Nick Cownie

Given the spare, textural soundscapes of 2016's Skeleton Tree and 2019's Ghosteen, it was not hard to wonder just how much Nick Cave still needed the Bad Seeds to bring his visions to life. 2021's Carnage suggests he may not need them at all outside of his longtime collaborator Warren Ellis. Cave and Ellis collaborated on Carnage while they were in lockdown thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, and in most respects it's of a piece with Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen, with Cave's dour, doomstruck lyrical meditations taking center stage while the musical accompaniment hovers in the background.

Plenty of artists have built careers out of writing about death, but only a tiny handful have shown the capacity to honestly and eloquently write about grief. Nick Cave knows more than a bit about grief, and he's been willing to stare into that particular abyss, doing so with a particularly keen focus on 2013's Push the Sky Away and 2016's Skeleton Tree, the latter partially informed by the death of his teenage son in 2015. Grief is hardly the only emotion that Cave and his ensemble the Bad Seeds explores on 2019's Ghosteen, but a sense of loss and a heavy heart permeates these songs like a thick fog, as well as the bonds of family and how they can bring us together and keep us apart…

In some ways, Murder Ballads is the record Nick Cave was waiting to make his entire career. Death and violence have always haunted his music, even when he wasn't explicitly singing about the subject. On Murder Ballads, he sings about nothing but death in the most gruesome, shocking fashion…

Following on from the successful An Idiot Prayer live album and livestream event released this year, Nick Cave releases B-Sides and Rarities: Part I and Part 2. B-Sides and Rarities: Part 2 was compiled by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis and features 27 tracks. It includes tracks from Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! in 2006 to 2019s Ghosteen and 19 rare and unreleased tracks including first recordings of ‘Skeleton Tree’, ‘Girl in Amber’, ‘Bright Horses’ and ‘Waiting for You’.

Nick Mason is one of the biggest selling artists of all time. A co-founding member of Pink Floyd, he is the only constant member of the group, performing on all of their albums as well as all of their live shows. In May of this year, Nick debuted his new band Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets with four intimate shows in London (Camden Dingwalls 20 May and The Half Moon in Putney 21, 23 and 24 May) to an incredible reception. Unattended Luggage is a further celebration of Nick Mason and his undeniably significant contribution to music. The set contains: ‘Fictitious Sports’ - Nick’s debut solo album which was originally released in 1981 and saw him collaborate with a variety of different musicians including Robert Wyatt and Carla Bley…

Nick Mason is the drummer of Pink Floyd and the only member to have remained in the group for its entire existence. Born Nicholas Berkeley Mason on January 27, 1944 in the Downshire Hills area of Birmingham, England, he met future bandmates Roger Waters and Rick Wright while studying architecture at Regent Street Polytechnic. He began playing with them in Sigma 6 in 1963, and in the Screaming Abdabs the following year, and in 1965 the Syd Barrett-led blues/R&B outfit that soon became Pink Floyd…

Released in 1994 and curated by Joe Boyd, the 16-track collection Way to Blue held true to its claim as An Introduction to Nick Drake. Though largely unknown during his lifetime and brief career, the beguiling English folksinger ascended to a kind of romantic cult hero in the two decades following his 1974 death. His name was known among artists and hardcore record collectors and thanks to Boyd's Hannibal Records label, his three lone albums along with the essential 1986 rarities disc Time of No Reply were all back in print. Artists like R.E.M., the Cure, and the Dream Academy had all cited him as an influence in the mid-'80s, but it really wasn't until the '90s that his gentle, austere music began to achieve the legendary status that it would enjoy well into the 21st century. A handful of other Nick Drake compilations had existed before this one, but Way to Blue remains the definitive primer for aspiring and casual fans.