The Bard’s Tale 4: Barrows Deep is only a few days away, drawing us back to the constantly endangered Skara Brae after a long hiatus. Slap your eyes on the launch trailer above for an overview of inXile’s dungeon crawler. 

The series itself kicked off 33 years ago, which isn’t really that long ago. I mean, I’m 33 and I’m a spring chicken and definitely not covered in grey hairs and full of aching bones. Definitely. The last proper game was 2004’s spoofy action-RPG, simply titled The Bard’s Tale. All of them are in the process of being remastered, starting with Tales of the Unknown; it launched last month. 

As for the new game, it’s going back to the series’ roots, dropping the action-RPG stuff for first-person dungeon crawling with a party of adventurers. Wes took the first few hours for a spin back in July and was particularly smitten with Bard’s Tale 4’s combat. 

“So far I love this combat system, which will probably be the most controversial element of The Bard's Tale 4's design. It's a far cry from the standard RPG menu of attack/defend/magic/item, with each character proceeding in turn. But even in just a few hours, there's a promising richness to this combat. I quickly found a strategy I liked: throwing down traps that stunned enemies when they were stepped on, then using my fighter's taunt to pull a unit forward onto that space.”

You’ll be able to return to Skara Brae on September 18.

Capcom has smooshed together seven arcade beat ‘em ups into one meaty bundle. The Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle was announced on the latest Nintendo Direct but is coming to PC as well as consoles. It’s the first time several of these games have been seen outside of arcade cabinets. 

The bundle contains Final Fight, Captain Commando, Battle Circuit, Knights of the Round, Warriors of Fate, Armored Warriors, and The King of Dragons. If, like me, you spent the early ‘90s in a wee village where the pub’s fruit machine was the closest you got to an arcade, some of these might be unfamiliar. 

If you can’t find three friends to join you on one of these brawling adventures, there’s online support; you can tweak the difficulty and adjust the settings to give you more lives; and if you’re a purist, you can play the Japanese versions of the games. 

Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle is due out on September 18.

The Culling is going back to the beginning. With the battle royale’s sequel now officially shelved, developer Xaviant has returned to its predecessor; today it relaunches as The Culling: Origins. If you played the original back in its early access days, it might be familiar. 

“When The Culling originally launched in March of 2016, it had an exciting, ‘anything goes’ approach to battle royale that was eventually sanded down over the course of many updates,” says Xaviant. “Origins brings back that special mojo by returning to the game’s roots, incorporating the spirit of Day 1 combat, perks, airdrops and overall gameplay.”

It’s a dramatic shift that’s also been accompanied by the move to free-to-play. That’s not the only difference, however; Origins has a new art direction, XP, levelling, leaderboards, new weapons and voice chat. And since it’s going free-to-play, of course it’s going to have some crates. 

Cull Crates are awarded when you level up and contain four cosmetic items or in-game currency. Credits can also be used to buy more of these crates. Crates (and premium items) can also be purchased with tokens that cost real cash, though they will also appear in crates occasionally. It’s doesn’t sound like a terrible implementation, and only DLC will be completely unattainable without dropping money. The DLC also won’t be gameplay-related; all of that will be free-to-play. 

If you owned the original, you’ll receive an ‘Original Gangster’ founder pack. Inside you’ll get some outfits, 1000 tokens, weapon skins, two Culling Cards and four Cull Crates. The pack will also be available as DLC that will cost the same as the pre-F2P version of The Culling. 

The Culling: Origins is due out on Steam today.

The strapline above practically wrote itself, didn't it? After adding CJ from GTA San Andreas to Lordran earlier this week, Dark Souls modder Drop0ff has introduced Link from The Legend of Zelda series—complete with their character model, audio and animations. 

Drop0ff this time partners with creator AinTunez to give us Hero of Twilight. As outlined on the project's Nexus Mod page, it replaces the Hard Leather Set "with Link's getup from Twilight Princess and adds Link's vocal shouts to player animations". This means you can play as the Zelda protagonist from the start of Dark Souls: Remastered. 

Warframe’s melee combat is getting a major revision, and it’s been a long time coming. It’s still some time away, thanks in part to a design change that the developers revealed today – and it looks like it’s worth the wait, as it will present a fast, fluid way of swapping between ranged and melee combat on a whim.

There’s going to be a quick melee attack that instantly allows you to strike, leaving you in melee stance. From there, you can either stay in melee or swap back to your gun instantly. This makes for a massive increase in combat speed, with a more fluid switch between attack types – exactly the sort of usability change this melee revamp is meant to provide.

