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After a 15-year wait and months of eager anticipation we can confirm that the rumours are indeed true: Robbie and Take That are back together and releasing an all-new album.

Following the reunion of all reunions in New York last September, Robbie, Gary, Howard, Jason and Mark have secretly recorded a full studio album with producer Stuart Price, which will be released later this year.

“I get embarrassingly excited when the five of us are in a room,” said Robbie, who also duets with Gary Barlow on new solo single, Shame. “It feels like coming home.”

Bandmate Mark Owen added, “Getting the five of us to be in a room together, although always a dream, never actually seemed like becoming a reality. Now the reality of the five of us making a record together feels like a dream. It’s been an absolute delight spending time with Rob again. But I’m still a better footballer.”

And what does Jason Orange think about Robbie’s re-joining the boys? “Flippin’ brilliant, absolutely brilliant,” he said. “I’m over the moon that Robbie’s back with us, however long it lasts. I just want to enjoy our time with him. Life is beautifully strange sometimes.”

Between them, the five-piece have have sold 80 million albums, performed to over 14.5 million people live, won 19 BRIT Awards, had 13 number one albums, 17 number one singles, eight MTV awards and five Ivor Novello awards!

Take That’s forthcoming album, which is currently untitled, will be released in November 2010, a massive twenty years since the band first performed live together in 1990. Wow!

“They so fucking blow me away, I can’t put it into words”

“Their music stirs my soul. I haven’t had that feeling since my younger days in the 80′s”

“Artistic, emotional, dark, hopeful, sends chills…brilliant ..//.. I’m 55, finally something I can listen to, think about, dance to. Fills my senses”

“I think you’ve achieved your goal! You both have indeed, created special music (and videos)!”

“‘Stay’ sounds INCREDIBLE!!! I’m so excited for this album, for this band”

Screenshot from the Hurts video ‘Better than love’.

Theo Hutchcraft and Adam Anderson are the names of two of Britain’s most promising pop artists. Through the spring and summer of 2010, their two singles ‘Wonderful Life‘ and ‘Better than life‘ have oozed from my preferred web channels.

With a blessed sound of nostalgia, hope and party, the two Manchester lads have created a sustainable mix of Erasurean clarity and electronic sharpness with the emotional and musical depth of Tears for Fears. There’s a third element though, I can’t quite place (yet). But bottomline is -> It’s really, really good and catchy.

Hutchcraft and Anderson use a style called ‘Disco Lento‘ (slow disco) or ‘Lento Dolorso’ (slow and painful), which they – according to Danish magazine Gaffa – picked up on a trip to Italy. But connected to 80′s stars Alphaville, Gazebo and Berlin I think Hurts has a lot more than ‘Lento’ to offer.

The piece below was broadcasted on Channel 4 earlier this year. Watch it and make your own opinion.

Hurts’ first album ‘Happiness‘ will be released on the 6th of September 2010 – I really can’t wait.

Until then there’s getting tickets for the present tour or:

- Informationhurts.com
- Hurts on YouTube
- Hurts on Facebook
- Theo on Twitter

Thanks to Claus Holm for introducing me to ‘Hurts‘. And thanks to the fans for your comments/quotes on YouTube.

One that falls in a particularly noticable category is the channel ‘DR Unga Bunga‘. A peculiar mix of indie, electronica and techpop with harmony and melody as core. But the real cool thing is that it mixes known artists with some unfamiliar to most.

While researching a little and writing this post I have heard:

- Gorillaz – ‘On Melancholy Hill’
- David Bowie – ‘Changes’
- Chemical Brothers – ‘Swoon’

In between the megastar-names AS cool pieces like:

- Filthy Dukes – ‘Messages’
- Primary 1 – ‘The Blues’ (feat. gorgeous Nina Persson)
- Giana Factory – ‘Rainbow Girl’

… appears.

Screen from DR Unga Bunga.

DR Unga Bunga is the natural alternative to Last.fm in the sense, that it presents new artists to me. As DR writes in their own presentation: “DR Unga Bunga is for the curious ear”. And it surely is interesting. Before today I had never heard of ‘Giana Factory’ or ‘Filthy Dukes’ – Both really catchy projects.

Latebar hereby recommends DR Unga Bunga to everyone. I’m sure the more web savvy user might be able to pull the feed into their own websites et cetera.

But Rhodes also comforts the many duranies around the world that 9 out of 12 songs are more or less complete and a new album is due in the beginning of 2011.

Nick Rhodes, by the way, turned 48 this tuesday. The day was celebrated by many fans in the virtual world of Second Life, where a list of 50 favorite songs picked by Nick were aired in the legendary Club Interference.

(Thanks to Peter Jones for the tip and the link)

Three albums, several massive hits and 100s of sold out gigs later, Carpark North has finally matured enough to take over the world. A new international contract was announced early May 2010 and the band’s world debut ‘Lost‘ awaits just after the summer holidays.

Carpark North is famous in Denmark for being very communicative with its fans. Recently the band used its YouTube channel to present Soren, Lau and Morten to the world.

The band signed with notorious Sony Music. Even though Sony is a huge international label with the power to really create megastars, it must be a bit worrying news to Carpark North’s dedicated and faithful fans. Sony Music – along with EMI – has a somewhat tarnished reputation for making barriers between their artists and the fans. Most YouTube-users outside USA know booleans ending with ‘Sorry, you’re not allowed to view this video in your country’ – a result of the music industry’s hopelessly oldschool approach to social media.

