Ahead of a series of North American summer shows and European festival dates, The Big Pink have made available a free-to-download five track remix EP. Alongside efforts from AraabmuziK, Forest Swords and King Krule, is an unreleased acapella take on “77″ by Montreal’s d’Eon.

Twin Shadow, the creative moniker of George Lewis Jr., will release his second album, Confess, on July 9th through 4AD. Self-produced and with mixing duties handled by Michael H. Brauer (Bob Dylan), the follow-up to 2010′s Forget finds Lewis Jr. doing what he does best; remembering and reinventing, and fashioning a soundtrack which sounds refreshingly and distinctly modern.

Gracing the paddocks of Kent for the 5th year is The Hop Farm Music Festival. Webcuts was lucky enough to attend last year and was clearly impressed us with the range and standard of acts and the ease of access. The line-up for 2012 is already shaping up with the announcement of headliners BOB DYLAN (UK exclusive), PETER GABRIEL AND THE NEW BLOOD ORCHESTRA (UK exclusive) and SUEDE (UK festival exclusive).

The latest acts include:

Ray Davies, Primal Scream, Psychedelic Furs, The Stranglers,My Morning Jacket, Peter Hook and The Light, Richard Ashcroft (only UK Show), Kool and the Gang, Patti Smith & Band, George Clinton Parliament Funkadelic, The Levellers, Ian Hunter, Gary Numan, British Sea Power and Gomez with more names still to be announced.

The festival which takes place over three days between 29th June – 1st July in Kent has also announced a new Powers Bar Stage and a Comedy Stage with comedians confirmed so far including Russell Kane, Patrick Monahan, Phil Nicol, Kerry Godliman, Andy Zaltzman and Simon Evans. The entertainment icon and legend that is Sir Bruce Forsyth will play his 1st festival appearance at the festival.

Vince Power said: “I’m very happy with the bill, we have yet again put together a unique bill of acts you’re not going to see repeated everywhere else. We have some true legends including Patti Smith and Randy Crawford and I think that’s what music fans look for, a well though out bill which is the best value festival this year at £162 for 3 days, 4 days camping with no added extras”

The three-day independent festival maintains its NO SPONSORSHIP, NO BRANDING ethos, the Hop Farm will be sticking to the winning formula of programming legendary artists with contemporary acts with one of the summer’s most affordable festival tickets.

Hop Farm Music Festival prides itself on offering great value for money for festival goers with no booking fee, no parking charge, no camping charge and no charge for children under 12. The festival has been offering the first 10,000 customers even better value with a special weekend ticket price of just £150.

These have nearly sold out and from Wednesday 18th April Tickets prices will be as follows:

Weekend Ticket: £162 (no booking fee) includes a 3 day ticket plus 4 days camping and parking.

Day Tickets: £55 (no booking fee) for the 1st 5,000.

For all line up details, tickets, announcements and news visit the brand new Hop Farm Music Festival website which is now fully compatible with all PC’s, tablets and smartphones- www.hopfarmfestival.com

Tickets available through: www.eventim.co.uk or call the ticket Hotline: 0844 249 1000

Follow us on www.facebook.com/theHopFarmMusicFestival and www.twitter.com/hopfarmfestival

Ahead of the release of their second album, Future This, The Big Pink have recorded a set of five songs as part of the 4AD Sessions series. Bringing to life the anthemic qualities of the new album, the session is a showcase of the unabashed step towards stadium dynamics the band have made on Future This, while also displaying the often-curveball influences that continue to underpin their best work.

Filmed in 3 Mills Studios, the location was to have a coincidental resonance with the music. Based on Three Mill Island in Bromley-by-Bow, the island is London’s oldest surviving industrial centre with evidence to suggest that the mills it houses were listed in the Domesday Book. The grand historical associations and JG Ballard-esque setting appears fitting of the darkened, industrial undertones that course through even the most pop moments of The Big Pink’s music. Channeling the epic, immersive and otherworldy feel of the new album, the stark backdrop of the warehouse-like space was coupled with lasers used in a structural way to frame the band and change the physical surroundings.