That info comes as part of today’s devstream #116 (relevant part at 1:03:00), but it’s certainly not our first look at melee 3.0. Back in August, we saw improvements like being able to add heavy attacks to combos, and choosing where to strike on the ground with a heavy jump attack. The highlight, however, is the ability to do combo aerial attacks.

Aerial attacks do feature in Warframe, but they previously could not be comboed in the same way ground attacks could be – now players can do just that. Furthermore, as was pointed out on devstream #114 (roughly 33:00), this also means that players are able to ‘float’ for longer in the air and so reach higher areas or items.

Today’s stream also gave us a look at the K-Drives and Vent Kids coming in the next big Warframe expansion. The Fortuna release date is still some time away, set for an indeterminate time this fall, but you can follow that link for much more info on everything we know so far.

Warframe is getting extreme with the introduction of K-Drive hoverboards, and they’ll offer exactly the sort of sweet style you’d want want from a futuristic skateboard. You can earn deck art by gaining standing with the new faction, the Vent Kids, and you’ll naturally be grinding rep by grinding tricks, in what I’d like to describe as a sort of Tenno Hawk’s Pro Skater.

You’ll be able to enter K-Drive races in Fortuna, offering time trials along intricately designed courses, where you’ll be using mobility tricks like leans, grinds, and turbo to propel yourself into new areas. Oh, and a pertinent detail since the last time we saw the boards in action – they can hover over water, just as you’d expect them to. You’ll have 20 races to compete in at launch, and there’ll be daily missions to complete that will be rotated across the map.

These races will give you rep with the Vent Kids, who – naturally – can be found hidden in a vent. The kids are orphans of Fortuna, and form sort of a mini-faction you can interact with. Not only are they the ones hacking up Corpus tech to build the K-Drives, once you’ve built up rep with them they’ll offer custom deck art for your board.

For a much lengthier look at the Vent Kids and K-Drive in action, you can view today’s full dev stream below. The relevant bit begins at 17:45.

Smurfing means starting a new account in an online game so you can have an easy time as you’re matched against low-level players. It’s definitely a jerk move, but there’s some debate over whether or not it’s technically cheating. Well, now we have official word. Jeff ‘from the Overwatch team’ Kaplan says it’s not against the rules – as long as you play a certain way.

“Starting a new account is not against the rules,” Papa Jeff says. “Boosting or throwing is against the rules. If you start a new account and play normally, the matchmaker determines your skill level very quickly and matches you with similar players.”

That comes via the Battle.net forums. So as long as you’re playing on you’re own, legitimate account and not throwing games to stay in low ranks, you’re free to smurf all you want. Since you have to buy a new copy every time – at least on PC – I’m sure Blizzard doesn’t mind those efforts too much.

It’s probably appropriate that Blizzard has a laissez-faire approach to smurfing, since internet lore holds that the term came to online gaming with Warcraft II. Blizzard’s own old-school website says it’s “a slang term coined by Warp! and Shlonglor to mean good or famous players using fake names to hide from people then attempting to beat other players. It is only a ‘Smurf’ if those players win.”

Kaplan also recently discussed cross-platform Overwatch accounts on the boards, and how the team’s still trying to work out a solution for that tricky problem. More immediately, we now have the 1.28 patch with Busan to enjoy, finally letting us play the new map outside of test servers.

Xûr is Destiny 2’s Exotic gear merchant. He appears every weekend to sell the game’s most coveted items in exchange for Legendary shards, but if you’re a casual player with limited shards to spend, it can be hard to know which of his wares is most worth your investment. That’s where we come in.

Ever since the Curse of Osiris DLC, Xûr appears every Friday at 17:00 GMT (09:00 Pacific), and will stick around until the Tuesday reset. We’ll update this guide shortly after he arrives, so if you’re reading this, you need only read on to learn where he is, and which are the best items he’s selling this week.

That said, it’s worth noting that Xûr only ever appears in one of five locations within the EDZ, Titan, Nessus, Io, or The Tower, and that location will appear as an icon on your in-game director (look for the ‘IX’ numeral). So you could simply open the map, mark his icon, and follow the directional prompts in your HUD to track him down.

