• Pickathon announced the on-sale date for tickets for 2016's festival. They go on sale Monday, January 18 at 8 am, and that evening, they're also throwing a free party at Revolution Hall to announce a portion of the lineup. The event will also include the premiere of the Portlandia episode that was filmed at last summer's Pickathon, featuring the Flaming Lips. This is the earliest the annual Portland-area music festival has announced its lineup, following a trend of festivals announcing their lineups earlier than ever—see Coachella, who revealed their poster yesterday.

• Speaking of Coachella, the lineup seems relatively weak this year, Guns N' Roses and LCD Soundsystem reunions notwithstanding. LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, for his part, wrote a lengthy post on the band's Facebook page to address the (surely very small) backlash from fans who thought the group's 2010 finale at Madison Square Garden would be the final word:

i saw some comments online a few days ago from people who felt that way, and it blindsided me, and made me incredibly sad.... i kind of side with the original complaint: if you cared a lot about our band, and you put a lot of yourself into that moment (or anything about us you chose), and you feel betrayed now, then i completely understand that. it’s your right to define what you love about a band, and it’s your right to decry their actions and words as you see fit, because it’s you, frankly, who have done much of the work to sustain that relationship, not the band. i was so clearly expecting the cynical cries of foul, that i hadn’t seen the heartfelt complaint coming.

Murphy is careful to acknowledge these feelings, but I really, really can't understand why a genuine fan of LCD Soundsystem wouldn't want them to get back together and play new music. More than a Coachella one-off, it sounds like there will be a new LCD Soundsystem album this year and a big tour to accompany it. This is very good news, and does nothing to threaten anyone's preserved-in-amber memories of the band's ostensible farewell a few years back.

• Vinyl nerds, rejoice: Technics announced today at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show that it is relaunching its famous 1200 turntable, with a new model available this summer. The Technics 1200 is the turntable, the one 9 out of 10 DJs use, and the one that they stopped making in 2008, right before the vinyl resurgence hit. The new model has been dubbed the 1200G and will have a new, improved direct-drive electric motor that's meant to cut down on speed fluctuations and a bunch of other technical stuff blah blah blah. There's also a limited edition called the SL-1200GAE which will cost a fortune. If you've been waiting to buy a new turntable, 2016 looks like a good year.