Alexander The Phatos

ATP on The Find Megazine

2011-11-27T00:58:00.002+08:00

With a fusion of hip hop, jazz and classical music, ‘Phatosism: A 21st Century Cavatina’ by Alexander The Phatos is diverse like a lot of releases coming from Japan and Asia these days. The majority of the album is produced by students and post-graduates from the music department of University Sains Malaysia (USM). You can buy the album on iTunes or Bandcamp, or try your luck here at The Find Magazine to get it for free!

Alexander The Phatos’ biography: “Our music is a momentarily captured event of the composer’s melodic emotions. Reality on pause; a photograph delivered through music. Merging sounds that are possibly considered a discord or an uncommon cross-over. ATP melts everything audible. A style we call ‘beauty within randomness’.”

Free Download
You can buy the album on Bandcamp for only 8 dollar, but the group was kind enough to share twenty free download codes with us! The first readers who leave a comment below receive a free download code. Better be quick, or support Alexander The Phatos by buying the album below!
UPDATE: We’re out of free download codes. Enjoy everybody! You can still buy the album here

An interview with Only Jazz Hope

2011-11-27T00:51:00.002+08:00

(From left to right: Cecilia Wong (no longer a member), Pek Yun Siah, Azreen Harlina, Adifarhud)
(Two other members, Anas and AnisHaron are not shown.)
Bolded is me.

–

Welcome and thank you for being OnlyJazzHop’s first interview.

To start off, introduce yourselves, please.

Go Here to read the rest of the interview

Phatosism : A 21st Century Cavatina [Digital Album is priced at $7.99 USD on Bandcamp]

2011-10-06T17:13:00.004+08:00

1.Beautiful Struggle feat. Leonard Lam (Interlude)

2.Beautiful Struggle (Reprise)

3.Walk On By feat. Nicholas Wonder of Vitium

4.Heart Breaker

5. Step 4 : Acceptance (1st Movement)

6.Hey Mama (Interlude) feat. Layde Dee

7.Hey Mama feat. AnisHaron

8.Hey Mama II / Unplugged

9.Hey Mama (The Blueprint)

10.Dreamer (Rêveur aria in D op.1) feat. Nicholas Wonder of Vitium

11.Dreamer (Rêveur aria in D op.1 on Piano)

12.Have You Seen Her

13.F.A.F / A 21st Century Cavatina

14.F.A.F / Output 1 – 2 feat. Dafrosty Ksatriya & SaphuanAwang

15.Who Cares feat. Dafrosty SaphuanAwang & Vandal

16.Nujabes Tribute (Zawsze w naszych sercach ) feat. Avens

17.恋の季節 (S.O.L) feat. PekYunSiah

18.H.T.S.T.T.M

19. Walk On By feat. Nicholas Wonder of Vitium-Acro Jazz Laboratories Remix-

20.Beautiful Struggle (Overture on Piano)

21.Beautiful Struggle (Outro) feat. PekYunSiah & RebeccaYap

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://alexanderthephatos.bandcamp.com/album/phatosism-a-21st-century-cavatina"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Phatosism : A 21st Century Cavatina by Alexander The Phatos&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>

Alexander The Phatos - Phatosism : A 21st Century Cavatina [iTunes/United States]

2011-09-10T04:47:00.001+08:00

Buy Phatosism : A 21st Century Cavatina on iTunes (U.S)

It's finally up you can now purchase the album from the iTunes music store (U.S)

Track-List

Alexander The Phatos - Phatosism : A 21st Century Cavatina [iTunes/Japan]

2011-07-30T16:30:00.007+08:00

Alexander The Phatos「Phatosism:A 21st century cavatina」現在iTunes HIP HOPチャート23位！マレーシアのアーティストがベスト30入りは初？ (Photo courtesy of Goon Trax )

Itunes (Japan) top 37 featured albums (Hip-Hop & Rap) - July 29th 2011 -

Homepage (Hip-Hop & Rap) - July 29th 2011 -

Buy Alexander The Phatos - Phatosism : A 21st Century Cavatina

The album is now available on iTunes (Japan) and other online stores worldwide.We would like to thank everyone for their love and support.Thanks to those who shared and promoted the album via blog twitter and facebook !

マレーシアのCradle Orchestra [HMV Japan]

2011-07-29T11:29:00.003+08:00

ヴァイオリン、チェロ、サックス、ピアノなどの生楽器にビートを織り交ぜたスタイルがマレーシアのCradle Orchestraとも言われるAlexander The Phatos。メロウ・ヒップホップの名コンピレーション『IN YA MELLOW TONE5』では「Hey Mama Feat.AnisHaron」、『IN YA MELLOW TONE6』では「Beautifle Struggle（Reprise）」と多くの評価を受けた彼らが待望の1stアルバムをリリース！上記2曲と共にNujabesへのトリビュート作品「Nujabes Tribute（Zawsze w naszych sercach）」などメロウというよりもエモーショナルなサウンドを存分に聴かせてくれる1枚となっている。

マレーシア・サインズ大学の音楽家のクラスメートにより結成された7人組ヒップホップ・ユニット。Cradle Orchestraからの影響を公言し、クラシック＆ヒップホップというスタイルでVIMA 2010というマレーシアの音楽アウォードの3部門入賞という結果をだした。名メロウ・ヒップホップ・コンピレーション『IN YA MELLOW TONE5』では「Hey Mama Feat.AnisHaron」、『IN YA MELLOW TONE6』では「Beautifle Struggle（Reprise）」と多くの評価を受け、今回のデビュー作に至る。

http://www.hmv.co.jp/en/news/article/1107150065/

Alexander The Phatos - A 21st Century Cavatina [Album's Tracklist]

2011-06-30T02:38:00.010+08:00

Here is an official track list of the upcoming debut album "Phatosism : A 21st Century Cavatina".It's a twenty-one track album and is mostly produced by graduate and post-graduate students from the music department of Universiti Sains Malaysia.The album is scheduled for an august release (August 3rd 2011).

Alexander The Phatos : Phatosism / A 21st Century Cavatina

1.Beautiful Struggle feat. Leonard Lam (Interlude)

2.Beautiful Struggle (Reprise)

3.Walk On By feat. Nicholas Wonder of Vitium

4.Heart Breaker

5. Step 4 : Acceptance (1^st Movement)

6.Hey Mama (Interlude) feat. Layde Dee

7.Hey Mama feat. AnisHaron

8.Hey Mama II / Unplugged

9.Hey Mama (The Blueprint)

10.Dreamer (Rêveur aria in D op.1) feat. Nicholas Wonder of Vitium

11.Dreamer (Rêveur aria in D op.1 on Piano)

12.Have You Seen Her

13.F.A.F / A 21^st Century Cavatina

14.F.A.F / Output 1 – 2 feat. Dafrosty Ksatriya & SaphuanAwang

15.Who Cares feat. Dafrosty SaphuanAwang & Vandal

16.Nujabes Tribute (Zawsze w naszych sercach ) feat. Avens

17.恋の季節 (S.O.L) feat. PekYunSiah

18.H.T.S.T.T.M

19. Walk On By feat. Nicholas Wonder of Vitium-Acro Jazz Laboratories Remix-

20.Beautiful Struggle (Overture on Piano)

21.Beautiful Struggle (Outro) feat. PekYunSiah & RebeccaYap

Alexander The Phatos - A 21st Century Cavatina [Album Artwork]

2011-06-23T14:37:00.006+08:00

Many thanks to Japanese designers for the album jacket artwork.A 21st Century Cavatina (Album/2011) is scheduled for an August 2011 release.

Happy 129th Birthday Igor Stravinsky

2011-06-18T01:44:00.002+08:00

Program: Keeping Score

Episode: Stravinsky's Rite of Spring

Savage and primitive, hypnotic and hell-bent, Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring turned Paris into the scene of one of the most astounding opening nights in history. In this episode of Keeping Score, the clutching tendrils of the music pull us back through France and Russia to the wild abandon of pagan times.

Watch the full episode. See more Keeping Score.

Takagi Masakatsu - Nijiko [Album/2011]

2011-06-16T23:12:00.003+08:00

1: Nijiko
2: Nijiko - tiny piano
3: Nijiko - Origin
4: Nijiko (The Museum of Me mix)

Nijiko- children of Rainbow were originally composed for Intel® 'The Museum of Me', the generator that connects data on your facebook. (http://www.intel.com/museumofme/r/)
The theme of the project is 'Visualize Yourself', you in fact, consists of many other existences and memories. That is why Takagi used various voices in this music. He asked his followers on Twitter to contribute their singing and voices, has collected 400 people's voice for just three days.

Track 4 is used in Intel® 'The Museum of Me', Track 1 is original mix, Track 2 is used in the teaser CM and Track 3 is unreleased tune newly composed for the this mini album 'Nijiko'.

Takagi Masakatsu: http://www.takagimasakatsu.com/
Epiphany Works: http://www.epiphanyworks.net/

The Sky May Be Falling.But the stars look good on you

2011-06-16T22:30:00.005+08:00

A documentary following the young and extremely talanted Icelandic musician Ólafur Arnalds, first at the Icelandic Airwaves and then straight to a full scale UK tour.The documentary focuses on getting to know "Óli" as his friends call him and his music

The Sky May Be Falling...but the stars look good on you from Gussi - Sleepless In Reykjavik on Vimeo.

http://icelandiccinema.com/film/The-Sky-May-Be-Falling...but-the-stars-look-good-on-you

Draumalandið [Film]

2011-06-16T22:16:00.003+08:00

How much unspoiled nature should we preserve and what do we sacrifice for clean, renewable energy? Dreamland gradually turns into a disturbing picture of corporate power taking over small communities.

Dreamland is a film about a nation standing at cross-roads. Leading up to the country’s greatest economic crisis, the government started the largest mega project in the history of Iceland, to build the biggest dam in Europe to provide Alcoa cheap electricity for an aluminum smelter in the rugged east fjords of Iceland. Today Iceland is left holding a huge dept and an uncertain future.

In Dreamland a nation with abundance of choices gradually becomes caught up in a plan to turn its wilderness and beautiful nature into a massive system of hydro-electric and geothermal power plants with dams and reservoirs. Clean energy brings in polluting industry and international corporations. It’s the dark side of green energy.

Official Trailer

Soundtrack

Websites

http://icelandiccinema.com/film/20

http://www.dreamland.is/index.html

39th Anniversary Of the death of Tan Sri P.Ramlee

2011-05-29T21:23:00.003+08:00

Allahyarham Tan Sri P.Ramlee, Malaysian's most popular and beloved film star,a film director,a composer and a musical genius past away 38 years ago on May 29th 1973 .It is thought that he had composed almost 360 music during his career.

P. Ramlee was the inimitable, charismatic and multi talented Malaysian screen legend who epitomized Malay cinema and had a huge following in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia in the 50s and 60s, whose reversal of fortune in the 70s left him scorned and forgotten by his fans.

Yet long after his death in 1973, there was a seismic resurgence of interest in his films and a clamor for everything ‘P. Ramlee’ which has endured to this day.

His is a story that even P. Ramlee, the master storyteller himself, could not have dreamed of. Today, loved by young and old alike, his films and songs have attained cult status in Malaysia and are regularly screened on TV, gaining him new generations of fans. In his final years, broke and broken, he had despaired of ever recovering his magic and getting the recognition he craved. In what must be one of life’s little ironies, in death…he became a superstar.

Here is a full - length documentary on the life and work of Tan Sri P.Ramlee.It was first premiered some time ago on September last year on History Channel.

P.Ramlee on History Channel

PuzzleMuteson - EnGarde [Video]

2011-05-19T02:58:00.002+08:00

Puzzle Muteson's first official video is here! Directed by the lovely people of Lauren Edward, this beautifully minimalistic video is set to the song 'En Garde', first single off Puzzle's forthcoming album.

Puzzle Muteson is the alter ego of an enigmatic songwriter from the Isle of Wight, rendering his music in a tremulous tenor over a finely spun web of fingerpicked guitar. Born in London, Isle of Dogs, the southern English island provided unexpected shelter for the shuddering transformation into one-man band Puzzle Muteson. His grade-school music teacher was first to recognise his unrivalled vibrato, and a little while later a parade of chance and coincidence led him to inhabit Puzzle Muteson, and start shaping a body of songs. Puzzle has since toured Ireland and the U.K., opening up for the likes of The Fruit Bats, Death Vessel and Sub Pop darling Daniel Martin Moore.

After obsessively listening to Puzzle Muteson’s own raw tapes, producer- arranger duo Valgeir Sigurðsson and Nico Muhly nurtured the songs that now inhabit his debut recording En Garde, released via Valgeir’s Bedroom Community label. The record shimmers with the signature value of Puzzle’s collaborators who have previously worked with the likes of Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Antony (& the Johnsons), Sam Amidon and many others.

Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians

2011-04-29T14:12:00.003+08:00

Music for 18 musicians is a title of a minimalist music piece composed by Steve Reich during 1974-1976.The play was first premiered on April 24, 1976 at Town Hall,New York.The Guardian (London) was once quoted "There's just a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history and Steve Reich is one of them" .

Steve Reich was recently called "our greatest living composer" (The New York Times), "America’s greatest living composer." (The Village VOICE), “...the most original musical thinker of our time” (The New
Yorker) and “...among the great composers of the century” (The New York Times).. From his early taped speech pieces It's Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966) to his and video artist Beryl Korot’s digital video opera Three Tales (2002), Mr. Reich's path has embraced not only aspects of Western Classical music, but the structures, harmonies, and rhythms of non-Western and American vernacular music, particularly jazz. "There's just a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history and Steve Reich is one of them," states The Guardian (London).

In April 2009 Steve Reich was awarded the Pulitzer prize in Music for his composition 'Double Sextet'.

