Music News LIVE: Ray BLK tops Sound of 2017 list

Whoever you are.

It's New Music Friday so let's have a look at a new music video shall we?

This one comes courtesy of another US songstress NJM, as she wanders around Berlin declaring her undying love for somebody or other.

Its pretty dark stuff, she even boasts about having been deliberately burnt with cigarettes, not a practice we would recommend.

Still in Love with you is taken from her debut album Only In My Mind, which is out now, and Norma Jean will play a couple of stripped-back acoustic shows at the Servant’s Jazz Quarters in Dalston, London on 11 January and 8 February.

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Now Adele has admitted to being "a bit obsessed" with her and has even called her a "goddess" (high praise indeed from the UK queen of pop).

So she'll be pleased with the news that American bluegrass/country songstress Alison Krauss is back with a brand new track.

Losing You is the first song from her new solo album Windy City which is out on 3 March.

Many of you will remember her from her Grammy-award winning album Raising Sand, which she collaborated on with Led Zep legend Robert Plant.

Now here she is on her own...singing about her car keys.  We think.

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The winner of the BBC's Sound of 2017, Ray BLK is an avid vinyl fan and so our music reporter Mark Savage has quizzed her on her three favourite albums.

If you want to find out what they are, you can watch the Facebook Live video.

She also talks about her love for Kendrick Lamar and even spits a few bars, courtesy of Ludacris.

The Shins have announced their first album in four years.

The follow-up to 2012's Port of Morrow, their fifth studio, Heartworms, will be released on 10 March.

The band previously released another new song Dead Alive for Halloween.

Singer James Mercer has said Name For You, the first track to be shared from the new record, is a female empowerment song which has been inspired by his three daughters.

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Well, this is a tricky one - there have been rumours abound all week that arty electronic band The KLF are coming back after two decades aayf.

For those too young to remember, the duo - Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond - had a string of hits in the early 90s, such as What Time is Love and Justified and Ancient and, as the Timelords - Doctorin' the Tardis.

Then in, 1992, the band and thrash punk group Extreme Noise Terror performed a live version of their song 3 a.m. Eternal, culminating in a kilted, cigar-chomping Drummond firing blanks from an automatic weapon into the crowd.

A voice over the PA system announced "The KLF have now left the music business" and later in the evening the band dumped a dead sheep at the entrance to one of the post-ceremony parties.

They also burned a million pounds on a remote Scottish island.

Could you see James Bay or Ed Sheeran doing any of that? 

At the beginning of the week, a montage video got people excited but Drummond said, in a statement: "Jimmy and I have always remained very close but we have no plans to reform the KLF or exploit our back catalogue in any way".

Now, a cryptic poster in London seems to suggest they are back from their self-imposed exile.

The poster seems to promise some kind of new work in August but adds "the Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu have no interest in anything that seeks to comment on, bounce off, glorify, debunk or resurrect their historical work."

We'll find out in just over six months.

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The director of Fabric has said he can't be happy despite the Lodnon nightclub re-opening this weekend.

It faced closure after Islington Council took away the venue's licence in September after several drugs-related deaths, saying it had a "culture of drug use".

The club is opening with a series of stricter anti-drug and security rules.

However Cameron Leslie has told Newsbeat: "I don't think there's any kind of pleasure or relief that we've reached this point."

Some of you ravers below tend to disagree.  

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Stonehenge.

Where the dew drops cry and the cats meow / I will take you there, I will show you how.

Until now, only Spinal Tap have ventured a guess as to what the ancients druids of south-west England were up to when the ancient rock structure was erected.

Now, after spending years researching what the music and sounds could have been like 5,000 years ago, a group of music academics have created a soundtrack for a new immersive app designed to answer those questions.

Not to be controversial but we kind of prefer David St Hubbins' image of Stonehenge...where the demons dwell, where the banshees live and they do live well...

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Now you wouldn't know it from that smile but it's not been a great 2017 so far for US gospel singer Kim Burrell.  In fact that could be the under-statement of the year so far.

Earlier this week we told you how the singer had found herself suddenly uninvited as a guest on the Ellen DeGeneres talk show after a video emerged online of her calling gay people 'perverted' at her church in Houston.  

Now, Burrell's weekly radio show Bridging the Gap, which goes on Texas Southern University's KTSU-FM has been biffed too.

