News: Alan Pownall, Coco Sumner, Metric, Divine Comedy, Court Yard Hounds

MBC Music News

Alan Pownall Makes Fearne Cry!
Last week, after playing Alan Pownall's rather luscious forthcoming single, "Colourful Day" on her Radio 1 show, Fearne Cotton admitted to her listeners that she blubbed the first time she heard the record. Bless her, um, cottons.

Coco and Sub Focus Beat The Chems
There's more Radio 1 news, with "Splash", the Sub Focus track on which our very own Coco Sumner, of I Blame Coco guests, came on top in the Radio 1 review show - getting 83% of the vote and beating the Chemical Brothers! Its prize was a play on the Greg James show. Good work, Coco!

Metric Kick Off New Twilight Soundtrack
Canadian clever-disco merchants, Metric, have joined the elite ranks of musicians deemed awesome enough to feature on the Twilight soundtracks. They join Florence and the Machine, Vampire Weekend and the Dead Weather on the soundtrack to the newest film in the series, Eclipse, contributing the title track "Eclipse (All Yours)", which has the honour of opening up the album. Co-written with Lord of the Rings composer Howard Shore, Emily Haines of the band says of the collaboration "I've always wanted to write music for film, but I never expected to start with something on this scale." The album is due out on June 8, 2010, and the film hits cinemas a few weeks later on the 30th.

Divine Comedy Take Over The Airwaves
Neil Hannon of Divine Comedy has been all over the wireless in advance of his spiffing new album, 'Bang Goes The Knighthood' - out May 31st. From 8pm today (May 17) he'll be playing a live session on the Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie show on Radio 2, playing the forthcoming single "At The Indie Disco" as well as a couple of other tunes. Then on Wednesday (May 19) he'll be appearing on Janice Long's show on the same station and later in the month he'll be showing up on the Jonathan Ross show. Over on 6Music, last week Neil popped up on Steve Lamacq's Roundtable to review the latest songs headed for the hit parade and he'll playing an acoustic session for Lauren Laverne in a couple of weeks as well.

Nick Tips Groove Armada
Nick Littlemore - of Empire of the Sun and Pnau - was a special guest speaker at The Great Escape down in Brighton at the weekend, and, wisely, was most excited about heading off to see Groove Armada. "Not just cos I was lucky enough to make part of the record with them, but 'cos they have managed to reinvent themselves in a dangerously hip way, but not in a hipster way, theirs are real songs that hit hard and deliver the night that you've been chasing half your life. Look no further."

The Return of Ronson
Mark Ronson is back, back, back, with a computer game inspired track - the bleep-tastic "Circuit Breaker". The tune has made its way onto YouTube, complete with Legend of Zelda style video that features synchronised slaying and tasty 16-bit clubbing scene.

Watch "Circuit Breaker" video:

Court Out There
The lovely Court Yard Hounds - Martie Maguire and Emily Robison of the Dixie Chicks - have been doing pretty damn well at home in the US of A, with their debut, self-titled album going into the Top Ten in its first week of release, selling 61,000 copies and hitting the No. 7 spot. The sisterly duo have also appeared on Good Morning America, The View, Late Night with David Letterman and Jimmy Fallon. The Americana inspired record - featuring a guest spot from Jakob Dylan - is out in the UK today. Here they are rocking through a rousing "Ain't No Son" on Letterman.

Watch "Ain't No Son" video:

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