Performing organizations around the world marked Steve Reich's 70th- birthday year, 2006, with festivals and special concerts. In the composer's hometown of New York, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Carnegie Hall, and Lincoln Center joined forces to present complementary programs of his music, and in London, the Barbican mounted a major retrospective. Concerts were also presented in Amsterdam, Athens, Brussels, Baden-Baden, Barcelona, Birmingham, Budapest, Chicago, Cologne, Copenhagen, Denver, Dublin, Freiburg, Graz, Helsinki, Los Angeles, Paris, Porto, Vancouver, Vienna and Vilnius among others. In addition, Nonesuch Records released its second box set of Steve Reich’s works, Phases: A Nonesuch Retrospective, in September 2006. The five-CD collection comprises fourteen of the composer’s best-known pieces, spanning the 20 years of his time on the label.

In October 2006 in Tokyo, Mr. Reich was awarded the Preamium Imperial award in Music. This important international award is in areas in the arts not covered by the Nobel Prize. Former winners of the prize in various fields include Pierre Boulez, Lucian Berio, Gyorgy Ligeti, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Richard Serra and Stephen Sondheim.

In May 2007 Mr. Reich was awarded The Polar Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of music. The prize was presented by His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. The Swedish Academy said: "...Steve Reich has transferred questions of faith, society and philosophy into a hypnotic sounding music that has inspired musicians and composers of all genres." Former winners of the Polar Prize have included Pierre Boulez, Bob Dylan, Gyorgi Ligeti and Sir Paul McCartney.

In December 2006 Mr. Reich was awarded membership in the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest and in April 2007 he was awarded the Chubb Fellowship at Yale University. In May 2008 he was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.

Born in New York and raised there and in California, Mr. Reich graduated with honors in philosophy from Cornell University in 1957. For the next two years, he studied composition with Hall Overton, and from 1958 to 1961 he studied at the Juilliard School of Music with William Bergsma and Vincent Persichetti. Mr. Reich received his M.A. in Music from Mills College in 1963, where he worked with Luciano Berio and Darius Milhaud.

During the summer of 1970, with the help of a grant from the Institute for International Education, Mr. Reich studied drumming at the Institute for African Studies at the University of Ghana in Accra. In 1973 and 1974 he studied Balinese Gamelan Semar Pegulingan and Gamelan Gambang at the American Society for Eastern Arts in Seattle and Berkeley, California. From 1976 to 1977 he studied the traditional forms of cantillation (chanting) of the Hebrew scriptures in New York and Jerusalem.

In 1966 Steve Reich founded his own ensemble of three musicians, which rapidly grew to 18 members or more. Since 1971, Steve Reich and Musicians have frequently toured the world, and have the distinction of performing to sold-out houses at venues as diverse as Carnegie Hall and the Bottom Line Cabaret.

Mr. Reich's 1988 piece, Different Trains, marked a new compositional method, rooted in It's Gonna Rain and Come Out, in which speech recordings generate the musical material for musical instruments. The New York Times hailed Different Trains as "a work of such astonishing originality that breakthrough seems the only possible description....possesses an absolutely harrowing emotional impact." In 1990, Mr. Reich received a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Composition for Different Trains as recorded by the Kronos Quartet on the Nonesuch label.

In June 1997, in celebration of Mr. Reich's 60th birthday, Nonesuch released a 10-CD retrospective box set of Mr. Reich's compositions, featuring several newly-recorded and re-mastered works. He won a second Grammy award in 1999 for his piece Music for 18 Musicians, also on the Nonesuch label. In July 1999 a major retrospective of Mr. Reich’s work was presented by the Lincoln Center Festival. Earlier, in 1988, the South Bank Centre in London, mounted a similar series of retrospective concerts.

In 2000 he was awarded the Schuman Prize from Columbia University, the Montgomery Fellowship from Dartmouth College, the Regent’s Lectureship at the University of California at Berkeley, an honorary doctorate from the California Institute of the Arts and was named Composer of the Year by Musical America magazine.

The Cave, Steve Reich and Beryl Korot's music theater video piece exploring the Biblical story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac, was hailed by Time Magazine as "a fascinating glimpse of what opera might be like in the 21st century." Of the Chicago premiere, John von Rhein of the Chicago Tribune wrote, "The techniques embraced by this work have the potential to enrich opera as living art a thousandfold....The Cave impresses, ultimately, as a powerful and imaginative work of high-tech music theater that brings the troubled present into resonant dialogue with the ancient past, and invites all of us to consider anew our shared cultural heritage."

Three Tales, a three-part digital documentary video opera, is a second collaborative work by Steve Reich and Beryl Korot about three well known events from the twentieth century, reflecting on the growth and implications of technology in the 20th century: Hindenburg, on the crash of the German zeppelin in New Jersey in 1937; Bikini, on the Atom bomb tests at Bikini atoll in 1946-1954; and Dolly, the sheep cloned in 1997, on the issues of genetic engineering and robotics. Three Tales is a three act music theater work in which historical film and video footage, video taped interviews, photographs, text, and specially constructed stills are recreated on computer, transferred to video tape and projected on one large screen. Musicians and singers take their places on stage along with the screen, presenting the debate about the physical, ethical and religious nature of technological development. Three Tales was premiered at the Vienna Festival in 2002 and subsequently toured all over Europe, America, Australia and Hong Kong. Nonesuch is releasing a DVD/CD of the piece in fall 2003.

Over the years, Steve Reich has received commissions from the Barbican Centre London, the Holland Festival; San Francisco Symphony; the Rothko Chapel; Vienna Festival, Hebbel Theater, Berlin, the Brooklyn Academy of Music for guitarist Pat Metheny; Spoleto Festival USA, West German Radio, Cologne; Settembre Musica, Torino, the Fromm Music Foundation for clarinetist Richard Stoltzman; the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra; Betty Freeman for the Kronos Quartet; and the Festival d'Automne, Paris, for the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution.

Steve Reich's music has been performed by major orchestras and ensembles around the world, including the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, New York Philharmonic conducted by Zubin Mehta; the San Francisco Symphony conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas; The Ensemble Modern conducted by Bradley Lubman, The Ensemble Intercontemporain conducted by David Robertson, the London Sinfonietta conducted by Markus Stenz and Martyn Brabbins, the Theater of Voices conducted by Paul Hillier, the Schoenberg Ensemble conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw, the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Robert Spano; the Saint Louis Symphony conducted by Leonard Slatkin; the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Neal Stulberg; the BBC Symphony conducted by Peter Eötvös; and the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.

Several noted choreographers have created dances to Steve Reich's music, including Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker ("Fase," 1983, set to four early works as well as"Drumming,"1998 and “Rain” set to “Music for 18 Musicians”), Jirí Kylían ("Falling Angels," set to “Drumming Part I”), Jerome Robbins for the New York City Ballet ("Eight Lines") and Laura Dean, who commissioned "Sextet". That ballet, entitled "Impact," was premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival, and earned Steve Reich and Laura Dean a Bessie Award in 1986. Other major choreographers using Mr. Reich's music include Eliot Feld, Alvin Ailey, Lar Lubovitch, Maurice Bejart, Lucinda Childs, Siobhan Davies and Richard Alston.

In 1994 Steve Reich was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, to the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in 1995, and, in 1999, awarded Commandeur de l’ordre des Arts et Lettres.

http://www.stevereich.com

In Ya Mellow Tone 6 [iTunes]

2011-03-25T04:44:00.003+08:00

VA「IN YA MELLOW TONE 6」
2010.04.02 in stores!

01.Magnetic North and Taiyo Na / Home:Word
02.Robert de Boron / Shine A Light Pt.2 feat.Awa and Oldwun
03.Alex Shiau & Vivian Chen / On And On
04.Nieve & Soulchef / Troubles Of The Past
05.re:plus / Solitude
06.Witness / Twenty Three feat.Emancipator
07.iris / You Are Beautiful
08.Alexander The Phatos / Beautiful Struggle (Reprise)
09.Derrick Fury / Better Half Of Me
10.Hidetake Takayama / Go With
11.Thomas Prime / Music Plays On feat.The 49ers
12.The Let Go / The Way You Were Before
13.Gowe / I Wonder
14.Avens / Come Around My Way feat.CL
15.Culture VI / All I Got To Give feat.Marsha Ambrosius
16.Upperleft Social / Her's and His

http://itunes.apple.com/jp/album/in-ya-mellow-tone-6/id425133018

Happy Birthday J.S Bach

2011-03-22T09:12:00.001+08:00

Happy birthday J. S. BACH here is a documentary on the life and work of J.S Bach a German composer whose compositions represents both the height of the Baroque and the beginning of the Modern Age of music.There are a lot of em in Youtube ,the previous series was documented by BBC.

In Ya Mellow Tone 6 [Track List]

2011-03-08T21:24:00.007+08:00

01. Magnetic North and Taiyo Na「Home:Word」
02. Robert de Boron feat Awa and Oldwun「Shine A Light Pt.2」
03. Alex Shiau & Vivian Chen「On And On」
04. Nieve & Soulchef「Troubles Of The Past」
05. re:plus「Solitude」
06. Witness feat. Emancipator「Twenty Three」
07. iris「You Are Beautiful」
08. Alexander The Phatos「Beautiful Struggle (Reprise)」
09. Derrick Fury「Better Half Of Me」
10. Hidetake Takayama「Go With」
11. Thomas Prime feat. The 49ers「Music Plays On」
12. The Let Go「The Way You Were Before」
13. Gowe「I Wonder」
14. Avens feat. CL「Come Around My Way」
15. Culture VI feat. Marsha Ambrosius「All I Got To Give」
16. Upperleft Social 「Her's and His」

CRIMINALIZING THE TRUTH TELLERS – AN ANALYSIS BY DR. LAWRENCE DAVIDSON

2011-03-05T18:58:00.002+08:00

Dr. Lawrence Davidson

Part I

There is no doubt that Julian Assange, the head of the Wikileaks organization, and Bradley Manning, the soldier who allegedly leaked U.S. classified documents, are being singled out and made examples of by the Obama administration. Their suffering constitutes a message which goes like this: if you inform the public of what the United States government is doing, no matter how illegal and disgusting it might be, our police and intelligence agencies will track you down and turn your life into hell. We will do that to you whether we can prove you committed a crime or not (as in the case of Assange) and we will do it to you even if it runs counter to our own legal codes (as in the case of Manning).

That is why Julian Assange is hold up in a British home under virtual house arrest devoting most of his energy to avoiding extradition to Sweden on what is almost certainly an exaggerated charge of sexual misconduct. The Swedes are cooperating with Washington and if Assange is extradited there he may well end up in the U.S. where, despite having not been charged with a crime, various politicians and talking heads have called for “punishment” of the most draconian sort. And it is not just Assange. Most of those involved with Wikileaks have been reduced to fear and trembling. As Glenn Greenwald puts it, “all of them, to a person, no matter what their nationality is, the thing they fear most is ending up in the hands of American authorities and in the American…justice system.” Greenwald notes the irony of it all. For the truth tellers, the land of the free has become a land of justice denied.

And, speaking of draconian punishment and justice denied, Bradley Manning who, for the past nine months, has been in incarcerated in the brig at Marine base in Quantico Virginia, is subject to treatment that is certainly cruel and unusual and thus illegal. He is in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. In the 24^th hour he is taken into another room where he can walk about shackled. This is for exercise. If he stops walking at any time during this hour he is immediately returned to his cell. Periodically he is put under constant surveillance because the military says he is potentially suicidal. How did he get that way? He was not suicidal upon his arrest. If in fact he is suicidal now it probably because the U.S. military has subjected him to conditions that drove him in that direction. The Commandant at Quantico has apparently seen fit to turn his brig into a stateside version of one of those infamous black hole detention facilities used by the CIA. The ones in which the Bush gang conducted “torture by proxy.” At Quantico we have decided to torture Bradley Manning ourselves.

Sadly, all of this is being done on Barack Obama’s watch. Yes, the President has defended Gay rights both in military and civilian society, and he has pushed for the employment of people with disabilities. However, when it comes to the federal government’s actions in violation of its own laws, he has refused to interfere or punish. This has produced the most startling juxtapositions. The U.S. government can lie to its people and start a war on that basis that kills millions of people (the ultimate crime according to the Nuremberg trials) and Obama will not investigate and will not prosecute. He will in fact do worse than nothing, as when he put pressure on Spain to cancel its own investigation of crimes against international law under the Bush administration.

But, if someone like Bradley Manning defies the American code of secrecy and reveals the truth, President Obama will allow him to be driven half mad and charged with “aiding the enemy” which carries the death penalty. But wait a minute. If your war is based on lies and manipulation and a good deal of official stupidity, it logically follows that the “enemy” is a contrived one. Under those circumstances does the charge of aiding such an enemy make any sense? Well, it makes sense if government secrecy has kept everyone mostly ignorant of the lies and other machinations. All of this makes you wonder how the man in the Oval Office sleeps at night.

Part II

And what about the rest of us? President Obama is not doing these things alone. What is happening to Julian Assange and Bradley Manning requires the cooperation or acquiescence of at least two additional groups.

1) The first group is made up of those employed to carry out the draconian measures now being practiced. You do not have to be familiar with the sociologist Max Weber to figure out how such people can do what they do, largely with impunity.

They are mostly bureaucrats and bureaucracies have evolved so as to hide responsibility. President Harry Truman once reacted to this fact by putting a sign in his office that said “the buck stops here.” In other words, buried in organizations with layers of authority, are anonymous millions who can always claim that they are “just following orders.” And, as a number of psychological studies have shown, most of us do in fact “just follow orders” especially if we are enmeshed in a peer group which is doing likewise. To this might be added the fact that there is always a sub-group of order takers who get their adrenalin highs from hurting others (every combat platoon has one or more of these). They are the ubiquitous torturers, abusive prison guards, and lower echelon thugs that find employment with all governments, including Washington. They were particularly active under the Bush regime.

To be sure there are laws against acting in a criminal fashion, even as a member of a government department. However, if your illegal actions are officially sanctioned, you are almost certain to get away with it. One will recall that the Bush gang, from top to bottom, is protected from prosecution by President Obama. Problems only develop when someone “blows the whistle” in a very public way. It is interesting that in such cases, more often than not, it is the “whistle blower who gets punished, and not the criminals. Assange and Manning are good examples of this.

