A bedroom producer named Reark claims he was the beat-maker behind ‘Natalia’s Song’ by Zomby, the lead single to his 2011 album, Dedication. In a post to his Soundcloud profile, Reark uploaded his original track and broke the backstory into bulletpoints:

1. I wrote this loop back in October 2007, entirely by myself, posting it on myspace.

2. Zomby, with whom I was communicating, hears the loop and offers to collaborate to finish it. I agree and send him the original Reason song file + Rex file of the vocals.

3. Zomby posts the loop on his myspace without crediting me, I complain, he takes it down.

4. In the next months Zomby suggests where the track might get released. I continue to remind him that it’s a collaboration.

5. Without my knowledge, a slightly revised version is aired by Mary Anne Hobbs on Radio 1, you can hear Zomby’s revised drum variation from 1:06 — 1:36. This is the only significant change he’s made to the track. The rest is looping, and some slight editing of the vocal cuts.

6. The track gets released on 4AD in May 2011, I notice in August 2011. I complain first to Zomby with no effect, then to 4AD, to whom I send this loop plus an e-mail sent from me to Zomby with the original Reason song file from October 2007. 4AD accept my evidence and change credits to include my name.

Zomby has been vague in interviews when asked about the vocal sample. The singer is Natalia Ladygina (hence the name of the track), a Russian friend of mine. She is singing a cover of Irina Dubcova’s song ‘O nem’. I have other samples of her, so you can expect to hear more of her in the future.

In response, Zomby tweeted: “Allow it I have thousands of songs its minor”

Judge for yourself here:

The original:

Zomby’s 2011 version:

SENSITIVE lover Drake has been announced as headlining the second night of this year’s Wireless Festival in London.

The Grammy-nominated musician tops a Saturday bill also featuring sets from Example, Professor Green and Wiz Khalifa.

Meanwhile Rihanna will be doing her rude-gal thing on Sunday night, following performances from Calvin Harris and Jessie J.

Friday’s headliner is yet to be announced. Wireless takes place July 6-8 in Hyde Park. Visit the website for ticket info.

Picture: Alan Lomax, left, with youngster during Bahamas recording expedition

Around 17,000 tracks comprising ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax’s phenomenal folk music archive will be made available for streaming at the end of this month, the New York Times reports.

Lomax’s field recordings of folk music styles from across the globe helped bring the talents of artists like Muddy Waters and Woddie Guthrie to the attentions of the wider world, but the Texas-born archivist had ideas diametrically opposed to your typical A&R:

“We now have cultural machines so powerful that one singer can reach everybody in the world and make all the other singers feel inferior because they’re not like him,” runs one famous quote. “Once that gets started, he gets backed by so much cash and so much power that he becomes a monstrous invader from outer space, crushing the life out of all the other human possibilities. My life has been devoted to opposing that tendency.”

Ten years after Lomax’s death, the ‘Global Jukebox’ he envisioned in the latter part of his life will become a reality as some some 5,000 hours of sound recordings, 400,000 feet of film, 3,000 videotapes, 5,000 photographs and piles of manuscripts, much of which will have only been seen by a very few, will become available.

In addition, the Global Jukebox imprint will digitally release a 16-recording sampler titled The Alan Lomax Collection From the American Folklife Center comprising material from across his career.

There’s a wonderful photo archive already online over at the Library of Congress website, and you can get a feel for some of Lomax’s work with the picture and music gallery below.

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“Lightnin’” Washington, an African American prisoner, singing with his group in the woodyard at Darrington State Farm, Texas

‘Hammer Ring’ (Lightnin’ Washington & Group)

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Prison compound no. 1, Angola, Louisiana. Leadbelly (Huddie Ledbetter) in the foreground. Lomax and his father, John, helped Ledbetter beat an attempted murder rap after agreeing to make a record of his petition on the other side of one of his favorite ballads, ‘Goodnight Irene’, and present it to the local governor. Said Lomax Jr of his subsequent pardon: “I was sitting in a hotel in Texas when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked up and there was Leadbelly with his guitar, his knife, and a sugar bag packed with all his earthly belongings. He said, ‘Boss, you got me out of jail and now I’ve come to be your man.’”

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Legendary bluesman Blind Willie McTell, with 12-string guitar, hotel room, Atlanta, Ga.

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James Baker (Iron Head), Sugar Land, Texas

‘Black Betty’ (James Baker)

A sign-language interpretation of Gnarls Barkley’s smash hit ‘Crazy’ has been removed from YouTube at Warner Music Group’s insistence that it constitutes a copyright violation – roundly ignoring the fact that most people viewing the clip won’t actually be able to hear any copyrighted content. As media blog TechDirt have pointed out, this is appalling on various levels – especially since the video certainly constitutes fair use.

