The worry when any beloved artist disappears into obscurity for an extended period of time, is that once returned their careers will forever be overshadowed by former glories. Last night at Paradiso, a suitably old church turned into a concert hall in Amsterdam, D’Angelo put all concerns to rest and performed one of the greatest shows we’ve witnessed live. Returning to the stage after a 12 year absence with an exceptionally tight backing band, last night Michael Archer let us know exactly what he’d been up to all this time – our guy was simply away getting better.

And yes, as impossible as it may sound – D’Angelo has returned better than when he left…

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M.I.A will debut her new single ‘Bad Girls’ exclusively on Pitchfork this coming Monday (January 30th) at 7:30pm (GMT). The song will also get it’s first spin on radio via Zane Lowe’s Radio 1 show at the same time – she’ll be joining him for a chat also. The video for the song will premier on Vice network’s Noisey YouTube channel on February 3rd.

Recorded in Miami and produced by Danja (Timbaland, Madonna, Nelly Furtado, Pink), the song will precede M.I.A’s much-hyped collaboration with Madonna and Nicki Minaj – which is set to premier during the Super Bowl XLVI halftime show. ‘Bad Girls’ will be taken off M.I.A’s upcoming, yet to be titled, new album which is due out this summer on her new UK label, Mercury Records.

On February 27th, Robert Glasper will release his awe-inspiring new album Black Radio into the world. The 12 track accomplished body of work will feature an array of sensation collaborations from the likes of Erykah Badu, Bilal, Mos Def, Musiq, Lalay Hathaway, Lupe Fiasco, Meshell Ndegeocello and more.

On May 14th, Glasper will being his Experiment to London, specifically to the Barbican, to celebrate his new LP. He will be joined by collaborator Bilal along with a host of other “special guests” – and if my sources hold true (which they will), the artists taking part will drop some jaws (and/or drawers).

Tickets are priced £10-£25 and are on sale now.

Live Nation, the biggest promoter in the world, has revealed it’s plans for three open air festivals in Hyde Park, Victoria Park & Trafalgar Square as part of London’s 2012 Olympic Games celebrations. The events will “allow people to watch outdoor screenings of the Olympic and Paralympic Games at Hyde Park and will provide live music shows including two Celebration Concerts in Hype Park to coincide with the opening and closing of the games” (sou).

Headline acts and ticket information have yet to be unveiled, but reports suggest an annoucement will be made within the next few weeks. With Live Nation attached, expect superstar names to be involved.

Six time Grammy Award winner Etta James has passed away, aged 73. After a long battle with Leukemia, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, passed away in Hospital earlier today.

“This is a tremendous loss for the family, her friends and fans around the world”, said her longtime friend & manager Lupe De Leon. “She was a true original who could sing it all – her music defied category. I worked with Etta for over 30 years. She was my friend and I will love her always”.

History will write that Etta James laid the foundation for many female artists who came after her. Unafraid to be her imperfect, unapologetic self during a time where women, especially black women, had very little power is something that the world should never overlook. Not to mention the enormity of her talent – a voice like no other, she commanded every second of every moment while singing in front of an audience. A true legend.

May she Rest in Peace.

Fans of the Big Chill Festival will be bitterly disappointed as Managing Director, Melvin Benn, has officially announced that this years show has been cancelled, saying:

“It is with a considerable amount of regret that I have decided not to go ahead with The Big Chill in 2012.

I looked long and hard late last year at moving the date so it didn’t clash with the Olympics but the mix of the festival fans desire to keep the date and an inability to find an alternative date that works I plumped for maintaining the existing weekend. Sadly, the artist availability and confirmations we were achieving led me to conclude that I couldn’t risk going ahead with the event as an outdoor event this year. Efforts are being made to look to bring a smaller event indoors this year with the anticipation of Big Chill being back outdoors in 2013.”

… An unfortunate state of affairs, not least because for the first time in my life, I was actually contemplating going this year! Higher power inception, maybe? In any case – we look forward to the festival’s return in 2013.

The nominations for this years Brit Awards have been announced and like every other year are sure to divide opinion…

Fantastic to see James Blake & Ed Sheeran nominated in the ‘Best Male’ category alongside James Morrison, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and Professor Green. While Adele, Jessie J, Florence + the Machine, Kate Bush and Laura Marling complete the nominations for ‘Best Female’.