2) The second group is the citizenry at large. Particularly in a democracy like the United States, these grossly inhumane acts by government officials are harder to carry on if the public knows about them and strongly objects. So there are two qualifiers here: a) if the public knows and b) if the public objects.

a) Secrecy, along with a less than aggressive media, is the way the American government attempts to assure that its own citizens do not know of its illegal doings. Until the age of the Internet this was relatively easy to do. Most of the privately owned media outlets are either whole heartedly conservative in outlook, and thus share the government’s attitude toward secrecy, or they are scared of the legal complications and bad publicity the government can cause them.

There have been times in recent history when some news companies have acted in aggressive ways to assert the public’s right to know (one thinks of the Washington Post at the time of the Watergate scandal) but the present day is not one of them. This is demonstrated by the fact that there has been no concerted effort on the part of the American media to defend Julian Assange, much less Bradley Manning. The combination of a government addicted to secrecy and news businesses that are essentially castrated means that what the public knows is what the government and its media allies tell it. So, unless someone breaches the walls of this system, either by doing something incredibly stupid, such as torturing prisoners at Abu Gharib while being photographed, or something incredibly brave, such as making public thousands of incriminating government documents, the citizenry will know little.

b) However, there is the second factor and that is objecting if you do happen to learn that something is amiss. One cannot assume that such objection comes automatically. Most people are so engrossed in their private lives that they do not pay attention to what the government is doing, particularly what it is doing abroad. They are more than willing to give Washington the benefit of the doubt unless the media aggressively asserts otherwise. So, when Obama says he will not allow for an official investigation of the Bush gang is there a public outcry? No. For that matter, if Washington quietly dropped all the charges against Bradford Manning and Fox News failed to go ballistic over the issue, would their be a public outcry? No. In the absence of an aggressive media to stir the pot and keep the citizenry focused, the default position of the majority is always a local one. In other words, if it does not impact my life, I am not going to pay attention unless you make me do so.

Part III

It may well be that the U.S. government has already achieved its goal when it comes to Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. It has created an atmosphere of fear and trembling so as to reduce the probability that anyone else will soon come along and replicate their behavior. In this effort law and due process mean nothing to either the President, the men and women who carry out his orders, or the citizens who go about their daily affairs with only minimal awareness that these two individuals are being harassed and tortured in their country’s name. It is a sad, but hardly unique, situation. It makes one nostalgic for those days in the 1960s when there was a another war based on lies, but also an aggressively skeptical media and a military draft that impacted lots of citizens’ lives. It is no mistake that this combination, one that indeed got the American masses into the streets, is missing today.

ldavidson@wcupa.edu
www.tothepointanalysis.com

Lawrence Davidson
Department of History
West Chester University
West Chester, Pa 19383
USA

DR. LAWRENCE DAVIDSON is professor of Middle East history at West Chester University in West Chester, PA, and the author of America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood (University of Florida Press, 2001), Islamic Fundamentalism (Greenwood Press, 2003), and Foreign Policy, Inc.: Privatizing American National Interest (University of Kentuck Press, 2009).

http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2011/03/criminalizing-the-truth-tellers-an-analysis-by-dr-lawrence-davidson/

Vitium - My Life Is Cleveland

2011-03-04T19:00:00.002+08:00

I have been wanting to share this brilliant music "My Life Is Cleveland" played by a funk/hiphop band Vitium.This song is one of my favorite off of the album/Oxygen Planet.

Website

http://www.vitiumband.com
http://www.myspace.com/vitiumband
http://www.ourstage.com/epk/vitium
http://www.reverbnation.com/vitium

Roomful of Teeth

2011-02-20T19:33:00.000+08:00

Ecstatic Music Festival - Roomful of Teeth and tUnE-yArDs from Kaufman Center on Vimeo.

The eight-voice polystylistic vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth and rising star composer/performers William Brittelle, the multi-talented "new music virtuoso" (New York Times) Caleb Burhans and tUnE-yArDs lead singer Merrill Garbus give the inside scoop on their collaboration for the Ecstatic Music Festival. See sneak preview of the works to be premiered on 2/19!

Radiohead - Lotus Flower

2011-02-19T16:07:00.001+08:00

Radiohead have pushed forward the digital release of their eighth album, The King of Limbs. Those who pre-ordered the record should look for their download codes, and those who didn't can purchase the record for immediate download here. UPDATE: Everyone can access their download by referring to the order tracking link on their original confirmation email and following that to the files.

The King of Limbs will be released by TBD Records in North America, XL in the UK, and Hostess Entertainment in Asia. The album will be out March 29 in North America and March 28 everywhere else on CD, 12" vinyl, and digital download.

Source / http://pitchfork.com/news/41623-radiohead-album-available-now/

Ólafur Arnalds - Hægt, kemur ljósið [Official Music Video]

2011-02-09T19:44:00.004+08:00

Born in 1986, Ólafur hails from the suburban Icelandic town of Mosfellsbær, just a few kilometres outside of Reykjavík. He has immersed himself completely in a world of delicate symphonic compositions generating near weightless orchestral pieces. Arnalds explores the crossover from classical to pop by mixing chamber strings and piano with discreet electronics which makes him a perfect fit for cinematic music label Erased Tapes. His motivations are clear: 'The classical scene is kind of closed to people who haven't been studying music all their lives. I would like to bring my classical influence to the people who don't usually listen to this kind of music…open people's minds.'

http://olafurarnalds.com

Iceland : Beyond Sigur Ros

2011-02-05T17:59:00.002+08:00

A must watch documentary,filmed in High Definition exploring icelandic music scene titled (Iceland ; Beyond Sigur ros) one of the most breathtaking comtemporary music scenes in the world.

Idiosyncratic, intelligent and involving, Iceland: Beyond Sigur Rós (2011), Serious Feather's latest not-for-profit film production, is a memorable celebration of Iceland's dynamic and diverse contemporary independent music scene.

Filmed in full HD, the 30 minute documentary features insightful interviews with Haukur Magnússon, flamboyant editor of Reykjavík's Grapevine Magazine, Ólafur Arnalds, world renowned pop-classical composer and music producer, and Pétur Úlfur Einarsson and Hafsteinn Michael Guðmundsson, ambitious co-founders behind online music distributor Gogoyoko.

With wonderful performances also from cutting-edge Icelandic acts such as Hafdis Huld, Berndsen, Mugison, Ólafur Arnalds, Lára Rúnars, Bloodgroup, For A Minor Reflection, Seabear, Sykur, Severed Crotch and DJ Musician, this really is something you shouldn't miss.

Enjoy!

Video can be viewed for FREE here

http://www.seriousfeather.com/iceland/

Ecstatic Music Festival

2011-02-05T17:06:00.012+08:00

The Ecstatic Music Festival is a showcase of imaginative collaborations between more than 150 composers, songwriters and performers.The festival starts on January 17th, continuing until March 28. The line-up includes - among others - Dan Deacon, Nadia Sirota, Doveman and Owen Pallett as well the Chiara String Quartet performing the music of Nico Muhly and Valgeir Sigurðsson.

The Chiara String Quartet asked four composers to create a new work and curate their evening; these series being called Creator/Curator. For their third in the series, they focus on Nico and on January 19th perform world premieres of his 'Diacritical Marks' along with Valgeir's 'Nebraska Quartet', written specifically for this occasion. The quartet will also be performing other music by both Nico and Valgeir as well as music that has influenced Nico in the past.

Curator Judd Greenstein has written a nice little piece on the performance that you can read here, and tickets can be bought here.

You can watch a trailer for the festival below (more videos here).

Ecstatic Music Festival: Dan Deacon & So Percussion from Guy Werner on Vimeo.

Ecstatic Music Festival from Kaufman Center on Vimeo.

Websites :

http://kaufman-center.org/merkin-concert-hall/ecstatic

http://postpostrock.com/2011/02/01/ecstatic-music-festival-the-first-week-in-review/

Monoloque - Tiada Kata Secantik Bahasa

2011-02-03T14:49:00.002+08:00

Monoloque has recently uploaded a full-length video of "Tiada Kata Secantik Bahasa.A rendition of the track which was originally sung in the movie "Anakku Sazali" directed and performed by Tan Sri Pramle.The initiative was first hatched by a local radio station XFM and a TV station ASTRO.It has taken so long for almost four decades after his death in 1973 for a local music industry to finally drew a first step paying a tribute to the late musical genius P.Ramlee.

A tribute album features 17 tracks performed by a variety of artists in Malaysia.Unfortunately there will be no physical copy or a vinyl edition to be bought as the compilation is meant to be a digital release only.A well-documented film on P.Ramlee works and life was also featured on History Channel as well it has been uploaded in YouTube in a High Definition feature.

Jónsi - Go Live Videos

2011-01-30T09:07:00.003+08:00

Go live is a film / live album double pack of jónsi’s hugely acclaimed solo show of 2010. this beautifully conceived package includes reworked live versions of all of the tracks from the sigur rós singer’s debut solo album, ‘go’, as well as versions of all the other new songs he’s been playing on a tour that’s taken in four continents.

The film

The visual element of ‘Go Live’ is based around a film of the very first time jónsi and his band played the songs from ‘Go’ to people at the final dress rehearsal for the tour in March 2010. Filmed by Fifty Nine Productions, the people responsible for jónsi’s celebrated stage design, the movie captures the never-to-be-repeated early stages of the productions development, in front of a small invited audience whose only price of admission was to dress as animals. Interwoven with this footage is background interviews and behind-the-scenes clips of jónsi and band on the road, as well as exclusive versions of the unreleased ‘Icicle Sleeves’, ‘New Piano Song’, ‘Volume Pedal Song’ and other untitled musical interludes to be found nowhere else. Running time is 1 hour 14 minutes.

The album

The live audio part of the package is the entire jónsi hour-and-a-quarter live concert as played this summer, and features still more exclusive content, including ‘Stars In Still Water’, ‘Saint Naive’, ‘Icicle Sleeves’ and ‘New Piano Song’, as well as a powerful live version of ‘Sticks And Stones’, the song written by jónsi for the end titles of ‘How To Train Your Dragon’. Housed in a hardback two disc “book”, ‘Go Live’ comes with lots and lots of personal pictures taken by the band on the road, throughout the 16-pages inside.

Website

http://jonsi.com/go

The Bolshoi Ballet Theatre Orchestra of Tashkent performs Tan Sri P.Ramlee's Menceceh Bujang Lapuk

2011-01-17T07:20:00.001+08:00

The Bolshoi Ballet Theatre Orchestra of Tashkent performs Tan Sri P.Ramlee's Menceceh Bujang Lapuk.

P. Ramlee featured on History Channel

2011-01-17T04:45:00.001+08:00

Tan Sri P. Ramlee (1929-73) was a renowned Malaysian composer,actor and a film director.

History Channel has recently featured a documentary on the life and work of P.Ramlee.The documentary was 1st premiered on October 31,2010.

Here are the links/videos uploaded in YouTube with a High Definition(HD) feature.

Bear McCreary - Battlestar Galactica Season (OST) - Kara Remembers

2011-01-11T00:28:00.002+08:00

Award-winning composer Bear McCreary has emerged as "one of the most innovative and intriguing composers on television" (Film Music Weekly) with his critically acclaimed score to Sci Fi Channel's ground-breaking series Battlestar Galactica. This series has been hailed by Time, Rolling Stone and Newsday as "The Best Show on Television," and won the prestigious Peabody Award. McCreary has also earned his share of acclaim. Kevin Smith's Quick Stop Entertainment proclaimed "McCreary astounds with his mastery in connecting the aural to the narrative... this fresh talent could be the vanguard of the next wave of important American composers. He’s bringing something new to the field of film composition." His score has been described as "sharp and sensitive" (The Wall Street Journal), "a key element in establishing the show's dark, complex tone," (The Hollywood Reporter) and "rich, raw, oddly stirring... kick-ass and powerful as hell," (E! Online). Both his Battlestar Galactica: Season Two and Season Three soundtrack albums rocketed into Amazon.com's TOP 30 Music Sales on their first days of release, and both were ranked by Visions in Sound as the "#1 Soundtrack of Album of 2006 and 2007" respectively.

In addition to completing Battlestar Galactica's highly anticipated final season, Bear is currently scoring Fox's smash hit Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the next chapter in the iconic Terminator franchise. He also scores Sci Fi Channel's highest-rated series Eureka. McCreary's feature film work includes Warner Bros.' Rest Stop (2006) and Twentieth Century Fox's Wrong Turn 2 (2007) starring Henry Rollins. Both quickly became the best-selling straight-to-DVD films in their studios' histories.

Bear is proud to be among the handful of select protégés of late film music legend Elmer Bernstein (The Magnificent Seven, Far From Heaven ). Bear worked with Bernstein for nearly a decade, learning the tools of the trade along the way. Working from Bernstein's own hand-written pencil sketches, Bear completely reconstructed and re-orchestrated Bernstein's 1963 score for Kings of the Sun, starring Yul Brynner. Bernstein himself conducted Bear's Kings concert suite in performances around the world. Their collaboration allowed for the complete score to be available as a soundtrack album for the first time in forty years.

Though he trained as a pianist, Bear has become a professional accordionist. He can frequently be found on stage, conducting his original music at his highly-anticipated Battlestar Galactica Concerts. He also served as musical director for the energetic Johnny "Vatos" Tributes to Halloween in 2005, 2006 and 2007, performing the hits of Oingo Boingo alongside many former members of the famous cult band. His unique combination of atypical instrumental background with rigorous classical training (degrees in Composition as well as Recording Arts from the prestigious USC Thornton School of Music) puts him equally at home writing for quirky, off-kilter ensembles or symphonic orchestras - often both at once.

