Last year, composer Danny Elfman teamed up with Nine Inch Nails frontman and the powerhouse of a producer Trent Reznor, who has also been working with Halsey and Health recently. Elfman was churning out remixes of tracks from his recent album Big Mess, so he recruited Xiu Xiu, Zach Hill of Death Grips, and, of course, Reznor for the song “True.”
Today, Elfman is back with another remix with Reznor, this time of the bombastic track “Native Intelligence.” The song is four and a half minutes of pure sensory overload, with layers of culminating, chaotic sounds and disturbingly tactile lyrics: “Taking a bath in cyanide, taking a bath.”
The remix comes from a new collector’s edition box set of Big Mess, which features unreleased collaborations with artists such as Rebekah Del Rio, Fever333, and Blixa Bargeld. It also has a 20-page lyric booklet, an art print signed by Elfman, and a “life-sized light up model of Danny’s peculiar hand.” It’s limited to 1,500 copies. More details can be found here.
Just last month, Nine Inch Nails announced their first tour since late 2018. Their run begins in Raleigh, North Carolina and ends in Cleveland, Ohio, starting next month.
Listen to this newer, crazier version of “Native Intelligence” above.
The Witcher has exploded into one of the most popular franchises in all of gaming. With three mainline games, a TV show, and the books this is a multimedia powerhouse that CD Projekt Red has been able to turn into something even bigger. The video games are beloved with many fans calling The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt one of the best games ever made.
On Monday, new information about the franchise was revealed. A new game in The Witcher franchise has entered development and it will be utilizing a new engine. Unfortunately, that is all we are going to know for the foreseeable future. No timeframe for the game’s release or even a development timeframe was revealed.
This is an exciting moment as we’re moving from REDengine to Unreal Engine 5, beginning a multi-year strategic partnership with Epic Games. It covers not only licensing, but technical development of Unreal Engine 5, as well as potential future versions of Unreal Engine, where relevant. We’ll closely collaborate with Epic Games’ developers with the primary goal being to help tailor the engine for open-world experiences.
At this point, no further details regarding the game — such as a development time frame or release date — are available.
For now, we’ll just have to assume that the sequel will release once it’s ready. This is for the best, and likely a calculated decision, after CD Projekt Red’s disastrous launch of Cyberpunk 2077.
Apparently, Kanye West is keeping his promise to continue updating his new album Donda 2 for those fans who purchased it via his Stem Player. This past weekend reportedly brought the latest album update, a new song called “We Did It Kid” featuring Fivio Foreign, who is quickly becoming one of Kanye’s go-to collaborators after the Brooklyn rapper appeared on “Off The Grid” from the original Donda. Since then, they also released “City Of Gods,” which is expected to appear on Fivio’s recently delayed debut album B.I.B.L.E.
He added a verse from @FivioForeign on “We Did It Kid”
Kanye’s Stem Player release strategy has been controversial, receiving criticism from Corey Taylor of the metal band Slipknot and even prompting some fans to simply create a software emulator of the device to avoid its $200 price tag. The Stem Player is a small, circular, touch-sensitive disc that allows fans to adjust the volume on one of four audio tracks, which the accompanying app creates from the original song. This allows listeners to remix tracks on the fly and save their mixes, but there were plenty of fans who felt this functionality wasn’t enough to justify a purchase.
The strategy has also affected Kanye’s standing on Billboard; the magazine has refused to count sales of the Stem Player as album-equivalent units. Kanye celebrated this as a victory but failed to demonstrate how it benefits him other than giving him more ammo for his persecution complex.
Through five months of the 2021-22 NBA season, Zion Williamson has yet to play a game. After undergoing offseason surgery to repair a fractured right foot, Williamson has been sidelined for the New Orleans Pelicans’ first 71 games.
“Sources said Zion Williamson is not expected to return to play this season,” Charania writes. “He is making progress toward on-court work. So far, Williamson has been seen doing stationary shooting and is able to bear weight on his injured foot.”
Charania further explains that with just 11 games remaining for New Orleans, there’s “an improbably tight window” for Williamson to move through the team’s “ramp-up stages,” which spans from “one-on-zero to five-on-five scrimmaging.”