Read more.

So, now we know who the BBC's pollsters have named as the Sound of 2017.

We saw (scroll down) how 22-year-old South Londoner Ray BLK reacted on Twitter to the breaking news that she's officially on top.

Sweet, right? But here's how she actually reacted when she was told for the first time...

Street cred 0...sheer loveability 10!

And Ray seems to be a popular choice so far. After all she's been 'nang' for a while don't you know.

It's a fair question.  Presumably to promote the show?

Former Take That star Gary Barlow tells Radio 2's Sara Cox about singing in the shower topless for the opening of his new Saturday night TV boy band talent show series Let It Shine which starts this weekend.

Don't forget to scrub behind your ears while you're singing Gaz.

Listen below.

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Next Tuesday, 10 January, marks a year since the death of David Bowie.

Now, a new documentary, which is being screened this weekend, claims the singer only learned his cancer was terminal three months before he died.

David Bowie: The Last Five Years reveals that the singer found out his treatment was to be stopped as he made the music video for Lazarus.

The video's director Johan Renck said: "I found out later that the week we were shooting is when he found out that it is over...we'll end treatment or whatever capacity that means, that his illness has won."  

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Directed by Francis Whately, the new BBC documentary is a follow-up to David Bowie: Five Years, which was broadcast in 2013.  

The new film airs on BBC Two on Saturday and covers the period of Bowie's A Reality Tour as well as the last four years of his life.

Here's a snippet below of guests Tony Visconti, Bowie's long-time producer and his band, explaining how recording sessions with the great man himself would go.

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The aforementioned Ed Sheeran is a Suffolk boy, hailing from Framlingham and now his local festival Latitude is set return to Henham Park, Southwold this summer having applied to boost its capacity by 5,000 to nearly 40,000.

The three-day festival, now in its 13th year, includes comedy, theatre and poetry as well as major music acts and has become known as a "middle class" festival.

Speaking in 2006, founder Melvin Benn said he was launching Latitude as a festival with a "genteel, less manic feel" with around 10,000 people in attendance.

But that figure could quadruple by this summer and the public have until the beginning of February to comment on the application.

Read more.

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Yesterday we brought you Twin Atlantic's rendition of Kings of Leon in the Live Lounge but now another great cover (get it?) has been named as the best album artwork of last year.

And while you may know that Alex Turner and Miles Kane's plaything The Last Shadow Puppets released their second studio album Everything You've Come To Expect in 2016, did you know that the front cover (above left) featured a 1969 image of a young Tina Turner?

Nope, neither did we, but the above image (left) beat the artwork for David Bowie's final release Blackstar (above right) to the prize, which is ran by Art Vinyl and voted for by the public.

As far as we know Alex and Tina are not related.

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Mark Pritchard's photo landscapes for his Under the Sun record came third.

The announcement follows news that vinyl sales topped three million last year - the highest UK total in 25 years.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38519733

Getty ImagesCopyright: Getty Images

Now, unless you have just got up or have somehow managed to avoid the internet and any social media this morning, you will already know that Ed Sheeran has marked the end of his year off by releasing not just one but two new songs.

Castle on the Hill, which channels the spirit of U2 and cool club number Shape of You were debuted on Radio 1's Breakfast show earlier.

Ed popped into the studio and revealed that the latter track could have gone to Rihanna.

Presenter Scott Mills reaction here below, a slightly lovelorn sounding 'wow' pretty much well captures the reaction of listeners.

Look, we could go on but you get the general gist. Ed's back and people seem to be happy.

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Press AssociationCopyright: Press Association

Hola amigos.

We've made it through the first working week of the year (well almost).  How was it for you?

Ed Sheeran is in the BBC this morning so we'll have news of brand new music from him and find out who beat David Bowie to the 2016's best album artwork.  

We'll give you a clue... it features a young Tina Turner.

Later this morning we'll tell you who has topped the prestigious BBC Music Sound of 2017 list and then this afternoon 5 Things We've Learnt This Week which will hopefully give us all some early reasons to be cheerful for 2017.

We're gonna get a brew, but while we do check out yesterday's Music News LIVE for news of Diplo, Chris Brown, Rag 'N' Bone Man and last year's best-selling debut artist Bradley Walsh.  Yes, you read that correctly.

Ok, vamos.