In 2007 he scored Smirnoff Vodka's global Bloodline campaign. His music has appeared in Frank Darabont's The Mist, as well as trailers for Heroes, The Other Bolelyn Girl and Law and Order. However, his greatest honor was having his Galactica score parodied in two pivotal episodes of South Park. He is represented by Soundtrack Music Associates.

Valgeir Sigurðsson - Past tundra

2011-01-10T23:50:00.002+08:00

Valgeir Sigurðsson's boundless approach to music informs his work as composer, musician, engineer and mixer. In high demand as a producer, Valgeir has spent over a decade cultivating projects by vaunted international artists whilst developing his own particular magic brand of recording artistry – now with two solo albums to his name. Valgeir is the founder of the Bedroom Community record label as well as Iceland’s top recording facility Greenhouse Studios where his collaborators include Björk, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Camille, CocoRosie, Ben Frost, Sam Amidon, Nico Muhly, The Magic Numbers, múm and many others.

Valgeir's formative years in a small Icelandic village proved fertile soil for his forays into self-taught recording technology; he studied classical guitar and plays keyboards, bass, percussion as well as electronics/programming. In 1991 he earned a Tonmeister degree from London’s SAE Institute. His career flourished in 1998 when fellow countrywoman Björk requested him as engineer and programmer for Lars Von Trier's Dancer in the Dark soundtrack, a monumental project that combined Valgeir's passion for electronic, orchestral and film music. The soundtrack's “I've Seen It All,” Björk's duet with Thom Yorke, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song. Valgeir's musical relationship as one of Björk's primary studio collaborators from 1998 to 2006 thrived through contributions to her albums Selmasongs, Vespertine, Medúlla, and Drawing Restraint 9.

Valgeir founded record label and collective Bedroom Community in 2006; the label is home to Sam Amidon and Ben Frost and has launched the solo recording careers of Nico Muhly, Daníel Bjarnason and Valgeir himself. After years of success in the recording industry, Valgeir debuted his own album Ekvílibríum, which The Fader Magazine heralded as “a singular album, as ornate as it is direct.” In 2009, collective members Valgeir and Muhly co-composed and premiered Scent Opera for New York City's Guggenheim Museum. In 2010, Bedroom Community released an album of Valgeir's documentary soundtrack for Dreamland (Draumalandið).

In all of his projects, Valgeir bends and blends familiar sounds to expose the new within the known, lending depth to pop and mainstream music through care and an ear for esoteric, eclectic sonic experimentation. His aural oeuvre and collaborative contributions collide organic with synthetic, acoustic with digital, connection with isolation, and domestic with ethereal – resulting in a body of work ripe with emotion, curiosity, and humanity.

Website

http://www.bedroomcommunity.net

Alexander The Phatos - F.A.F / Output 1 - 2 [Excerpt/Pre-Mixed]

2011-01-04T09:53:00.003+08:00

Produced by AnisHaron for Phatosism 2011
Music/Keys/SoundEffects written arranged and performed by AnisHaron.
Lyrics by Adifarhud.Dafrosty.Ksatriya.SaphuanAwang.

F.A.F / Output 1 - 2 Feat.Dafrosty.Ksatriya.SaphuanAwang[Excerpt/Pre-Mixed] by Alexander The Phatos

Alexander The Phatos - Walk On By feat. Nicholas Wonder of Vitium [Excerpt]

2011-01-04T09:34:00.005+08:00

Produced by Adifarhud for Phatosism (2010/2011)
Piano and String arrangements written & arranged by Adifarhud
Lyrics written and performed by Nicholas Wonder,Adifarhud & Anas
Contains a sample of "Walk On By" performed by Dionne Warwick

Walk On By feat. Nicholas Wonder of Vitium [Excerpt] by Alexander The Phatos

Runaway

2011-01-03T22:39:00.005+08:00

Runaway from Kanye West. even someone who hates ballet will notice how beautiful ballet can be after they watch this music video. and yes, i'm talking about myself. and i believe you will feel the same way too. a video with a subliminal message with a nicely careographed ballet. kudos Kanye!

ads

Original post from Anas

Valgeir Sigurðsson - Draumalandið /Dreamland

2010-12-24T00:47:00.001+08:00

Websites

http://valgeir.net

http://www.bedroomcommunity.net/artists/valgeir_sigurdsson/

Monoloque / Live at Istana Budaya

2010-12-22T07:21:00.002+08:00

Konsert ‘Analoque’ - Ana Raffali & Monoloque merupakan sebuah konsert akustik istimewa yang menggabungkan sepasang adam & hawa terunik dewasa ini, iaitu Ana Raffali dan Monoloque. Konsert dijadualkan akan berlangsung pada 19 disember, 2010 di Lambang Sari, Istana Budaya. Dua pertunjukan dalam satu hari iaitu pertunjukan pertama akan berlangsung dari jam 3:00 - 5:00 petang dan pertunjukan kedua akan bermula pada jam 8:45 – 10:45 malam.

Ana Rafalli seperti biasa akan diiringi oleh pemuzik pengiring The Marhaens yang didukungi oleh gabungan otai dan yang sedang meningkat naik, antaranya Aidit Alfian, GG, Geeka, Pito, Rohnie dan Nazrin. Manakala Monoloque dibarisi oleh Loque (tunjang utama), Kadax, Loko, Ijoo dan Adam. Sejarah mengetahui bahawa mereka ini jugalah merupakan pejuang Buterfingers yang cukup gah itu.

Perjalanan konsert ini amat menarik untuk dinikmati. Hampir 30 buah lagu akan dipersembahkan oleh kedua insan berbakat istimewa ini. Dimulakan oleh Monoloque yang akan mempersembahkan gabungan lagu-lagu lama dan baru dari zaman kegemilangan Allahyarham Tan Sri P.Ramlee, Biduan R.Azmi, zaman emas Butterfingers hinggalah eksperimentasi Monoloque hari ini. Tiada Kata Scantik Bahasa, Mengapa Riang Ria, Rindu Dendam, Cuai, Tentang2, Chenta, Jika Aku seorang Robot merupakan cebisan dari karya agung yang akan dipersembahkan pada hari konsert nanti.

Selepas berakhirnya persembahan Monoloque, Ana Raffali pula yang akan tampil. Ana akan menyampaikan lebih kurang 15 buah lagu, antaranya Hujan Bunga Di Kuala Lumpur, Tolong Ingatkan Aku, Cuba Jangan, Dan Biarkan Kau Terlepas, Ketika Aku Kecil dan lain-lainnya selain dari medley lagu-lagu ‘cover’ Melayu dan Inggeris yang digubah mengikut tekak Ana Raffali.

Kemuncak konsert ini adalah apabila kedua artis ini akan bergandingan untuk menyampaikan 2 buah lagu berhantu ketika ini iaitu ‘Kekanda Adinda’ dan ‘Kalau Berpacaran’ selain sebuah lagu bonus yang diberi sentuhan baru oleh Monoloque iaitu ‘Doa Buat Kekasih’ (nyanyian asal Ramli Sarip dan Khatijah Ibrahim).

This article was taken from The following website

Websites:

Monoloque

http://www.monoloque.com

Istana Budaya

http://www.istanabudaya.gov.my/analoque

Nieve - Playback

2010-12-22T07:11:00.002+08:00

Playback on Itunes

Get 5 free tracks / Digital Download

Hip hop at its finest. Los Angeles based emcee Nieve has a lyrical style that is smooth, poetic, and captivating. His music combines elements of classic hiphop and jazz to create a soulful, mellow sound.

Nieve has been rapping and making music since he was kid, perfecting his skills in numerous hiphop shows, rap battles, and open mics across LA. His rhymes are inspired by artists such as Nas, Mos Def, Gangstar and Wu-tang as well as from Jazz artists, like John Coltrane and Miles Davis.

His first album "Away with Words.' (produced by cook classics) gained the attention of Tokyo hiphop label "Goontrax" and was released in Japan in 2008. This led to further collaborations with the talented Tokyo production crew "Cradle," which included the music video "Talk it out" featured on the Cradle Orchestra's "Velvet Ballads."

The LA and Tokyo connection continues to flourish between Nieve and Cradle with the release of their new album "Soulbirds" A mix of silky smooth rhymes, colorful vocals (courtesy of singer Jean Curley) and the unmistakable mellow tones and sweet sounding production that Cradle has become known for.

Through it all, Nieve remains a genuine and humble artist, more concerned with making the music he loves, then chasing false aspirations of money and fame. Forever the student, Nieve continues to excel in his craft and enjoys learning and collaborating with fellow artist from all around the globe. With his fresh new sound and classic flow, Nieve is sure to be a welcomed addition to any hiphop fan's music library.

Website:

http://nievemusic.com

Scala & Kolacny Brothers (Choir)

2010-12-16T02:36:00.005+08:00

When you were here before,
Couldn't look you in the eye
You're just like an angel,
Your skin makes me cry

You float like a feather
In a beautiful world
I wish I was special
You're so fuckin' special

But I'm a creep,
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doin' here?
I don't belong here

I don't care if it hurts,
I wanna have control
I want a perfect body
I want a perfect soul

I want you to notice
when I'm not around
You're so fuckin' special
I wish I was special

But I'm a creep
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doin' here?
I don't belong here, ohhhh, ohhhh

She's running out again
She's running out
She run run run run...
run... run...

Whatever makes you happy
Whatever you want
You're so fuckin' special
I wish I was special

But I'm a creep,
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doin' here?
I don't belong here

I don't belong here.

The Scala story is truly a dream come true. The classically trained Kolacny brothers, Steven (piano) and Stijn (conducting) have turned this Belgian girls’ choir into an international phenomenon, performing imaginatively reworked covers of Radiohead, U2, Rammstein and Nirvana songs (to name but a few) as well as, their equally successful original compositions before sold-out audiences throughout the world.

In February 2009, Scala performed for the first time in the United States at the New York Times Center. Later this year, the first ‘Scala live’ TV special will start to air on PBS (the live recording took place April 28th at the ‘Concertgebouw’ of Bruges). In conjunction with the PBS special, Scala will release their first CD and DVD, ‘Circle’, in the Fall of 2010 and the choir will tour the U.S. in April 2011.

Scala currently has more than 200 young women between the ages of 16 and 26 on its member list, but the choir started very small. The very first rehearsal took place on April 2nd 1996, with just 18 singers. The brothers' intention was to work with "voices" in their free time, thinking that a choir would be the best form for their experiment!

Scala started more or less as a classical choir. The many rehearsals, hard work and perseverance soon led to prizes at choir festivals and contests. In their home country Belgium, Scala became "Choir of The Year 1999-2000" and have won top prizes around the world. In his search for ‘a different sound’, older brother Steven started arranging pop and rock hits, which younger brother Stijn directed. This led to Scala the ‘rock choir’ being born, almost without them even realizing it.

Their first CD, ‘Scala On The Rocks’ was released December 1st, 2002. The idea was simple but daring: transposing rock songs into a believable sound using 40 young women’s voices and 1 piano. The success of this first CD, the favorable reviews from press and the audience, were beyond everyone’s wildest expectations. The CD got the support of nearly all-Belgian radio stations, newspapers and magazines and from leading names within the Belgian rock scene. Sales of “On The Rocks’ CD achieved gold in Belgium; making it the first ever choir to score a gold album!

At the end of 2003, the second CD, "Dream On" (named after the Depeche Mode song) was released and Scala started its first "On The Rocks" sold-out tour throughout Belgium. Neighboring countries showed interest and it was not long before Scala's CD's made the playlist of radio stations throughout Europe. In Paris, RTL2 and M6 rolled out the red carpet and Nikola Sirkis, the lead singer of mega group Indochine, let it be known that he loved Scala. This resulted in a collaboration with Indochine, a duet with Nikola, two concerts (Brussels/Paris) in one day and a guest appearance on Indochine’s CD “Starlight”. As a result, the Scala CD "Respire", an album with French rock songs, was released in 2004.

In Germany, Radio Fritz in Berlin discovered Scala around the same time. Thanks to airplay of the Scala version of German superstar Rammstein’s "Engel" – which Rammstein endorsed enthusiastically - and a live Fritz-concert in Berlin in August 2004, Scala started getting requests for concerts throughout Germany, as well as from radio and TV-stations. They performed with the German band "MIA" and in 2005 Scala released “Grenzenlos”, its first CD in German.

In 2005 Steven, in partnership with Koen Buyse, front man of the Belgian rock band Zornik, started writing songs in earnest. The collaboration resulted in the album, ‘It All Leads To This’ (released in Belgium in September 2006), which again went ‘gold’. An ‘It All Leads To This’ tour followed throughout several countries. This tour strongly emphasized sound, light, sets and projection. Finally, the Scala concept was complete: take rock classics and pop hits, strip them down and rework them in a totally new dimension, utilizing celestial female voices. Simple but brilliant.

In 2008 Scala was asked to do a project in remembrance of the legendary Belgian singer Pierre Rapsat, who died in 2002. The sold out “Dans les Yeux d’Aurore’ tour strengthened Scala’s relationship with Belgium’s French-speaking audience. The number of concerts in Germany also increased steadily and Scala performed more and more songs in German, including its version of MIA’s hit, ‘Hungriges Herz’, which was used in a top national German television commercial.

Symbolically, Scala is completing its ‘Circle’, from covers to their own songs, from churches to rock music festivals, from Belgium via Japan to the States. Scala is spreading its wings, introducing new audiences to new original music. Like the potter’s hands molding masterpieces from clay, the Kolacny brothers are taking these female voices, the choir’s soul and shaping them in their own inimitable way.

Go Live by Jonsi

2010-12-06T17:50:00.007+08:00

Go live preview from Jónsi on Vimeo.

Go live’ is a film / live album double pack of jónsi’s hugely acclaimed solo show which is still going on as we speak. this beautifully conceived package includes reworked live versions of all of the tracks from the sigur rós singer’s debut solo album, ‘go’, as well as versions of all the other new songs he’s been playing on a tour that’s taken in four continents.‘go live’ is available exclusively on jonsi.com.

