Ramble” from Vol. 1 about which he explained:“Our local bar was The Ramble Inn. My father spent most of his waking and sometimes sleeping hours in there…he’d ramble in and stumble out. I wrote this song after he passed at the fair young age of 62. The kind of tribute song he would have approved of. My father was a proud man. Loved his family and his drink in equal measure. My father showed his love shoulder to shoulder, not face to face. He drove The Frames amps and instruments around for years. Rarely staying for the show. But always there to load out the gear with the band afterwards. I loved him very much and wanted to write him a tribute song he’d enjoy. I raise my voice, and a glass to Jemo Hansard.”

The track listing of the Vol. 1 is as follows:
Don’t Settle

Down On Our Knees

Back Broke

My Little Ruin

Didn’t He Ramble

Fitzcarraldo

Carrickfergus

Lonely Deserter

The Feast Of St John

Wreckless Heart

A founding member of The Frames, Hansard first gained international attention through Alan Parker’s 1991 film The Commitments and a subsequent film, Once (2007), made on a modest budget, became a global success and grossed $23 million worldwide.
Co-starring Markéta Irglová,  the pair won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for ‘Falling Slowly’ and later recorded and toured as The Swell Season.
Since launching his solo career with 2012’s Rhythm and Repose, Hansard has released four further studio albums: Didn’t He Ramble (2015), Between Two Shores (2018), This Wild Willing (2019), and All That Was East Is West of Me Now (2023).
Over the years, he has collaborated with and earned praise from artists including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Joni Mitchell. Now 55, Hansard describes Transmissions East as a document of energy and connection, capturing the spirit of his live performances at an important moment in his musical journey.

Even voorstellen - OOIOO & Lightning Bolt announce split LP ‘THE HORIZON SPIRALS / THE HORIZON VIRAL’

On limited metallic Silver and Gold vinyl while they last. Double A-side artwork designed by QOTAROO.

Lightning Bolt share new track "CLOUD CORE":
https://lightningbolt.bandcamp.com/track/cloud-core

Two legendary, singular bands in their own right, Japan's OOIOO and Providence, Rhode Island's Lightning Bolt, have announced a split LP THE HORIZON SPIRALS / THE HORIZON VIRAL, out Apr. 24th. Along with the album's announcement, Lightning Bolt have shared the track "CLOUD CORE," a dizzying piece of pummeling breakneck percussion and timeless riffing that showcases how relentless the duo’s energy remains. OOIOO have also announced a rare show at Open Melody Festival in Los Angeles on April 4th – more dates forthcoming.

Lightning Bolt drummer/vocalist Brian Chippendale explains their approach to the track and their side of the LP: “OOIOO set the tone with THE HORIZON SPIRAL but we didn’t really roll with the spiral theme. We’re more Viral than Spiral though they both can dump you in a rabbit hole and we definitely like rabbit holes.”

OOIOO and Lightning Bolt are both bands whose music is wholly unique and whose creators’ influence would be impossible to overstate. YoshimiO, OOIOO’s founder and bandleader, has been a guiding force in uncompromising art across the continuum of rock and improvised music for four decades, from her work in UFO or Die to BOREDOMS to SAICOBAB and beyond. OOIOO serves as a core outlet for melding freeform experimentalism with hypnotic rock pulses, defying boundaries with her acrobatic voice, electronics, trumpet and gamelan. Lightning Bolt’s Brian Chippendale and Brian Gibson have remained unparalleled in their ability to transmute frenetic whirls of percussion, gargantuan fuzz and dizzying melody into monolithic vistas. THE HORIZON SPIRALS / THE HORIZON VIRAL is a split that captures the parallels in ethos between these two ensembles, their sense of gleeful abandon and freight train momentum, in inspiring detail.

THE HORIZON SPIRALS, composed of OOIOO’s gamelan-infused sagas “THE HORIZON” and “Gamel BE SURE TO SPIRAL” demonstrates the boundless scope of OOIOO’s music. YoshimiO explains a core contrast between these pieces and 2014’s Gamel lays in the physical materials used: “Back then in Bali, bronze-keyed gamelan were mainstream, and GAMEL uses bronze. THE HORIZON SPIRALS' gamelan is iron. Black-painted iron. This time, incorporating Koheysai's iron sound (iron gamelan) allowed us to see OOIOO's songs spiraling upward with greater lightness. The iron gamelan infiltrated OOIOO's sparkling elements, grounding that sound within the audible range as a new wave sound. It also blends exceptionally well with Mishina's cymbals.”

Lightning Bolt’s THE HORIZON VIRAL evokes the limitlessness of their improvisations and distills through more sophisticated home recording techniques.THE HORIZON VIRAL reignites the flame of their storied home recordings, capturing the duo unfiltered and on their home turf and bolstered from bassist Brian Gibson’s experiences composing and recording for his acclaimed games Thrasher and Thumper.

Live Nation concert - The Prodigy
Op vrijdag 27 november 2026 in Vorst Nationaal, Brussel

Brace yourself, Brussel. Op vrijdag 27 november transformeert Vorst Nationaal in een kolkende massa energie wanneer The Prodigy het podium overneemt.

Na een indrukwekkend 2025, waarin de band wereldwijd de headliner was op grote festivals van Summersonic in Japan tot Coachella in de Verenigde Staten en een toonaangevende show neerzette op Glastonbury, schakelt The Prodigy in 2026 nog een versnelling hoger. Met een carrière van 35 jaar op de teller blijft de band pieken, met een UK en Ireland arena tour die in recordtempo volledig uitverkocht raakte en een Europese tour die in november ook halt houdt in Brussel. Bovendien staat The Prodigy dit jaar op Rock Werchter, waar ze op de openingsdag The Barn afsluiten met een knallende set.

Vergeet alles wat je denkt te weten over liveshows: The Prodigy doet het anders. Dreunende bassen, een intense lichtshow en onverwoestbare energie. Klassiekers als "Firestarter", "Smack My Bitch Up" en "Breathe" komen live nog harder binnen. Liam H en Maxim krijgen tijdens hun shows versterking van Rob Holliday op gitaar en Leo Crabtree op drums en zetten een show neer die je niet loslaat. De band werkt intussen ook aan nieuw materiaal als opvolger van het succesvolle 'No Tourists', hun zevende opeenvolgende nummer 1-album in het Verenigd Koninkrijk.

Zoals Rolling Stone het treffend verwoordde: The Prodigy geeft een masterclass in het samenbrengen van rave en rock. Kom genieten van deze pure "Firestarter"-energie op vrijdag 27 november in Vorst Nationaal!

Tickets zijn beschikbaar via livenation.be en kosten €57,01 (inclusief servicekosten en mobiliteitsbijdrage).

www.livenation.be