Category: Music News

The Breakspoll Awards Party will once again take place at London’s Fabric on Thursday 23rd February and will be the perfect opportunity for the breakbeat community to celebrate the year that was 2005. Once again Radio 1 will play an active role in supporting the breaks community with Annie Nightingale presenting the awards alongside breakbeat don Danny Mac. Radio 1 will also broadcast live from Fabric as part of Annie Nightingale’s show.

Voting for the 2006 International Breakbeat Awards will commence on January 1st 2006, To register your votes just visit www.breakspoll.com

To continue the Breakspoll Awards celebrations Leyline presents Breaking Ground, The Official Breakspoll Aftershow @ SeOne club on Friday 24th February 2006. The After-Show will be presenting a whole host of award winning Breaks DJs such as Rennie Pilgrem, who has picked up Outstanding Contribution to Breakbeat three years in a row, as well as the Breakfastaz who won Best Breakthrough Act 2004/5 and mixed the first Breakspoll Compilation last October.

And as an extra special treat The Teamplayers Live band will perform which is the finale to an 18 month recording session with the leading lights in modern day breakbeat. The breakbeat rock band features Aquasky, UK Apache, Spyda, The Ragga Twins and Ban Jyang.

Tickets for the after party can be purchased here

The Dead 60s have announced details of a short UK tour in March. The band, whose debut album has now sold over 75,000 copies, will headline their biggest London show to date by performing at The Astoria on 19th March.

The Dead 60s have just returned from a sold-out tour of Japan, where they played to audiences of over 5,000. During a recent trip to the US, guitarist Ben Gordon met up with Dead 60s fan Courtney Love. Courtney played Ben some of her new material and they discussed working together in the future. “We played through about 7 or 8 of her new songs” commented Ben. “It’s different from what she’s done before, it’s very sensitive and sounds a little folky at times. It reminds me of Bob Dylan or Patti Smith. We stayed in touch and may work together later this year.”

March

Wed 15th Manchester Academy
Thu 16th Coventry The Colosseum
Sat 18th Nottingham Ballroom
Sun 19th London Astoria

Check www.thedead60s.com for all info

To celebrate the release of their forthcoming fifth album, Meds, Placebo take to the road in April to play their first UK shows since their amazing sell-out Wembley Arena show back on November 5th 2004.

Since the band last played the UK, they have toured the world extensively, taking in every continent, culminating in a sell-out tour of South and Central America, where they played to tens of thousands of screaming fans per night (Q Magazine witnessed this spectacle in Mexico, awarding it a 4-out-5 rating and describing it as “a dancefloor rammed with screaming teenagers, wobbling under the weight of 15,000 pogoing bodies.”).

The band release their new single Because I Want Youon 6th March. It was added to the XFM Daytime playlist seven weeks upfront and has been championed by BBC Radio 1 DJs Jo Whiley, Zane Lowe and Steve Lamacq. The band caused hysteria last week when over 1000 fans turned up at the video shoot for the single.

The tour dates are as follows:

Wednesday 5 April
Blackpool Empress Ballroom- 01253 292029/ 0161 832 1111

Thursday 6 April
Glasgow Academy- 0870 169 0100

Saturday 8 April
Newcastle Academy- 0870 771 2000

Sunday 9 April
Birmingham Academy- 0870 771 2000

Tuesday 11 April
London Alexandra Palace- 020 7403 3331/ 020 7734 8932/ 0870 5344 4444

The tour goes on sale from 9am on Friday 3rd February.

Meds will be released on 13th March.

Placebo are one of the UK’s most successful bands of the last 10 years, having sold one million albums in the UK and 6 million worldwide, with 1.4 million of those sales for their last studio album Sleeping With Ghosts, which went Top 10 in 20 countries (including the UK), including number one in France.

For further information on Placebo, go to: www.placeboworld.co.uk

Do you have tunes? Want them on the TV?

Basik Products produce a series called ‘MTV Mono‘ that’s about to go into production for it’s 5th series. Mono is a series of 10 x 3 minute spots that are interstitial in the MTV programming schedule (sits in-between half-hour shows instead of adverts). It has a pan-European broadcast & is syndicated worldwide (except the States, which isn’t such a bad thing really).