The Film

The visual element of ‘Go Live’ is based around a film of the very first time jónsi and his band played the songs from ‘Go’ to people at the final dress rehearsal for the tour in March 2010. Filmed by Fifty Nine Productions, the people responsible for jónsi’s celebrated stage design, the movie captures the never-to-be-repeated early stages of the productions development, in front of a small invited audience whose only price of admission was to dress as animals. Interwoven with this footage is background interviews and behind-the-scenes clips of jónsi and band on the road, as well as exclusive versions of the unreleased ‘Icicle Sleeves’, ‘New Piano Song’, ‘Volume Pedal Song’ and other untitled musical interludes to be found nowhere else. Running time is 1 hour 14 minutes.

The Album

Jonsi Official Website/Go Live

Samurai Jazz Quintet (SJQ)

2010-11-25T05:00:00.002+08:00

Pico from takcom™ on Vimeo.

PV for “Pico”, which is included in second album named “Animacy”, have been released.

It was created by Takafumi Tsuchiya (a visual artist).
Each object in the video was connected to each sound. The complex nexus of the sounds in music, was visualized by his awesome imagination.

SJQ is a band composed of Yuta Uozumi (piano/computer), Tadashi Yonago, (trombone/computer), Isao Nakagaito(guitar), Shuhei Otani(bass), Wataru Asada(Drums). and gismo: an artificial life program created by Yuta Uozumi.

SJQ’s approach is a chain reaction of human and virtual interactions, one by one evolving without recorded loops.

In the course of a performance, SJQ utilizes realtime modulation, computer manipulation as well as traditional Jazz instruments such as piano, trombone, guitar, bass, and drums.

SJQ Website

『Melancholic Jazz Sunset』に収録されているWonderWheelin'のMV。

2010-11-06T23:08:00.001+08:00

2010年10月20日発売

『Melancholic Jazz Sunset』に収録されているWonderWheelin'のMV。

POP！DREAMY！MELANCHOLY！

MUSIC::::::::::::Hidetake Takayama

VISUAL:::::::::::Toshiro Nanba

CAMERA::::::::Kenji Noguchi

PRODUCE::::::Junpei Kishino

This song was made for the short film『Wonder Wheelin'』

Buy Melancholic Jazz Sunset

Cradle Orchestra – Transcended Elements [2010]

2010-10-28T05:36:00.000+08:00

Artist: Cradle Orchestra
Album: Transcended Elements
Release Date: November 3, 2010
Label: Goon Trax
Genre: Jazz-Hop
Format: mp3
Quality: VBR
Size: 81 MB
Description: New Album!

Tracklist:
1. Don’t Wake Me Up (feat. Speech)
2. The Night Is Right (feat. Giovanca)
3. Follow This (feat. Hocus Pocus)
4. On My Way (feat. Nieve & Jean Curley)
5. You Got To Luv It (feat. Guru)
6. Things Have Changed (feat. Pismo)
7. Jazzentic
8. Walk Out (feat. Need Not Worry)
9. Picnic (feat. De La Soul)
10. Imported Nights (feat. Camp Lo)
11. Married To The Game (feat. C.L. Smooth & Jean Curley)
12. Make Life (feat. Aloe Blacc)
13. I Never Knew (feat. Substantial)
14. Eternal Truth

Link/Buy : Itunes/japan

Nico Muhly : I Drink the Air Before Me | 5-6 Oct 2010

2010-10-21T19:43:00.000+08:00

Stephen Petronio's explosive new work explores the awesome forces of nature. With unpredictable twists and turns, the ten dancers whirl like the turbulent forces of a storm. Featuring a special guest appearance by Stephen Petronio, this exhilarating visual spectacle combines fashion, music and dance.

An irresistible score created by New York composer Nico Muhly will be performed on stage by a live band and a choir of young people. This eclectic soundtrack fuses stunning classical phrases with electronic landscapes and acoustic instruments.

Footage courtesy Pat Jaffe & Gil Gilbert

The Night is Right feat. GIOVANCA /　Cradle Orchestra

2010-10-21T10:51:00.001+08:00

Cradle Orchestra new album "Transcended Elements" due 2010.11.3 : featuring many great artists : De La Soul.Giovanca.Need Not Worry.Nieve & Jean Curley.Aloe Blacc.Guru.

マーケットを席巻した１stアルバム「Velvet Ballads」から１年１０ヶ月・・・

Cradle Orchestraがよりパワーアップして帰ってくる！

De La Soul,　Giovanca, Hocus Pocus,　Speech,　Guruなど世界中のトップ・アーティストが集結した2ndアルバムが遂に完成！

2ndアルバムからのMusic VideoはGiovancaが参加！

2010.11.3　On Sale!　「Transcended Elements」

GTXC-052 ￥2940(tax in）

Malancholic Jazz Sunset / Hidetake Takayama // Yuyake No Uta // 夕焼けの歌

2010-10-20T03:02:00.006+08:00

Malancholic Jazz Sunset is a sequel to Malancholic Jazz Winter,Series of compilation that features a various great Japanese Jazz/Hiphop/Classical Artists.The compilation was released on an early October 2011 in Japan,among other artists are Lurisca , DJ whitesmith, Blazo HeRajiKa etc.Direct yourself for this good music,You may find the music is way much better than a mainstream ish u have been listening.Spread it give the artists the credits they deserve.

"LASERS" Protest / Rally at Atlantic

2010-10-17T01:49:00.002+08:00

The cause was to protest demanding Atlantic Record to release Lupe Fiasco's new Album entitled 'Lasers' after a 3 years delay.Protest was first seen over the online petition created by a fan of Lupe Fiasco, has managed to get approximately 30 000 signatures.The action has caused an inevitable buzz over the internet gaining its support by not only signed by random fans but well known artists.

LASERS protest took place in two different venues, New York and Chicago.The protesters were urged to spread the message to Atlanctic Records by carving up written banners with Lasers amendments and gather in front of the Atlantic building in New York city.Let's not forget the rallies were fully organized by the fans of Lupe Fiasco themselves.Although the release date was recently confirmed,Lupe's fans decided to proceed with the protest but with a different cause 'A celebration'.

The protest seems to has archived its goal witnessing The CEO of Atlantic record came down with a boombox radio playing Lupe upcoming single.After a few hours ,Lupe headed down to the heart of protest and had given a speech celebrating and reminding the fans the essential of Laser Manifesto what are they really fighting for.

More Images Here /// LasersPictures

Rear More here /// Lupend

Sting / Symphonicity : Live in Berlin Accompanied by The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

2010-10-12T01:44:00.000+08:00

Sting Symphonicity Orchestra Concert Review

I wasn't really planning on seeing Sting on his current tour. After a ho-hum show a few years back at the Rose Garden, I decided that perhaps the best shows for Sting were behind him. I find it extremely difficult to watch some of my favorite performers from my childhood struggle to try to recapture a spark they have lost. Musically, there's almost nothing worse than listening to a song you love, sung by someone you used to love hear singing it, and having it sound like someone doing a karaoke version of their own song.

I'm extremely grateful that I ended up seeing Sting in his latest tour "Symphonicity" on its first US stop in Portland, Oregon. Not only was Sting's Symphonicity show a fantastic musical experience, it was a rare opportunity to see an extremely accomplished performer celebrate his work in a way that enhanced the memory of it rather than denigrate it.

Backed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sting seemed to be right at home on stage with 48 other musicians. Sting has always been attracted to great music and musicians, from the mad genius of Stewart Copeland in The Police, Branford Marsalis in Bring on The Night, and more recently Chris Botti. Playing with talented people always seems to elevate Sting's performance.

There was a lot for Sting to draw from with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, expertly conducted by Steven Mercurio. Sting adapted the arrangements of many of his iconic songs for the orchestra and they did a superb job of accompanying him. Not all adaptations were a home run, however. Message in A Bottle lost its sense of loneliness and longing, Next to You felt like someone trying to force a rock sound out of an orchestra, and Whenever I Say Your Name was an utter train wreck. But when things worked, they really worked.

Songs from Sting's Ten Summoner's Tales album adapted extremely well for an orchestra. If I Ever Lose My Faith in You, the opening song, sounded fantastically full, Fields of Gold got some great texture, and Shape of My Heart became more dramatic with symphonic exclamations.

With such a strong orchestral accompaniment, Sting's backup vocalist, Jo Lawry, got pretty lost in the shuffle. The duet I Say Your Name, originally performed with Mary J. Blige, came off poorly, and the chorus for When We Dance was muted and stripped down to accommodate Lawry's voice. The only place she really shined was on You Will Be My Ain True Love, a song Sting wrote for the motion picture Cold Mountain (originally recorded by Alison Krauss). Even there, her voice didn't quite mesh with with Sting.

With Symphonicity, Sting's greatest on-stage collaborator was really conductor Steven Mercurio. It was extremely clear that Mercurio 'got it' - his conducting was animated, dramatic and just plain fun. For some this concert may be an introduction to seeing an orchestra live, and I couldn't think of a better introduction than Mercurio.

Sting has had a pretty diverse musical journey throughout his career, from his pure rock days with The Police, his ballad-focused solo work, jazzy Bring On The Night, and even country I Hung My Head (which was ultimately recorded by Johnny Cash before his death). Rather than just making Symphonicity an evening of Sting's greatest hits, Sting drew from all the corners of his musical cannon in a celebration of the breadth of his work. Songs like Tomorrow We'll See and End of The Game fit between classics like Moon Over Bourbon Street and King of Pain, and Hung My Head and You Will Be My Ain True Love syncopated with Shape of My Heart and Mad About You.

One of the things I loved the most about Symphonicity was the absolute pure clarity of sound. Sting's voice was exceptional. He effortlessly hit the high notes on Roxanne while still maintaining a strong soft and quiet voice on A Thousand Years. The orchestra also sounded fantastic, from the dramatic orchestration for Moon Over Bourbon Street and Russians, to the softer Why Should I Cry For You and Fields of Gold, The Royal Philharmonic had a richness and depth of sound that was simply spectacular.

The absolute high point of the show for me was King of Pain. It was the moment that all the elements came together perfectly - a classic Police song, sung exactingly by Sting, and sonically expanded by the orchestra. It was the absolute 'a-ha' moment of the show and the moment I knew I would have deeply regretted missing Symphonicity.

With fairly high ticket prices, some may accuse Sting of using Symphonicity to 'cash in'. I've seen Sting phone it in before and he isn't doing that here. Sting delivered over three hours of top level performance backed by one of the better orchestras I've seen on stage, all of which are more than enough to justify paying the ticket price. Rearranging these songs for the orchestra has breathed some new life and energy into Sting's work and Sting seemed really invigorated by it. If you are a fan of Sting, this is the tour you absolutely should not miss.

Here's the setlist from the June 4th Sting Symphonicity show at the Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland, Oregon:

Lose My Faith
Englishman in New York
Every Litte Thing She Does Is Magic
Roxanne
Straight To My Heart
Russians
Fields of Gold
I Hung MY Head
Shape of My Heart
Why Should I Cry For You
Whenever I Say Your Name
When We Dance
Message in A Bottle
Next to You

20 min intermission

A Thousand Years
Tomorrow We'll See
Moon Over Bourbon Street
The End of The Game
My Ain True Love
All Would Envy
Mad About You
Ghost Story
King of Pain
Every Breath You Take

Encore
Desert Rose
She's Too Good For Me
Fragile
I Was Brought To My Senses (acapella)

Sting performs again in Portland on June 5th in Portland and then: June 9 at Red Rocks in Denver; June 15 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles; July 17 and 18 at Chicago's renowned Ravinia Festival. Sting will also perform in New York, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle and Washington and return to Canada, with stops in Toronto and Montreal. Tickets can be purchased at Live Nation.

© On Portland by Geoff Kleinman

Nieve : Los Angeles based Emcee Musician Superpoet.

2010-10-05T12:14:00.002+08:00

Nieve /// Website

Jónsi live show by 59 Productions

2010-10-01T02:52:00.000+08:00

Jónsi live show by 59 Productions from Jónsi on Vimeo.

Selected Reviews

Go, Jonsi's debut album under his own name, seeks to translate Sigur Ros's elegiac, symphonic soundscapes into something approximating pop music, and is a qualified success. The material works better live, where a five-piece band – including Jonsi's partner, Alex Somers, on guitar – and spectacular visuals by the theatrical design company 59 Productions combine in a truly hypnotic performance....By the encore, he has donned a towering Native American headdress for the hyperventilating percussive-pop rush of Animal Arithmetic, and then performs a war dance in front of staggering high-definition thunderstorm visuals during the glorious cacophony of Grow Till Tall. Sigur Ros are a sorry loss, but if Jonsi maintains this staggering form, their absence will be less sorely felt."

Guardian

"Playing at the Kentish Town Forum as part of a world tour, the colourful Jonsi and his talented whip-tight band play songs delicately and feverishly before a brilliant backdrop.

Devised by Fifty Nine Productions, a creative collective who work in theatre and film, the live show is a hybrid of arts that blasts the senses.

The visuals continually morph - flames flicker across the forest stage, scratchy drawings of wolves hunt deer, hummingbirds caress tumbling flowers - you walk away greatly appreciative of nature.

As Jonsi tinkers on the piano during Sinking Friendships, the background turns into bright blue waters, ready to burst from the stage, but the magnificent production doesn’t take anything away from the music: it enhances the eerie dream-like songs."

Metro

"When tonight's set closes, it's difficult to believe that an hour and a half has passed, such is the spell that the Sigur Ros frontman, Jonsi, casts over his audience.... It has a powerful effect on those in the prime spot, standing, who are buffeted by the lightning and pelting rain, fully immersed in – and almost part of – the performance. There is nobody in contemporary music quite like Jonsi."

Independent

"throughout his 75-minute set Friday night at Sound Academy, the audience was torn: were they more impressed with the gorgeous, lush arrangements fuelled by Jonsi's at times angelic high notes or the equally stunning visuals which accompanied the songs?"