The day that I’m not allowed to view a Carpark North video AND embed it to this blog with praising words, organic manure will be finding its way to the Sony Music HQ.

Anyway, let’s hope it never ends there

First video from the international debut album ‘Lost’ has just been released. ‘Just human’ was actually released earlier in Denmark under the title ‘Human’, featured on Carpark’s 2005 album ‘All things to all people’.

(Congrats to director Martin de Thurah – a job well done)

Wanna know more:

- Carpark North website
- Carpark North YouTube
- Carpark North Facebook
- Carpark North on Wikipedia
- Buy first three albums at iMusic

Co-owner of Jazzhus Montmartre Niels Lan Doky.

The “new” Montmartre is owned and run by the worldclass pianist Niels Lan Doky and his entrepreneur friend Rune Bech. It serves as a high-end restaurant with a more than above high-end jazz scene.

It is run as a non-profit business and survives only by the help of friendly and jazz-loving donations.

Many (I dare say ‘most’) international jazz stars in the 20th century has played Montmartre one or more times. Only the new and young talents and stars haven’t .. Yet!

From the heart – Niels and Rune, thanks, congrats and the very best of luck and good fortune.

Imagine this is Sunday around 10am. The first cup of coffee is poured and one of your friends pokes you on Facebook.

“You’ve gotta hear this”, he writes and posts a URL for a video on YouTube. The story is that my friend follows one of the guys from Chemical Brothers on Twitter. He recommends the British shooting star James Yuill… And here we are.

James Yuill plays ‘No Surprise’.

James Yuill introduces the genre folktronica – at least to me. An obvious mix of the two genres ‘Electronica’ and ‘Folk’. And it really works. In fact I find it really, REALLY good.

The cockney British musician (born in 1981) recently signed a deal with MoshiMoshi Records, who also published the A-class swede ‘Lykke Li‘ and Danish ‘Blue Foundation‘ earlier on.

Having his single ‘This Sweet Love‘ chosen as Starbucks’ iTunes pick of the month, in November 2009, got him more exposed to a broader audience. And I feel really confident this marked a real breakthrough for the folktronic-boy-wonder.

The official video to James Yuill’s ‘This sweet love’.

AND ((drum roll)) – James Yuill obviously embraces Social Media. Visiting his website at www.jamesyuill.com you’re introduced to everything from his profiles on MySpace, Facebook and Twitter to his account on Flickr and YouTube and even his personal blog (and ‘yes’ it is WordPress). This rocks 100% and shows a modern artist offering a service to his dedicated fans, who in turn help spread the music and to share feel-good-feelings while listening to it.

The most excellent (and really non-medieval) feature on his site is the ‘Download Page’. Take a peak and tell me how you think established oldtimer record companies would think of this *lol*.

Screw the uptights – James, you’ve got yourself a new mega-fan in Denmark! Your openness will make me buy your stuff and come to your gigs.

(And by the way, I didn’t want to be a name-dropping-showoff. But my friend mentioned above is ‘Lars Krimi‘. Find him and his music on last.fm)

‘Man Up‘ by Danish band The Blue Van.

‘The Blue Van‘ has experienced huge success in Germany, and according to Danish daily ‘Politiken‘, it’s been a long, sturdy load of work by the publishers (Iceberg Records) to place the song as a title song.

According to Politiken, ‘Countdown – die jagd beginnt‘ is viewed by approximately 4 million Germans every week on channel RTL.

The band’s 4th studio album is expected to be released in the autumn of 2010.

It could all be a hoax. But since LA Times quickly removed the blogpost, we’re kinda flying blindfolded. So if any of you guys out there know anything, I bet some fans would love you to share information, if you have any, either here or at the ‘Stereogum‘-website.

Meanwhile we could once again enjoy band member Thom Yorke crashing the Climate Summit in Copenhagen – undercover as a journalist. Both GristTV and The Guardian caught the “secret agent” British musician there.

Cool guy, that Thom Yorke is, right?!

That being said I must confess, I find the newly settled case against the aussie band ‘Men at Work‘ a bit off the hinges. Thursday a judge Peter Jacobsen ruled that the flute riff of the 1979 megahit ‘Down Under‘ was plagiarised/stolen from the 1932 childrens song ‘Kookaburra‘.

According to CNN, Greg Ham who played the flute on the track, admitted that ‘Kookaburra’ was a part of his childhood songbook. That was, according to Judge Jacobsen, enough to conclude the riff was stolen/plagiated and used in ‘Down Under‘ some 47 years later.

An Australian music group called Larrikin Publishing bought the rights for the old ‘Kookaburra’-song in 1990 – two years after it’s original author/writer Marion Sinclair died in 1988. According to CNN, Larrikin now demands 40 to 60 percent of the royalties earned from ‘Down Under’ in Australia during the last six years.

I found the two songs on YouTube. Can you hear the foul play?

World Children’s Choir at 17th Anniversary Concert performing ‘Kookaburra’.

Men at Work’s ‘Down Under’ – focus on the flute riff.

So what do you think? I see some resemblance. But I also see some resemblance to the brilliant John Williams song ‘Double Trouble (Something wicked this way comes)’. But fined for plagiarism – I don’t know.

Personally I find this close to hilarious. Maybe Larrikin Publishing wants to compete with Sony Music Entertainment in an attempt to win the honorable Badwill Cup of modern music. OR… Maybe this is just a really lowlife PR-stunt to revitalise an old childrens song of fame. A song that – in my mind – doesn’t need revitalising.

What do you think?… Or know that I don’t know.

Thanks to ‘Vulture‘ for bringing the news to me.