Emeli Sande, Anna Cali, Ed Sheeran, Jessie J and The Vaccines will all go up for the ‘British Breakthrough Act’ award. Sande has already been announced as the winner of the prestigious ‘Brits Critics’ Choice’ Award, beating off BBC Sound of 2012 winner Michael Kiwanuka and Maverick Sabre.

Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’, Ed Sheeran’s ‘The A-Team’ and Jessie J’s ‘Price Tag’ are among some of the songs in the running for the ‘Best British Single’ award. Interestingly, Jessie’s debut album was left out of the running for ‘Best Album of the Year’, despite having a massively successful year and being nominated for three gongs at this years show. Adele’s 21, Sheeran’s +, Coldplay’s Mylo Xyloto, Florence + the Machine’s Ceremonials and PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake are go up for the nights biggest award.

Internationally, the usual contenders are represented – Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Beyonce, David Guetta, The Throne (Jay-Z & Kanye West), Nicki Minaj, Lana Del Rey and others all make up the nominations for the ‘International Male Solo’, ‘International Female Solo’, ‘International Group’ and ‘International Breakthrough Artist’ categories.

This year’s ‘Outstanding Contribution to Music’ award goes to British band Blur.

Check out the full list of nominees after the jump…

The Brit Awards take place on February 21st. For more info and to vote for your favourite acts – go here.

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Coachella has officially announced it’s festival line-up for 2012 and as ever – it’s very impressive. This years event, held in California, will play host to artists/bands such as Radiohead, Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg, the Black Keys, Miike Snow, Florence and the Machine, La Roux, Azealia Banks, A$AP Rocky, Thundercat, Gary Clark Jr, Arctic Monkey and a whole host of others (including David Guetta, a fact we shall ignore).

And for the first time ever the festival will take place over two weekends – April 13-15 & April 20-22. More details & ticket information to be announced shortly.

Red Bull have just announced that the 2012 Red Bull Music Academy will be held in New York this Autumn. Singers, producers, musicians, instrumentalists and DJ’s can download the application from February 2nd and send it off with a selection of their tracks by April 2nd.

Now in it’s 15th year, previous host cities include Berlin, Toronto, Melbourne, London, Cape Town and last year, Madrid. The academy invites musicians from around the world to apply for a chance to take part in the 5 week course which incorporates “workshops, concerts, club nights and all-round musical extravaganzas held all across the boroughs, exploring [the city's] diverse cultural and musical legacies”.

For all those interested in applying this year, up top is a very helpful video on how best to fill in the 5o+ questions on the application

For more information – go here. Good luck!

“HDB059 Burial – Kindred EP. Join Hyperdub mailing list for news. Vinyl/digital and def less than 25quid” – news straight from Kode9′s twitter.

No word on when this will drop or how many tracks will be included (we’ll keep you updated, of course), but when it comes to William Bevan – the specifics rarely matter.

Bevan was surprisingly quite active this year having released his Street Halo EP in March, a beautiful set of remixes for Massive Attack and a collaborative project with Four Tet & Thom Yorke. With the news of another new EP on the way we can only assume an album is being prepped. Fingers are crossed.

Last year Janelle Monae’s debut surpassed all other albums and pipped the top spot for PinBoard’s Album of the Year. In a stunning display of what true creativity can producer, she accomplished a conceptual and sonic feat by releasing her Grammy nominated LP The Archandroid.

With very little word from the lady herself in a while, curious minds were beginning to wonder what follow up plans were being put in place – in terms of delivery, but also more importantly of direction. With Monae it’s never “how will she follow up”, as it is “what will she follow it up with?” – her debut featured orchestras and musicians from around the world – once you go there, what else is left?

… While the aforementioned musical questions are yet to be answered, new information has emerged about her plans for 2012. In an interview with Back to Rockville, Monae says “I stopped touring so I could finish the album. Actually, I plan on releasing two albums next year. 87.799 percent of the writing is done… I will release them according to my soul clock. But I will try to stick to the scheduled release dates, which I know but can’t say. We already have a tour set but it hasn’t been announced yet. I’ll be with some really big artists. We’ll hit the Staples Centre three nights in a row in L.A. It’s a really big band. I can’t say who it is. I think next week you should probably hear something”. [via]

Promising news, lets see what 2012 brings.