Toronto Sun

"During the show, which blends elements of operatic and theatrical staging and film and art installations with the lighting and dynamics of a live gig, animals including wolves, deer, butterflies, owls and rats, all come to life on screens and take flight.

It might sound odd, but fans and critics who have already seen the show on tour in America have been won over. "With 90 minutes of genuine, theatrical production, replete with an interactive set and costumes, Jonsi made the fifth stop of his solo career at the Roseland Theater with a performance designed for an opera house," said the Oregon Music News. "Bringing some to tears, the intensity and sheer force of the final minutes triggered cool perspiration to chill stunned onlookers – one powerful gasp before letting go forever."

The Independent

"It began as an affirmation, with churchy organ chords and Jonsi’s purest sustained high notes, and a tree blooming on the video screen. A martial beat and electric guitar chords arrived, pealing and then moving into frenetic tremolos; the screen darkened with torrential rain and windblown debris, as the tree shattered. Jonsi’s purity turned to desperate shouts. The sweetest falsetto couldn’t hold back a hurricane."

New York Times

"On a set that looked like the Museum of Natural History after a fire (trust me), a tight musical arc that fit the songs into one another like puzzle pieces, and gorgeous projections courtesy of London's 59 Productions, the show was less winsome rock and more serious Theatre."

Spin Magazine

"...None of that prepared me for one of the most incredible experiences I’ve recently had. The music was amazing, of course it was amazing, we’re talking about dedicated musicians playing their hearts out to a totally rapt audience, but the light display merged both performers and backdrop into a story that unfolded through the course of the show."

Guttersnipe

Monoloque / Halimunan abad ke -21 / Excerpt

2010-09-30T07:11:00.003+08:00

Visit Monoloque facebook page for the video /// Monoloque/facebook

MonoloQue was born in 2004. The man himself, better known as loQue, was the founder of the well-known Malaysian grunge/alternative/independent band, Butterfingers. He is also the main composer/lyricist for the band. The band which was founded in 1992 has received enormous popularity in Malaysian Music Industry, having 8 albums under their belt, 4 English albums – 2 Malay albums - 2 Compilations albums. Currently Butterfingers's KEMBALI is nominated at AIM 2009(Anugerah Industry Muzik)for Best Rock Album and 1000 Tahun(mahu hidup) for Best Rock Song,one of many songs written by LoQue.

As the band gets it success, loQue known for his love to challenge himself and to explore new things in life, comes up with monoloQue in 2004 when the band he founded took a hiatus from the music scene. He knew that he had to start from scratch and not falling into the comfort couch that he had for almost 15 years as the band member & founder of Butterfingers. He began to explore the other side of him that some people think was the darker side of him. He listens to the great late R.Azmi and made a research on him. He went back to the 40’s and began to explore the things that would inspire him later on. As he goes on, he realized that he love sounds in general. Sounds that would break the comfort zone that he had with his band, Butterfingers. 2004, the year he took a break from every thing became the year he discover his true-self. And that year itself, Jika Aku Seorang Robot was born followed by his alter-ego, monoloQue. He received mix reviews & feedback when he shares the song with his close friends & foes. Some like it, others hate it.

But as time goes by, and as what had happened the years before, songs that created under the name monoloQue, started to grow in those close to him. They were asking for more. That started his MySpace account where he staged his songs as well as established himself as monoloQue and no longer as loQue Butterfingers. The songs that he shared includes, Rindu Dendam, Pecah Amanah, Chinta (which was a collaboration with Muzium Pahang) and Perempuan Kalis Peluru.

Fast-forward, 2009, in his last semester in Berklee College of Music MA Boston – majoring in Composition & Synthesis, he is ready to take the world by storm. He is ready to introduce to the world what music means to him and how it helps him to be the man he is now. Not only sharing his music, he is also willing to continue to explore, to learn, to teach and to breathe the true passion he has as loQue & monoloQue.
And as usual, not known as one that follows the trend, he started his first project known as KonvensyenRemixmonoloQue where you can download his song Jika Aku Seorang Robot and remix it with your own touch and sound. He will then choose the best remix to appear on his website as well as on his 'remix' album that is under construction at the moment.

Nico Muhly : A contemporary Western classical music composer.

2010-09-28T01:06:00.001+08:00

Skip Town from Banner Gwin on Vimeo.
Film by Banner Gwin. Music by Nico Muhly.

Born in Vermont in 1981 and raised in Providence, Rhode Island, New York–based composer Nico Muhly graduated from Columbia University with a degree in English Literature. In 2004, he received a Masters in Music from the Juilliard School, where he studied under Christopher Rouse and John Corigliano. A former boy chorister, Muhly has composed extensively for choir, including commissions from the Clare College Choir and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. New York’s Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue commissioned and performed his Bright Mass with Canons, later recorded on their American Voices CD.

His orchestral works have been premiered by the American Symphony Orchestra, the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Orchestra (It Remains to Be Seen, a 2006 commission celebrating their 40th anniversary), the Boston Pops (Wish You Were Here), the New York Philharmonic, and the Chicago Symphony (Step Team).

Film credits include Muhly's scores for Joshua (2007), Best Picture nominee The Reader (2008), and the Argentine drama Felicitas, and he has worked extensively with Philip Glass as editor, keyboardist, and conductor for numerous film and stage projects. With designer/illustrator Maira Kalman, Muhly composed a vocal work based on Strunk & White's The Elements of Style, and he has worked with choreographer Benjamin Millepied to create new pieces for the American Theater (From Here On Out) and the Paris Opéra ballet (Triade), as well as for the Nederlands Ballet’s 2010-2011 season. His 2009 collaboration with American choreographer Stephen Petronio (I Drink the Air Before Me) was presented at the Joyce Theater in New York and will be remounted at the Barbican Centre in London in 2010. Muhly has also lent his skills as performer, arranger and conductor to other musicians, including Antony and the Johnsons (The Crying Light), Sam Amidon (All is Well, I See the Sign), Björk (Medúlla, Drawing Restraint 9, Volta), Bonnie "Prince" Billy (The Letting Go), Doveman (The Conformist), Grizzly Bear (Veckatimest), and Jónsi from Sigur Rós (Go). Muhly co-composed fourteen songs with Faroese singer Teitur Lassen (Confessions), and presented them in a week of concerts with the Holland Baroque society.

Among his most frequent collaborators are his colleagues at Bedroom Community, an artist-run label headed by Icelandic musician Valgeir Sigurðsson and inaugurated by the release of Muhly's first album, Speaks Volumes (2007). Leading up to Speaks Volumes’ American release, Muhly was invited to present concerts of his chamber music at both Carnegie Hall and the Whitney Museum. Since then, Muhly has
released a second album, Mothertongue (2008), and worked closely with labelmates Valgeir, Ben Frost, and Sam Amidon on their respective solo releases. Valgeir collaborated with Muhly and perfumer Christophe Laudamiel to create the "scent opera" Green Aria (2009), which premiered at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Carnegie Hall commissioned his song The Adulteress for soprano Jessica Rivera's 2009 Carnegie debut, and that same year, countertenor David Daniels and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields performed his Vocalise and Drones on arias by Handel. 2010 will see the premiere of a new orchestral song cycle for tenor Mark Padmore, violinist Pekka Kuusisto, and the Britten Sinfonia, and Muhly's first full-scale opera, with a libretto by Craig Lucas, has been co-commissioned by the English National Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, and Lincoln Center Theater Commissions Program.

Website : Nico Muhly

We Want Lasers !

2010-09-24T09:16:00.000+08:00

WE WANT LASERS:we refuse to be slaves to commercial radio and the musical power-grab by large corporations. Music is one of the most important tools of expression and is a massive platform for the spread of ideas.This growing faction of global youth is sick and tired of substance-less music that encourages a society.built on materialism sexism ignorance and a false sense of rebellion without a cause- FiascoFriday.

Lupe Fiasco - I'm Beaming (Video)

Sign 'We Want Lasers Petition' //HERE//

Website :

FiascoFriday

LupeFiasco

Shin - Ski

2010-09-22T03:37:00.003+08:00

Shin - Ski/Myspace

Born in Amagasaki, Hyogo, Japan. Enrolled at U Mass Dartmouth in 1996, Majored in Music Composition, back to Tokyo in2003,and on, here i am in the city of Tokyo,making beats for living. Been producing and remixing several songs w/ cats like The procussions, Time Machine, Insight, Electric, Project Move, Othello from Lightheaded, Edo G, La Melodia and lots of more. also a member of production team called "Martiangang" w/ DJ Real, also a member of one of the illest trio in a history"ShinSight Trio" w/ Insight and DJ RYOW, also a member of poduce and Live unit"Levitatorz" w/ DJ RYOW, also a member of "designed people" w/ Koji Taninaka.

Jónsi - Go Do (Official Music Video)

2010-09-20T00:08:00.005+08:00

Jónsi - Go Do from Jónsi on Vimeo.
Official video to first single from Go.

www.jonsi.com

Reviews

birgisson has just made the best record of his career 9/10 - clash music	a phenomenal record with almost every bar bursting with beauty. has ‘pop’ music ever sounded this wonderful? ***1/2 - music omh*
it does cartwheels when it bloody well feels like it, cries when it wants to, and raises the bar for song writers like sufjan stevens who share similarly heady classical predilections. 8/10 - paste magazine	the sigur rós singer fights huge with huger on his solo debut, matching the uplift of his full-time band at their most dramatic. 8.1 - pitchfork
lithe, lush pop… retains an inimitable singer’s sound but adds oxygen-rich breathing room. ******** - spin magazine	brims with moments of aural salvation 82% - filter magazine
go is, at its strongest, an album of almost lung-collapsing loveliness. 9/10 - drowned in sound	replacing the abiding sense of melancholy you get from sigur ros albums with a child-like joyousness that dares you not to break out in a huge grin ***** - the times

In Ya Mellow Tone, Vol. 5 : Available on Itunes (Japan)

2010-09-15T11:48:00.003+08:00

Link/Buy/Itunes : In Ya Mellow Tone 5 / Itunes

カスタマレビュー

やっとでましたね

レビュー : ayaka1221

聞きやすく綺麗な音楽が沢山つまっています。

私のおすすめは１曲目Shine A Light-ROBERT DE BORON
一緒に歌えます。

待ってました！

レビュー : Real-1129

これからの季節にはいいのではないでしょうか。
今回は今までのシリーズよりも聴きやすい感じがします。あまりhip-hop色が強く出てないからかもしれませんが、、、

個人的には2曲目re:plusのremixが好きです。

ジャケ写

レビュー : 空 DJ

今までで最高にメローな仕上がりで。
HIPHOP聴かなかった僕がHIPHOP聴きだしたのはこのシリーズなわけで。
とりあえず個人的に①が最高に好きなわけです。

Jonsi - Animal Arithmetic (From Go Quiet Acoustic)

2010-09-14T22:14:00.003+08:00

Original Ver. Of Animal Arithmetic

For an individual who confesses that his early exposure to music was through the heavy metal genre, Jón “Jonsi” Birgisson writes some darn good melodic music. The implicit paradox of these two statements seems a little bewildering, but in an interview with NPR for All Songs Considered, Jonsi stated that what drew him to the music of Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, and others in that genre was the “energy” of the songs. For all the accolades lavished on the sweeping soundscapes of Jonsi’s primary musical output, the Icelandic quartet Sigur Ros, what drives the band’s tunes has always been the energy and passion lavished upon them by Jonsi’s vocal ambulations. Given the burgeoning international success of Sigur Ros, the announcement of a solo album by its frontman was met with an immediate and thrilled response, although many wondered if the final product would end up as anything other than a slightly more accessible reincarnation of a Sigur Ros full-length.

For quite a while, any press regarding the album’s style was limited to Jonsi’s admission that the album would be a more stripped down, “acoustic” affair than anything he’d done before. Then came “Boy Lilikoi”, the fourth song on Go, offered as a free download to Jonsi’s email subscribers. Far from acoustic, the track actually proved to be explosively broad in its composition, featuring an impressive array of woodwind instruments and vigorous tracks of percussion that combine to pummel out a magical array of sounds unlike anything else Jonsi has ever been a part of. The track portended a direction entirely distinct from Go’s original conception. Indeed, “Boy Lilikoi” was a brilliant introduction to the forthcoming album, for two reasons. First, it proved to be indicative of the album’s intricate musical compositions which expertly craft chaos into beauty, thanks to the impressive work of Nico Muhly (known for his collaborations with Grizzly Bear and Antony and the Johnsons). Secondly, it set the lyrical tone of the album. Jonsi sings throughout with an affected sense of childlike wonder atypical of frontmen of his superstar status. Specifically, on “Boy Lilikoi”, he compels the listener to “Use your eyes; the world goes a-flutter by.”

The implication is that we, in our sensory-saturated world, tend to live in media-insulated shells, stimulated constantly by artificial trinkets which distract us from the idyllic amusements (and yes, even tasks and challenges) that comprise more of our lives than we take the time to consider. Here lies a distinction between Go and the Sigur Ros catalog. Sigur Ros generally captivates with its musical expression of the natural world, while Jonsi, in this album, illuminates the magic of the seemingly simple and mundane.

“Go Do” is the first song from Go, and it is the heart and soul of this record, if not of Jonsi, himself. The arrangement is thrilled, frenzied and meticulously layered, showcasing the percussive additions of the Finnish musician Samuli Kosminen (of the musical group Edea). The track sounds like an optimistic love song as Jonsi exclaims “You and sunrise will never go under,” but it also establishes the pace of the majority of the album, demonstrating from the get-go that Jonsi is not afraid of driving tempos and vigorous lines of percussion. He sings over it all with the same energy that attracted him to the metal groups he listened to as a teenager, howbeit with a flair unique to himself. The pace is picked up in the second track, “Animal Arithmetic”, which features a frenetically assaulted kick drum. It’s an interesting idea, but the tempo forces Jonsi to virtually rap throughout most of the track, which makes the song sound like its gas pedal got stuck a la Toyota, and almost sends it escalating out of control. “Around Us” is more measured in its approach, vacillating between fast-paced drums and thoughtful interludes before fading out with a shimmering string arrangement.

