Peek-A-Boo presents new video Paradise Lost + new album

06th of May 2015, 19:03

PARADISE LOST - Beneath Broken Earth (OFFICIAL VIDEO)

New album - "The Plague Within"

Our new album 'The Plague Within' will be released via CM on June 1st, 2015 in Europe and June 2nd, 2015 in North America!

We have written a very dark, yet melodic album, but this time many songs definitely have a death metal edge, which is something we haven’t done for a long long time in Paradise Lost...

'The Plague Within' is produced and mixed by Jaime Gomez Arellano from Orgone Studios in London (Ghost BC, Ulver, Cathedral, Angel Witch).

The Plague Within, coming June 2015

www.paradiselost.co.uk

More information/reviews concerning PARADISE LOST

The three last names for Alcatraz announced!

06th of May 2015, 12:27

Wolf, Michael Schenker’s Temple Of Rock and W.A.S.P. complete the line-up for the Alcatraz Metal Festival. Those 3 bands all will be playing on Saturday 8 August in Kortrijk.

Saturday 8 August

The Swedish heavy metal band Wolf kicks off the festival.

Armored Saint, another heavy metal band, plays next. The Los Angeles based band debuted in 1984. John Bush [Anthrax) is the vocalist.

After that, Death Angel, another Californian band will mount the stage. The trash metal quintet from San Francisco, the Bay Area scene will perform at Alcatraz for the 3rd time.

Then it’s time for the gothic metal institute Moonspell. They visit Alcatraz for the 2nd time. The Portuguese band released Extinct, an excellent album, earlier this year. The road to extinction tour passed in Vorselaar, where the crowd could see an intense and impressive live show. Their debut Wolfheart is 20 years old now and became a classic.

Queensrÿche, the American progressive hard rock band, will play next. Their monumental album Operation Mindcrime (’88) is number 7 in Martin Popoff’s book ‘The top 500 heavy metal albums of all time’. On AMF Queensrÿche might play some songs from their new album Building The Empire.

Michael Schenker’s Temple Of Rock is the following band. Martin Schenker, ex-Scorpions and ex-UFO, is considered to be one of the most influential guitarists. He’s a top class guitar player such as Page, Blackmore, Malmsteen and Van Halen.

Overkill, the New Jersey based trash metal pioneers will also attend the festival.

Blackie Lawless returns with the shock rockers W.A.S.P. They present their new album.

Then it’s time for Trivium. The trash metal band from Florida, that had the ambition to become the new Metallica, played a solid set at the previous edition of Graspop.

The headliner on Saturday is Nightwish, the Finnish female fronted symphonic metal band. People worried when Tarja Turunen left the band in 2004. The band replaced her by Anette Olzon and remained succesfull. Nowadays the Dutch Floor Jansen (ex-After Forever) is the band’s front woman.

Sunday 9 August

The Danish hard rock band D.A.D. kick off the 2nd festival day. In their homeland Disneyland After Dark are even more popular than Volbeat.

Powerwolf, the German power metal combo plays next.

Death (DTA) is the following band. Death guitarist Chuck Schindler pioneered the death metal genre with his brutal music and grunts. He passed away in 2001. Two years ago the remaining members formed Death To All as a tribute to the band.

After that it’s time for Annihilator, the Canadian melodic trash metal band from Jeff Waters. The band is known for classic albums such as Alice In Hell (’89) and Set The World On Fire (’93) At Graspop the band proved to be a live sensation.

Carcass, the death metal band from Liverpool that reformed in 2007, plays next.

They are followed up by Behemoth. They play occult blackened death. In 2014 the band from Poland released the critical acclaimed album The Satanists. At Graspop they even succeeded convincing people that aren’t fond of black/death metal.

Then it’s time for another German band, Accept. Udo Dirkschneider, who is also famous for his solo career as U.D.O. is a member of this heavy metal band.

Venom, the black metal pioneers from Newcastle, are next. Cronos (bass & vocals) is the only original member that remains from the band that wrote the benchmark album Black Metal in 1982.

Top of the bill is the glorious Sabaton. This popular Swedish power metal combo doesn’t need an introduction.

The Cure's Roger O'Donnell Releases Solo Album Feat. Julia Kent

06th of May 2015, 12:24

Best known for his role as keyboard player with alternative rock band The Cure, Roger has spent most of the last five years composing for orchestral strings. Ranging in size from the Wurttemberg Chamber Orchestra (The Bernhard Suite) to this his most recent work written for the cellist Julia Kent, 'Love and Other Tragedies'.