The content of the show is predominantly skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing & bmx, but pretty much anything goes in as long as it’s good enough. For this series the guys are going on the road filming in the French Alps for a rookie snow-park tour, Egypt / Israel & Greece for a skate tour that will end up at the bowl-riders final in Italy + then they are off to Switzerland for a Ski / reggae event organized by Candide Thovex. Other footage also getting hold of the original footage of Danny Way’s ‘Wall Of China’ jump + the Kelly Slater Invitational surf event. The series has no presenters & no sync (talking heads) meaning it’s jam packed with tricks & goodness from beginning to end. The main narrative that drives the show is the music…

So, Basik are looking for some original tracks to use in the series. In the past they have used producers such as Quantic, TM Duke, Ed Solo & numerous other masters of the trade to lend their talents to the series… But they need more, which is where you come in.

Basically – this is a call to arms for all unsigned producers & bands that have got a stockpile of tracks just waiting to be put to good use. The music can be from whatever genre you like & can be as fast or slow as you like – but it has to be good!

The show will be sponsored by a pretty big & reputable sports company this year (can’t tell you who yet), so there will be a handsome reward in it for you if your track gets picked… Also, you / your band will receive a credit at the end of the relevant show. Sounds good right? Well, wait up – there are some broadcast & legal stipulations:

– The track has to be edited to 2’42 exactly (the titles / bumpers are 18′ seconds long), anything longer or shorter will not be taken into consideration for the series.

– The track has to be produced / mixed to a good level & delivered on CD as an AIFF file.

– You give up all rights of the track to MTV / Basik Products, unfortunately this mean’s that you will not be able to release the track in question AT ALL in the future. This is a way of simplifying any legal issues for us in the future & to save you from having to have any legal dealings with a big corporate company… But hopefully the financial reward will help you deal with your strict socialist morals. If not, look at it as damn good exposure.

If they choose your track, you will be asked to sign a contract agreeing to the all of the above which will be non-retractable & nonnegotiable.

Listen to the corporate monster roar! Anyway, better you know what your getting yourselves into now right?

So then, interested? If so, e-mail your track’s as compressed mp3’s (no huge files please) to: ritchie@basikproducts.com

If you want more information on us or Mono, check the site at www.basikproducts.com

JUNE 3RD 2006 @ MILTON KEYNES BOWL

DEEP PURPLE, ALICE COOPER
+ FULL SUPPORT BILL

Monsters of Rock, the legendary one-day hard rock festival which was born in 1980 on the crest of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, returns to the UK festival calendar on June 3rd 2006 at Milton Keynes Bowl. Tickets, priced £38.50, are on sale from January 20th from all usual agents, and via credit card on 0870 400 0688. A dedicated coach service hotline has also been set up on 0870 166 0430. www.getLIVE.co.uk.

Monsters Of Rock is synonymous with the very cream of hard rock and heavy metal. Acts such as AC/DC, Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Dio, Guns N’ Roses, Iron Maiden, Kiss, Metallica, Motorhead, Ozzy Osbourne, Rainbow, Status Quo, Van Halen, Whitesnake and ZZ Top have all graced the Monsters’ stage over the years.

Monsters Of Rock 2006, promoted by Live Nation, marks the welcome return of the Daddy of all one-day Heavy Metal festivals to the rock music calendar. While hard rock has never gone away, it has to be said that interest in heavy music’s glorious heritage has never been more intense, with new young rock fans eager to check out legendary colourful giants of hard rock and heavy metal such as Deep Purple and Alice Cooper.

Monsters Of Rock will be headlined by hard rock pioneers Deep Purple, currently being lauded for their latest studio album ‘Rapture Of The Deep’. The self-proclaimed ‘heaviest of heavy rock bands’, have also just had their ‘Best Of’ Three-CD set ‘The Platinum Collection’ voted ‘Collection Of The Year’ by the readers of Classic Rock Magazine, who also awarded the band their inaugural ‘Classic Album’ award for 1970’s ‘In Rock’ opus at their debut awards ceremony in October 2005 at London’s Café De Paris. Classic Rock Magazine and Planet Rock Radio are co-promoting / sponsoring Monsters Of Rock. Expect a plethora of mega-hits, from ‘Smoke On The Water’ to ‘Child In Time‘ and ‘Black Night‘.