Xur is back at the EDZ this week, distributing his wares near Winding Cove. Set your waypoint to his marker on the world map. He is selling:

Sunshot, an Exotic energy hand cannon, for 29 legendary shards
Eye of Another World, an Exotic Warlock helmet, for 23 legendary shards
Graviton Forfeit, an Exotic Hunter helmet, for 23 legendary shards
Wormgod Caress, Exotic Titan gauntlets, for 23 legendary shards
A Fated Engram, which guarantees a non-duplicate Exotic, for 97 legendary shards.

Sunshot is an excellent hand cannon which you probably already have, because it’s available in the campaign and everyone has known how good it is for ages. It fires explosive rounds and will cause enemies it kills to explode. Together, these perks add up to enough splash damage to erase whole hordes of weak mobs, such as Hive Thrall and Cabal War Hounds, in just a couple of rounds. Magazine size isn’t great, but reload speed is fast enough to give plenty of uptime regardless. Pair with hand cannon reload perks for best results. If you somehow don’t have Sunshot, you should not only buy it if you have the shards, but you should probably grind for them if you don’t.

Eye of Another World is a Warlock helm that highlights priority targets – weak enemies in PvE and Guardians with charged Supers in PvP – but more importantly, it improves the regeneration speed of your grenade, melee, and rift abilities. According to YouTuber MTashed, the cooldown reduction is 10% – the same as a Legendary armour mod – in each case. That’s three cooldown reductions from just one helmet, which can itself take a mod. Hence Eye of Another World is probably the most helpful armour piece if you’re looking to build for fast ability recharging – consider the implications if you’re a Devour Voidlock. Pick this one up if you missed it in the story – as a bonus, it also looks badass.

Graviton Forfeit increases the duration of any invisibility effects, and will recharge your melee faster while you are invisible. The first perk is the key draw here – an invisible Hunter who is free to resurrect dead teammates can absolutely save your bacon. Now that Warlocks can’t self-res, a Nightstalker with Graviton Forfeit and an invis grenade is the best PvE insurance policy – though since everyone understands the raid at this point, we’d say Nightfall strikes are its best environment. The question is, is it better than Orpheus Rig? And the answer is ‘no’. The hilariously meta lore text adds a certain something, so we’d say it is worth owning if you have the shards, but there are certainly better Exotics out there.

Wormgod Caress offers the Burning Fists perk, which gives you increased melee damage after each melee kill, with further kills stacking both duration and effect. That’s not great in PvP, since melee can already be a one hit kill for Titans, but is pretty useful in both Gambit and PvE. Of course, you probably don’t need Xur for this, since it’s the reward for completing the Warmind campaign – chances are, it’s already in your inventory.

Analysts over at investment bank JP Morgan fear Intel’s chip shortage is only going to get worse going into Q4. Intel has been repeatedly hit by claims that it can’t produce enough 14nm CPUs to meet demand, largely due to a slowdown of node progression thanks to the tricky 10nm node, and, if the latest reports are to be believed, it’s not going to get any better this year.

Intel has been struggling to get its 10nm process node up-and-running to meet volume demand. That means more and more products – many years worth due to constant delays in fact – are instead wallowing around on the companies prolific 14nm process. That’s the same one used within the Coffee Lake CPUs, and almost every single 300-series motherboard chipset except Z370. It’s only going to get worse as the Z390 chipset is expected to launch on 14nm soon, too, along with a host of new Coffee Lake processors.

Intel’s shortage will reportedly be a huge issue for PC sales as the company heads into the busy holiday season. According to PC vendors, the shortage, which began in Q3, has been getting worse as the year goes on, and will be affecting Q4 worst of all.

“Our conversations with PC vendors indicate that the shortage, which started in small magnitude in 3Q, has been progressively worsening and is likely to have the maximum impact in 4Q18,” JP Morgan analyst Gokul Hariharan says. “We expect this to affect both notebook and desktop PCs and likely to have a higher impact on commercial and high-end consumer PCs, where using AMD or older Intel family of CPUs as substitutes are more difficult. ”

The shortage was previously rumoured to cool off as 2019 rolls around, but it’s not just internal supply issues Intel has had to contend with in the last few days. Intel also had to deny claims that it was considering outsourcing some production to rivals TSMC. The foundry currently deals with both Nvidia and AMD products, someday soon totally sweeping up AMD’s entire 7nm lineup, and was rumoured to have been roped in to aid Intel with its supply woes.