The video has since been re-uploaded, spliced together with the song, and made available on Vimeo. Catch it while you still can:

Signs of [Crazy]: an ASL Interpretation from Nina Paley on Vimeo.

Desert Island Discs, a stalwart of the BBC radio schedule, celebrated its landmark 70th anniversary on Sunday morning.

Its premise is simple: a well-known public figure is marooned on a desert island and they have to choose eight pieces of music, one luxury item and a book (plus the complete works of Shakespeare and a Bible or its equivalent) to take with them to pass the time. Who’d have thought that this unassuming idea could go on to become the longest-running factual show in radio history?

Devised by Roy Plomley late in 1941 and first aired in January 1942, Desert Island Discs may be a simple construction, but it’s deceptively deep. Over the years, guest’s music choices have reaped such personal revelations as Yoko Ono’s claims that she almost aborted John Lennon’s son Sean, or Norman Mailer’s choice of luxury item being “a stick of the very best marijuana I could find”.

The most popular musical choices over the past seven decades are Beethoven’s ‘Symphony No. 9 in D minor’ and Rachmaninoff’s ‘Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor’, but other choices cover Bob Dylan’s ‘My Back Pages’ to the call of a Lyre Bird in Australia.

But the reason Desert Island Discs has remained such an icon of British broadcasting is that it’s largely the same show it was 70 years ago. Aside from the inclusion of a book and a luxury item in 1951, Roy Plomley’s concept still remains the same — even the theme song, Eric Coates’ ‘By The Sleepy Lagoon’, is unchanged.

But there has been one change. Following the death of Plomley in 1985, the show has had just three long term presenters: Michael Parkinson, Sue Lawley and Kirsty Young, and all three have allowed Plomley’s legacy to continue.

And now, 70 years on, it’s still not showing any signs of stopping.

MIA will perform with Madonna and Nicki Minaj at next month’s Super Bowl in Indianapolis, the ‘Paper Planes’ singer has confirmed.

The singer told Zane Lowe in a Radio 1 interview last night: “Yes, I’m going to the Super Bowl… I’m gonna be performing with Madonna and Nicki Minaj… If you’re gonna go to the Super Bowl, you might as well go with America’s biggest female icons.”

It’s hard not to feel disappointed with that quote, isn’t it?

MIA and Minaj both feature on Madonna’s forthcoming single, ‘Give Me All Your Luvin’, slated for release on February 3. It’s the first single to be taken from Madonna’s forthcoming album MDNA, which is out on March 26 through Interscope Records.

During the interview, MIA also spoke about her next solo album — her first for Mercury after parting ways with XL — saying that she’s working on it with “European producers” and that she wants it to be released in the summer. “I want it to be a summer thing,” she said, “because it’s a summer record.”

The London star’s fourth record is rumoured to feature contributions from Swizz Beatz, Cataracs and — please God no — Chris Brown.

‘Bad Girls’, a track from MIA’s Vicki Leekx mixtape re-recorded by US producer Danja in Miami, is the first track confirmed to appear on the record. Check it out below, along with some footage of Madonna bossing MIA about in the studio:

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The Wedding Present are to play their classic, not-quite-as-good-as-George-Best 1991 album Seamonsters in full at one of two free concerts that will open and close the Primavera Sound festival this summer.

The festival, which last year arguably offered the best line-up of the summer, takes place from May 30 to June 3 in Barcelona, with the main three-day event bookended by two free open-air concerts under the banner of Primavera a la Ciutat.

These gigs will take place in central Barcelona, next to the Arc de Triomf (think the Arc de Triomphe but made out of brick and surrounded by palm trees), on Wednesday May 30 and Sunday June 3, with French soundtrack specialist Yann Tiersen and Spain’s own Nacho Vegas joining the bill. More details on the line up are expected later this week.

Sonar organisers made the announcement as they officially launched Primavera 2012 at a press conference in Barcelona today.

While most of the Primavera line up had already been released — it includes The Cure, Bjork and Wilco — there were a few new names announced today, including St Etienne, reformed Swedish punks Refused, Rufus Wainwright, Benga (live), SBTRKT, Hype Williams, local hero John Talabot live and Big Star’s Third.

The latter will see a line up that includes former REM-er Mike Mills, Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor, Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan, Teenage Fanclub’s Normal Blake and Big Star’s own Jody Stephens recreate Big Star’s classically painful third album, Third. Hankies are advised.