Playing several tracks from Future This, alongside spiritual cousin “Velvet”, taken from the first album, the session captures what makes The Big Pink such an intriguing band. Effortlessly moving between the outre sounds of the underground and their love for shameless pop hooks, the band display the full scale of their creative ambitions.

Tracklisting

1. ‘Stay Gold’
2. ‘Hit The Ground (Superman)’
3. ‘Velvet’
4. ‘Rubbernecking’
5. ‘Give It Up’

The Too Pure Singles Club returns in 2012 with a bang (or is that a rattle) with the sound of Icelandic mantra magicians Dead Skeletons. For the uninitiated, Dead Skeletons came into existence in 2008 when band member Jon Saamunder needed music for an art installation in the Reykjavik Art Museum. Enlisting the help of friends Henrik Bjornsson and Ryan Carlson Van Kriedt the trio penned the songs which would eventually become the Dead Magick album, a 72 minute, 12 song journey through space and time, life and death. “Om Mani Peme Hung” is the sound of Neu! on a meditation retreat engaging in a spiritual hypno-chant. I wouldn’t advise watching this clip under the influence as the apocalyptic dudes holding swastika shields may freak you out. Now repeat after me… Om Mani Peme Hung, Om Mani Peme Hung, Om Mani Peme Hung… Check out the Too Pure Singles Club website for more details on how to subscribe and pick up this 7″ single.

Out of the Fiery Furnace and into the solo arena, Eleanor Friedberger released her debut solo record Last Summer last year to positive reviews (I’m pretty sure we liked it too). Currently enjoying an Australian summer playing a few shows and watching the tennis, Eleanor also found time to put together a video for her song “Heaven” which you can watch here, and a four track live EP which you can download above. It’s like an endless summer of Eleanor. Dig it.

Recent Rough Trade signings Howler stake their claim as a band to watch in 2012 (while coming across like a Midwest Strokes) with a brand new track “Back of Your Neck” taken from their forthcoming debut album America Give Up due out January 16. Download the song for free above and catch the band touring the UK early next year.

From her isolated upbringing in rural Wisconsin, combined with a passion for opera, philosophy and industrial music, Nika Rosa Danilova aka Zola Jesus has created a name for herself as being a successor to the great Diamanda Galas and Lisa Gerrard with her haunting, otherworldly vocal style.

Over the past three years Danilova has reached the point in her career where she is no longer an experimental, teenage noise-maker but an internationally celebrated electro-pop artist. Her third album Conatus is her most accomplished work to date, pushing beyond the dark melodrama of Stridulum II toward something that is emotionally breathtaking.

From Conatus alone, it’s clear that Danilova confidence to follow her instincts her paid off, but in conversation she remains tight-lipped, holding her cards close to her chest, as Static’s Chris “Man of 1000 questions” Berkley would quickly find out.

It’s only been 12 months since Stridulum, you’ve put out EPs and toured a lot. Do you sleep?

Um, not much. No. (laughs)

Have you found yourself out on the road these past 12 months especially?

Yes, I’ve been touring a lot this past year.

How do you find time to fit in tours with making records? You seem to cram a lot in.

Well, I just make it work. There are a lot of hours in the day. Not enough, but there are enough (laughs).

Have you always been this way? Were you a prodigious child?

I don’t know. I’ve always felt like there’s so much to do and there’s so much to get done and you gotta do it, you know? Now or never.

How did you discover that you wanted to be a singer?

It was very natural. I just loved to sing and would always be singing. As long as I remember I’ve always wanted to do this.

As a child were you having those ‘Sound of Music’ moments where you’re walking around the hillside singing to yourself?

Maybe (laughs).

You seem to be drawn towards opera or classical singing as a kid, rather than rock n’ roll, right? Was that your first love?

Well, just singing was my first love. I just wanted to be a better singer and I wanted to be able to do things with my voice that you needed training for, so that was just the natural course.

