Music News & Notes

Gibson Guitars Raided Over Alleged Use Of Rare Madagascan Timber
Their Tennessee HQ is stormed...

Gibson Guitars is under investigation in the US for allegedly using illegal wood to make their instruments. Federal agents stormed Gibson's headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee on suspicion of the company using threatened Madagascan rosewood smuggled in via Germany.

The search took place under the Lacey Act which seeks to hinder trafficking of illegal wildlife, plants and fish. The US Fish and Wildlife Service seized a variety of items including wood, computers, files and guitars from Gibson HQ.

A statement from Gibson Guitars reads: "(We are) fully cooperating with agents of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as it pertains to an issue with harvested wood".

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Arctic Monkeys Planning New Album

Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders has revealed the band have already begun working on ideas for a follow-up to this year’s album ‘Humbug‘.

Speaking to BBC6 Music, Helders said: “We’re already talking about when we can record again, but I still enjoy being on tour as well. It’s good to have time to work stuff out, then at least you can start doing the quality control before and actually record what you think is decent, rather than recording hundreds of songs to then find out you only like 10 of them.”

It remains to be seen as to whether the new tracks will continue the harder sound that dominated their third album, which was produced in part by Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme.

The Sheffield band are currently on a large UK arena tour and recently completed two sold-out shows at London’s Wembley Arena, playing a set which relied heavily on songs from their new album.

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Spoon Reveal First Transference Dates

Spoon's next album, Transference, is due January 25 in Europe via Anti- and January 26 in North America via Merge. And in the coming months, lucky folks in the U.S. and Europe will get a chance to hear Spoon play some of these songs live. Spoon's catalog of spiky new wave jams is already pretty huge, and they've always been totally smooth and on-point onstage, so you're pretty much guaranteed a good night out if you hit up one of these shows.

Spoon:

12-03 Kansas City, MO - Midland Theatre
12-04 Boston, MA - Orpheum Theatre #
12-11 Portland, OR - Crystal Ballroom *
12-12 La Jolla, CA - RIMAC Arena
12-31 Milwaukee, WI - Riverside Theatre !
02-14 Glasgow, Scotland - King Tut's
02-15 Manchester, England - Academy 3
02-16 London, England - Electric Ballroom
02-18 Amsterdam, Netherlands - Paradiso
02-19 Cologne, Germany - Luxor
02-20 Berlin, Germany - Frannz Club

# with Phoenix, Passion Pit
* with Black Joe Lewis
! with Jay Reatard