Williamson rejoined the Pelicans two weeks ago after spending a lengthy period of his rehab in Portland, Oregon. Charania notes that the third-year star has been cleared to “gradually progress in basketball activities,” is attending home games and is seemingly “in positive spirits around teammates and coaches.”
Despite Williamson’s injury, amid a number of other intermittent absences, New Orleans finds itself tied for ninth in the Western Conference at 30-41. It has a 2.5 game lead over the 11th-seeded San Antonio Spurs for the final play-in spot and has seen marked improvement since the arrival of CJ McCollum at the trade deadline.
For as many people like Trevor Noah and the Grammy producers who are concerned about Kanye West’s recent troubling behavior, there are others around him even more heavily invested in defending him from the criticism he’s been receiving lately, such as The Game. One of the latter is Chicago rapper GLC, who appeared on Kanye’s first two albums and was one of his closest associates at the start of his career. Like Kanye and Game, GLC posted his defense of the embattled producer on Instagram in the caption of a photo of Ye with his four children.
“@kanyewest is the ultimate father,” he wrote. “He fights for the betterment of his children. I understand that we all have our vices & issues but would you like a dude in & out the rehab in the midst of your children? He aims to have his kids at church & form a relationship with God. He doesn’t want his little girl on social media with make-up on, singing about how she’s in love with an emo girl… The way he is being portrayed in the media is disheartening on many levels especially when it comes to our own people aiming to bring him down. It makes me wonder would the headlines read the same if he wasn’t a Black Man in America?”
Well, yeah, probably. The thing is, Kanye seems to be mostly expressing those sorts of doubts to deflect from the very problematic behavior he’s been exhibiting lately — a lot longer than just the past few months when he ramped up attacks on his ex-wife’s new boyfriend. He continues to lash out at anyone who seems to want to help him, and he paints any consequences of his own actions — such as getting suspended by Instagram — as persecution enacted on a supposedly free thinker who is mostly just regurgitating red-pill, right-wing talking points. It sounds like what Kanye, GLC, and the rest of Kanye’s yes-men really want is free reign for him to do and say whatever he wants — no matter how much potential harm it might be doing to his kids, who probably wouldn’t enjoy most of this media scrutiny either.
Early on in X, A24’s Texas Chain Saw Massacre-meets-porn throwback, an aspiring French New Wave-loving filmmaker explains to his prudish (for now) boom mic operator girlfriend why he’s interested in shooting an “adult feature.” He’s part of the sweaty drive from Houston to a farmhouse in middle-of-nowhere Texas because he wants to prove that it’s “possible to make a good dirty movie.”
This weekend, we got two of them. It’s about time.
X is director Ti West’s first movie since 2016’s In a Valley of Violence, and best movie since 2009’s The House of the Devil, a deliberate homage to the horror films of the 1970s and 1980s. X, with its grindhouse delights, also feels like it’s from a different era: it’s grainy, grisly, and most of all, sexy in a way that you rarely get nowadays in a wide-release movie (2,865 screens with an impressive $4.4 million opening weekend).
I’m not trying to go all “back in my day” on you (mostly because “my day” was, like American Pie and Eurotrip), but I feel the same way as Steven Soderbergh when it comes to the superhero movies that have dominated Hollywood for the past 15 years: “Nobody’s f*cking!” Contemporary blockbusters are largely sex-less affairs with the occasional outlier, like every time Robert Pattinson and Zoe Kravitz share the screen in The Batman; meanwhile, everybody’s f*cking in X. There’s boobs and butts, and because it’s the 1970s, probably another b-word that rhymes with “tush,” although we don’t see any of those. X is “only” rated R, after all.
Another R-rated feature that was released this weekend was Deep Water, the long-delayed “mid-budget adult sex thriller” from director Adrian Lyne starring former real-life lovebirds Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas. In his review, our own Mike Ryan wrote, “To the point that Deep Water makes no sense, it’s impossible to make heads or tails out of character motivations, and there’s no real resolution or payoff to anything, yet I enjoyed this trashy dumb thing more than I ever thought I would.” I couldn’t agree more.