But Intel claims it will be investing in its own fabs instead, something I’m certain the company won’t want to do with 10nm on the way. However, since 10nm isn’t set to launch in notable numbers until holiday 2019, Intel may not have any other choice than to start putting money and effort back into its 14nm process and stay some of the strain currently on the fabs.

With Intel’s i9 9900K and i7 9700K launching, reportedly, relatively soon, these shortages could end up having an affect on stock levels for the Coffee Lake refresh chips and Z390 motherboards – both of which are manufactured on the 14nm process node. Whatever’s going on behind closed doors, it’s all playing into AMD’s hands.

PC is the best place to play Overwatch and no, we’re not at all biased. But if you want to play across multiple platforms – maybe your friends prefer consoles – you aren’t able to transfer your level progress or cosmetic unlocks between accounts. That’s frustrating if you’ve dumped your hours into one version and gathered a selection of favourite skins that you can’t use elsewhere, and Blizzard is “not crazy” about that either.

Addressing the lack of cross-platform progress on the forums, Jeff ‘from the Overwatch team’ Kaplan says the team is trying come up with a fix, but it’s a bigger challenge than it might seem. “We’re not crazy about that. We’re brainstorming solutions. It’s complicated…”

This came back up thanks to the Demon Hunter Sombra skin which, oddly enough, is available across platforms. If your Battle.net account is linked with your console profile, you’ll get the skin across both versions of the game – which raised some questions about why this isn’t possible more generally on the Battle.net forums.

That post echoes what we heard in our interview with Jeff Kaplan earlier this year, and it sounds like this a problem the Overwatch team has been looking to solve for quite some time.

“This is something that we have ongoing and frequent discussions about with our tech group,” Kaplan says. “It’s something we would very much like to explore. It’s very challenging for many reasons, and I won’t get into all the details as to why, but I think it’s a very valid desire that our players have and it’s something that the Overwatch team would love to figure out. We will continue to work hard on it to make it happen someday, if we can get around some of the challenges that we’re faced with.”

Cross-platform play is certainly unlikely for Overwatch, given how reliant the PC edition on precision controls, but apparently the cross-platform profile dream isn’t dead – but it may take awhile to come to life.

Brexit, Trump, Russian Collusion, Ed Miliband’s bacon sandwich – it’s been a busy few years in the world of politics. Which is quite literally why Positech Games, the developer of the Democracy series, is returning with the announcement of their new game, Democracy 4.

In a press release, Positech straight up says “Democracy 3 was released in 2013 and…quite a lot has happened in global politics since then, which we hope to reflect in the new version.” To give that some context, in 2013 neither ‘Brexit’ nor ‘Alt-Right’ were terms that had any worldwide relevance (according to Google). Obama was just starting his second term as president. Elsewhere in the world, China’s leader, now able to stand as president indefinitely, had just been elected, while Pope Benedict XI announced his surprising decision to step down from his role.

To reflect the way the world has changed since the release of the last game, Democracy 4 will be “completely updated to reflect modern issues.” That means some older features will be stripped out, but there’ll be plenty of new problems to worry about.

Most notably, those include “fake-news, social media, and other social phenomena.” There’ll also be features carrying over from the series’ most recent release, Democracy 3: Africa. That introduced corruption, as well as the ongoing issues surrounding freedom of the press.

Positech says the game is still “very early in development,” so there’s nothing to show off just yet. They do, however, have a release date of “some time in 2019,” and expect to offer some form of early access or alpha version to players ahead of the game’s full release.

While there might be a new game on the horizon, I’ve got to say that Democracy 3 is suddenly sounding very appealing. It might be worth picking it up cheap somewhere while you wait for the new game, and rewinding to a time when politics was less ridiculous and depressing than it is today.

Nvidia has announced nine more games will feature Deep Learning Super-Sampling (DLSS) support, bringing the total titles to 25 so far. DLSS reportedly boosts performance of the latest Nvidia RTX cards by up to two times the performance of previous generation GPUs, while utilising TAA, and the likes of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, SCUM, Stormdivers, and Darksiders III have now joined the list of supported games.

DLSS, included within Nvidia’s RTX platform, leverages a deep neural network to infer the details required in a frame for less effort than non-AI enhanced approaches. It takes a similar approach to temporal anti-aliasing (TAA), which, in essence, utilises sampling across multiple frames to reduce aliasing. Whereas this is an imperfect algorithm, an AI that infers, or learns, how to best carry out similar anti-aliasing techniques is much better suited to the job. Enter: DLSS.