What point did you become aware of the power of vocals, or being a singer?

I don’t know. Like I said, ever since I was born I would just be singing. It’s not even something that I remember the impetus. Music has always been something very innate to me, like an impulse.

Were you shy of jumping up on stage and doing Zola Jesus stuff when you first began as well?

Oh yeah, I was terrified at the beginning. I mean, I’m still terrified really. It felt like if I wasn’t going to do it then I’m never going to do it and I need to get over that fear if I ever want to do this. So I just had to do it.

At the same time, your early recordings as Zola Jesus were obscured by murkiness or programmed noise. Was that your way of hiding behind a veil?

In a way, yes.

How much did you learn to program at the same time as learning to sing?

Well, programming and producing came a little later on when I felt like I needed to make songs and do everything myself. I didn’t have anyone around me to make music so I just did it for myself. I just had to learn the skills.

Did you have some bands that were touchstones then, that you were kinda discovering or looking to, to make the sound of Zola Jesus?

No, not really.

So when people have compared you to other bands have you been pleasantly surprised by what they’ve said?

It just confuses me. I don’t think about my music in that way.

Did embarking on some of those big tours last year then impact on how you wanted Conatus to sound? It seems like this album is definitely borne out of live shows?

I actually thought it was going to be a lot more poppier and a lot straighter. When I started making it, it became much more introspective and atmospheric and exploratory in a way. It wasn’t as much of an immediate pop record as I had envisioned it to be in the beginning.

So in the first place this was going to be a feel-good happy-go-lucky Zola Jesus album and something went wrong?

Not necessarily, but I thought it was going to have much more of an immediate impact as far as the songwriting went, but as I started working on music I felt like whatever came out, came out. For some songs it was that, but it wasn’t that completely. It feels a lot more subtle and introspective.

A couple of those big tours that you’ve done were with Fever Ray and The XX. Both of them have powerful female vocals and sparse instrumentation, did you find inspiration touring with a couple of artists who might be kindred spirits?

Not really. I was inspired by their work ethic and their conviction in what they believe in and everything but musically not so much.

You’ve certainly cut back the programming on Conatus. To use a lofty word it sounds more ’earthy’ than anything you’ve done before, there’s strings and pianos, did you find yourself enjoying some of those earthier tones on this record?

Well, actually I feel like this record is much more programmed because the beats are much more intricate and sophisticated in a way, but at the same time I wanted to bring in a lot of acoustic and organic elements and balance it out instead of it being a completely electronic record. But it feels more electronic to me than Stridulum. I don’t know, it’s kind of a strange dichotomy.

Some of the songs seem to have that breathing space where you can just hear piano and strings which might’ve been obscured in previous years on your records.

Yeah, I wanted there to be a lot of space on the record. I tend to write and put everything in the song and then weed it out and bring out the space in the songs just to allow them to be more breathing room, I guess.

A song like “Skin” is a total torch song. Some kid is gonna cover that on American Idol, I’m sure.

Oh god.

Does it feel like that? Does it feel like your power ballad?

It kinda felt like my point of no return in a way.

Why is that? Because it’s such a naked song?

Yeah, so stark and for me, very cathartic. When I wrote it, I felt very low.

Was it one of those five minute songs that came very quickly? It seems like such a great impulsive or spur of the moment song…

Yeah. It came very quickly.

Another way that you’re going to be infiltrating teenage bedrooms this year is the M83 collaboration ‘cos you’ve turned up on Anthony’s record. Was it a thrill to be able to team up with him?

It was wonderful. I’ve always been a fan of his work and I guess he’s been a fan of mine too, so getting to work with him was very exciting.

Was this one of those horrible 21st century things where you weren’t in the same room together, or did you spend time with him to make that song?

We went into the studio together and we worked on the vocals and did it together. It was a lot of fun.

Interview broadcast on Static on 10/11/11. Static can be heard on Sydney’s 2SER (107.3 FM) and via the Internet (www.2ser.com) every Thursday evening (AEST).