David Bowie’s surprise comeback track, “where Are We Now?” was released without warning or fanfare on Bowie’s 66th birthday on Tuesday and is the first single from his first new studio album since Reality in 2003, album which will be released in March.
The disturbingly emotional, downbeat song has failed to top the singles charts, only making it to number six, still, it has become his first top 10 single for 20 years, and his highest charting hit since Absolute Beginners reached number 2 in 1986, according to the Official Charts Company.
The album, entitled “The Next Day”, will marks the renewal of Bowie’s long-term relationship with producer Tony Visconti, who also worked on a range of albums with the singer, including Low, Heroes, Lodger, Young Americans and Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps).
Director Tony Oursler’s created an enigmatic promotional film for David Bowie’s new single. So, Let’s walking the dead now! Read more David Bowie – Where Are We Now?
2013
Blue Willa – Blue Willa (2013)
Blue Willa is the debut album by the Italian art rock quartet bearing that same name. The band had been touring and recording for years under the name Baby Blue, but then they decide it that the time has come for change and came up with a brand new identity: Blue Willa.
They explains: “Continuing a story which lasted seven years and three records so far, we decided to carry on our pursuit for a sound that would fit neatly onto our ideas asking a person we unquestionably loved to help us fulfill it.
We called on Carla Bozulich, whom we had met in Florence some four years ago, and she immediately got involved and interested in our plans.
We spent ten days in the Italian countryside, working side by side with her and our sound engineer, Davide Cristiani. Carla took care of our songs and sounds, proposing shapes and a whole new imagery for them. She made our sounds feel aquatic, ringing and overturned: a sort of underwater punk rock music from the Thirties.
This music then went on to be mixed and fixed on the Himalayan mountainside and in Paris: it is a pleasant thought for us to imagine that something from these places – as well from our provinces – got entangled and caught inside these songs.”
And well, this is really a journey to folk flavored punk, psychedelic rock and vivid experimentalism, but also to yet undiscovered places, unrevealed sounds. Read more Blue Willa – Blue Willa (2013)
Ben Royal feat. Kate Walsh – Home, EP (2013)
Both, Ben Royal and Kate Walsh, are terribly common names. Not really helpful to google them because you will end up reading about a million different people from all over the world from Australia to Alaska.
If Ben it’s not a doctor having fun twisting beats off after-hours, he night be a DJ from Melbourne, Australia, while Kate, hm, there are too many Kate’s I guess, actresses, singers, waitresses, whatever.
The key of selling a product it’s not the product itself, but the identity of it. Hard to impossible sell something without solid, build-up identity while the market it’s anyway over-saturated and lately everybody “doing” music, “making” music, but nobody listening music, and very few are interested in buying music. You say Lady Gaga and everyone automatically knows exactly what you’re talking about. Ben who?
Although “Home” it’s an uplifting, melodious and minimalist, but really nice and sweet, danceable house track featuring in two different mixes (original and radio edit) and benefitting of 6 tasty alternative remixes delivered by Chris Valencia, U4Ya (with two mixes), Franco De Mulero, Desusino Boys and Max Fabian. Read more Ben Royal feat. Kate Walsh – Home, EP (2013)
Steven Wilson – The Raven That Refused To Sing (and other stories) (2013)
Third and deadly? The restless guitarist of Porcupine Tree, and beside involved in a million and one projects and collaborations, plus full time mixer, remixer and producer, it’s back with his third solo album which will be released on 25th February 2013. Alan Parsons (best known for his work on Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon”) engineering the album and we’ve got a quite colorful and dynamic mixture of King Crimson, Rush and Jethro Tull. Probably not accidentally, currently Wilson is remixing the back catalogue of King Crimson from 1969–84 into MLP (Meridian Lossless Packaging) 5.1 and new stereo mixes, as well as remixing the back catalogue of Jethro Tull.
So, the presence of Theo Travis (flute and saxophone) it’s not really surprising. Travis has made ten albums as leader, composing and arranging most of the material; and he has also worked with Robert Fripp, Gong, The Tangent, Bill Nelson, Bass Communion, No-Man, David Sylvian, Harold Budd, John Foxx, Burnt Friedman and Dave, Richard Sinclair, and Porcupine Tree. But this is a full all star release featuring exclusively well respected and acclaimed musicians. Read more Steven Wilson – The Raven That Refused To Sing (and other stories) (2013)
Tribute to Laghetto – Il coraggio di essere suonati (2013)
This is a double album, tribute to the Italian hardcore punk band called Laghetto compiled by the Italian music web magazine Impatto Sonoro. And what for these guys was a year of hard work, you can have it for free by giving up your precious e-mail address HERE. But, as they say, more then a tribute, this is a declaration of love. Although Laghetto prefers to called themselves a”ninja-core band”. So, this is Ninja love. Kind of murderous, isn’t it? And well, you got the chance to get know a lot of really ass-kicking Italian bands of different genres given quite different flavors to the original tracks. Read more Tribute to Laghetto – Il coraggio di essere suonati (2013)
Cortez – Phoebus (2013)
The Swiss trio are back and it’s time for the new set of dark and furious butchery! Although guitarist Antoine Tinguely (ex-Berserk For Tea Time) replaced former guitarist Samuel Vaney, Vaney is now supporting the band as composer/mixer.
