Focus Music Notes. "Out of the Blues". Popular music through the decades

Tributes and Obituaries Rolling Stone Magazine http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/tom-petty-rock-iconoclast-who-led-the-heartbreakers-dead-at-66-w506651 LA Times  http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-tom-petty-20171002-story.html Washington Post  https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/tom-petty-hall-of-fame-singer-who-became-rock-mainstay-in-1970s-dies-at-66/2017/10/03/57f33aca-a7a6-11e7-b3aa-c0e2e1d41e38_story.html?utm_term=.7ee6762ffd8d New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/video/arts/music/100000005474101/tom-petty-dead.html The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/oct/02/rock-star-tom-petty-dies-heart-attack The Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/news/tom-petty-found-unconscious-full-cardiac-arrest-not-breathing/ NME News: "Tom Petty The rock veterans last ever gig was held at the legendary Hollywood Bowl on September 25, 2017". Read more at http://www.nme.com/news/music/watch-last-song-gig-tom-petty-ever-played-2146668#EFCvk0v7D...

Fresh from the announcement that she is to star in this year's 'Strictly Come Dancing',  Mollie King  storms back on to the UK music scene with her new single ' Hair Down' . Mollie has reunited with pop maestro  Brian Higgins - Xenomania  to produce an in your face pop banger that fans have longed to hear from Mollie since her announcement she was releasing solo music.  'Gotta let my hair down, I just wanna dance now' proclaims Mollie on an immense track that gets firmly stuck in your head from it's very first listen. The song was released  on Friday 1st September  via Island Records, accompanied by a breathtaking video, shot in South Africa by Kyle Lewis. Mollie says: “I've spent the last few months working hard in the studio developing my sound and experimenting with my solo music. I'm a huge fan of pop music myself and was thrilled about working with Brian Higgins again on this record. 'All Fired Up' was one of my ...

Fresh from experimenting with her unique sound and crafting her debut album, today Elli Ingram releases ‘Stone Cold’, the third offering to come from her much anticipated forthcoming debut album,  Love You Really,  which is released on September 15 th  via Island Records. Co-written with Ninja Tune’s latest signing and Disclosure discovered Jordan Rakei, ‘Stone Cold’ brings together their multi-instrumentalist influences on this sultry jazz-ballad. LISTEN TO ‘STONE COLD’  HERE The 24 year old rising star Elli returns with the follow up to her praised mini-album  The Doghouse , following from the Brighton native’s independently released  Sober EP,  which marked her out as a truly singular new talent with a sound and voice of rare depth for one so young. No Brit School alumni, Elli developed her impressive vocals first in her bedroom, then gigging in her hometown of Brighton. Drawing comparisons to Amy Winehouse and Adele, she grew up in a ...

Never the kind of band to act in uncertain haste when it comes to their music, each song off Flyte's debut album The Loved Ones feels like something to relish, to mull over, with a deeper, unfolding resonance. In the school of Grizzly Bear, Alt J, and Fleet Foxes, Flyte have used their four voices to guide their sound, avoiding crashing cymbals and layers of electric guitars in favour of a more carefully constructed approach. The Loved Ones is the result of years of enlightenment and friendship. "The Loved Ones is for the thoughtful listener. Like a book you can open and read from start to finish. An album you would listen to on headphones on the bus to school, that is yours and no one else's," says lead singer Will Taylor. Today Flyte release their exceptional debut 10-Track LP, and to celebrate their album release, the four-piece reveal the first instalment of 'Behind Sliding Doors', which documents early sessions in the studio, from the perspective of p...

In December 2016, a man and his rescue dog drove out to Joshua Tree in the Southern California Desert. Armed with a guitar and “a shitty 10-year-old laptop,” the genre-spanning maverick spent two weeks screaming into a microphone at two in the morning and bleeding over his guitar strings in between walking his dog under the cool, arid night sky and barely sleeping at the “weird house” he rented. That man was Mondo Cozmo (the dog just goes by Cozmo, you can hear his input on the raucous ‘Come With Me’). They left the desert with the artist’s 2017 full-length debut, ‘Plastic Soul’ in tow. ‘Plastic Soul’ is a genuinely unique, impassioned collection of ten songs. It has to be one of the most intriguing, exciting and impressive debuts to be released this year. Having already been tipped by Sunday Times Culture as a ‘Breaking Act’ and with every track released to date being named a ‘Best New Track’ in NME, as well as support from BBC Radio 1 and Radio X, this year looks set to belong...