New York trio Violens release their debut album Amoral on November 2 via Friendly Fire. The self-recorded, self-produced and self-mixed album showcases the driving first single “Acid Reign,” available for free on their website. Also free is a summer mixtape featuring “Space Around The Feel Station” with Washed Out.

After touring with MGMT, Grizzly Bear, and Deerhunter, the guys are hitting the road on a tour of their own playing dates in the U.K. They also have a few shows in New York City, including CMJ.

We caught up with the guys long before they set a release date, and they told us about their contemporaries and finding their sound.

Flying Lotus, Modeselektor, Carl Craig, Pantha Du Prince, Theo Parrish and Gold Panda are just a few of the names playing Seattle’s Decibel Festival September 22-26. Nearly 100 musicians will play the fest at venues in the city’s Capital Hill neighborhood–here’s a map to get you started.

Founded in 2003, Decibel Festival showcases local and international electronic music and technology via shows, workshops, panel discussions and visual art. Tickets for individual showcases can be purchased as well as complete festival passes.

Farm Aid is about as American as bad bangs and hair spray, spurious lawsuits, denim overalls and apple pie.

Created 25 years ago by Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp to raise awareness and funds for family farms struggling to keep their hard-won patches of land, it’s still going strong with all the cheesy, back-slapping fun (plus an undertone of whiskey-tinged melancholy) also found in their music. So far, the boys have raised $37 million.

This year, Farm Aid is diversifying its lineup at its 25th anniversary show at Milwaukee’s Miller Park on October 2. Kenny Chesney, Norah Jones, Jason Mraz, Jeff Tweedy, Band of Horses, The BoDeans, Amos Lee and Robert Francis join Farm Aid board members Nelson, Young, Mellencamp and Dave Matthews, who joined the Farm Aid board in 2001.

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To mark its 20th anniversary, London-based label Ninja Tune will release a box set featuring over 100 songs on October 5th, as well as limited edition vinyl, posters and a book titled “Ninja Tune: 20 Years of Beats and Pieces.” Select tracks from the box set are streaming at the label’s Soundcloud page, and new mp3s will be given away each week here.

There will also be several anniversary events in Europe, Japan and the U.S. Amon Tobin, Kid Koala, DJ Food, Ghislain Poirier, Toddla T, DJ Kentaro, Eskmo and Ghostbeard play Santo’s in New York City on October 28, while Cut Chemist joins in place of Poirier at the Echo in Los Angeles on October 30.

Many musicians have called Ninja Tune home over the years, including Roots Manuva, Coldcut, Up, Bustle and Out and UI interviewee Daedelus, who tells us about how he stumbled upon his first song, and who later sampled it.

Looking back on my glory days (?) of high school, I must thank Buddha, Thor, Jesus and all other deities for my luck. Facebook didn’t exist and the Internet was still undergoing developmental hurdles in Al Gore’s brain. There is no public record of my zany get-ups or my hair “style”–one that resembled a large, misshapen and oddly colored tumble weed.

Taylor Momsen has not been granted such blissful anonymity. So, we, the public, have been blessed with the bemusing fruits of her painful public adolescence–the eating disorder rumors, the chain-smoking, the fashion pratfalls, the ridiculous statements, the romantic entanglements.

Momsen, who got her start as a wee toddler in Shake ‘n Bake commercials at age three went on to reach teeny-bopper fame in the WB’s Gossip Girl. But not until her band, the aptly named The Pretty Reckless, re-staged The Last Supper (yes, the one involving the aforementioned Jesus) in the music video for “Miss Nothing” did she reach the apotheosis of poly-irony.

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Often described as rock ‘n’ roll camp for adults, All Tomorrow’s Parties is upon us once again, curated this year by filmmaker Jim Jarmusch. Iggy and The Stooges, Mudhoney, The Breeders, Sonic Youth, Sun 0))), Raekwon, and several others will be playing all over the famed Kutsher’s resort in upstate New York during Labor Day weekend, September 3-5.

On top of music performances there’s also a comedy lineup, Criterion’s film screening, an art exhibition, music trivia and the Steve Albini-manned card room.

A variety of ticket options are still available, including hotel and bus travel combinations. Although rooms at Kutsher’s have long been sold out, the fest is offering free shuttle service between several hotels in the area and the resort, where all the action takes place.

Mudhoney, former curators of the 2006 U.K. edition of the fest, describe their experience.

Remember when Sting was cool? It was a halcyon time when his former band, the Police, managed to balance the corporate, party-pooping mainstream musical success with tonal poems that embraced jazz, punk and reggae. You have to admit–Synchronicity still kicks ass.

But now that gramps is shamelessly cranking out pieces of atonal traif, even his most hardcore fans are holding their noses and trying not to titter.

One thing prevents him from being a laughingstock, however. Sting’s inner eco-warrior boasts a 900-acre estate in Tuscany, which was devoted to growing and selling organic food way before it was the hipster thing to do.

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