Villagers, Ed Sheeran, Trent Reznor, Overhead, The Albatross & St. Vincent star in Free Music Friday

It’s a just a week to go before the Four Horseman line up alongside the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Radio City Rockettes, top Bruce Springsteen tribute act The B Street Band and Jackie Evancho at The Donald’s Presidential Inauguration. To take your mind off all that pestilence, war, famine and death, Free Music Friday has assembled another putting a smile on yer’ face collection of downloads, streams, trailers, vids and mixes.

Conor J. O’Brien has penned a tune in support of the Home Sweet Home initiative, which entered a new chapter yesterday with their vacating of Apollo House.
"Now that I'm strong love, I'm taking a stand/ And it's not just for me, it's for all of this land/ You can water it down, but there's nothing to douse/ 'cause you can't quench the flame of Apollo House," he intones.
Couplets like "They showed me a room, didn't know what to think/ There were holes in the walls, there was blood in the sink," suggest that he was working on it right down to the wire.
Heartfelt and raw, it’ll hopefully heap more shame on the Minister and his under-performing colleagues…

Ed Sheeran was happy to oblige the other day when a Capital Radio London listener rang in to ask if he’d pick out ‘The Fresh Prince’ on his guitar.

To the streams now and American NPR has the ace newbies from Austra and Saturday Looks Good To Me singer Fred Thomas who’s on a solo flight of fancy.

John’s daughter Tracey Bonham treats us to five tracks she recorded in Levon Helm’s Woodstock studio with actor, comedian, screenwriter, singer and all round renaissance man, Fred Armisen.

Also new and tasty from Noise Trade are a full-length offering from Kelley McRae whose Nashville stock is sharply on the rise, and Midnight Pilot, another Music City act who sound like Chris Martin if he’d been raised on a Tennessee farm.

The Austin synthpop outfit who feature on the Stranger Things, Survive, are giving away a bundle of tunes at
click here

Hans Zimmer, John Williams, Danny Elfman, Trent Reznor, Randy Newman, Howard Shore, Rachel Portman, Jerry Goldsmith, Quincy Jones and James Cameron are among those contributing to Score: A Film Music Documentary, which is doing the festival rounds before going on general release in May.

The aforementioned Mr. Reznor and Atticus Rose have penned two hours worth of new music for The Vietnam War, a ten-part documentary series, which hits the smallscreen in September 2017 courtesy of American PBS.
“In an immersive 360-degree narrative, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick tell the epic story of the Vietnam War as it has never before been told on film,” we’re told. “The Vietnam War features testimony from nearly 100 witnesses, including many Americans who fought in the war and others who opposed it, as well as Vietnamese combatants and civilians from both the winning and losing sides. Six years in the making, the series brings the war and the chaotic epoch it encompassed viscerally to life. It includes rarely seen, digitally re-mastered archival footage from sources around the globe, photographs taken by some of the most celebrated photojournalists of the 20th Century, historic television broadcasts, evocative home movies, revelatory audio recordings from inside the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations and more than 100 iconic musical recordings by many of the greatest artists of the era.”

Iggy Pop and Danger Mouse have collaborated on ‘Gold’, a Cohen-esque tune that helps soundtrack the new Matthew McConaughey film of the same name. The Oscar-winner stars as “Kenny Wells, a prospector desperate for a lucky break, who teams up with a similarly eager geologist and sets off on an amazing journey to find gold in the uncharted jungle of Indonesia. Getting the gold was hard, but keeping it would be even harder, sparking an adventure through the most powerful boardrooms of Wall Street. The film is inspired by a true story.”

From the Consequence of Sound stable comes The Losers’ Club: A Stephen King podcast. The first, generously endowed two-hour show covers everything from The Dark Tower being turned into a film starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey to fond recollections of Carrie The Musical, which tanked so badly it’s now taught in theatre school as a how-not-to. There are also some choice tunes like ‘(Don’t Fear) The Reaper’, which have been referenced in the Maine man’s books.

FKA twigs brings her abundant talents to the new Nike advert.

David Crosby takes a potshot at the US Congress with ‘Capitol’, a politicians in it for power rather than helping the people (whodathunk?) ditty that finds him sounding proper angry.

Joe Chester trails his new album, The Easter Vigil, with the exquisite ‘Juliette In The Rain’.

From Galway with much love comes New Pope who’s letting you try his Love seven-tracker before you buy. The nom de studio of David Boland, it manages to be both li-fi and lush. We suspect that this could be the start of something big.

While the rest of Kodaline (bleedin’ slackers!) may have had Christmas off, bassist Jason Boland was hard at work co-producing the debut Otherkin long-player – see the next issue of Hot Press for our bumper 2017 Irish Album Preview – and being front of stage with his video camera as old pals Overhead, The Albatross stormed Vicar St. Both of these noble pursuits have been documented by Jay in his latest vlogs.

St. Vincent has posted the trailer for XX, a “wrapping together of four suspenseful stories of terror written and directed by fiercely talented women.” The singer contributes The Birthday Party under her real name of Annie Clark, with Karyn Kusama’s Her Only Living Son, Roxanne Benjamin’s Don’t Fall and Jovanka Vuckovic’s The Box completing the gory-looking line-up. Due in selected cinemas and digital platforms on February 17, the cast includes Natalie Brown, Melanie Lynskey, Breeda Wool and Christina Kirk.

The very sad breaking news is that the man who scared us shitless in the ‘70s with The Exorcist, William Peter Blatty, has passed away. He was 89.
Having penned the original novel, which has recently spawned a spin-off Sy-Fy channel series, the New Yorker picked up a Best Screenplay Oscar for Willie Friedkin’s blockbusting Hollywood adaptation of the demonic possession tale.
Team Hot Press are also major fans of the novels, which preceded and followed it, Twinkly, Twinkle “Killer” Kane and The Ninth Configuration.
Free Music Friday doffs its headphones to the New Yorker with the Mike Oldfield that provided The Exorcist with its instantly recognisable theme tune.

It’s with our heads spinning through 360 degrees and projectile vomiting that we bid you a demonic ‘adieu’ for another week. Keep those links coming to @stuartclark66 and this being Friday 13th, keep safe out there…