With the same set of samples, DLSS is able to guess, with high accuracy, what information is required for a high-quality final image. The Tensor Cores in the Turing GPU allow this to occur at a much faster pace than the Pascal architecture, and, in theory, results in performance far surpassing that of the GTX 1080 Ti in supported games.

Here’s the complete list of supported games:

Ark: Survival Evolved
Atomic Heart
Dauntless
Darksiders III
Deliver Us The Moon: Fortuna
Fear The Wolves
Final Fantasy XV: Windows Edition
Fractured Lands
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
Hitman 2
Islands of Nyne
Justice
JX3
KINETIK
Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries
Outpost Zero
Overkill’s The Walking Dead
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.
Remnant: From The Ashes
SCUM
Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Stormdivers
The Forge Arena
We Happy Few

But, alas, we don’t know exactly when each game will be going live with DLSS support. Some games in the list are available right now, and could potentially offer RTX platform support on day one (The RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti launch on September 20th), but that might not be the case for every title on the list.

Ray tracing, the headline feature of Nvidia’s latest graphics cards, itself won’t be available until Microsoft actually launches DirectX RT within the October Windows update. However, DLSS, which looks to be Nvidia’s implementation from the ground up, might be straight out the door if devs have been proactively working with Nvidia on day one deployment. That could really shake up the initial benchmarks.

Speaking of benchmarks, it’s only one more week to wait until full RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti performance is let loose on the internet, so make sure to check back for a complete performance breakdown once they’re live.

11 bit studio’s survival management sim Frostpunk is getting a free expansion titled ‘The Fall of Winterhome’. It’s a new story mode that’ll let you experience the tragic events that led to the demise of Winterhome.

The Fall of Winterhome is out next week, on September 19, and will feature a brand new map and “a fresh take on Frostpunk’s mechanics.” The challenge in Frostpunk isn’t in its management decisions but its moral ones, as you must manage an industrial city while also ensuring the survival of mankind during one of its hardest times, which leads to some pretty bleak decision making.

Better prepare for more of that in this new ‘fresh take’. The announcement picture shows a generator – a key component in the game and the heart of your city – engulfed in flames, surrounded by wreckage. You didn’t honestly think 11 bit would release a happy expansion, did you?

If you’ve played Frostpunk before, the name Winterhome should set off alarm bells. In the main campaign, it was a town that had a reputation for being a beacon of hope and a symbol of human civilisation’s perseverance – before it was destroyed, that is. It was a mystery as to why Winterhome fell, but with this new story, you can finally find out what happened.

This new scenario will join the game’s other two story-driven scenarios: The Arks, which has you help scientists trying to keep rare plants alive; and The Refugees, which has your city subject to waves of refugees as you try to desperately house and feed them all.

11 bit’s previous game, This War of Mine, was also updated with free content, as well as paid DLC that saw proceeds donated to charities, including War Child. Frostpunk has had the same treatment with multiple free releases, new Survivor and Endurance game modes, and several new scenarios – which now includes ‘The Fall of Winterhome’. 11 bit really knows how to support its community.

If you’re hankering for something to scratch your nostlgic itch, Jagex has the perfect thing. RuneScape: The Orchestral Collection and RuneScape: Original Soundtrack classics are coming to CD and Vinyl, allowing you to cast yourself back to both the noughties and the 70s at the same time.

RuneScape: The Orchestral Collection takes fans on a journey shaped by the modern iteration of the game (popularly known as RuneScape 3). Recorded at Abbey Road Studios, the modern collection takes players on a journey through RuneScape’s world, Gielinor. If you want something more traditional, you can get your hands on RuneScape: Original Soundtrack Classics, which offers tracks from across Old School RuneScape, designed to mirror your first journey across the world. Although, if you were me, that involved mooching about in Lumbridge for many, many hours.

Of course, RuneScape holds a world record for the most pieces of original music in a videogame (there were 1,228 tracks in that library as of July 2018). Sadly, that means you won’t be getting the full soundtrack. Instead, Jagex is offering a curated experience.

There’ll be 26 tracks on the Orchestral Collection’s vinyl version, rising to 33 tracks on the CD and digital versions. If you’re feeling Old School, the Original Soundtracks classics features only 24 tracks on vinyl, but that rises to a massive 43 on other editions.

These two releases won’t be Jagex’s only musical releases – two further collections are planned for release “over the coming months.” RuneScape: The Arc and RuneScape: Menaphos will both be released as digital downloads at some point in the future.

