A trailer has been posted for the DVD release of the Joe Strummer documentary titled The Future is Unwritten. It is set for release on July 08, 2008.

The film promises an intimate biographical portrait of Clash frontman, vocalist, rhythm guitarist, and primal lyricist Joe Strummer who passed away in 2002. Director Julian Temple had a 30-year association with John Graham Mellor aka Joe Strummer and along with covering his entire life, the film includes narration by Strummer himself from his BBC radio show which featured some 65 of Joe’s favorite songs.

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We’ve struggled a little to figure out how to cover the rather significant presidential elections in the United States this fall. On one hand, any support of a candidate makes some of you uncomfortable and we certainly don’t want to turn Punknews.org into the Huffington Post or Little Green Footballs.

Still, there are a lot of voting-aged people reading this right now, and it seems like it’d be worthwhile to provide some coverage outside of the things directly connected to music. So, rather than just start doing one thing or the other, we thought we’d just present the question and see what you think. Of course, we’ll continue to cover issues that are already part of our mandate like copyright reform, digital music and issues that affect us directly.

Simply put, should Punknews.org stay out of presidential politics?

We’ll be reading all the comments and coming up with some sort of consensus on how to cover things in the next few months.
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The Human Abstract have posted the first track from their upcoming sophomore Hopeless Records album. The record is titled Midheaven and is due out August 16, 2008. It is the follow-up to Nocturne which was released in 2006.

You can find “Recession of the Fates” on their myspace page.
Source Continue reading The Human Abstract: “Recession of the Fates” →

Today we’ve got a full album stream from Austin, TX-based Driver F. The band self-released their album to critical acclaim and have drawn comparisons to a less esoteric Man Man, early Saves the Day and even The Starting Line.

You can check out the album on their Punknews.org Profile.
Source Continue reading Driver F: “Chase The White Whale” →

Wasted Days TV has put together a little spotlight on record collector Kevin Finn who boasts one of the largest Revelation Records vinyl collections imaginable. He talks about some of his favorite 80s hardcore albums and some of the strange ways he acquired albums over the years.

You can check it out here.
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According to a story in the El Paso Times, the 2008 edition of the Warped Tour will be the long-running tour’s attempt to reduce its carbon footprint.

Known as the “Warped Eco Initiative”, the tour will use biodiesel fuel for the tour’s large vehicles and solar power for the smaller Kia/Kevin Says stages and Warped Eco tent. The tour will be promoting reusable shopping bags which run $2.00 and tour organizer Kevin Lyman hopes that people will use the bags for the myriad of swag and merchandise they find at the show. The bands will be getting their catered meals on reusable cutlery and dishes as well.

The cost of these initiatives is not insubstantial, with fuel costs expected to be $200,000 over what originally was budgeted. Lyman also mentions the rising fuel costs and what that means for the tour:

People are hurting. Reality is setting in. The Warped Tour, for a lot of people, is still that county fair that comes to town once a year. They can have a crazy time. It’s still artificially cheap. That’s why I do have corporate sponsors. I have to keep the prices low.

You can find more on the story here.
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Cute Is What We Aim For have launched a stream of their new record. The record is titled Rotation and is due out June 24, 2008. It is the follow-up to The Same Old Blood Rush with a New Touch which was released in 2006.

You can check it out on their myspace page.
Source Continue reading Cute It What We Aim For: “Rotation” →

If any confirmation was needed for the popularity of digital music, it was reached yesterday when Apple’s popular iTunes music store reached a 5 billion song milestone. That adds up to $4.95 billion in digital revenues over a five year period.

That said, people are still buying CDs. According to shipment statistics from the recording industry, CD sales alone over the same period amounted to nearly $49 billion with $7.4 billion coming in 2007 alone. As iTunes represents 70% of the legal download market, this means digital still only represents about 15% of music sales overall. (Yes, we looked it up)

Have you made the shift to digital yet? Are you planning to?
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Though their debut full length, Everything’s Watching, Everything’s Watched was inevitably filed under “metalcore,” New Weathermen/Ferret act Heavy Heavy Low Low is planning a different take for their next album. The record is titled Turtle Nipple and the Toxic Shock and is due out August 19, 2008.

The label had this to say about the record:

Taking the direction of, but not limited to an early release on SST, Dischord, or Touch and Go, HHLL thrives on a formula of minimalist punk energy, choppy tempos and the most bastardized take on prog rock you’ve probably ever heard. With sprinkles of glitchy keyboards, slabs of noisecore and frantic lyrics tossed in the mix

Source Continue reading Heavy Heavy Low Low plan SST/Dischord-influenced album →

MC Dälek of shoegaze/noise-influenced hip hop act Dälek has announced the launch of Deadverse Recordings. The aim is to form an artist-friendly label in the tradition of Hydrahead, Ipecac and Public Guilt. The MC added:

I basically started deadverse recordings because I know of too many great musicians with amazing albums, obviously some of which I have been lucky enough to work on musically as well, that were not seeing the light of day. During my recording career, I’ve been blessed to work with incredibly fair and artist-friendly labels like Ipecac, Hydrahead, and Public Guilt. I hope to model deadverse recordings after those labels and provide a place for artists and their creations to call home. deadverse recordings was founded a home for real music by the illest musicians out there. Never mind genre, to quote Phil Spector, “there are only two kinds of music… good and bad!” We here at deadverse recordings only work with the first kind.

The label’s first release will be Oddatee’s Halfway Homeless. You can check out some music on the label’s myspace page.
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Hopeless Records has signed Phoenix, Arizona’s Anarbor. The five piece, just recently out of high school, hit the studio earlier this month to record for an unspecified future release on the label. In the meantime the group will be playing shows with Eye Alaska and the Summer Set as well as performing at several Californian Warped Tour dates. More tour details and some demo recordings can be found at the band’s MySpace page.
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