The Bulletin: Arts & Culture News | 29 April

TURNER PRIZE SHORTLIST ANNOUNCED
The shortlist for the Turner Prize was announced last week, with recognition for celebrated Glasgow-based artist David Shrigley, who now joins the massed ranks of Glasgow School of Art graduates to be nominated for the prize over the years, proving once again how effective the city is as a launchpad for up-and-coming artists. Incidentally Shrigley interviewed Harry Hill about his art for us back in August last year, which was both hilarious and enlightening. 

Also nominated alongside Shrigley this year are conceptual artist Tino Saghal, whose work involves improvised performance and 'live encounters' with the artists' minions; French multimedia and film artist Laure Provost, and portrait artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, who paints only fictional characters she has created. This year's prize will be presented to the winner this December in the city of Derry-Londonderry, named as the 2013 City of Culture. The winning artist takes home £40,000 prize money.

NEW PODCAST FROM THE SKINNY: WELCOME TO THE NETVERK 
This week sees the return of NETVERK – a column we ran on The Skinny website late last year which explored the world of netaudio and forward-thinking electronic music released independently on SoundCloud, Bandcamp and online. Our Staff Writer Bram E. Gieben and co-host Pete Ross have been hard at work reinventing NETVERK as an audio podcast – tune in each month, and learn how to submit tracks for consideration in future episodes here. This month's episode features excerpts from an upcoming interview with Scottish hip-hop originator Loki and an exclusive track from his forthcoming album, plus new music from Flying Lotus (as Captain Murphy), The Underachievers, and post-dubstep rising star Koda.  

BOARDS OF CANADA: WE FOLLOW THE BREADCRUMB TRAIL
It all started on Record Store Day – two mysterious 12" vinyls appeared in shops in New York and London, each containing 20-second snippets of music. This was the first new material from reclusive Scottish electronica pioneers Boards Of Canada since 2006, so the dedicated fan sites and discussion boards centred around the group immediately began to speculate on what the snippets could mean, with all hopes pointing towards a new album from the Warp legends. 

Each vinyl bore a cryptic legend on the packaging: ------ / ------ / ------ / XXXXXX / ------ / ------ The pattern seemed to indicate that each vinyl was one of six. When the snippets of audio were uploaded, they contained a sampled robotic voice intoning numbers – with further clues hidden in the video descriptions. By the end of last week, fans were reporting on miniscule clues left across Boards of Canda's web presence – a repositioned banner on their Facebook page containing a GIF image with a secret code inside; videos from Twosim being repositioned on their YouTube page, and two unique Soundcloud links embedded in the GIF containing links to further Soundcloud links, which when played together make up new audio snippets, with yet more cryptic strings of numbers. 

The sequence as it stands is 699742 / 628315 / 717228 / 936557 / —— / 519225, with a further code, 699742, revealed in a viral advert on Cartoon Network and on NPR Radio. Code-junkies claim to have gleaned the possible album title Cosecha by decoding seeemingly random patterns in a text edited version of some of the code. Further clues were projected onto the wall of a shop near London's Rough Trade.

It's a mysterious, tantalising campaign, and one that will no doubt ratchet up the already feverish anticipation for new material from the band.. we'll keep you abreast of any developments as the clues are uncovered and secrets are revealed!

NEW MUSIC: DAVID YOW, IGGY & THE STOOGES, QUASIMOTO, SAVAGES, ZOMBY, JOY ORBISON, FOUR TET X ATOMS FOR PEACE
Front-man of seminal post-punk nightmare The Jesus Lizard, David Yow has announced a new solo album, Tonight You Look Like A Spider. Exploring doom-laden, crepuscular territory on Thee Itch, the first track to be revealed, Yow comes on like a 70s horror soundtrack-obsessed alternate-universe version of The Doors. It's very, very good – and you can grab it for free here. The album is out on 25 June, and will be available in a limited edition 'Monolith' vinyl package hand-crafted personally by Yow.

Iggy & The Stooges have given an exclusive stream of their album Ready To Die to NPR. The album reunites the original Raw Power lineup of Iggy and John Williamson, alongside original drummer Scott Asheton and Mike Watt, filling in on bass for the late Ron Asheton. The album is available to buy today.  

Quasimoto, the helium-voiced cartoon character alter-ego of venerated hip-hop producer Madlib, is back. Yessir, Whatever collects 12 tracks of rare and unreleased Quasimoto material from 12 years of Madlib's adventures with the character on Stones Throw, and will be released on June 18 with an exclusive peel-able sticker on the vinyl cover. Stream the first track below.

London-based post-punk band Savages have revealed a third track from their debut album Silence Yourself (reviewed here). We have an exclusive interview with the band in our forthcoming issue (out tomorrow). For now, listen to No Face over at BBC 6 Music, on the Mary Anne Hobbes show. 