The two vinyl and CD collections are currently available for pre-order via Laced Records here – where you can also see full track listings). If you do pre-order a vinyl copy (which come in some beautiful sleeves), you’ll get free access to the equivalent digital copy. Shipping is expected in Winter 2018.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 won’t have a campaign, and developer Treyarch says that’s in keeping with its vision for the game. From the earliest stages of development, co-studio head Dan Bunting says “It was a multiplayer game, top to bottom.” Some sort of campaign-like feature was in development, but it sounds like it wasn’t the sort of traditional single-player experience you might’ve expected.

“It wasn’t a campaign as people usually refer to it anyway,” design director David Vonderhaar says. “So when people say ‘what happened to the campaign,’ it’s like it wasn’t ‘campaign’ in the first place. How can you say ‘what happened to’ this thing that it wasn’t?”

In the full interview with Game Informer – which you can see below – Vonderhaar and Bunting point to the prototyping process as the point where ideas ill-suited to the final game get culled early in development. They aren’t specific about what form campaign was taking, but it was a direction that fit with their social-focused vision for the game – and one that didn’t end up working out.

“We can make a really big campaign and we can add co-op to it,” Bunting says, “but at the end of the day it’s still going to be such a narrative-heavy, guided experience for players. The replayability is limited. We wanted to make a game that players would just keep playing for a long time, because that’s something we are passionate about.”

A traditional single-player campaign being cut from Black Ops 4 was one of the earliest rumours we heard ahead of the game’s reveal, suggesting that the mode would not be completed in time for the game’s final release. Instead, Raven Software was brought in to help complete a battle royale mode, which you’ll be able to try for yourself in the Blackout PC beta starting this weekend.

The Black Ops 4 release date hits in October – follow that link for details on everything that actually will be coming to the game.

The track is HEALTH's first original music since last year's NOLIFE collaboration

HEALTH have shared a new track called ‘Mass Grave’, which features Soccer Mommy and was produced by Purity Ring‘s Corin Roddick.

The Los Angeles noise-rock band last released an album in 2015 with ‘Death Magic‘. In a four-star review, NME said: “‘Death Magic’ makes a grander statement than its more rudimentary predecessors. It sounds like Health finally know what they want.”

‘Mass Grave’ is the group’s first piece of original music since last year’s collaboration with NOLIFE, titled ‘Hard To Be A God’.

In a press release, the band said: “The annals of music history are filled with a rich tradition of trios. Crosby, Stills & Nash… Emerson, Lake, and Palmer… Lennon, McCartney, and that other guy… And now Soccer Mommy, the guy from Purity Ring, and HEALTH. We give you ‘MASS GRAVE’.” Listen to the track below now.

The band's former bassist has discussed the way their legacy has been handled

Melissa Auf der Maur has spoken out about Hole‘s “unfinished business” in a new interview.

The musician played bass in the band between 1994 and 1999. She also played with the Courtney Love-led group in 2012.

Speaking to Stereogum, Auf der Maur discussed her views on Hole’s legacy and the way it’s been handled. Told that she had said in the past the band had “unfinished business”, she replied: “For sure. I actually feel pissed off, and it’s no one’s fault – except for kind of, maybe, mismanagement or hard-to-manage artists.

“Hole’s legacy lives in the gutters of YouTube. It had been like 10 years since I’d played with Hole when YouTube was created. I was, for the first time, able to look at some of the powerful live things. I realised, ‘Wow, nobody knows this.’ There’s no ‘Best Of’.”

The bassist continued to say she has 35,000 negatives from her time in Hole and that she had been “slowly scanning them” onto a computer. “I like the idea of helping remember things and put memories together,” she said.

She added: “There was actually a show I had with [Yeah Yeah Yeahs‘] Nick Zinner at a very interesting photography museum in Cleveland, Ohio, called Transformer Station. He and I had similar work, it was from my archives of life on the road in the ’90s. I’m really excited to make a package of it. I have really fond memories.

“I’m working with a very old friend of mine and [Love’s], called Joe Mama-Nitzberg, who was one of Courtney’s oldest friends as a teenager. They came up together in the San Francisco punk rock scene. He now lives in Hudson and he’s a very big friend and supporter of Basilica [Hudson, the arts centre she founded in upstate New York]. And we’re going to direct a very strange soiree. I’m really happy to be able to do that for the legacy of Courtney and Hole.”