As in previous years, the main event will take place in the Forum, on the outskirts of the city but — crucially — next to the sea, with stages from the likes of All Tomorrow’s Parties, Vice Magazine and Pitchfork, as well as Primavera Pro, for music business types.

Organisers also gave out some stats about last year’s Primavera: in total 226 artists played and 173,000 people attended the 2011 festival — of which 60% where from outside of Barcelona.

The majority of these were from England, as will surely come as no surprise to anyone who was forced to listen to their friends go on and on endlessly about how sunny Primavera was as they contemplated another rainy Reading.

But Brits attending this year should not fear the cold shoulder. Primavera rolled out two local business bigwigs in the shape of Fèlix Riera and Jaume Ciurana to tell us all about how important Primavera is for Barcelona both culturally and economically.

Which is something to remember this summer when you’re sunburned, hungover and contemplating a full English breakfast.

A poker-playing music biz exec gave $1.5 million to a doorman and chauffeur in his will, reports the New York Post.

Late Wind-Up Records boss Alan Meltzer (pictured above, bottom right) left the money to two of his workers as reward for their friendship after his wife left him.

“I don’t know what to do exactly with the money, but one thing I know for sure — every year, I’m going to bring the guy some flowers at his grave,’’ said chauffeur Jean Laborde, who received $1 million — or 10 per cent of his boss’s $10 million estate.

“He was always joking. He never looked down on anybody,’’ said Laborde, a 54-year-old father of five from New Jersey. “He was such a nice guy. He left me money, but it’s not a good deal for me because it means he’s no longer here.’’

Meanwhile doorman Chamil Demiraj trousered about $500,000 from the label boss, whose Wind-Up signings included Evanescence and Creed.

“I appreciate it,” Demiraj said. “He was a generous guy. He was a really good friend of mine, and I was a good friend of his. It’s a surprise. Peace and rest to him. That’s all I can say.”

The 67-year-old ­— also a high-stakes celebrity poker player — died on Halloween, about a year after he and his wife, Diana, divorced after at least 13 years together and no kids.

The split cost his ex a guaranteed 33 per cent of his estate. Suffice to say, she was not a happy camper.

“He can leave it to whoever he wants to,” Diana told the paper. “I’m doing fine. I could care less.

“If he wants to give it to the bums, he can give it to the bums. He could fuck a nun. I couldn’t give a shit. He can give his money to whoever he wants. We’re divorced. The man is dead.”

To all those who say reunions are nothing more than nakedly cynical exercises in moneymaking — yes, but when there’s this many zeroes involved, the moral high ground suddenly looks like a pretty boring place to be.

What are we on about? The Stone Roses’ bassist Mani woke up to find nearly two million quid had been deposited in his bank account overnight, reports The Sun.

Mani had apparently nipped out to the corner shop for milk and bread, only to find a whopping £1.8m had been transferred into his account in advance of the band’s shows and world tour this summer.

On seeing the available funds, the ‘mad ferret’ muso made a beeline for his local boozer. Mani told pals back home in Stockport: “It’s madness. I only went out to buy milk and things.

“I went to the cashpoint and someone has stuck nearly £2million in while I wasn’t looking.

“The whole world’s gone crazy. I could have fallen over backwards when I saw the balance.”

The band announced they would be reforming last autumn, selling out 225,000 tickets for three summer dates at Manchester’s Heaton Park in just one hour — meaning the boys will have ‘renewed their friendships’ to the tune of about 12 million quid.

No wonder The Happy Mondays are following suit — Madchester’s number two sons have officially been announced as back, baby after ‘heavy negotiations’ at the Lowry Hotel in Salford, Manchester.

Feisty one you are — that’s the sound of us talking to the metaphysical concept of the Green Man Festival 2012, the first of whose headliners has been announced as the lovely Lesley Feist.

The Canadian singer-songwriter (interviewed here) has been revealed as the first of three headlining acts for this year’s edition of the festival, which takes place August 17-19 in the picturesque heart of Wales’ Black Mountains.

More than 20 other additions to the bill have also been announced — see below for details. Tickets for the festy went on sale this morning at 9am and can be acquired here.

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The Walkmen
The Felice Brothers
Yann Tiersen
Jonathan Richman
Junior Boys
Damien Jurado
The Time & Space Machine (Live)
Cass McCombs
Scritti Polliti
Slow Club
Ghost Poet
Pete Paphides – Vinyl Revival
Peaking Lights
Dark Dark Dark,
Cashier No. 9
The Wave Pictures
Islet
Rocketnumbernine
Alt-J
Teeth of the Sea
The Perch Creek Family Jug Band
Richard Warren
Goodnight Lenin
Sweet Baboo
Alaska