Search Results for: progressive

New York, NY – The rowdy “ghetto rock” of Virgin Records band El Pus is spreading into the mainstream quickly from its strong and enthusiastic foothold in the early-adopting college market. In June, July and August, the band will take its electric, uncontainable blend of raw punk and hip-hop noise on the road coast-to-coast with the massive ten-stage 2005 edition of Van’s Warped Tour. In a recent New York Times Arts and Leisure “Playlist” feature, El Pus was credited with the rehabilitation of rock/hip-hop fusion in their Virgin debut album, “Hoodlum Rock: Vol. 1.” The Times notice praised El Pus… Read more »

Kasabian Rock’s back pages are littered with tall tales and weird stories about murder and mayhem. Everyone’s heard the one about the woman murdered while the Ohio Players recorded “Love Rollercoaster,” her blood-curdling scream inadvertently making it into the final mix; of Charles Manson’s dalliances with the Beach Boys; or the backwards messages in Judas Priest songs that made middle-American teenagers kill themselves. Well, here’s another one – while recording their self-titled debut in a rural farmhouse, U.K. electro-rock troupe Kasabian whiled away their evenings of pastoral isolation with bloody killing sprees. True story. Well, sort of. “There were shitloads… Read more »

SANTA MONICA, Calif. – The evolution of digital downloads marks another milestone on November 23, 2004, with the debut of UMe Digital, the world’s first all-digital download label from a major music company. UMe Digital product – individual songs, EPs, and full-length albums – will be distributed exclusively online. With its unparalleled music and video marketing capabilities and the power and scope of UMe to place songs in films and TV shows and commercials, UMe Digital offers unprecedented access and exposure for artists. The releases on UMe Digital will be consistent with UMe’s philosophy of marketing established acts and acts… Read more »

San Diego – Entriq Technology Enabled NPG Music Club to Build Online Community and Promote New Prince Album, Resulting in Highly Successful Album Release Entriq(TM), Inc., an innovative company that provides pay media services to leading content providers, ISPs, and cable operators worldwide and a subsidiary of the multinational media group Naspers and (JSE:NPN), today announced that its technology helped enable the successful launch of NPG Music Club’s Prince Musicology album, resulting in the artist receiving the “Best Use of Technology by an Artist” award at the Billboard Digital Entertainment Conference. The award acknowledges the band or individual artist who… Read more »

The success of the Black Eyed Peas flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that the music business sacrifices long-term artist development in favor of quick hits and short-term corporate profits. Signed to Interscope Records more than six years ago by chairman Jimmy Iovine, the progressive hip-hop group’s first two albums, “Behind the Front” in 1998 and “Bridging the Gap” in 2000 earned rave reviews but failed to go gold (shipments of 500,000 copies). The first album peaked at No. 139 on the Billboard 200 with sales of 197,000 units, according Nielsen SoundScan, while the sophomore set stalled at… Read more »

The pioneering rock supergroup Yes- currently celebrating their 35th anniversary – is en route with acoast-to-coast North American spring 2004 itinerary that launched April 15 andruns through mid-May. The historic arena tour – in the grand scale of pastYes excursions – presents the band’s formidable “classic” line-up of 1969co-founders Jon Anderson and Chris Squire, along with Rick Wakeman, SteveHowe, and Alan White, all three of whom started with Yes in the very early’70s. The three-hour 35th anniversary shows bring to life essential Yes songsfrom throughout the visionary prog-rock icons’ extraordinary career, as wellas the brand new composition, “Show Me.” The… Read more »

Of all the things N.E.R.D. and Black Eyed Peas have in common – a progressive hip-hop sound, a talented live band, a vibrant catalog of songs – what most impressed Thursday’s crowd was a mutual friend. That’s what happens when you’re homies with Justin Timberlake… or, to his friends, J.T. The crowd at the sold-out Wiltern LG Theater went into an uproar midway through the Peas’ encore of “Where Is the Love?” when Timberlake casually strolled onstage to sing the song’s classic “People living, people dying…” hook. At that point, the promoters might as well have added Justin’s name to… Read more »

Even when adopting the most drastic measures, record labels seem helpless to prevent albums from surfacing online before their release dates. So now one label is taking the “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” approach. Four months before the debut album by New York trio the Secret Machines hits stores, Reprise Records, a Warner Bros. subsidiary, is making it available for sale online. In a campaign tied to Reprise’s online marketing campaign, the label is trying to make sure fans have a legal way of acquiring new music they hear about on the Internet. “[When] there’s no legal alternative,… Read more »

Call it progressive, nu-metal, punk, hard-core but when it comes down to the basics no matter what sub-genres people create it ´s still rock ´n ´ roll. On Friday night, the several thousand fans packing the Patriot Center at George Mason University got to experience rock music in all its many forms. Hailed as the first big rock tour of 2004, the Meteora: World Tour lived up to its billing, presenting a four-hour nonstop barrage of power chords, screaming vocalists and head-nodding beats. Kicking off the evening was up-and-coming act Story of the Year. With its major label debut “Page… Read more »

The Shortlist Organization announced today the complete “Long List” of eighty-six nominations for the 2003 Shortlist Music Prize, as selected by a panel of “Listmakers” including Flea, Erykah Badu, Perry Farrell, Chris Martin (Coldplay), and the directors Spike Jonze and Cameron Crowe. The ten finalists for the award will be announced in early September, and the third annual Shortlist Music Prize will be presented at a multi-artist concert on October 16th at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles. Plans for a Shortlist Awards Concert television special will be announced soon. “This year’s Long List features artists from five continents and… Read more »