32+ min ago (479+ words) Barriers include rising costs and lengthy visa processes Jools Holland, Level 42's Mark King and Dame Evelyn Glennie have thrown their weight behind a new cross-industry organisation that hopes to break down the barriers to touring that have emerged since Brexit. The newly-formed Cultural Exchange Coalition (or CEC for short) includes a number of major music industry entities such as UK Music, the Musicians' Union, and the European Music Exporters Exchange, as well as more than 50 businesses from across the EU - and now counts stars such as Holland and King amongst its ranks. Following a joint UK-EU summit in May 2025, the UK and EU signed the Common Understanding agreement, a series of measures designed to strengthen bilateral cooperation in the wake of the UK's exit from the bloc. Amongst these measures was a commitment to support cultural exchange. In its…...

32+ min ago (479+ words) Barriers include rising costs and lengthy visa processes Jools Holland, Level 42's Mark King and Dame Evelyn Glennie have thrown their weight behind a new cross-industry organisation that hopes to break down the barriers to touring that have emerged since Brexit. The newly-formed Cultural Exchange Coalition (or CEC for short) includes a number of major music industry entities such as UK Music, the Musicians' Union, and the European Music Exporters Exchange, as well as more than 50 businesses from across the EU - and now counts stars such as Holland and King amongst its ranks. Following a joint UK-EU summit in May 2025, the UK and EU signed the Common Understanding agreement, a series of measures designed to strengthen bilateral cooperation in the wake of the UK's exit from the bloc. Amongst these measures was a commitment to support cultural exchange. In its…...

6+ hour, 37+ min ago (890+ words) Iron Maiden are celebrating their 50th Anniversary and to mark the occasion Fender and Jackson have rolled out a limited edition collection of signature guitars for Dave Murray, Adrian Smith, Janick Gers, and Steve Harris. And what we like about these is that sense of classicism. Iron Maiden might have been the NWOBHM band that made it to big, graduating to stadium shows and making their commute via their own plane. But the high-altitude of their success hasn't messed with their heads. They know what they like. It's Fender Stratocasters all the way " or, in Smith's case, a variation on the Strat, with his Jackson SC1 signature model conforming to the hotrodded Superstrat S-style design idiom. Hey, Fender owns Jackson, so it's all part of the same family. Harris? He likes West Ham United sweat bands, wedge monitors as a foot rest,…...

7+ hour, 10+ min ago (384+ words) It was actually very well conceived but it didn't sound guitaristic at all," he says of the original demo There was a time, not so long ago, when having the UK Christmas Number 1 meant an awful lot to bands and artists. And, back in 1996, it was the Spice Girls who sat atop the festive chart with 2 Become 1, their first big ballad. Their two previous singles - Wannabe and Say You'll Be There - had also hit the top spot, but 2 Become 1 showcased a softer side to Scary, Sporty, Posh, Baby and Ginger. Much of the tender mood is set by Greg Lester's nylon-string acoustic guitar work, and he recently looked back on it in a conversation with Vertex Effects. Lester remembers that he took several guitars along to the session so that songwriters/producers Matt Rowe and Richard Stannard had plenty of…...

9+ hour, 17+ min ago (640+ words) The story of the blissfully psychedelic bricolage that launched The Orb's career, introduced ambient house to the masses and even prompted a lawsuit from Rickie Lee Jones In the 21st century, sampling has become an essential technique in pop music's toolbox: from Britney Spears' Toxic to Sabrina Carpenter's Espresso, the annals of modern chart history are lined with hits built on snippets of other songs or ready-made loops from commercial sample packs. Alex Paterson of The Orb: 5 things I've learned about music production With this germ of an idea in hand, Paterson and Glover put together a demo for Little Fluffy Clouds in a bedroom studio in their Wandsworth flat, with the rackmount Akai S700 on sampling duties. Layering multiple samples together in a freeform and improvisational creative process, they drew inspiration from wide-ranging DJ sets they'd performed at London's Heaven nightclub....

9+ hour, 45+ min ago (371+ words) The TCD Compulsion Drive from Wampler Pedals is a love letter to the Fulltone OCD, expanded with 3-band EQ, switchable clipping four modes, and all that enigmatic dirt that is at one with your amp Wampler Pedals has unveiled The Compulsion Drive, a fully featured overdrive/distortion pedal inspired by the Fulltone OCD but with an expanded set of features. The Compulsion Drive, or TCD as it is named on the enclosure, is Brian Wampler doing Brian Wampler things, the product of a pedal designer who will workshop circuits just for fun, as in, for a thing to do on a Saturday night when there's nothing on the TV. And given that the OCD has long been one of his favourite dirt pedals, it was only a matter of time before his electrical engineering curiosity led him to do his…...

9+ hour, 49+ min ago (550+ words) I Ran was created using Suno Jorja Smith's record company is claiming royalties on a track it is alleged was created using an AI clone of the singer's voice. The song at the centre of all this is I Ran by Haven (nothing to do with the Manchester-based indie band from the early 2000s, this Haven is a UK dance duo). Initially, the track went viral on TikTok earlier this year and was heading for the charts. But when it hit streaming platforms, it was taken down when it was alleged to have infringed another artist's copyright. Haven are producers Harrison Walker and Jacob Donaghue and Walker himself has admitted that he used his own voice to record the vocals on I Ran with a processing and filtering technique to make it sound female. That process involved using the generative AI…...

11+ hour, 8+ min ago (480+ words) "I remember, he came up to me and he didn't talk," he says As many of his former collaborators have attested, Prince wasn't always the most straightforward person to work with. Or, indeed, to communicate with. Take the experience of Jazz polymath Jon Batiste, who says that he encountered Prince when he was just a young man studying in New York at the prestigious Juilliard School. "Prince shows up to one of my shows, and decides after the show that he wants the band to be one of the bands that plays with him on tour," he told BBC Radio 2's Scott Mills. As you might expect, Batiste and his band were happy to oblige, and played what he describes as a "short run of shows", including two each at the MetLife Stadium and Madison Square Garden. This gave Batiste…...

11+ hour, 22+ min ago (1691+ words) Songwriter, producer and creative artist Robin Scott is the man behind M and the huge hit Pop Muzik. Over 40 years later, he shares the story of the iconic track and why he's brought this moniker back on his new album Released in 1979, Pop Muzik, the hit single released by Robin Scott under his M alias, provided a template for the pop sound of the eighties, pre-empting the MTV generation with a global message and eye-popping video. Fast forward more than 45 years, and the track has been enjoying a new life, trending on TikTok with users sharing it online alongside their dance routines. "I don't think of those who have helped my track go viral as an audience," says Robin. "Instead, this TikTok army are like collaborators, taking an idea I put out there and making it their own. It's very…...

11+ hour, 52+ min ago (543+ words) Chicago 1945 and Dream Away remain in the vaults Steve Porcaro, the producer and synth player who played on Thriller, has been talking about his work on that album and two unreleased tracks he co-wrote with Michael Jackson. This was in 1982, right at the end of the project. Appearing on the Think Like A Synth podcast, which is hosted by Anthony Marinelli " who played on Thriller himself " he described how those tracks came about. Porcaro said: "He mentioned that he had to jump straight to another project, with his brothers " the Victory album " and he was hoping that I could help him write and produce some stuff off of that album. Literally two weeks after Thriller was done, he started showing up." "I'd give him a tape of just a synth jam I had done and one of them he really…...