In 2010 having written some exploratory works for piano and cello Roger was asked to compose for the acclaimed Toronto Corktown Chamber orchestra. This led to the suite, 'Quieter Trees' inspired by the painting “Bigger Trees near Warter" by English artist David Hockney. Intrigued by trying to describe colours and shape using sound, Roger went on the repaint the picture using violins, violas, cellos and basses. The piece in six movements was premiered in London by the children of the Centre for Young Musicians and then completed in Toronto with the orchestra.

Collaborating with South African born composer Adam Donen led to a Requiem for a small ensemble and then on to a suite for chamber orchestra based on the life of the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. Performed by the Wurttemberg Chamber orchestra in Heilbronn Germany and at the Cadogan Hall in London in 2013 and the Summer of 2014.

Parallel to these other works and very close to his heart Roger stayed true to a very personal project which evolved to become this release, 'Love and Other Tragedies'.

The piece will be premiered at St Leonards Church in London on May 30th 2015.

About Julia Kent:

After years spent performing and recording with other artists and groups, among them Anthony and the Johnsons and all female cello group Rasputina, Canadian-born, New York City-based Julia Kent found her own voice with her solo debut 'Delay', an exploration of the private emotional worlds that exist within the disjunctions and disorientations of travel. 'Delay' was hailed for its “lovely, melancholy” compositions, full of “aching romanticism…rich melodicism and detailed arrangements”. Kent toured extensively in support of the album throughout Europe and North America and subsequently released an EP 'Last Day in July'.

In 'Green and Grey', her following solo record, she continued to use looped and layered cello, electronics, and field recordings to explore the intersections between the human world and the natural world. The record explores the melding of the technological and the organic, the patterns and repetitions that exist in nature and are mirrored in human creations, and the complexity and fragility of our relationships with one another and with the world that surrounds us.

Kent's last record 'Character' was released by The Leaf Label in March 2013.
Julia Kent has composed a number of original film scores, as well as music for theatre and dance performances. She continues to tour extensively and is currently composing for television and film.

About Love and Other Tragedies:

Almost three years in to the making of this project, it quickly turned in a labour of love, lost love and tragedy.

When asked to write a new version of the story of Scheherazade for the Post Romantic Empire project of Italian, Giulio Di Mauro, Roger was first introduced to the cellist Julia Kent. They collaborated on the suite written in three movements by Roger for piano and four cellos and decided to explore this liaison further. After a solo performance by Julia in Spring 2011 the two met and in one of those moments of open thought and excitement decided to add two other stories to Scheherazade and complete an album together.

Roger suggested 'Tristan and Isolde' and Julia, 'Orpheus and Eurydice'. The original idea was that they would write one story each but due to Julia’s extensive touring schedule Roger took over the composition. Each story was written in three movements in the same way Scheherazade was approached, and because each story had three crucial plot points, this made the process quite simple.

Each piece is written for piano and two to four cellos, all of which are played by Julia. Roger wrote the entire suite for Julia and at one stage contemplated recording with other cellists due to scheduling conflicts. This idea was quickly abandoned due to no other reason than that it simply wasn’t meant to be.

Writing in his studio in England’s rural Devon, Roger sent the piano files and scores to New York where Julia recorded the parts in her home studio. Two totally contrasting environments but with a common understanding of emotion and drama; dialogue was never required, misunderstandings never an issue. The male piano and the female cello came together in perfect harmony.

Once the recordings were finished, Roger called upon his good friend Paul Corkett to mix the songs and then mastered them in London with Guy Davie. The tracks have been cut to heavyweight vinyl and are presented in gatefold format with art work by constant collaborator Anna Dorfman. The inside cover photograph was taken by Australian photographer Romain Duquesne and realised by the artist Jodee Knowles.

Steve Roach: Skeleton Keys

05th of May 2015, 08:51

Experience the beauty of 100% pure analog modular sequencer-based music.

There's a worldwide analog modular synthesizer-based music resurgence in full swing. Pioneering electronic musician Steve Roach taps into the zeitgeist on Skeleton Keys, a 74-minute album recorded using Synthesizers.com's large format analog modular synthesizer/sequencer-based system. These are eight emotional and mind-expanding spiraling mandalas-of-sound made from interwoven tapestries of melody, rhythm, tone and musical space. The result is warm and engaging retro-futurism, a continuing evolution upon the musical structures Steve has unlocked in the restless pursuit of his soundquest. Read the full bio here.