The New Music

Avant-electronic hip-hop wonder Flying Lotus has announced he’ll release a new album this year. Warp Records will release Cosmogramma on April 20th. Fly Lo will also release a career-spanning mix/comp called A Decade of Flying Lotus featuring unheard material.

Wanna hear the new Vampire Weekend album a week earlier? Well you can now hear Contra over at the band’s MySpace page. The album will be released on all formats next Tuesday, January 12th.

Duran Duran have leaked details about an upcoming David Bowie tribute album. And guess what? It looks damn good! Aside from the ’80s heartthrobs covering “Boys Keep Swinging,” we can also expect Vivian Girls doing “John, I’m Only Dancing,” A Place To Bury Strangers covering “Suffragette City,” Warpaint taking a stab at “Ashes To Ashes” and Soulwax, who have yet to decide what they’ll be contributing. You can see the somewhat complete tracklisting here.

Just the other day I was watching About A Boy wondering whatever happened to Badly Drawn Boy. Well, I can now tell you that he has a new album coming out this year. Damon Gough told BBC 6Music that he feels “I’m back to the beginning. Whatever’s been done in the past is done, whatever I’ve achieved or not achieved.” Great, then we can expect that proper follow-up to his Mercury Prize-winning The Hour of Bewilderbeast, because everything after was a bit naff.

Finally, the mysterious jj have announced they’ll be releasing their new album here in North America through Secretly Canadian. The Swedish duo will drop the aptly named jj nº 3 on March 9th, and then come to Canada for three dates this spring: April 3rd at Le National in Montreal, April 4th at Lee’s Palace in Toronto and April 13th at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver.