Category: News

On their first three albums, Beacon presented unique and beautiful songs that merged Thomas Mullarney III’s soft vocals and gorgeous piano playing with his and Jacob Gossett’s synths and production. The result has always been music that merges classical techniques, electronica, and a touch of futuristic chamber pop sensibilities. Songs like 2018’s defining “Marion” tug at the heartstrings with a rhythmic dark, dance floor pulse.

The duo have just announced their fourth album, Along The Lethe, out on September 9th. It’s the first release on their own Apparent Movement imprint, after releasing their previous records through the Ghostly International label. “Lethe” refers to one of the five rivers of the underworld in Greek mythology, where the dead’s memories of their waking lives were erased when they drank from it. It speaks to the creation of the new album happening mostly during quarantine and how deeply affected the duo were by the circumstances. “I was haunted by this feeling of history intruding on our reality as lockdown descended on NYC,” Mullarney III said in a statement.

Today, Beacon have released two new singles in “Can’t Turn Back,” and “Ostrich,” the latter features saxophonist Colin Stetson, a noted, frequent Arcade Fire collaborator. While the two songs are disparate in nature, it showcases the different poles that Beacon turn to when making music. “Ostrich” is inspired by a tuning technique used by The Velvet Underground, where all of the instruments — from Mullarney III’s piano to Stetson’s horns and woodwinds — are tuned to the same note. Beacon then swirl everything into sonic oblivion with synths. Meanwhile, “Can’t Turn Back” feels like a page out of classic Beacon cuts. With nods to UK garage and downtempo drum and bass, it’s the type of tune you vibe to in a club, and also come down to at the afterparty.

Listen to “Can’t Turn Back” and “Ostrich” above. Check out the album artwork and tracklist for Along The Lethe below as well as Beacon’s upcoming North America and UK tour dates.

1. “Until Next Time”
2. “Oranges”
3. “Pay My Debts”
4. “I’m The Answer”
5. “Can’t Turn Back”
6. “Ostrich” (feat. Colin Stetson)
7. “Nova”
8. “Show Me How”
9. “Harm”
10. “Mile A Minute” (feat. Matthew Dear)

09/10 — Brooklyn, NY @ Public Records
09/13 — Boston, MA @ Middle East
09/14 — Atlanta, GA @ Aisle 5
09/25 — Chicago, IL @ Schubas
10/06 — Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz
10/15 — Portland, OR @ Holocene
10/23 — Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room
11/15 — Haarlem, Netherlands @ Patronaat
11/17 — Budapest, Hungary @ Turbina
11/18 — Glasgow, UK @ The Hug & Pint
11/19 — Manchester, UK @ YES
11/20 — London, UK, @ Nells

Along The Lethe is out on 09/09 via Apparent Movement. Pre-order it here.

Tuesday’s edition of the Jan. 6 hearings wasn’t an explosive powder keg like the one where former Mark Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson claimed Donald Trump, among other things, tried to choke a Secret Service agent. But it had its moments. In fact, it ended with a mic drop for the ages, with committee vice chair Liz Cheney revealing Trump tried to engage in some possible witness tampering.

“After our last hearing. President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation — a witness you have not yet seen in these hearings,” Cheney said at the end of the hearing. “That person declined to answer or respond to President Trump’s call and instead alerted their lawyer to the call. Their lawyer alerted us. And this committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice.”

She added, “We will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously.”

One would think Trump, of all people, would know not to contact witnesses.

The latest hearing for the House select committee also featured some more Rudy Giuliani nonsense, as well as a leftfield cameo from a Queer Eye set, seen in the Zoom background of an attorney for the far right militia group the Oath Keepers — the first and perhaps final time those two entities ever crisscross.

(Via CNBC)

Last month, Fred Again released the danceable anthem “Jungle” after teasing it for a few weeks during slots at festivals, including Coachella. Now, he’s teamed up with Rico Nasty for a chaotic, disruptive remix. The track has been totally transformed; the rapper’s vocals add a new layer of intensity that makes the beat drop even bigger. At three-and-a-half minutes, it’s the perfect song to dance to at the club.