It’s becoming unquestionably evident that 2012 will be the year of D’Angelo.

Having recently announced his first European Tour in over 10 years, with dates in Amsterdam, Paris & London confirmed – the latest word from friend and long-time collaborator Questlove is that his new, long-awaited album is “97% done”. Speaking to Pitchfork, The Roots’ drummer says “for all intents and purposes, this album is the black version of [The Beach Boys'] Smile – at best, it will go down in the Smile/There’s a Riot Going On/Miles Davis’ On the Corner category”.

Yep.

He goes on to say: “There’s stuff on there I was amazed at, like new music patches [keyboard sounds] I’ve never heard before. I’d ask him “What kind of keyboard is that?” I thought it was some old vintage thing – but he builds his own patches. One song we worked on called ‘Charade’ has t his trombone patch that he re-EQ’d and then put through an envelope filter and then added a vibraphone noise on top and made a whole new patch out of it. He’s the only person I know that takes a Herbie Hancock approach, or a Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff – the two musicians/engineers who programmed all of Stevie Wonder’s genius-period stuff – approach. That’s the last time I ever heard somebody building patches. We’ll see if history is kind to it”.

Not entirely sure I could be any more excited about this. The return of D’Angelo is something I (along with many of you, I know) have dreamed about since Voodoo, but for the past 10 years, after a series of controversies and worrying reports – that dream seemed distant and unrealistic. But alas – the surprise resurfacing via a string of live dates has reignited all of our hopes and with this news now surfacing – all looks good. It sounds like this is actually happening.

The PB crew will be flying out to A’Dam to see D perform there, then skipping back to the big smoke to catch his Brixton show. We ready.

Tickets are still on sale. Go here.

Also – don’t forget The Roots’ new concept album undun is out December 5th. Pre-order here.

So, according to the dinosaurs on the Grammy panel, Rihanna’s Loud album was a better, more complete body of work than Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and thus hers was nominated for ‘Album of the Year’ and his wasn’t.

I’ll let that one simmer for a second.

I mean, really – what is this? Year after year the Grammy Awards subject us to some type of fuckery (last year Janelle Monae was parr’d, ridiculously) but this is unforgivable and extremely hard to fathom. I can’t work out their process here, I understand it’s an extensive panel made up of experts across the music industry, but how would any Rihanna album beat off any Kanye West album? What universe is this? They best pray the dude decides to skip this years ceremony – you all remember the VMA’s, right?

In any case, let me get back to reporting this news – the 2012 Grammy Nominations were announced last night and as ever the full list is rather lengthy, but peep some of the more PB relevant ones after the jump.

… Adele continues to represent, massive congrats to her and XL.

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Yes. Yes. YES.

It was bound to happen, wasn’t it. While most people leaked with excitement on hearing hype machine’s very own golden child, Frank Ocean was performing in London, I held my girlish excitement.

Since the Amsterdam date was announced, I could only hope the Godfather would bless our capital city. Answered prayers and ecstatic screams later, it has been announced that D’Angelo will be at the Brixton Academy come February 3rd.

PSA: Tickets go on sale 9am Friday 25th November here. Until then, I will proceed to listen to his two albums, watch this (Damn, he gets me everytime!)and wait.

We’re off to the Neverlands…!

PinBoard is delighted to be teaming up with the Buma Rotterdam Beats Festival this year as official media partners. The three day event (November 17th-19th) focuses on the newest and most exciting developments in contemporary music today. Specialising in Hip Hop, R&B, Soul, Reggae, Dubstep and through a series of live showcases/gigs/workshops and industry insider conferences – it looks to explore both the art and business behind music today.

Acts performing include our very own Szjerdene, Stacey Barthe, Charles Bradley, Pete Philly and a whole host of others.

We’ll be representing the LDN at a industry insider conference which aims to explore the progression and dominance of blogs on today’s music industry. We’ll be talking about the impact online music platforms have had, the way in which we curate our content and much more along side an impressive round table consisting of Okayplayer (US), Juice Magazine (DE), Spash Magazine (DE) and Puna (NL).

Go to the Buma Rotterdam Beats Festival website for the full low-down and lineup. It’s pretty dope. And keep it locked here for more updates. Also, follow us @PinBoardBlog / @PinBoardFilm for some real-time action too.