While the drums were recorded in the REC Studio of Serge Morattel in Geneva, they recorded the guitars and vocals in their own rehearsal room, the new album is the result of hard work, giving the band big freedom in creation and the possibility to fully assume the production process. The sound it’s pretty raw, unpolished and have a pithy live vibe, if you pump up the volume high enough, almost feels like you are there in the rehearsal room. So, “Phoebus” it’s not about surgically clean sound and high-end production, but about the unleashed strength of metal, about the flesh ripper riffs and pounding like hell drums, about not making compromises, but expressing feelings through music. Read more Cortez – Phoebus (2013)
Consciousness Removal Project – Tacit (2013)
Consciousness Removal Project it’s a one-man post-metal band from Tampere, Finland. Its only official member Antti Loponen is solely responsible not only for compositions, lyrics and arrangements but also for most instruments and the record production. Although, with the help of a live collective including Arttu Kimmel – guitar, Vesa Ahonen – bass and Artturi Mäkinen – drums, Consciousness Removal Project has also been able to perform live since 2008.
The music of Consciousness Removal Project has been published on the internet for free since 2004. The new album, released on 03 January 2013 and entitled “Tacit” it’s also available for free download (“name your price”) from their Bandcamp page (Click “Buy now” and enter $0 for free download), as well as a limited edition Digipack CD pressing hand numbered with binary digits. Support artists, we need them!!
And the music it’s gloomy, subtle and beautiful. Described perfectly by José at Terrorizer magazine: “It’s not the soundtrack for the eventual apocalypse itself, it’s the soundtrack for sitting on the porch on a quiet evening with a drink, thinking about it.” Read more Consciousness Removal Project – Tacit (2013)
EmptyMansions – snakes/vultures/sulfate (2013)
EmptyMansions it’s the solo effort of Interpol’s drummer Sam Fogarino. Sam Fogarino wrote most of the songs for snakes while on tour promoting Interpol’s fourth and self-titled album, from mid 2009 to late 2011. This is raw sounding, garage flavored, but genuine indie rock, somewhere in the space between dEUS, Eels (in their good old days) and Sonic Youth. As he describe it: lyrically, the songs are the result of he’s reading much postmodern fiction by writers such as Hubert Selby Jr (‘Sulfate’); discovering an appreciation for aerial dance and a fascination with outer-space (‘Lyra’); the TV-drama Justified (‘Up In The Holler’), and Black Francis of Pixies fame (‘That Man’). Musically, Sam drew upon classic heavyweights; Neil Young (The closing track on snakes is a cover of ‘Down By The River’), The Stones, Zeppelin—filtered through his affinity with the likes of Sonic Youth and Pixies. Read more EmptyMansions – snakes/vultures/sulfate (2013)
Artifex – Suspension of Disbelief (2013)
If there is a space between King Crimson and Marilyn Manson, that space definitively it’s filled with the Italian Artifex. With roots back to the Psychedelic/Progressive Rock of the 70s and 80s, but with gloomy resonances of the Industrial Rock and Industrial Metal of the 90s, Artifex are building a brand new world out of Hard Rock bricks and modern sounds, electronic layers, but not at least, strong emotions.
Antonio “Mircea” Olivo (voice/guitar/electronics) founded Artifex in 1997, in Bologna, Italy, wanting “to recall that “verve” which had the great bands of the 70s, developing their sound in a modern key through the “balance” between analog and digital.”. The line-up was completed by Francesco Paonessa (drums & machines) and Davide Schipani (bass guitar, synth). By now the band released four self-produced CDs: “Tristis” (1997), “In-Side” (2001), “Artifex” (2003), and an EP entitled “Redux” in 2009.
“Suspension of Disbelief” will be released on 27th January 2013 and it’s a concept album based on the MAN’s emotions, an intermittent and laborious back to basics made of suspension and disbelief as well.
The album also have two special guests: Pat Mastelotto from King Crimson on drums featuring on “Witness of Transition” and Fabrice Quagliotti from Rockets on keyboards and backing vocals featuring on “Electric Lights”. Read more Artifex – Suspension of Disbelief (2013)
Shrapnel Streetwear Launches EDM/Bass Music Inspired Clothing Line for 2013
December 14th, 2012, Las Vegas, NV – EDM/Bass Music-Inspired clothing line, Shrapnel Streetwear has just announced their 2013 Collection, available now, exclusively from FiXTstore.com.
Since the streetwear brand’s inception, they have become a favorite among the bass music elite, repped by artists like Excision, Sluggo, Liquid Stranger, Ajapai, Dirty Talk, Messinian, and Jonathan Davis of Korn & Killbot to name a few.
Shrapnel Streetwear has quickly become synonymous in the underground EDM world with authentic dubstep fashion, while large retailers like Hot Topic have made attempts to jump on the dubstep bandwagon from the corporate level. Sporting dubstep shirts with nothing more than a standard font, displaying unimaginative terms may appeal to some, Shrapnel can be seen as the antithesis of such an approach to cash in or to target the lowest common denominator. They have instead featured unique designs that stay true to the integrity and futurism of bass heavy musical styles, as well as delivering a style that mirrors the inspiration of Bass Music culture as a whole. Read more Shrapnel Streetwear Launches EDM/Bass Music Inspired Clothing Line for 2013