Auf der Maur and Mama-Nitzberg will hold a tribute to Love at Basilica Hudson on October 27. It will be hosted by Michael Stipe, Chloë Sevigny, the National’s Aaron Dessner, Ryan McGinley, Yelena Yemchuk, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach.

Speaking about the event, she said: “Courtney deserves a creative bouquet of honouring. She’s one of the most misunderstood, wild card, strange individuals, and Hole’s legacy is important to me, as far as it being looked at with the respect it deserves and the impact it made. The impact is very real. The #MeToo moments, Courtney was always saying this stuff.”

The star celebrated women at the launch of her latest lingerie collection

Rihanna focused on female empowerment at the launch of her ‘Savage x Fenty’ AW18 collection at the 2018 New York Fashion Week.

Women of all shapes, sizes and colours – including pregnant women– took to the runway in luxurious lingerie at the event on Wednesday (September 12).

Speaking to E! News about the show, Rihanna said: “Women are the strongest people on earth. Our bodies alone are made to do so many different things and they’re designed in so many different, unique ways. It is about time that we celebrate that.”

Bella Hadid, who appeared in the show along with her sister Gigi, shared her excitement about participating in such a female-focused event. She wrote on Instagram: “Every girl had so much fun and felt so beautiful.”

In other recent news, Rihanna has confirmed that new music is on the way soon.

Responding to a fan on Instagram, the 30-year-old singer wrote: “I know I know sis. I’m doing music. Simultaneously doing lingerie, makeup, film, amongst a couple other things that I enjoy.”

She added: “When the music is ready, you won’t have to ask for it. But it’s coming. Just not today sis. I’m hype too tho, it can’t come soon enough.”

It’s believed that the follow-up to 2016’s ‘Anti‘ will hear her music move in a reggae-influenced direction.

The pair's feud continues with the release of the new track

Eminem has responded to Machine Gun Kelly‘s recent disses in a new track called ‘Killshot’.

The track is the latest stage of the pair’s feud. Eminem started the recent spate of diss tracks by calling the rapper out on ‘Kamikaze‘ track ‘Not Alike’. Kelly then responded with ‘Rap Devil’, on which he referenced Eminem’s sobriety and age.

On ‘Killshot’, the Detroit star questions: “How you gonna name yourself after a damn gun and have a man bun?” He also fires back at Kelly’s lines, rapping: “I’m 45 and I’m still outselling you/By 29 I had three albums that had blew.“

Later in the song, he adds: “I’d rather be 80-year-old me than 20-year-old you/Til I’m getting old-aged still can fill a whole page with a 10-year-old’s rage.”

Earlier this week, Eminem revealed why he took aim at Kelly on ‘Not Alike’, saying it was “a lot more petty” than the presumption that his rage was provoked by comments Kelly had made about his daughter Hailie

“The reason that I dissed him is because he got on—first he said, ‘I’m the greatest rapper alive since my favorite rapper banned me from Shade 45,’ or whatever he said, right? Like I’m trying to hinder his career,” he said. “I don’t give a fuck about your career. You think I actually fuckin’ think about you? You know how many fuckin’ rappers that are better than you? You’re not even in the fuckin’ conversation.”

Eminem has also said he “went too far” when he used a homophobic slur against Tyler, The Creator. On ‘Fall’, he rapped: “Tyler create nothin’, I see why you called yourself a f****t, bitch.”

The Beatles star recently expressed regret at not having tried to help her

Amy Winehouse‘s dad has rejected Paul McCartney‘s claims that The Beatles star could have helped the singer.

Winehouse died on July 23, 2011 from alcohol poisoning. She was 27 years old. Today (September 14) would have been her 35th birthday.

In a recent interview, McCartney had expressed regret at not helping the singer despite being aware she had a problem with alcohol and substance abuse. The musician recalled meeting Winehouse at the 2008 European MTV Awards in Liverpool, saying the pair had met in a corridor.

“I knew she had a problem, and I ended up just saying hi, she said hi,” he explained. “Afterwards I thought I really should have just run after her – ’Hey, Amy, listen, you’re really good, I really hope you…’ – and say something that broke through the despair. And she’d remember and think, ‘Oh yeah, I’m good, I’ve got a life to lead.’ But you always have those little regrets.”

Now, Winehouse’s dad, Mitch, has responded to McCartney’s comments.

Appearing on Loose Women, her father said: “What would he have done? It’s up to the person in recovery and they have to want to get help. It’s all about the person who is dealing with her addiction.