Both of the artists have been pretty busy. Rico Nasty also dropped a new song of her own today called “Sunflower.” “Everyone hates the new song but eye love it,” Nasty wrote in a tweet, “and besides when was I ever gonna have a SUNFLOWER FIELD LIKE THAT AND A SONG CALLED SKULLFLOWER AT THE SAME TIME.” She later followed up, noting that she is no longer making music to appeal to the masses, writing, “Im not tryna go number one. Im just making music that I like again. If you don’t get it. Then don’t. Im not about to waste my entire career pleasing people, that’s not what I’m here for. I hope you respect that.”

Listen to the Rico Nasty remix of Fred Again’s “Jungle” above.

Fred Again is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

John Bolton has been a fixture of every Republican president going back to Reagan, but he only has open contempt for one: Donald Trump. The on-again-off-again administration figure and noted war hawk has been loud and clear about how dumb he thought his last White House boss was. Even when Bolton went on CNN to claim he wasn’t actually trying to plan a coup in his last months in office, he did so backhandedly — and while casually making a pretty alarming confession about himself.

Bolton was speaking to Jake Tapper about the ongoing, pretty weird Jan. 6 hearings, and he disagreed that what he was doing was a “carefully planned coup d’état,” which he admitted take “a lot of work.”

“That’s not the way Donald Trump does things,” Bolton told Tapper. “It’s rambling from one half-assed idea to another. One plan that falls through and another comes up. That’s what he was doing. As I say, none of it is defensible. But you have to understand the nature of what the problem of Donald Trump is.”

Tapper pointed out that “one doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup.”

“I disagree with that,” Bolton replied. “As somebody who has helped plan coup d’état — not here, but other places — it takes a lot of work. And that’s not what he did. It was just stumbling around from one idea to another.”

Did Bolton just admit on a live news show that he helped plan a coup? He sure did. Tapper circled back to that admission soon after, but when asked which coups he helped plan, Bolton replied with a laugh, “I’m not going to get into the specifics.”

But when asked if he’d played a part in any “successful coups,” Bolton did point to his latest memoir, which contained passages on one in Venezuela he said “turned out not to be successful.”

He added, “Not that we had all that much to do with it, but I saw what it took for an opposition to try to overturn an illegally elected president. And they failed. The notion that Donald Trump was half as competent as the Venezuelan opposition is laughable.”

Tapper told him, “I feel like there’s other stuff you’re not telling me.”

“I’m sure there is,” he replied.

Bolton did allow that Trump was responsible for what happened on Jan. 6. “Ultimately, he did unleash the rioters at the Capitol, as to that, there’s no doubt,” he told Tapper. “But not overthrow the Constitution, to buy more time to throw the matter back to the states to try to redo the issue. And if you don’t believe that, you’re going to overreact.”

Bolton’s hatred of Trump is fully reciprocated. One of the many Trump tell-alls claimed he hoped his former national security adviser would catch COVID and die.

(Via The Daily Beast)

The Jan. 6 hearings were back on Tuesday, with a session devoted to further evidence that there was no proof for Trump’s voter fraud lies, as well as extensive looks at the direct connections between his administration and far right extremist groups. It was yet another colorful afternoon on Capitol Hill, complete with still more Rudy Giuliani nonsense. But perhaps the strangest moment came from someone else.

As per Curbed, one of the pre-taped testimonies presented during the hearing came from Kellye SoRelle, a general counsel to the militia group the Oath Keepers. A volunteer for Lawyers for Trump, she claimed that when it came to the Stop the Steal rallies that preceded the Capitol riot, the conspiracy theorists Ali Alexander and Alex Jones “became, like, the center point for everything.”