Ian Gillan comments that “For Deep Purple to headline the return of the mighty Monsters of Rock Festival in 2006 is somewhat appropriate, as this brings two venerable giants of hard rock together for the first time. I have great memories of playing the Monsters of Rock as a solo artist back in 1982, and am very much looking forward to Deep Purple’s debut appearance.”

Special Guest is Alice Cooper, who has just released his new ‘Dirty Diamonds‘ album and sold out a massive UK Arena tour. The opening lines of his official biography on alicecooper.com say it all:-

“30 albums and some of the most famous rock songs ever recorded, you’d think Alice Cooper’s demons would’ve been conquered by now—or maybe locked in a cage and fed undercooked meat. But the man who changed the course of rock music in the ’70s with bloody guillotines, sparking electric chairs, slimy boa constrictors, and a little blood and eyeliner still has more to slay in 2005. Alice Cooper is master at re-inventing himself, shedding his skin like one of his snakes to become everything from a mascara’d grave robber to a leather-wrapped street hooligan, a film noir detective, insane asylum honor student, and nihilistic dada-ist.”

Additional acts will be added to the line-up of Monsters Of Rock and announced in the next few weeks as they are confirmed. Go to www.monstersofrock.co.uk for all info.

One of the best UK indie magazines Drowned In Sound have just launched their first radio shows through their website over at www.drownedinsound.com.

The site has been going strong for the last 5 years and added a great record label to it’s structure and has always supported us here at Crossfire along the way. You can now download the first hour long show via podcasting on i-Tunes weekly featuring music from the likes of Neutral Milk Hotel, Cat Power and At the Drive-In, whilst discovering Jeniferever, Semifinalists and lots more from www.drownedinsound.com/radio

Another year gone and another set of awards arrive. However, unlike the Grammys, which seem to champion whichever major label artist has had the most money pumped into them, the Plug Awards are all about the independent community.

The Plug Cartel want the music to be recognised, not the amount of sales, and the awards cover a wide range of categories, from the usual Artist/Album/Label Of The Year to Zine Of The Year and Internet Radio Station Of The Year.

This is a great chance to vote for the artists and bands that you never see on much hyped award shows, so make sure you get along to Plug’s site and vote for your favourites! You can leave some categories out if you’re not sure and all they ask of you is to vote in at least 5 categories.

Voting closes on January 30th, so get in before the deadline and make your opinion count!

Plug Awards

The mighty Anthrax have confirmed that they are back in the UK with a vengeance when they tour the country in April.

The band’s line up for these dates is:

Charlie Benante

Frank Bello

And the gig dates are:

April

8th – Sheffield Corporation

9th – Wolverhampton Wolfrun Hall

10th – London Astoria

11th – Nottingham Rock City

12th – Glasgow ABC

http://www.anthrax.com/

Rhymesayers heavyweights Atmosphere have announced a short European tour, supported by their albino label mate Brother Ali. The Europe ’06 Tour kicks off with 2 dates in Germany before moving on to Sweden, Holland and Belgium, finishing with 2 shows in the UK. The dates are:

January

Sat 28th – Munich, Germany @ Ampere

Sun 29th – Berlin, Germany @ Knaack Club

Mon 30th – Copenhagen, Denmark @ Little Vega

Tue 31st – Malmo, Sweden @ KB

February

Wed 1st – Gothenburg, Sweden @ Sticky Fingers

Thu 2nd – Stockholm, Sweden @ Debaser

Sat 4th – Amsterdam, Holland @ Melkweg

Mon 6th – Utrecht, Holland @ Ekko

Tue 7th – Gent, Belgium @ Da Centrale

Thu 9th – London, UK @ Scala

Fri 10th – Manchester, UK @ Roadhouse

Tickets are available on www.seetickets.com and its rumoured that Atmosphere will be backed by a live band for this tour. It promises to be a blast and as Slug states with his last album title: You can’t imagine how much fun we’re having!

Josh Homme and Brody Dalle have just delivered a baby daughter and have named her Camille. The healthy bundle weighed in at 6lbs.15oz and is said to be very stable. Obviously the rock and roll couple are delighted which will leave most blokes gutted that Brody has finally locked down her family and is no longer available!

Er..by the way, this is not a picture of their newborn but you get the picture…she’s gonna be a cool kid!