“We’ve gone through the hurt and the pain and it’s still painful, and our way to deal with it is to help young people.”

Meanwhile, cinemas across the UK will mark Winehouse’s birthday by playing her second album, ‘Back To Black’, at special Pitchblack Playback events. Lights in the theatres will be turned off so fans can listen to the record undistracted.

Earlier this year, a previously unheard demo recorded by Winehouse when she was 17 surfaced online. ‘My Own Way’ was recorded in 2001 as a demo for the singer to take to record labels.

Queen Bey gets reflective as the tour enters its final leg

Beyoncé has said that she wishes her ‘On the Run II Tour’ with Jay-Z “could never end”.

With fewer than 10 dates left on the hip-hop power couple’s co-headlining tour, the ‘Formation’ singer shared a reflective post on Instagram.

Ahead of yesterday evening’s (September 13) show at New Orleans’ Mercedes-Benz Superdome, Beyonce wrote: “Tonight is the first of the last ten shows of OTRII. I’m doing what I love most with whom I love most. I wish it could never end. Feeling thankful for all of the love from our fans around the world. New Orleans, you ready? Let’s go get em!!!”

The ‘On The Run II Tour’ surpassed $150 million (gross) in August.

Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s massive summer tour caps off a notably prolific era of their careers. They released a pair of complimentary albums, Beyoncé’s Lemonade in 2016 and JAY-Z’s 4:44 the following year. According to Nielsen Music, these two records combined yielded 21 entries on the Hot 100 and earned 3.5 million equivalent album units.

As a duo, they completed the trilogy with 2018’s Everything is Love, released under the name The Carters.

The joint record, which was released in the middle of the European leg of their tour, topped five Billboard charts at the end of June.

The ‘On the Run II Tour’ ends on October 4 at CenturyLink Field in Seattle, the final of 48 shows.

Bangalter has written a song called 'Sangria' for the stomach-churning movie

Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter is one of several artists announced for the Climax soundtrack.

Bangalter, who has written a new song called ‘Sangria’ for the film, joins Aphex Twin, Giorgio Moroder, and Soft Cell in contributing to the 18-song soundtrack.

Daft Punk’s previously released record, ‘Rollin’ & Scratchin’, is also included on the soundtrack.

Read more: Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker says he wants to work with ‘god-like’ Daft Punk
The film, which is directed by Argentine filmmaker Gaspar Noé, details a dance party that erupts into chaos.

Noé’s 2002 film Irreversible was the notorious cause of fainting fits at Cannes Film Festival. That year, Bangalter defended the film’s controversial 9-minute rape scene to NME.

He said: “Yeah it’s unbearable, it’s horrible, but Gaspard is everything but a fascist. It’s violent all the way, but, to me, free violence is when you accept it more and more.

“Here you are in front of something where you can’t accept it and you can’t support it, which is pretty much like how violence is when it’s real and happening to you.”

Climax, which also screened at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, is said to feature similarly bilious scenes – this time of self-mutilation and orgiastic sex.

Bangalter previously worked with Noé on Irreversible as well as the director’s 2009 film, Enter the Void.

The CD version of the film soundtrack arrives on September 28 with the 2xLP vinyl following on October 5 (both via Milan Records).

Climax is released in French cinemas on September 19 and UK cinemas on September 21.

Climax OST:

1. Cerrone: ‘Supernature (Instrumental Climax Edit)’
2. Patrick Hernandez: ‘Born to Be Alive (Instrumental New Version)’
3. M/A/R/R/S: ‘Pump up the Volume (USA Radio Edit)’
4. Dopplereffekt: ‘Superior Race’
5. Chris Carter: ‘Solidit (Climax Edit)’
6. Dopplereffekt: ‘Technic 1200’
7. Kiddy Smile: ‘Dickmatized’
8. Thomas Bangalter: ‘What to Do?’
9. Thomas Bangalter: ‘Sangria’
10. Neon: ‘Voices’
11. Suburban Knights: ‘The World’s’
12. Aphex Twin: ‘Windowlicker’
13. Wild Planet: ‘Electron’
14. Soft Cell: ‘Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go (Extended)’
15. Giorgio Moroder: ‘Utopia – Me Giorgio’
16. Thibaut Barbillon: ‘Angie (Instrumental Cover)’
17. CoH Plays Cosey: ‘Mad’
18. Gary Numan: ‘Trois Gymnopedies (First Movement)’