That’s all well and good and useful intel that should help bolster the House select committee’s case. However, it was easy to be at least mildly distracted by what was behind SoRelle on her Zoom screen: a lovely kitchen festooned with leather barstools, white marble counters, and an island. In fact, Crooked Media’s Erin Ryan thought it looked a mite familiar.

As Ryan pointed out, it was indeed a green screen Zoom background, its image lifted from the third season of Queer Eye. It was the gang’s home base that season, and it was designed by Bobby Berk with goods from West Elm. The photograph comes courtesy of Landon Vonderschmidt.

The Trump gang is a weird one, and these hearings have been alternately (or even simultaneously) shocking and surreal. In a sense, seeing some Queer Eye pop up in hearings concerning people, many of whom are for the gutting of LGBTQIA+ rights, shouldn’t be that surprising. And they still (maybe) have Steve Bannon to deal with.

(Via Curbed)

The biggest question in the immediate aftermath of the Utah Jazz’s decision to trade Rudy Gobert to the Minnesota Timberwolves was whether or not Donovan Mitchell would be out the door next. The rumblings for months made it sound like the Jazz wanted to build around Mitchell going forward, but on Tuesday evening, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reported that Utah will listen to teams that are interested in trying to figure something out.

According to Tony Jones of The Athletic, one team that has long been linked to Mitchell is expected to try and make something happen. Jones brings word that the expectation is the New York Knicks, the team Mitchell supported while he was growing up just north of the five boroughs, are prepared to put an offer together sooner rather than later.

Despite that, Jones made clear the Jazz will have an incredibly high bar teams need to clear if they are interested in acquiring Mitchell’s services.

The Knicks could, in theory, put together a package that includes four first-round picks in the 2023 NBA Draft, along with a handful of young players like RJ Barrett. Beyond the fact it would serve as a homecoming for Mitchell, suiting up for New York would mean playing alongside high-profile free agent signing Jalen Brunson, against whom he battled in the first round of the 2022 playoffs.

The Utah Jazz made the biggest trade of the offseason thus far over the first weekend of July when they dealt Rudy Gobert to Minnesota for a package that was headlined by four first round picks (three unprotected) and a pick swap going back to Utah.

That deal seemed to signal that the Jazz might be ready to blow it up completely and begin angling for the future, but for the past two weeks, the reporting from around the league had presented it as a consensus that Utah wanted to build around Donovan Mitchell and that the Jazz weren’t interested in trading their All-Star guard. However, a the offseason has worn on and the Jazz have continued to look at their current situation and the future, they’ve softened their stance on Mitchell trades at least a little bit, and, per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, are willing to at least listen to trade offers for the All-Star.

One would think the Jazz would be asking for something fairly similar to the Gobert package in return for Mitchell, with a heavy emphasis on draft picks and young players. Whether there’s a team out there willing to meet that price will be something to watch for in the coming weeks and months, but it shouldn’t really come as a surprise that Utah would take this approach. For Danny Ainge and the front office, it’d be rather absurd to refuse to at least engage in conversations after making such a future-facing move with the Gobert trade. Mitchell is under contract at least through 2025, with a player option for the 2025-26 season worth $37 million.

A young star locked in on a long-term deal doesn’t often come available and as such the price will be steep, but teams like Miami, who have long coveted a guard like Mitchell, will surely put what they can on the table and see if it’s enough to get Ainge and the Jazz to bite. What makes this more interesting is some of the teams with interest in Mitchell will surely overlap with those pursuing Kevin Durant (with Miami at the very top of that list) and as such it could push the Nets into re-engaging a bit more earnestly on KD trades after seemingly putting that on the backburner until closer to the season with offers not coming in they’d hoped for — or potentially leading to a three-team deal involving both Durant and Mitchell on the move.

In the immediate aftermath of Kevin Durant’s highly-publicized trade request, reporting indicated that they were two teams for whom he wanted to play. One, the Phoenix Suns, are in the tricky position of trying to figure out Deandre Ayton’s restricted free agency, while the Brooklyn Nets would reportedly want Devin Booker back in a deal that sent Durant to Phoenix.