The album is more than a collection of burbling, skitzophrenic tunes cobbled together into accessible arrangements, however. There are plenty of moments where the music slows and the focus shifts to Jonsi’s iconic countertenor. The zenith of these moments is found on “Kolnidur”, where Jonsi’s voice climbs out of a wall of synthesizers and stringed accompaniment to majestically peal out several lines of Icelandic verse. It is one of the album’s many highlights and the first song on the record to incorporate Jonsi’s native tongue (most of the songs are in English), and I have, as of this writing, not seen an English translation. But as with Sigur Ros, the words here are largely unimportant. The music is the main expression, and it, combined with Jonsi’s vocals, convey more than most intelligible lyrics ever could. Indeed, the lyrics of Go, where distinguishable, tend to languish in fatuous poetry. Case in point, the first few lines of “Sinking Friendships”, We’re swimming in the blue; my misfortune. Will light bring lighter blue? My eyes are soaked all way through. However, lyrics like these are generally innocuous in the context of an album so full of musical beauty. “Sinking Friendships” is a prime example, as it is awash with musical ideas, and layered with a choir of Jonsi vocal tracks, some belting in english, others cooing a backdrop of “ooo’s”, and still others echoing wordlessly beneath a lush string arrangement.

Although the album largely avoids the traditional Sigur Ros sound, choosing to dance with the pixies rather than soar with the angels, the penultimate track, “Grow Till Tall”, builds over the course of its nearly five-and-half-minute length in much the same way as “Festival” from Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust. Unlike “Festival” however, “Grow Till Tall” recedes without any significant resolution, failing to capitalize on its pent momentum. “Tornado”, on the other hand, makes use of its beautiful string arrangement and repetitive piano progression, building into a glorious collision of sound before Jonsi brings the track to a serene finish.

The CD closes with “Hengilas”, an intimate song that makes you feel like you’ve finally come home after a long walk on a sunny spring day. Birgisson’s voice provides the lead vocal as well as the harmonizing tracks, and the effect is ethereal. The change of pace from the beginning rush of “Go Do” to the closing caress of “Hengilas” is gradual, deliberate, and expertly managed, and Jonsi’s voice provides the integral instrument on each track; effectuating every mood through the sound of his voice and its many distinct inflections.

Jonsi said that he first picked up an electric guitar when he was 13 years old and admitted that “the reason I started playing my own [music] was because I was so bad playing other people’s songs.” Whatever his inspiration for writing music, the music world can certainly express appreciation for the indelible mark that the 34-year-old singer from the country of Iceland has made.

Article taken :

http://audacify.com/2010/04/jonsi-go-album-review/

In Ya Mellow Tone 5 (Video/Promo/Japan)

2010-09-08T08:44:00.000+08:00

総セールス100,000枚越えという、驚異的人気シリーズの第5弾！

IN YA MELLOW TONE 5

2010.09.08 instores!

01.Robert de Boron「Shine A Light feat. Awa & Oldwun from Nesian Mystik」
02.Hidetake Takayama「Forever Yours feat. Stacy Epps & Toby from Inverse －re:plus remix－」
03.SoulChef「Eyes Like Blue Skies feat. Need Not Worry」
04.Nicholas Smalc「With You feat. Maclyn Lucille」
05.Robert de Boron & The Antidotes「Peace of Mine feat. Shanelle」
06.iris「Simple Love」
07.Kid Klassic「Go feat. Rhyzz & Natalia」
08.Incise「Running Out Of Time feat. The 49ers」
09.Hidetake Takayama「Motion feat. Raashan Ahmad from Crown City Rockers & Shea Soul」
10.Alexander The Phatos「Hey Mama feat. Anis Haron」
11.CL「Deacon Blu －Produced by Blazo－」
12.Don Cerino「Trusting The Soul feat. Shuanise (as Skyrise)」
13.Awon「Flow Of Life－Alan de Laniere remix－」
14.Thomas Prime「Heartbreak feat. Seeka & Jr」
15.Happy Unfortunate「The World Is Mine feat. Muneshine」
16.Nieve「I'll Be Doin That Today」

In Ya mellow Tone 5 / Track List Presented by Goon Trax/Japan

2010-08-03T22:48:00.002+08:00

01.Robert de Boron「Shine A Light feat. Awa & Olwun from Nesian Mystik」
02.Hidetake Takayama「Forever Yours feat. Stacy Epps & Toby from> Inverse －re:plus remix－」
03.SoulChef「Eyes Like Blue Skies feat. Need Not Worry」
04.Nicholas Smalc「With You feat. Maclyn Lucille」
05.Robert de Boron & The Antidotes「Peace of Mine feat. Shanelle」
06.iris「Simple Love」
07.Kid Klassic「Go feat. Rhyzz & Natalia」
08.Incise「Running Out Of Time feat. The 49ers」
09.Hidetake Takayama「Motion feat. Raashan Ahmad from Crown City Rockers & Shea Soul」
10.Alexander The Phatos「Hey Mama feat. Anis Haron」
11.CL 「Deacon Blu －Produced by Blazo－」
12.Don Cerino「Trusting The Soul feat. Shuanise (as Skyrise)」
13.Awon「Flow Of Life－Alan de Laniere remix－」
14.Thomas Prime「Heartbreak feat. Seeka & Jr」
15.Happy Unfortunate「The World Is Mine feat. Muneshine」
16.Nieve「I'll Be Doin That Today」

Hidetake Takayama

2010-08-03T00:45:00.000+08:00

MV of Sanctuary(from V.A/Melancholic Jazz Winter)

Music http://www.myspace.com/hidetaketakayama
Camera http://www.enpictures.jp

Esperanza Spalding

2010-07-27T04:03:00.001+08:00

If “esperanza” is the Spanish word for hope, then bassist, vocalist and composer Esperanza Spalding could not have been given a more fitting name at birth. Blessed with uncanny instrumental chops, a multi-lingual voice that is part angel and part siren, and a natural beauty that borders on the hypnotic, the 23-year-old prodigy-turned-pro might well be the hope for the future of jazz and instrumental music.

“She is an irresistible performer,” says The Seattle Times. “She sings and plays bass at the same time and does a sort of interpretive dance as she plays…Her analysis of what’s going on in jazz today is perceptive.”

Irresistible. Interpretive. Perceptive. Such words are very much at the core of Spalding’s life story, but the story is anything but typical. She was born in 1984 and raised on what she calls “the other side of the tracks” in a multi-lingual household and neighborhood in Portland, Oregon. Growing up in a single-parent home amid economically adverse circumstances, she learned early lessons in the meaning of perseverance and moral character from the role model whom she holds in the highest regard to this day – her mother.

“She was very strong-willed, very independent,” says Spalding. “She did a million things. She was a baker, a carpenter, she worked in foster care homes, she worked in food service, she worked with Cesar Chavez as a labor organizer. She was an amazing woman. She was hip enough to put a lot of negative things I saw as a child into some kind of context – even before I fully understood what she was saying.”

But even with a rock-solid role model, school did not come easy to Spalding, although not for any lack of intellectual acumen. She was both blessed and cursed with a highly intuitive learning style that often put her at odds with the traditional education system. On top of that, she was shut in by a lengthy illness as a child, and as a result, was home-schooled for a significant portion of her elementary school years. In the end, she never quite adjusted to learning by rote in the conventional school setting.

“It was just hard for me to fit into a setting where I was expected to sit in a room and swallow everything that was being fed to me,” she recalls. “Once I figured out what it was like to be home-schooled and basically self-taught, I couldn’t fit back into the traditional environment.”

However, the one pursuit that made sense to Spalding from a very early age was music. At age four, after watching classical cellist Yo Yo Ma perform on an episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, the roadmap was suddenly very clear. “That was when I realized that I wanted to do something musical,” she says. “It was definitely the thing that hipped me to the whole idea of music as a creative pursuit.”

Within a year, she had essentially taught herself to play the violin well enough to land a spot in The Chamber Music Society of Oregon, a community orchestra that was open to both children and adult musicians. She stayed with the group for ten years, and by age 15, she had been elevated to a concertmaster position.

But by then, she had also discovered the bass, and all of the non-classical avenues that the instrument could open for her. Suddenly, playing classical music in a community orchestra wasn’t enough for this young teenager anymore. Before long she was playing blues, funk, hip-hop and a variety of other styles on the local club circuit. “The funny thing was, I was the songwriter, but I had never experienced love before. Being the lyricist and the lead singer, I was making up songs about red wagons, toys and other childish interests. No one knew what I was singing about, but they liked the sound of it and they just ate it up.”

At 16, Spalding left high school for good. Armed with her GED and aided by a generous scholarship, she enrolled in the music program at Portland State University. “I was definitely the youngest bass player in the program,” she says. “I was 16, and I had been playing the bass for about a year and a half. Most of the cats in the program had already had at least eight years of training under their belts, and I was trying to play in these orchestras and do these Bach cello suites. It wasn’t really flying, but if nothing else, my teachers were saying, ‘Okay, she does have talent.’”

Berklee College of Music was the place where the pieces all came together and doors started opening. After a move to the opposite coast and three years of accelerated study, she not only earned a B.M., but also signed on as an instructor in 2005 at the age of 20 – an appointment that has made her the youngest faculty member in the history of the college. She is the 2005 recipient of the prestigious Boston Jazz Society scholarship for outstanding musicianship.

In addition to the studying and the teaching, the Berklee years have also created a host of networking opportunities. Since her move to the East Coast, Spalding has worked with several notable artists, including pianist Michel Camilo, vibraphonist Dave Samuels, bassist Stanley Clarke, guitarist Pat Metheny, singer Patti Austin and saxophonists Donald Harrison and Joe Lovano. “Working with Joe was terrifying,” she recalls, “but he’s a really generous person. I don’t know if I was ready for the gig or not, but he had a lot of faith in me. It was an amazing learning experience.”

The newest chapter of Spalding’s journey begins with the release of her forthcoming international debut recording for Heads Up in May 2008. The album will be the first opportunity for a worldwide audience to witness her mesmerizing talents as an instrumentalist, vocalist and composer, but it’s just the start of what she hopes to achieve in a career where the creative opportunities are almost limitless.

“I think there are some outside forces that have blessed me with creative talents, and I don’t want to disrespect whatever plan the cosmos or the heavens or God or whoever might have for me,” she explains. “But based on what I know about myself right now, what I really want to do is reach people. I want to make great music, but I also want to use that talent to lift people up, and maybe show them some degree of hope where there might not be any in their lives. My name means ‘hope’ in Spanish, and it’s a name I want to live up to.

http://www.esperanzaspalding.com

Alif Ridzuan / Photographer

2010-07-20T02:37:00.009+08:00

Penang-based Photographer Alif Ridzuan.Check out his website for more Pictures and Artworks

http://alifridzuan.rs.com.my/

Audio Palimpsest (2010) is an interactive sound-based installation by Anis Haron

2010-07-16T19:02:00.003+08:00

Audio Palimpsest (2010) is an interactive sound-based installation that explores applications of indeterminacy and randomness in an interactive platform. The piece is based on a hacked cassette recorder, where the device functionalities are reconfigured to work in a different context. Audio Palimpsest is an auditory art system that allows multi-point interaction by synthesizing data inputs collectively and emphasizing the thought of open-endedness in its execution -- opening up content generation to sources beyond the traditional expectations.

Musical Genius/Monoloque - Interview with BFM Radio

2010-07-08T00:59:00.002+08:00

Cokiyu

2010-07-06T04:07:00.002+08:00

Cokiyu, who was born in Ehime, finished her master degree of musicology study in Sonology Depertment of Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo. From her student time, she had created works using Max/MSP, the works like contemporary music for voice and woodwind instruments, and percussion instruments. She started to do live performance in 2002, and opened her works to the public with the web. Since 2006 she hasparticipated in some compilation albums, and also has worked as the vocalist of aus, and in 2007 she became the member of Shugo Tokumaru & The Magic Band as the toy pianist.

Website:http://www.cokiyu.net/

Re:Plus - Time Goes By feat. Hydroponikz & Anika

2010-06-25T10:58:00.001+08:00

Hiroaki Watanabe（Pianist / Trackmaker / Sound Producer）
Kohei Sato（DJ / Sound Producer）

http://www.myspace.com/replus

Hideo Kojima - The Making of MGS4 / Video

2010-06-16T07:26:00.000+08:00

Metal Gear Solid 4 has been critically acclaimed, with a 94% aggregate rating at both Metacritic[46] and Game Rankings.[45] The first review was a 10/10 from PlayStation Official Magazine (UK), commenting "MGS4 shifts gears constantly, innovating again and again".[60] The game has been awarded 10/10 from Game Informer[61] and a 5/5 in all categories (graphics, control, sound, and fun factor) from GamePro.[62] The game also received perfect scores from PlayStation: The Official Magazine (5/5),[63] Japanese magazine Famitsu (40/40)[64] and Empire.[65] The game received a 9.9/10 from IGN UK,[66] a 9.5/10 from IGN Australia,[67] and a 10/10 from IGN. IGN was quoted in a video review, saying MGS4 is "one of the best games ever made".[68] Edge[48] and Eurogamer[50] both gave the game 8/10. GameSpot gave it a 10/10 saying "Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is the most technically stunning video game ever made,"[69] making MGS4 one of the five games to ever receive a perfect "10" from both IGN and GameSpot.

