JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Pink Floyd co-founder and drummer Nick Mason’s 82nd birthday.
Throwback: Happy 58th Birthday, Mike Patton!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 58th birthday of Mr. Bungle and Faith No More frontman Mike Patton.
Throwback: Happy 58th Birthday, Tricky!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Tricky’s 58th birthday.
Throwback: R.I.P. Sly Dunbar
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the life and music of reggae legend Sly Dunbar.
Throwback: Happy 71st Birthday, Eddie Van Halen!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 71st anniversary of the birth of Eddie Van Halen.
Throwback: Happy 68th Birthday, Anita Baker!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Anita Baker’s 68th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 63rd Birthday, Andrew Ridgeley!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Andrew Ridgeley’s 63rd birthday.
Throwback: Happy 83rd Birthday, Thom Bell!
JOVM’s WIlliam Ruben Helms celebrates the 83rd anniversary of the birth of Thom Bell.
New Video: Atabasca Shares Ethereal and Dreamy “Kundela Mawedi”
Italian trio Atabasca — Luca Mongia (guitar, lap steel, keys, vocals), Paolo Mazzioti (bass, keys, vocals) and Valerio Pompei (drums, percussion, vocals) — features three highly accomplished musicians, who over the course of the past 20 yers have made names for themselves individually on the national and international scene.
Formed back in 2023, the trio got together to create a project that merges experience, experimentation and creative freedom. The trio’s sound moves through jazz-funk, world music and film scores while weaving together elements of Afrobeat, desert and psychedelic influences into a personal and timeless musical language. Each composition manages to set a scene with each sound, each chord is a fragment of a world. Ultimately, their work is a dream-like journey between reality and imagination seamlessly blend.
Atabaca’s self-titled debut is slated for a March 27, 2026 release through Rome-based Killer Groove Records. “Kundela Mawedi,” the album’s second and latest single is an ethereal and slinky tune anchored around shimmering pedal steel, jazz-like four-on-the-floor and twinkling keys that evokes the sensation a psilocybin trip in a tropical paradise.
The accompanying video for “Kundela Mawedi” follows the trio as each individual member skateboards, rollerblades and/or bikes their way through the Italian countryside while they goof off. The video captures the trio’s easy-going, playful chemistry.
Throwback: Happy 88th Birthday, Etta James!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 88th anniversary of the birth of the legendary Etta James.
New Video: Joshua Idehen Shares Euphoric “This Is The Place”
After nearly two decades in London‘s poetry scene, Joshua Idehen found widespread recognition with the viral success of “Mum Does The Washing,” a poignant, witty pice set to music by his creative partner Ludvig Parment, a.k.a. Saturday, Monday. The success of “Mum Does The Washing” led to sold-out shows, major festival appearances — including Glastonbury — and a new chapter in Idehen’s artistic life.
Initially drawn to film, Idehen’s poetic journey began after being captivated by Dizzee Rascal‘s Vexed on Channel U. Inspired by Scroobius Pip, he began poetry with music, collaborating with the likes of LV, Benin City and Sons of Kemet. His career as a singer/songwriter/performer alongside a series of personal channels, including a divorce and mental health struggles. Relocating to Stockholm during the COVID-19 pandemic gave him space to reflect and begin anew.
That period of rebirth led to Idehen’s highly-anticipated debut album, I Know You’re Hurting, Everyone Is Hurting, Everyone Is Trying, You Have Got To Try. Slated for a March 6, 2026 release through Heavenly Recordings. Made with his longtime collaborator Parment, the album is a sonic embrace for the weary, mixing house-tinged beats, choral flourishes and lyrical meditations on hope, self-worth and collective resilience. The album will feature the previous released “It Always Was” and “Don’t Let It Get You Down.”
I Know You’re Hurting, Everyone Is Hurting, Everyone Is Trying, You Have Got To Try‘s third and latest latest single “This Is The Place” is a euphoric bit of Larry Levan-inspired house featuring glistening and woozy synth arpeggios and skittering beats serving as a lush bed for Idehen’s poetic meditations on the club being much like a church with music and dancing as a form of connection with yourself and others and as a form of freedom from your daily struggles, from the harshness of our world, from your own self-doubt and the like. It’s a much-needed joy bomb in a desperate, uneasy time — and a reminder that joy is a form of resistance.
“The way I squealed when Ludvig sent this beat over! When I heard it, I was taken back to bouncing in-between rooms early morning in Fabric, on one of those weekend nights that felt so non-special at the time ‘just another average night out’ but were a quiet healing, a ordinary burst of joy, and I wanted to capture that feeling,” Idehen explains. “‘This is the place where I pick all my pieces up; was the first line, and everything else flowed after that.”
Directed by PREHUMAN, the accompanying video is an elegant yet joyfully minimalist visual that begins with a person on the street style interview that quickly becomes a joyous dance session.
PREHUMAN adds: “Joshua is an unusually compelling performer — put him in front of a camera and much of the work is already done. The video itself is deliberately stripped back, with no distractions. I wanted the feeling of a shared space, like a club: bodies moving together, connection through rhythm.
The treatment is clean and minimal, but the movement is intentionally angular and imperfect. I love the line ‘everyone’s a bit broken here.’ Those ’90s white cyc music videos with fisheye lenses were a strong reference point throughout. Ludvig on the old MPC3000 was the icing on the cake.”
New Audio: Bronco Forte Shares Bruising “Obvious Alias”
Los Angeles-based stoner rock outfit Bronco Forte — Chris Klepac (vocals, guitar), All Hail the Yeti‘s Sako Inajaian (guitar), White Forest‘s Jen Glomboski (bass), and Batillus‘ and A Storm of Light‘s Geoff Summers (drums) — will be releasing their full-length debut, Lightning Scars on April 3, 2026.
After years of creative toil and preparation, the Los Angeles-based stoner rock quartet’s full-length debut sees the band stepping into the spotlight as a fully-formed heavy rock phenomenon with roots in the classic heavy music of the 1970s — but with a modern sensibility and sonic approach. Lightning Scars was tracked and mixed by engineer Kevin McCombs at The Steakhouse, the studio where Queens of The Stone Age recorded Era Vulgaris. The album was mastered by Nick Townsend, who cut the album to lacquer on his own personal lathe.
Thematically, Lightning Scars chronicle the uncertain lives of ordinary people of California and elsewhere, with the characters each song depicts desperately striving to maintain their integrity and sanity in the face of a rapidly-changing, increasingly dystopian hellscape.
And as a result, the album’s lyrics balance literary style and kitchen-sink realism. The album’s material is anchored around deep, dirty riffs, hard swinging grooves and song structures that are clever without being cluttered or overly complicated. And this is paired by a pop leaning sense of harmony.
Lightning Scars‘ second and latest single “Obvious Alias,” is anchored around the sort of bruising riffage that seemingly channels Queens of the Stone Age, Dirt-era Alice in Chains and Badmotorfinger-era Soundgarden while showcasing a band with an uncanny knack for pairing catchy, melodic-driven hooks, rousingly anthemic hooks and lived-in lyrics.
New Video: Tinlicker Shares Euphoric “Release”
Acclaimed Utrecht-based electronic music outfit Tinlicker — founding member Micha Heyboer, Jordi van Achthoven and their newest member Hero Baldwin — can trace their origins back to 2012, when the project was founded as a solo project. As a solo project, Heyboer released Tinlicker’s debut EP, 2012’s My First Time Here and the 2012’s Remember The Future demo compilation through his own label, Zero Three Zero.
Jordi van Achthoven was introduced to Heyboer through a mutual contact in 2014. The pair bonded over their mutual inspirations of Paul Kalkbrenner, Trentemøller and Moderat, and at that point, Tinlicker expanded to a duo, releasing three EPs through Feed Me‘s Sotto Voce, 2014’s Like No Other, 2015’s Into The Open and The Space In Between, which featured “Oudegracht,” a track that amassed significant attention online.
2017 saw the duo releasing material through Anjunadep, Armada Music and deadmau5′s mau5trap before singing a record deal with Anjunadeep, who released their breakthrough full-length debut, 2019’s This Is Not Our Universe, which featured contributions from alt-J, Run Rivers, Thomas Oliver and Belle Doron. The album reached #1 on the dance charts in the US, Australia, India, Canada and Finland and #2 in the UK, The Netherlands and Poland.
The duo’s sophomore album In Another Life was released in February 2022. But by November 2023, the duo announced that the third album, 2024’s Cold Enough for Snow would be released through [PIAS] Électronique. The album featured collaborations with Brian Molko, Editors‘ Tom Smith and Circa Waves. The Dutch duo supported the album with sets at Pinkpop Festival, CRSSD Festival, Crystal Palace Bowl, Coachella and Sziget Festival.
Back in 2020, as the Dutch duo were achieving commercial and critical success, they started a successful collaboration with London-based signer/songwriter and producer Hero Baldwin that has continued through a series of singles including last year’s “I Started A Fire.” Last year, also saw Heyboer and Achthoven inviting Baldwin to be a full-time member of the group. “Jordi and Micha seem to pull something out of me that resonates with my emotional landscape every time we make a song,” the London-based singer/songwriter and producer says. “I think it’s so important to feel creatively and emotionally secure, and Jordi and Micha always afford me that privilege.”
The act’s Melkweg Amsterdam show was their official debut as a trio. She also joined the duo for their biggest live show to date, Tinlicker In The Park at Crystal Palace Bowl.
Tinlicker’s highly-anticipated fourth album — and first as a trio — Dreams of the Machine is slated for a February 27, 2026 release through [PIAS] Électronique. Dreams of the Machine will feature the previously released singles “I Want My Freedom,” and “Reborn.”
The newly-constituted trio’s third single “Release,” is a lush, euphoria-inducing track anchored around melodic, rippling synth arpeggios, skittering, industrial-inspired breakbeats and reverb-soaked bass paired with Hero Baldwin’s sultry, commanding delivery and the trio’s unerring knack for crafting expansive, club and festival friendly tracks underpinned by a deep soulfulness.
Lyrically, the addresses the modern obsession with our cell phones — to the point that we’re not fully present with ourselves, with others or within the moments we should be enjoying and cherishing. How many times have you attended some event and 98% of the people around you are fixating on their phone — whether to text, instagram or to record every single moment? But the song also focuses on the potential conflict between human and the influence of AI-led algorithms.
“At its heart, ‘Release’ is about how easily we slip out of the moment without noticing. The habit of checking, fixing and responding instantly on our phones and how that slowly takes over our attention to each other,” the members of Tinlicker explain. “We’re not anti-technology, perhaps just quietly aware of what disappears when distraction becomes automatic. ‘Release’ is about pausing and staying in the moment with the people around you.”
The accompanying video by Carl Frazer-Lunn begins in a bustling London with businesspeople, commuters, students and others busily fixating on their phones, completely unaware of their surroundings. The video then quickly turns to live footage of the trio performing at Crystal Palace in front of an enraptured crowd. It’s proof that there are only a few truly transcendent moments in our morally bankrupt world: that moment when our favorite act plays our favorite song live — or that moment when that act gets into an irresistible groove. Put that phone down and dance already.