The other was the Miami Heat, which were a tough sell because they just do not have much to trade — Bam Adebayo, the team’s best young player, cannot be moved to the Nets due to a provision in his contract that likewise exists in that of Ben Simmons. Despite that, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reports that no team is putting in more work to make something happen for Durant than Pat Riley and co.

“The Miami Heat certainly have been one of the most determined teams to try to acquire Kevin Durant since he asked for that trade,” Wojnarowski said. “They’ve talked to Brooklyn here in Las Vegas, and ultimately, for Miami and Brooklyn specifically to do a deal, they’re gonna need a third team, perhaps even a fourth team.”

The Heat are very, very good at finding a way to make something happen in an effort to bring a superstar to South Beach. Time will tell if they’ll be able to do that with Durant.

The 2022 Emmy nominations are in and some new blood has made the cut. Scratch that, a lot of new blood has made the cut.

Some 50 first-time nominees were recognized by voters this year for their outstanding contributions to TV and streaming and while we’re cheering them all on, a few performances from the past year stood out amongst the crowded lineup. All come courtesy of first-time nominees and all changed the TV landscape in 2022 for the better. Here’s a roundup of the newcomers you should keep your eye on, and where to watch them.

Lee Jung-jae

Category: Best Actor In A Drama Series
Where To Watch: Netflix’s Squid Game
When Netflix’s Korean survival drama broke the internet (and a bunch of streaming records) last year, Jung-jae’s character — a father struggling with a gambling problem — became the underdog audiences rooted for. Somehow he survived the sick, twisted gameplay that fueled the show’s first season, and now, he’s got an Emmy nom to show for it.

Jung Ho-yeon

Category: Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series
Where To Watch: Netflix’s Squid Game
Another unfortunate participant in Netflix’s Squid Game, Ho-yeon’s capable and quiet North Korean defector was playing for a chance to rescue and reunite her family. She had a heartbreaking backstory and a complicated relationship with some of the other contestants which made her a stand-out in the show’s first season.

Rhea Seehorn

Category: Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series
Where To Watch: AMC’s Better Call Saul
We know, we know. Rhea Seehorn has been killing it on Better Call Saul for six seasons now but, weirdly enough, this is the first time her magnetic performance as Kim Wexler, a sharp and scheming lawyer who becomes Jimmy McGill’s partner in crime, has been recognized by Emmy voters.

Melanie Lynskey

Category: Best Actress in a Drama Series
Where To Watch: Showtime’s Yellowjackets
Again, a damn travesty has been brought to light with this first-time nomination for the severely underrated character actress known as Melanie Lynskey. The best part of literally anything she’s in, here, Lynskey plays a suburban housewife just trying to keep pesky rabbits out of her garden and, you know, bury memories of when her high school girls soccer team was stranded in the wilderness and forced to resort to cannibalism to survive.

Adam Scott

Category: Best Actor in a Drama Series
Where To Watch: Apple TV+’s Severance
Oh, you thought celebrated comedic actor Adam Scott had nabbed an Emmy nom for his work in one of a dozen beloved TV sitcoms he’s starred in over the years? Well, you were wrong. Instead, Scott had to wait for this mind-bending workplace dramedy about a depressed widower trying his best to achieve that fabled work-life balance through morally questionable means to get some love from the Emmys.

J. Smith-Cameron

Category: Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series
Where To Watch: HBO’s Succession
J. Smith-Cameron has been baby-sitting Waystar Royco’s nepo-babies for a few seasons now but her ascent to interim CEO during season three’s hostile takeover meant she had even more scenery to chew.