Whether it’s Ben Affleck in Gone Girl-mode repeatedly saying “the snails are not for eating” (add a “clapping hands” emoji between every word for maximum effect) and looking uncomfortable on a bicycle, or Ana de Armas having her own “Zou Bisou Bisou” moment and picking a pubic hair out of her mouth, Deep Water is a sleazy blast. I only wish it had been released not on Hulu, but in theaters like X: the off-the-charts camp levels are more fun in a communal setting. If there isn’t already a Deep Water drinking game, there needs to be one. “Take a shot every time Ben Affleck looks sad while staring at Ana de Armas flirting with another dude.” You’d be drunk in 20 minutes.
X and Deep Water couldn’t have less to do with each other (one’s an old-school slasher; the other has a little girl driving her mom crazy because she won’t stop playing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” on the Alexa — guess which is which!), other than they’re both fun, sexy times. We’re already in the golden age of phallic shenanigans… maybe sleaze is making a comeback, too? That’s the vibe shift we all need.
Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best new music this week.
This week saw Coi Leray and Nicki Minaj drop the collaboration that almost didn’t exist and Charli XCX go full pop mode with a new album. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.
“Blick Blick” almost didn’t happen, or at least not as it was released last week featuring Nicki Minaj. The good news, though, is that it did, as the pair dropped their braggadocios meet-up a few days ago. Uproxx’s Wongo Okon says on the single, Leray and Minaj “are a taunting duo that flexes their status and fires some shots at the competition, all without fear of being defeated at any point.”
Charli XCX — “Every Rule”
While Charli XCX spent the lead-up to Crash flexing how pop-focused the now-released album is, she kinda went against that with her final pre-album single, “Every Rule.” There’s no upbeat, in-your-face pop hook here, but rather, an emotional collaboration with AG Cook and Oneohtrix Point Never that shows even when Charli is in pop star mode, she hasn’t fully left her alternative instincts behind.
Normani — “Fair”
After generating some attention with a clothes-free teaser, Normani capped last week by dropping her latest single, “Fair.” On the tune, Normani gets vulnerable as she sings about her struggles with moving on after the conclusion of a relationship.
Arcade Fire — “The Lightning I, II”
Last week had two major Arcade Fire headlines: Will Butler revealed he left the band last year, and a few days before that, the band dropped a new single, “Lightning I, II.” Butler’s on this song, as he left the band after their new album, We, was completed. As for what the tune’s like, it’s classic, epic rock Arcade Fire.
Ethan Gruska and Bon Iver — “So Unimportant”
Ethan Gruska, perhaps best known in recent years as a Phoebe Bridgers collaborator, has added another esteemed name to his Rolodex, as he and Bon Iver linked up on “So Unimportant” last week. While Justin Vernon is clearly the bigger name here, he was actually pretty starstruck to get to work on the song with Gruska, as he said in a statement, “It’s not often that something IMMEDIATELY grasps you where you stand as his music did. It only happens a few times in one’s life.”
Fivio Foreign — “Magic City” Feat. Quavo
Fivio Foreign feels like he needs more time to work on his debut album B.I.B.L.E., since he announced last week he was delaying its release. While that news might be a downer, he came through last week with “Magic City,” a Quavo collaboration on which the rappers confidently make it rain at the strip club.
Rosalía — “Candy”
Rosalía has one of the headlining album releases last week with Motomami, which she immediately preceded with the pre-album single “Candy.” While it’s rhythmic as many of her songs are, this one comes at it in a calmer way, sounding almost ambient in some moments and captivating in all of them.
Juice WRLD — “Sometimes”
There’s apparently still some Juice WRLD posthumous material left in the tank, as last week brought a new song, “Sometimes.” The song arrived as an update to his Fighting Demons album and it’s a dark, brooding tune as he sings about the issues his substance abuse has brought him.
The Smile — “Skrtng On The Surface”
It’s currently Radiohead season… sort of. The band hasn’t announced a follow-up to 2016’s A Moon Shaped Pool, but Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood’s side project The Smile has been getting after it lately. They dropped a new single last week, “Skrtng On The Surface,” which Uproxx’s Adrian Spinelli reckons “might just be the best offering yet from this enigmatic supergroup.”
King Princess — “For My Friends”
Cheap Queen came out in 2019 and now it appears King Princess is gearing up for her second LP. She hasn’t formally announced it yet, but she’s dropped a number of singles since that album, including last week’s “For My Friends,” an evocative alt-pop tune on which King Princess reckons with how much of a handful she can be.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
As Moon Knight gets closer to its premiere on Disney+, director Mohamed Diab has been opening up about how important it was to him that the Marvel series focuses on Egyptian representation. In the process, he also expressed disappointment over the upcoming Black Adam film starring The Rock, which Diab feels squandered a significant opportunity to feature Egyptian talent.
