Below we have the latest music news headlines, features and some of our favourite reviews from the past 7 days that have been featured on the AltSounds pages. This is also the AltSounds Weekly Newsletter that hits your inbox during the week.


Week ending July 22nd 2012 | Bored of reading already?
Bob Dylan, Fiddy, Frank Ocean, Bob Babbitt & More
Like a Virgin...
Beardy Richard Branson is seemingly bored already of ripping off the British public with his bank and he wants to get back in to charging people too much for music. The man who worked with great acts like Sex Pistols, The Spice Girls and The Rolling Stones says Virgin Records has been mismanaged for the past ten years, which in fairness it has. The last time a decent song was released by the brand the world was worrying about the millennium bug. Here’s hoping the music mogul finds the spark he had in 1972 when it all started.
What a Waster...
Everybody’s favourite mess Pete Doherty has been thrown out of rehab for being, well … such a complete mess. The former Libertines singer was paying over £7,000 a month for one of the world’s greatest treatment programmes in Thailand to help him get past his cocaine addiction, but apparently was being his usual douchey self to other members at the clinic.
A Jubilee to Truly Commemorate...
You thought celebrating a woman with a crown on her head for 60 years was worth it? The man who changed music is about to release his 35th studio album. Bob Dylan has announced Tempest, something many are calling his final album. Dylan’s tracklisting features titles such as ‘Long and Wasted Years’ have the blogosphere a chatter, but in reality a man of the folk legend’s intellect may even have selected the titles to generate such rumour on purpose. Of course previous song names over the past 50 years like ‘I Threw it all Away', ‘Fixin’ to Die Blues’ and ‘Baby, Please Don’t Go’ mean nothing.
Tears of Many a Clown...
The funk community has lost a great this week. One of the finest bass players to ever grace the planet with his existence has died. Bob Babbitt played on some of the greatest funk and soul songs including Marvin Gaye’s ‘Mercy Mercy Me’, Stevie Wonder’s ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered’ and ‘Tears of a Clown’ by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Bob Babbitt, also know as Robert Kreinar died of brain cancer, July 16th 2012.
All Rapped Up...
Coming off the back of Frank Ocean’s closet exit, rapper 50 Cent has pledged his support for the newly outed, although he did say it might have been timed well for promotional purposes. “You can call it brave or you can call it marketing, because it was intentional”. Meanwhile, Ocean has said to the Guardian how it feels great to not live “with this freakin’ boulder on my chest”.
Below we have the latest music news headlines and some of our favourite reviews, competitions and features from the past 7 days that have been featured on the AltSounds pages.

Two pairs of tickets up for grabs!
‘ABBEY ROAD: The Best Studio in the World’ With a foreword by Sir George Martin Published by Bloomsbury 19th July 2012, Hardback £50.00...
"Our ambition wasn’t to create a new genre, it was just to write music that we liked."
3rd - 5th August, Peak District...

Check out the full UK tour dates now...
Stream new single 'Sugar' below, released September 10th on Fiction
October and November tour dates...

Read The Latest Music Reviews
ESL Music // "A steady trek across familiar aural landscapes - synthesizers lacks conviction"
Mercury Records // "It's absolutely stunning, and will stand as my album of the year so far"
Planet Function // "A promising debut, with some moments of real quality."
Rise Records // "Brilliantly nostalgic songwriting that echo's the best of noughties melodic-punk"

So until next week...
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