Sydney Sweeney

Categories: Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series
Where To Watch: HBO’s Euphoria, HBO’s The White Lotus
The only thing better than being a first-time Emmy nominee is being a first-time Emmy nominee with two nominations in two totally different categories, something only Sydney Sweeney can brag about this year. On Euphoria, she navigated Cassie’s episode-long meltdown with ease, playing a lovesick teenager willing to throw her life away for the absolute wrong guy. On The White Lotus, she played a judgemental and privileged white woman roping her less afluent friend into the worst vacation imaginable. Take your pick of which performance to watch first.

Park Hae-soo

Category: Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series
Where To Watch: Netflix’s Squid Game
Hae-soo is another first-time nominee to come from the streamer’s surprise foreign-language hit. His character on the show started as a quiet, unassuming Icarus who flew too close to the sun with some bad investments but ended as a cutthroat competitor willing to literally cut throats to claim the cash prize.

Nicholas Hoult

Category: Best Actor in a Comedy Series
Where To Watch: Hulu’s The Great
An overgrown toddler outfitted as an 18th-century Russian tyrant, Nicholas Hoult has been having the time of his life playing Peter III on Hulu’s The Great. He’s tossed Pomeranians from balconies and survived attempted assasination plots but in the show’s latest season he had to perform his greatest feat yet — giving up his throne for the woman he thinks he might one day be able to kind of love.

Quinta Brunson

Category: Best Actress in a Comedy Series
Where To Watch: ABC’s Abbott Elementary
Not only did Quinta Brunson script one of the best new comedies to land on network TV in the last decade, she did it while also starring in the show as a well-intentioned young teacher hoping to make a difference despite low budgets and an incompetent principal.

Elle Fanning

Category: Best Actress in a Comedy Series
Where To Watch: Hulu’s The Great
Elle Fanning had a pair of standout performances for Hulu this year but her turn as the ambitious and untested monarch in The Great proves she can do comedy as well anyone. After all, who else could make a murderous coup seem like a fun time?

Janelle James

Category: Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
Where To Watch: ABC’s Abbott Elementary
Janelle James delivered the most memeable performance on TV week after week playing Ava Coleman, a social-media obsessed, totally underqualified school principal who somehow made her teaching staff’s jobs even harder — even when she wasn’t trying to.

Sarah Niles

Category: Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
Where To Watch: Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso
Ted Lasso’s second season flirted with a bit more pessimism than its first, forcing its normally sunny, optimistic characters to confront their true feelings for the first time. As Dr. Sharon, the team’s new psychologist, Sarah Niles gently pushed the show’s titular character to move past the kitschy motivational quotes and start fixing himself. We should all be thanking her.

Sheryl Lee Ralph

Category: Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
Where To Watch: ABC’s Abbott Elementary
You either wanted a teacher like Barbara Howard or want to be the kind of teacher Barbara Howard is. Either way, that’s thanks to Sheryl Lee Ralph’s commanding presence and riotous straight-to-camera stares on Abbot Elementary.

Toheeb Jimoh

Category: Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series
Where To Watch: Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso
Richmond’s nicest player on the pitch got an unexpected romance, a surprisingly topical character arc, and an offer to join another team over the course of Ted Lasso’s second season and Toheeb Jimoh made the most of all that screentime, giving Sam new layers and audience more reason to root for him.

Tyler James Williams

Category: Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series
Where To Watch: ABC’s Abbott Elementary
Is Tyler James William the new John Krasinski of network TV? It might be too soon to tell, but his will-they-won’t-they romance plot with Quinta Brunson’s character is a big part of what made the show’s first season so watchable. Add an Emmy nom to the mix and things are looking good for the new Jim and Pam.

Lily James

Category: Best Actress in a Limited Series
Where To Watch: Hulu’s Pam & Tommy
It wasn’t just the makeup department that turned Lily James into the spitting image of Baywatch star and 90s icon Pamela Anderson, it was James’ own nuanced and thoughtful take on the celebrity scandal. She played Pam as we should have seen her then — a strong, opinionated woman with incredible talent and a shrewd understanding of how the media viewed her.