“I was really annoyed with DC when they set Black Adam in a fictional middle eastern country as an excuse to cast non-Egyptians, when it was obviously meant to be in Egypt,” Diab said in an interview with Filfan (translated by Comic Book). While Diab understood that Black Adam is simply sticking to the source material, he’s of the opinion that representation should’ve been a higher concern:
“Representation opportunities shouldn’t be wasted… But it’s not a full mistake since it’s based on an iteration of the comics that doesn’t mention Egypt.” He added, “I wanted to showcase Egyptian talents as much as I could. Every culture should be represented by its people so I hired actors, an editor, a costume designer, an art director & a composer who are all Egyptian.”
Diab also confirmed that Oscar Isaac‘s character, Marc Spector, will be Jewish in the Disney+ series despite reports to the contrary. “The journey that Marc Spector is on during our whole show is: Who am I?” Diab said before explaining that’s a universal theme we all deal with on a “day-to-day basis.”
Moon Knight premieres March 30 on Disney+. Black Adam hits theaters October 21.
In 2017, Uproxx premiered “Revelatory,” the lead single of Caracara’s debut Summer Megalith. They’ve since released the 2019 explosive EP Better which caught people’s attention, including Indiecast‘s own Ian Cohen who interviewed them for Stereogum. They also did an Audiotree live session that pushed them even further in the indie rock scene. After announcing their Will Yip-produced sophomore effort New Preoccupations (As The Gods Descend) last month, the band have unleashed a powerful new single, “Colorglut” today, which features Circa Survive’s Anthony Green.
About the album, vocalist Will Lindsay said: “I think what people will be able to hear in this record, and what we hope to say, is that this isn’t a totally dark and dismal record. We didn’t want to make a druggy emo record about recovery. What we really wanted to show, and what anybody trying to quit substances knows, is this is what makes it so hard: that there are these incredible, rapturous highs that exist in concert with the use of the substance that can’t be uncoupled from it, but aren’t invalidated by it. Just because it ended with you needing to stop does not mean that you can’t celebrate those beautiful memories that you did make.”
Listen to “Colorglut” above.
New Preoccupations (As The Gods Descend) arrives 3/25 via Memory Music. Pre-order it here.
In The Eye, music’s best up-and-coming artists take to an intimate and minimal studio space to perform highlights from their discography, with only one microphone and one take. This time, getting in the studio is Omah Lay, an afrobeats/R&B favorite you’ve probably heard working with some of today’s biggest artists.
The 24-year-old Nigerian musician formally launched his music career by dropping some singles in 2019 and landing a record deal. After taking a few months off, he returned in 2020 with “Bad Influence,” which was a success on social media. Early in his life as a professional artist, he made waves in the industry, with his two 2020 EPs, Get Layd and What Have We Done, and songs from them faring well on the Apple Music charts in Nigeria. Apple took notice, as they prominently featured Lay when they launched their Africa Rising Artist Showcase in 2020.
All this attention has led Lay to work with some major names in the music industry: He teamed up with 6lack on a remix of “Damn,” then just a couple weeks ago, he and Justin Bieber connected on “Attention.” For his performance on The Eye, he went with the latter song. Bieber didn’t swing by the studio to join Lay on this rendition of “Attention,” but Lay was totally capable of carrying the smooth and rhythmic track, which he performed here essentially in its original form minus the Bieber appearance.
In a 2020 interview, Lay explained the origin of his stage name, saying, “Omah was gotten from my name and the Lay is the way my people call people who are far away.” The singer also noted that his original vision for his career was different than where he finds himself now, saying, “I wanted to be a rapper. I was part of a rap group, my name was Lil King [laugh]. I really liked Drake and his flows so I wanted to be like that.”
He went on to say of his success in the afrobeats scene, “I don’t want to sound like God or like a God, but I always knew this was where I was going to be.”
If he was saying that in 2020, imagine how happy he must be with where he’s at now.
Watch Omah Lay perform “Attention” for The Eye above.
Omah Lay is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
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