Pitchfork

Photos by Kristin Klein

Mastodon guitarist Brent Hinds allegedly got himself into another altercation last night (September 18), this time with garage guru Arish "King" Khan. According to multiple sources, including a report by Chad Radford for Creative Loafing Atlanta's Crib Notes blog, Hinds punched Khan in the face, sending him to the hospital, after an appearance in Atlanta at the Highland Inn Lounge's weekly Kirkwood Ballers Club open mic.

Khan played the gig to support his friend and Atlanta scene fixture BJ Womack. Kristin Klein, King Khan's manager, told Pitchfork that Womack was "just diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, so Arish came into Atlanta from Berlin...to see [Womack], because it could be the last time he sees our friend." Frank Jensen-- Womack's "best friend of, like, 25 years [and] the drummer for [Chicago bands] the Tyrades and the Busy Signals"-- also flew into Atlanta to play the gig with Khan and Womack. (Klein also provided these photos.)

According to Klein, the trio (plus drummer Jessica Juggz) played a few songs, including a cover of Them's "Gloria", before Hinds, who was in attendance, spontaneously joined them on guitar. "Brent was fucking around with Arish's guitar," says Klein. "Arish dumped a beer on Brent's head, and then after the show was over, Arish went outside and was like, 'Hey man, sorry about the beer. Let me buy you a drink.' And Brent said, 'Do you know who I am?' And Arish said, 'No, not really. Kind of. I don't know.' And Brent said, 'I'm the greatest guitar player alive.' And Arish said, 'Well okay man, but this is all about our friend BJ, you know?' And he went to walk away and he got sucker punched. Split his lip open."

Klein took Arish to the Atlanta Medical Center, where Khan "ended up getting three stitches in his lip."

Before leaving for the hospital, Klein approached Hinds. "After I got Arish an ice pack and some salt water to swish out, I went up to Brent and was like, 'Hey man, that was a little bit fucked up," she said. "We gotta go to the hospital and get stitches instead of hanging out, this night, with our friend. The least you can do is pay for his stitches. It's like $150 [to] walk in.' He was like, 'I only got $80.' I was like, 'Okay.' He was like, 'It was a dick move, but I'm a dick sometimes.' He gave us the cash, which was cool. It was nice of him to do that.

"Then we went to the hospital, and the bill was actually $2,700," Klein said, laughing.

According to Klein, "everything is cool" now between the two parties, and Khan will not take legal action. "I took him to the airport, and he's on a plane to San Francisco where he's gonna be playing with a reunited Gris Gris at Urban Outfitters on Saturday," she said. "We went this morning to breakfast with our friend. [Khan] was in town for BJ... I don't want [that] to get overshadowed because these two goons in rock bands freaked out."

Pitchfork has been in touch with a representative at Mastodon's label, but we've not yet received any comment from Hinds or the band.

For his part, Khan seems to be recovering nicely. In the aforementioned Crib Notes post, he told Creative Loafing, "It sucked to get punched in the face, but I live for these kinds of adventures and I love this town."

By most accounts, the Radiohead "Nude" remix project was a smashing success. It resulted in over 2,000 unique reworkings, plenty of hard-hitting analysis, and-- however inadvertently-- the band's first significant chart showing for a single in ages. So it comes as little surprise that the In Rainbows gang is gearing up to do it all over again.

The band sent an email today to folks who partook in the "Nude" project, offering advance access to stems for In Rainbows highlight "Reckoner" and revealing that those stems will go up for digital sale to the general public on Tuesday, September 23. As with "Nude", the stems divide the song into its component parts-- all the better to remix with, of course.

For "Reckoner", folks can nab tracks for "Lead Vocal", "Backing Vocal", "Guitars", "Bass", "Drums", and "Piano/Strings". That's six stems in all to "Nude"'s five-- all the better to chart with, of course. ;-)

No word yet whether this project will work precisely like the last one did-- you know, with the voting and the ranking and the embedding and all that-- but there's little reason to think it won't. Eager remix beavers are advised to click on over to the onetime home of all those "Nude" remixes, http://radioheadremix.com/, come Tuesday for more details.

And will this project herald the release of a proper "Reckoner" single? Guess we'll see.

Finally, as Radiohead point out in today's email, "Please remember if you wish to commercially exploit the stems in any way you need permission from us. You don't have any legal ownership of this music simply by cutting it up or whatever." Well said.

Thanks to reader and "Nude" remix project participant Ivan Reese for the tip.

In other news, Radiohead are reportedly writing up their In Rainbows follow-up, they lent "Reckoner" to the Choke soundtrack and closing credits, they're on a charity compilation, and they've still got a brief run of dates in Japan come October.

Photo by Michael Lavine

Dear Science, the latest LP from NYC soundbombers TV on the Radio, has made its way to the U.S. iTunes store several days in advance of its September 23 physical release on Interscope.

The set is available in both a regular and "bonus track" incarnation, and the latter more than lives up to its name. That one includes new jams "Make Love All Night", "Heroic Dose", and "Dogs of Light", plus a Prefuse 73 remix of "Dancing Choose" and a Telepathe remix of "Crying". Even the regular iTunes edition gets you "Dogs of Light" if you buy the whole thing. Thanks to several readers for the tip.

Dear Science is due in stores in the rest of the world September 22 from 4AD.

On the live front, TV on the Radio have added a European tour in November and December since we last checked in. The tour will follow the band's international crop of dates currently in progress.