Amanda Seyfried

Category: Best Actress in a Limited Series
Where To Watch: Hulu’s The Dropout
Amanda Seyfried adopted a lower octave, commandeered a closet full of black turtlenecks, and transformed herself into the fascinating real-life figure whose Silicon Valley unicorn would eventually land her behind bars. The story of Elizabeth Holmes is juicy enough, but Seyfriend manages to add weight to it by playing the easily-villainized CEO as a flawed young woman trying to succeed in a man’s world.

Andrew Garfield

Category: Best Actor in a Limited Series
Where To Watch: FX’s Under the Banner of Heaven
Andrew Garfield’s first foray into TV is, predictably, awards-worthy. In this gritty true-crime drama he plays a Mormon detective tasked with investigating a heinous homicide that might have been committed by members of the church.

Oscar Isaac

Category: Best Actor in a Limited Series
Where To Watch: HBO’s Scenes from a Marriage
Oscar Isaac continues his zadification in this drama about a marriage on the rocks, co-starring Jessica Chastain. If you thought the pairs’ chemistry on the red carpet was too hot to handle, gird your loins for when Isaac plays a scruffy college professor trying to save his relationship in this miniseries.

Himesh Patel

Category: Best Actor in a Limited Series
Where To Watch: HBO’s Station Eleven
This surprisingly hopeful drama recounting the end of the world thanks to a deadly, fast-moving plague may have had an eerie sense of timing, but it also sports some terrific performances and Himesh Patel’s is chief among them. As Jeevan, a young man burdened with the responsibility of looking after his brother and a child he just met as the world goes to sh*t, Patel is both fierce and vulnerable in equal measure.

Sebastian Stan

Category: Best Actor in a Limited Series
Where To Watch: Hulu’s Pam & Tommy
Covered in tattoos, painted with black eyeliner, and having full-blown conversations with his sentient penis — Pam & Tommy gives fans a Sebastian Stan they haven’t seen before. He’s oddly charming and sympathetic, even when his character struggles to be the kind of feminist ally his wife needs, and his manic energy takes up the whole screen.

Jennifer Coolidge

Category: Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series
Where To Watch: HBO’s The White Lotus
Jennifer Coolidge is an undeniable comedic talent but she manages to infuse her heartbreaking and frustrating turn as a woman reeling from the loss of her abusive mother and trying to make new connections in a tropical paradise with enough drama to keep things balance. The show wouldn’t be the same without her.

Murray Bartlett

Category: Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series
Where To Watch: HBO’s The White Lotus
Whether Murray Bartlett takes home a trophy come Emmys night or not doesn’t change this one, undeniable fact: he gave the wildest performance on television last year. We’re talking pill-popping, ass-eating, luggage-shitting wild. What’s a golden statue compared to that level of bragging rights?

There are still a handful of episodes in Better Call Saul, whose sixth season picks back up Tuesday night. But apparently it’s a doozy. Is someone going to bite it, with five whole episodes left? Will something worse than death happen? Is Kim Wexler, fellow lawyer and lady friend of Bob Odenkirk’s Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman, okay? As of this writing, only TV critics know for sure. But whatever it is, even the fiancé of the person who plays her doesn’t know.

Variety rang up actress Rhea Seehorn during a trip to London to congratulate her on finally landing an Emmy nomination for the role she’s played since 2015. Seahorn kept things pretty close to the vest, barely teasing what — or what doesn’t — befall her character. Reporters aren’t the only ones she keeps in the dark.

“My fiancé knows nothing,” she says. “I don’t tell him anything. He’s sitting here in my hotel room, hoping I don’t spoil anything while I’m talking to you.”

Of course, maybe nothing happens to her. There’s every reason not to worry about her — unless we should. Seehorn herself recently teased that it’s not death people should be worrying about. “Death is not the only tragic end,” she cryptically put it last month. Or maybe, as Uproxx speculated recently, she winds up wed to McGill/Goodman and spends the run of Breaking Bad hiding. Or, you know, maybe she does die.

(Via Variety)