Zomby has revealed another track from his anticipated album With Love, dropping on 17 June. The new track, Soliloquy, can be heard below, and showcases the deeper, more fragile sound of the eclectic dubstep producer's sound.

With his releases on labels like Hotflush and Nonplus gaining him a solid reputation in dance music circles worldwide, Joy Orbison has long been on our 'ones to watch' list - he dropped an exclusive bootleg on his Soundcloud page this week. Grab it for free below.

Finally, Thom Yorke's Atoms For Peace revealed a remix of Four Tet's track Pyramid this week, taken from the producer's 2012 album Pink. Stream it exclusively from Four Tet's Soundcloud page.

FESTIVAL WATCH: ATP: THE END OF AN ERA, GLASTONBURY, T IN THE PARK, READING & LEEDS, WICKERMAN DANCE TENT
Seminal 1980s psych-rock outfit LOOP have been announced as the curators of ATP: The End Of An Era, the final installment (for now, at least) of All Tomorrow's Parties' epic weekends of live music, which run with different curators each year in Camber Sands and other locations. The final two events will take place on Nov 22-24 and Nov 29 - Dec 1 this year, with the first curated by Primavera Sound, and the second by LOOP. The first weekend will feature a reformed Television topping the bill, while LOOP, who have confirmed the re-release of their crucial back catalogue this year, will curate the final fling. Their most highly regarded album, A Gilded Eternity, is due for release on 19 Aug. We'll keep you updated about additions to these bills as they are announced. 

In Glastonbury (26-30 Jun) news, soul legend Bobby Womack has been announced as the headliner of the West Holts stage. Reading (23-25 Aug) and Leeds (23-25 Aug) have confirmed some new additions, in the form of Frightened Rabbit, Skindred, FIDLAR and Kodaline. Meanwhile the Wickerman (26-27 Jul) dance tent has confirmed its lineup, headed up by electro legend Dave Clarke, Kissy Sell Out, Elite Force and Justin Robertson.

NEW VIDEOS: SINKANE, TAKEN BY TREES, CRYSTAL CASTLES, THE PASTELS, SUN GLITTERS, YOUNG FATHERS
We were much enamoured of Sinkane's album Mars (reviewed here) when it came out, and we spoke to Ahmed Gallab about his new band back in January. This week he revealed the video for Warm Spell, a hallucinatory oddyssey set in a parallel reality. 

Taken By Trees is the project of Victoria Bergsman, the Swedish singer formerly of The Concretes, and the singer from the track Young Folks, by Peter, Bjorn & John. Her new video, for the track Only You, taken from her recent album Other Worlds, features transgender model Shelbe Chang. The video's director, Armen Harootun, commented: "To me the idea of the video came from the resistance of another idea. I became tired of watching videos of the same thing: a man chasing a woman, or visa versa. It seemed appropriate to consider love as something that doesn't have to be between a man and a woman. The video is a showcase, not a demonstration of that idea."

Crystal Castles have a new video this week – Affection is taken from last year's III (reviewed here), and drops just as it is announced that the band will support Depeche Mode on the US leg of their world tour.  

Indie stalwarts The Pastels have unveiled the first video from new album Slow Summits, out on 27 May. We have an exclusive interview with Stephen Pastel in the forthcoming issue of The Skinny. Watch the video for the Glasgow-based band's song Check My Heart below. 

The stately, UV-drenched post-dubstep of Victor Ferreira aka Sun Glitters has been attracting attention across sites like XLR8R and The Guardian since 2011's Everything Could Be Fine, and now the producer has unveiled a new video, for the track It Takes Me, from the High EP.

Finally, eclectic hip-hop crew Young Fathers this week unveiled the first video to be taken from their new Anticon release Tape Two, out 11 Jun. 

GRIMES: MAD AS HELL, NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE
Grimes, aka Claire Boucher, has again taken to her Tumblr for a heroic rant against sexism, wilful misunderstandings of her public statements on pop music, and the generally crappy attitudes on display within the music industry towards female artists such as herself. 

"I don't want to be molested at shows or on the street by people who perceive me as an object that exists for their personal satisfaction," Boucher writes. "I don't want to live in a world where I'm gonna have to start employing body guards because this kind of behavior is so commonplace and accepted and I’m pissed that when I express concern over my own safety it’s often ignored until people see firsthand what happens and then they apologize for not taking me seriously after the fact. I’m tired of men who aren’t professional or even accomplished musicians continually offering to ‘help me out’ (without being asked), as if I did this by accident and I’m gonna flounder without them. Or as if the fact that I’m a woman makes me incapable of using technology. I have never seen this kind of thing happen to any of my male peers."

We would like to offer a huge round of applause to Boucher for calling out the industry, and the men who run and dominate it, for their anachronistic, prejudiced attitudes. Read the post in full at Grimes' Tumblr.