Newly formed Bay Area trio the Mighty Underdogs-- aka Blackalicious' Gift of Gab, Lateef the Truth Speaker, and Crown City Rockers' Headnodic-- have scheduled their first headlining tour. The dates are in support of their debut album, Droppin' Science Fiction, which comes out via Def Jux on October 14.

The tour starts in L.A. the night before Halloween and includes support from Zion-I. Before then, the 'dogs have some Down Under dates with Blackalicious shaping up and a final show opening for Aesop Rock tonight (September 19) in San Luis Obispo, California.

This evening in San Diego, the freshest, flyest cadre of computer programmers you've ever heard will step onto the stage and kick off their fall tour. Yep, Hot Chip are hitting the road again. They'll keep to North America for the next three weeks before heading off to the UK for an October/November run.

In other news, the Hot Chip DJs will hit the decks at the Plug in Sheffield, England on December 6 as part of BBC DJ Annie Mac's "Annie Mac Presents" tour. And, as we mentioned last week, the guys have reportedly worked up a cover of Vampire Weekend's "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" with Peter Gabriel himself, and they're starting to craft their follow-up to this year's Made in the Dark. These dudes get a lot done, huh? Oh, right, 'cuz they're nerds and stuff.

In April of 2007, Damon Albarn made a few rather cryptic comments to BBC Radio 2 interviewer Steve Wright that some took to mean Gorillaz, the cartoon supergroup led by the Blur frontman and artist Jamie Hewlett, would never make another proper pop album. In the year and a half since Albarn's comments, Gorillaz have been the subject of a documentary, a remix collection, a "circus opera," and a series of promos for the recent summer Olympics. No pop album has emerged though, which has surely caused some trepidation among fans of the band's recordings.

But there will indeed be another Gorillaz pop album, as Damon Albarn told Pitchfork's Scott Plagenhoef in an interview that will see the light of Pitchfork soon enough. Albarn noted that he hasn't started formally contacting folks for those coveted guest spots or anything, but that a record is definitely happening, and therefore, Gorillaz are so not breaking up. (He also said as much to the CBC recently.)

In other news from the land of Gorillaz and Albarn: Monkey's Journey to the West hits North American shops September 23 via XL, and Albarn produced "Sabali", a track from Welcome to Mali, the forthcoming LP from Malian husband-and-wife duo Amadou & Mariam. Look for that one in shops November 17 from Because Music.

Willy Graves, onetime bassist for disbanded San Diego noise-punkers The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower, has passed away. No cause of death was given.

In a MySpace bulletin entitled "WILLY GRAVES 1980-2008", Graves' former bandmate Brandon Welchez paid tribute to his fallen friend, noting that "Willy brought so much to our band artistically, aesthetically, and in terms of general morale. When the going got tough (and believe me, things would get fucking rough), we could always count on Willy to be the eternal optimist."

Added Brandon, "We discovered so many things together, went through so many things together-- it's unbelievable that he is gone so young. He had a lot more love, humor, and art to give the world. This is everybody's loss."

Thanks to Saxon Baird for the tip.

Subtle will support this year's ExitingARM on a tour of North America this fall. Joining them at these shows will be Zach Hill & Peer Pressure performing Hill's Necromancer and, on the latter half of the tour, Pattern Is Movement.

The first show of Subtle's tour is November 7 in Portland, and by the time it rolls around, Subtle will have a new collaborative/remix record in tow. Lex plans to release the record, SmallFear Souvenir, in CD and digital formats.

SmallFear Souvenir features remixes and collaborative reworkings of ExitingARM tracks from Trans Am (reworking "The No"), Alias ("Sick Soft Perfection"), Black Moth Super Rainbow ("Gonebones"), Genghis Tron ("Take to Take"), Thee More Shallows ("Day Dangerous"), and Subtle themselves. The finalized tracklist is still coming together, but in the meantime you can enjoy an MP3 of the original version of ExitingARM's "The No" via the download link below.

Gnarly Georgia metal masters Baroness will serve North America another huge helping of fiery Red jams this fall. The Savannah foursome begins its next tour with a hometown show tonight, September 19. From there, Baroness' travels include multiple previously noted stops with Opeth and High on Fire, as well as a run of shows with previous tourmates Genghis Tron and Relapse labelmates Coliseum and Minsk.

Cardinology is the silly title of the forthcoming LP from Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, due October 28 on Lost Highway.

The new disc, described by people who would like you to buy it as "a concise and focused collection of twelve unadorned gems," will be preceded by a single for "Fix It" on September 23. Closing track "Stop", meanwhile, will appear in a September 30 episode of the A&E drama "The Cleaner", which is-- fittingly enough-- about a recovering addict and his struggles to help others get clean. Also, we'd be remiss if we didn't point out that Ryan's got not one but two songs on the disc-- the follow-up to, um, Easy Tiger-- with the word "Easy" in the title. Guess when you write like 100 songs a day, coming up with words for the titles isn't so...simple.

Ryan's Infinity Blues, his "first ever collection of non-musical writing," now has a release date: March 16, 2009 from Akashic Books. Starting October 6, however, you can preorder the thing from Akashic's website. Those who go that route will get a signed hardcover copy of the book and a poetry chapbook exclusive to the Akashic preorder entitled Sad American Mythology.

In other Ryan news, he's gonna turn in a cover of a Merge Records favorite as part of their SCORE! anniversary stuff, and he recently bolstered his previously States-centric tour itinerary with a couple weeks of UK tour dates in November. A heads up: his U.S. tour's first date has been moved from Schenectady, New York's Proctors Theater to nearby Albany's the Egg. Finally, Ryan will return to "Late Show With David Letterman" on October 29.