While We Were Out: NIN, Feist/Tweedy, Animal Collective, T.I., Lil Wayne

Rivers Cuomo, Julian Casablancas, Decemberists, Michael Jackson, and more While We Were Out: NIN, Feist/Tweedy, Animal Collective, T.I., Lil Wayne

Photo via I Can Has Cheezburger?

Happy New Year! After a two week break, Pitchfork News is back in full swing for 2010. Of course, plenty of music news happened while we were out stuffing our faces with holiday meals/lying on the beach in the tropics/partying with Girl Talk (and his house!) on New Year's Eve. Here's a round up of some notable items, including news about Trent Reznor, Feist and Jeff Tweedy, Animal Collective's Deacon, T.I., Lil Wayne, Rivers Cuomo, Julian Casablancas, the Decemberists, Michael Jackson, Mos Def and Gorillaz, Real Estate and Woods, and many more.

-- Sticking with his assertion that the "end" of Nine Inch Nails really meant the end of Nine Inch Nails as a touring entity, Trent Reznor announced on December 23 that the new year will bring new NIN music. Writing on the NIN website, he said, "2010 has a number of things planned including new material from nine inch nails and something else that isn't nine inch nails. I am in a state of rediscovery and reinvention that feels unfamiliar, unsure and exactly what I need."

-- In the latest installment of Beck's Record Club series, Feist and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy duet on a cover of Skip Spence's "Broken Heart". Watch the video here.

-- Later this week, Animal Collective's Josh Dibb (previously known as "Deakin", now known as "Deacon") is headed to Africa to perform at the Festival in the Desert in Mali. In early December, he started a Kickstarter page to raise funds for the trip, with contributors receiving a limited edition book and/or CD. Just before Christmas, the mission of the Kickstarter page changed. Deacon's trip would be funded by Animal Collective's label, Paw Tracks, and the money would go to the Malian charity TEMEDT, which fights for the rights of black Tuareg people. Deacon also played his first solo show ever, on January 1 at the Ottobar in Baltimore. Check out audio and photos from the show over at Bmore Musically Informed.

-- It was a busy couple of weeks for interactions between hip-hop stars and the police. The New York Times reports that on December 22, T.I. was released from federal prison and sent to a halfway house in Atlanta. T.I. had been locked up since May on illegal weapons possession charges. He will be in the halfway house for three months. Lil Wayne, who is expected to go to prison in February on weapons charges, was detained by Border Patrol agents in Texas on December 18, after marijuana was found on his two tour buses, MTV reports. Wayne was not arrested, and though other members of his entourage received citations, Wayne did not. According to Billboard, Kid Cudi was handcuffed and held at gunpoint by the LAPD while conducting a photo shoot for NME in Los Angeles on December 21. However, Cudi was released quickly, after the police realized they had the wrong guy. (On a related note, Cudi makes his big-time acting debut in the HBO series "How to Make it in America", which premieres on February 14.) And finally, on January 1, producer Shawty Redd, who has worked with Gucci Mane, Snoop Dogg, and Young Jeezy, was arrested for murder in Hampton, Georgia, reports The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (via the Daily Swarm).

-- Weezer's Rivers Cuomo, who has been known to collaborate with fans in the past, gave the masses another piece of music to tinker with while he recuperates from a December tour bus crash. He posted a demo on Indaba, asking folks "to produce a better demo of the music," before he adds lyrics. "I'll pay you $208," he added. On his Indaba profile, Cuomo wrote, "Look for the finished production next year on my debut Japanese album, ザクマモトキッド." (Apparently, that translates as "The Kumamotokiddo.")

-- Julian Casablancas announced an East Coast tour, debuted the video for "11th Dimension", and performed the "Saturday Night Live" song "I Wish It Was Christmas Today" with Jimmy Fallon, Horatio Sanz, the Roots, and, um, a feather in his hair on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon".

-- Three members of the Decemberists (Chris Funk, Jenny Conlee, and Nate Query), along with two others (Analisa Tornfelt and John Neufeld) have formed the experimental bluegrass band Black Prairie. Black Prairie will release their debut album on Sugar Hill Records early this year. Funk has also launched You Who, a series of shows in Portland, Oregon, in which indie rock bands perform for kids. The Decemberists and Quasi kicked the series off, with Blitzen Trapper, Explode Into Colors, and the Builders and the Butchers set to perform in the coming months.

-- Spike Lee's video for Michael Jackson's posthumous single "This Is It" features archival footage of Jackson throughout his life, scenes from Jackson's hometown of Gary, Indiana, and memorial tributes to Jackson.

-- Nick Thorburn of Islands has teamed up with Ryan Kattner (aka Honus Honus) of Man Man have started a new band together, Spinner reports. The band doesn't have a name yet, but they've already coined a new genre to describe its music: "doom-wop." Thorburn tells Spinner, "We won't release a proper record necessarily. We're probably going to release all the tracks on the Internet at the same time, do something forward-thinking."

-- In an interview with DJ Semtex (via Nah Right), Mos Def spills a few details about his contributions to the new Gorillaz album. Mos says he plays a character named Sun Moon Stars, and appears on three songs, including "Sweepstakes", which he calls "one of the greatest things as an MC that I've ever done."

-- Real Estate and Woods will hit the road together in March for a tour of the Eastern half of the U.S. Brooklyn/New Jersey lo-fi extravaganza!

-- Andrew Bird and David Byrne are among the lecturers at the TED2010 conference, taking place in Long Beach, California February 9-13. Other speakers include Bill Gates, Sarah Silverman, and Elie Wiesel.

-- In addition to Vic Chesnutt and Rowland S. Howard, the past two weeks also brought the deaths of original Organized Konfusion DJ Omega Supreme, Big Brother and the Holding Company guitarist James Gurley, and Remy Zero drummer Gregory Slay.

Posted by Amy Phillips on January 4, 2010 at 3 a.m.

Tags: Animal Collective, Black Prairie, Deacon, Gorillaz, Islands, Julian Casablancas, Kid Cudi, Legal, Lil Wayne, Man Man, Michael Jackson, Mos Def, Obituary, Real Estate, Record Club, Rivers Cuomo, T.I., The Decemberists, Trent Reznor, video, Woods