Reviewers were unanimous in approval of the way the title continues and concludes the series. Eurogamer stated that "You could not ask for a funnier, cleverer, more ambitious or inspired or over-the-top conclusion",[50] and IGN Australia found that the result "refines the MGS formula and introduces just enough new (or respectfully influenced) ideas to ensure that it stands on its own as a game".[67] Edge concluded that "it is faithful to its fans, its premise and its heart, delivering an experience that is, in so many ways, without equal",[48] while IGN UK describe it simply as "the ultimate Metal Gear game" and "a dazzling, heart-lifting, voyage of discovery".[66]

The game was also described as being unusually sad and depressing for a video game. Kotaku said, "Metal Gear Solid 4 is so unusual in that it's the rare game that asks them to be interested in something else: a march toward defeat, an interactive tragedy."[70]

The new control scheme ("the ideal balance of intuitiveness and range"),[48] camouflage system[48][66] and shift to more free-form, "replayable" gameplay (in particular the Drebin Points system and alternatives to "stealthy" play)[48][66] were particularly highly praised with a few minor annoyances.[67] The variety of set-piece events, details such as the "psyche" meter, and healthy provision of secrets were also remarked upon.[48][66] Eurogamer tempered their overall praise with concern that one of the chapters may induce "ennui", but noted that the game quickly recovered,[50] while Edge expressed mild disappointment that the "Beauty and the Beast" unit compare poorly to the previous title's main foes, the "Cobra Unit".[48]

The game was also lauded for its technological and artistic achievements, with Edge describing the "Otacon" character as "the real star", and "a gaming revolution" while they found the game's score to be superior to that of many Hollywood offerings. The magazine felt that the few visual shortfalls (such as texture detail) did nothing to detract from the game's overall quality.[48] IGN UK comment that the attention to detail in both visuals and audio represent "sublime brilliance", and remark upon innovations such as the use of split-screen.[66]

Criticism of the game was largely leveled at the storyline, which reviewers found at times to be confusing[50][67] or poorly executed[66] and with IGN UK advising players to revisit the earlier titles for clarity.[66] However, the overall result was praised as emotionally engaging and topical, and characters such as Liquid Ocelot were singled out for the quality of their depiction.[48][50][66] It was generally conceded that although the use of cut scenes is more intrusive than it needs to be (comprising "about half of the content of the game" by one estimate, and which "might make you crave action, or wonder why they couldn't have been turned into interactive sequences"),[66] the style is somewhat appropriate given the rest of the series[67] ("in many ways it's a vindication of Kojima's unique interpretation of the videogame medium"[66]) and unlikely to trouble fans.[48] The addition of a pause function for these story sequences was universally welcomed.[50][66][67]

Edge and Eurogamer alike concluded that although the game represents an apotheosis of the series style, it ultimately fails to revitalise it, and will not win over new fans.[48][50] IGN UK were concerned that the game's hype and widespread praise may lead to disappointment, but feel that, objectively, the game is a "masterpiece".[

Stephen Devassy

2010-06-15T19:06:00.001+08:00

Stephen Devassy (born 23 February 1981 in Ottapalam (Palakkad), Kerala) is an Indian pianist. He composes, sets tunes and arranges music for the Indian Music industry.
Stephen's first major break came when he was just 18 through Johny Sagarika for whom he did the music orchestration of six songs in the album Ishtamannu. He then went as an accompanying artiste to play the keyboard for Hariharan on his European tour. He has also accompanied the violin maestro L. Subramanian at the Lakshminarayana Global Music Festival.

At age 19, he started a music band called Seven along with singers Franco Simon and Sangeeth. A Hindi pop band, they released an album Yeh Zindagani.Stephen, who started performing at a young age, has done the music arrangement for many films. Some of the films he scored were Majaa, Thambi, Nammal, Azhagiya Thamizh Magan and Hariharan's album, Waqt Par Bolna.

Hariharan Pilla Happy Aanu was his maiden music directorial venture in Malayalam.
He is one of the regular band members in Rex Band, a Christian contemporary band singing gospel fusion. He performed with the band before Pope John Paul II. It was the only band from India. Stephen has orchestrated an instrumental version of the popular Rex Band melodies called Different Vibes.[2]

In association with Kosmic Music, Stephen has also set to tune to a background of western music, Sanskrit slokas, mantras and verses from the Upanishads, called Sacred Chants of Kosmic Music, and albums of holy chants on Ganesha, Shiva and Vishnu.[3]He has also assisted Sarod maestro Amjad Ali Khan with his album on Christmas carols, Breaking Barriers.

He has released his album Romanza which was a mix of world music, sprinkled with the flavor of real piano. Indian Ragaas have been treated with the rich use of contemporary piano. Hariharan, Ouseppachan and a Russian vocalist have appeared as guest artistes on the album.

Stephen’s solo stage shows have propelled him to the top league of on-stage performers.[4]
Recently, Stephen Devassy made his first appearance on a Tamil channel by playing for the contestants and playback singers Srinivas (singer), Chinmayi, Sujatha Mohan and Unnikrishnan in the unplugged round for the famous Tamil reality music show "Airtel Super Singer 2008". [5]

Stephen performed at Shakthi foundation's annual fund raising concert, Ghananjani 2009 along with Zakir Hussain, U Shrinivas, Sivamani and Dominique Piazza.
He also performed with Benny Dayal and others at SSN College of Engineering on March 5, 2010 as part of Instincts, the annual cultural event at the college.

http://www.stephendevassy.com

A.R Rahman Sydney 2010

2010-06-15T18:26:00.002+08:00

A two-time winner of the Academy Award (Oscar), A. R. Rahman is popularly known as the man who has redefined contemporary Indian music. Hailed by Time magazine as the 'Mozart of Madras', Rahman, according to a BBC estimate, has sold more than 150 million copies of his work comprising of music from more than 100 film soundtracks and albums across over half a dozen languages, including landmark scores such as 'Roja', 'Bombay', Dil Se', 'Taal', 'Lagaan', 'Vandemataram' and more recently, 'Jodhaa Akbar', 'Delhi 6' and 'Slumdog Millionaire'.

Rahman pursued music as a career at a very young age and after assisting leading musicians in India went on to compose jingles and scores for popular Indian television features. He also obtained a degree in western classical music from the Trinity College of Music, London and set up his own in-house studio called Panchathan Record-Inn at Chennai. In 1991, noted film maker Mani Ratnam offered Rahman a movie called 'Roja' which was a run-away success and brought nationwide fame and acclaim to the composer. The movie also won Rahman the Indian National Award for the best music composer, the first time ever by a debutant. Since then, Rahman has gone on to win the National Award 3 more times, the most ever by any music composer.

Kanye West - Power

2010-06-15T07:44:00.004+08:00

I’m livin’ in the 21st century
Doin’ something mean to it
Do it better than anybody you ever seen do it
Screams from the haters, got a nice ring to it
I guess every superhero need his own theme music

No one man should have all that power
The clock’s tickin’, I just count the hours
Stop trippin’, I’m trippin’ off the power
(21st century schizoid man)

The system broken, the schools closed, the prisons open
We ain’t got nothin’ to lose, ma’fucka, we rollin’
Huh? Ma’fucka, we rollin’
With some light-skinned girls and some Kelly Rowlands
In this white man world, we the ones chosen
So goodnight, cruel world, I see you in the mornin’
Huh? I see you in the mornin’
This is way too much, I need a moment

No one man should have all that power
The clock’s tickin’, I just count the hours
Stop trippin’, I’m trippin’ off the power
‘Til then, fuck that, the world’s ours

And then they (Go)
And then they
And then they (Go)
And then they (21st century schizoid man)

Fuck SNL and the whole cast
Tell ‘em Yeezy said they can kiss my whole ass
More specifically, they can kiss my asshole
I’m an asshole? You niggas got jokes
You short-minded niggas’ thoughts is Napoleon
My furs is Mongolian, my ice brought the goalies in
Now I embody every characteristic of the egotistic
He know, he so, fuckin’ gifted
I just needed time alone, with my own thoughts
Got treasures in my mind, but couldn’t open up my own vault
My childlike creativity, purity and honesty
Is honestly being prodded by these grown thoughts
Reality is catchin’ up with me
Takin’ my inner child, I’m fighting for it, custody
With these responsibilities that they entrusted me
As I look down at my dia-mond-encrusted piece

Nigga, no one man should have all that power
The clock’s tickin’, I just count the hours
Stop trippin’, I’m trippin’ off the powder
‘Til then, fuck that, the world’s ours

And then they (Go)
And then they
And then they (Go)
And then they
And then they (Go)
And then they (21st century schizoid man)

Holy, powers, Austin, Powers
Lost in translation with a whole fuckin’ nation
They say I was the obamanation of Obama’s nation
Well, that’s a pretty bad way to start the conversation
At the end of day, goddammit, I’m killin’ this shit
I know damn well y’all feelin’ this shit
I don’t need yo’ pussy, bitch, I’m on my own dick
I ain’t gotta power trip, who you goin’ home with?
How ‘Ye doin’? I’m survivin’
I was drinkin’ earlier, now I’m drivin’
Where the bad bitches, huh? Where ya hidin’?
I got the power, make yo’ life so excitin’ (So excitin’)

Now this would be a beautiful death
Jumpin’ out the window
Lettin’ everything go
Lettin’ everything go

You got the power to let power go

(21st century schizoid man)

Kanye West- Power

A.R RAHMAN - CNN Talks Asia

2010-05-22T07:44:00.003+08:00

In 1997, to commemorate 50 years of Indian Independence, Sony Music signed up Rahman as its first artiste in South Asia. The result was 'Vande Mataram', an album that instantly made Indians relate to it and succeeded in rekindling the spirit of patriotism. In 2001, Andrew Lloyd Webber, the well known composer of musicals like 'Phantom of the Opera' & 'Jesus Christ Superstar' invited Rahman to compose for his musical, 'Bombay Dreams', the first time he would produce a musical he did not compose for. 'Bombay Dreams' opened to packed houses at London's West End and had an unprecedented run for 2 years and later premiered at New York's Broadway. Rahman recently composed the score for the stage production of 'The Lord of the Rings', one of the most expensive productions mounted on stage.

Ezio's Family from Jesper Kyd's score to Assassin's Creed II (2009)

2010-05-20T19:41:00.003+08:00

Jesper Jakobson Kyd (born February 3, 1972) is an acclaimed video game and film score composer.Kyd combines sounds of dark ambient, electronic and symphonic music and has won many awards. He is also notable for his work in the demoscene, where he composed a large amount of music in his teenage years, in particular a ten year long set of gatherings known as "The Party". Today, he is best known for composing music for the Hitman, the Assassin's Creed video game series, and, together with Rom Di Prisco, the soundtrack for Unreal Tournament 3.

Harvard's HipHop Hustler

2010-05-16T20:37:00.001+08:00

Anthony Ryan Leslie Ryan Leslie (born September 25, 1978, in Washington, D.C.) is an American record producer, multi-instrumentalist, rapper, entrepreneur, and singer. Founder of the media company NextSelection Lifestyle Group, Leslie has produced singles for a number of artists in a variety of genres ranging from R&B/Hip-Hop to Pop to Gospel. From 2005–2006 he had his most commercial success to date with NextSelection/Bad Boy/Atlantic recording artist Cassie and her single "Me & U". Leslie's debut album, Ryan Leslie (2009), features the songs "Diamond Girl," "Addiction," and "How It Was Supposed To Be."Ryan Leslie was born into a multicultural (mixed race) family. Leslie is the oldest son of mother Mooi Leslie who is of Caribbean Dutch, Chinese, and African descent, and father Clement Leslie who is from Barbados and of Irish ancestry, raised in Trinidad. His parents were Salvation Army officers who frequently relocated for work.

Ryan has lived in various states, cities, and countries. At an early age, Leslie taught himself how to play the piano. He developed the ability to recite music, as well as arrange chords to create songs.[1] At the age of 14, Leslie scored a 1600 on his SATs—a perfect score—while attending Bear Creek High School, in Stockton,California.[2] In 1993 he applied to four University of California campuses as well as Stanford, Yale and Harvard. In his application essays he explained his interest in matriculating from his junior year in high school without having earned a diploma. He was accepted to all except Yale. He ultimately decided to attend Harvard College.[3] At the age of 19, Leslie graduated from Harvard with a degree in Government, concentrating in Political Science and Macroeconomics.[4] During his commencement ceremonies, Ryan delivered the prestigious Harvard Oration.[5]

http://www.ryanleslie.com

Malique - Cuba Lagi

2010-05-16T20:18:00.002+08:00

Malique feat Lah Ahmad - Cuba Lagi Lirik

Satu dua tiga dan empat
Cuba berkali masih tak dapat
Lupakan sakit segan dan penat
Nanti di puncak pasti terubat

Empat tiga dua dan satu
Puncaknya betul aku di situ
Ada dah dekat, ramai yang berbatu
Cuba lagi dik ku tunggu

(korus)
Ku cuba berkali-kali
Masih tak menjadi-jadi
Tapi ku tak patah hati
Tiap kali gagal aku cuba lagi
Aku cuba lagi, aku cuba lagi
Hanya yang lemah kan lari
Jadi lelaki dan cuba lagi

Ku cuba, ku cuba, ku cuba
Puas ku cuba

Nah! Bukan senang hendak menang
Apatah lagi jadi juara
Nah! Bukan senang nak jadi bintang
Apatah lagi jadi lagenda
Aku tahu aku fasih
Nombor satu, yup, aku masih
Terima kasih seteru bersekutu
Keranamu aku bertambah mutu
Tetapi, kebelakangan ini aku tepu
Hampir beku, ni, buku lirik kosong nak berdebu
Hilang sengat hilang seri hilang seru hilang merdu
Mata tutup kepala tertelungkup
Pintu dengar ketuk, oh anakku menjenguk
Papa jangan kerut dahi
Tukar niat baca Bismillah mesti jadi

(ulang korus)

Buat lagu hebat radio tak nak main
Apa boleh buat? Buat lagu lain
Aku dengar sedap, dia dengar lain
Mungkin lepas menang AIM dia main
Jangan cari pasal, kaji hujung pangkal
Buat lagi sampai tiada orang boleh sangkal
Sampai orang kampung kata pakai tangkal
Sampai gadis kota tidur tepuk bantal
Sampai orang-orang gaji pun hafal
Tapi selagi tak berlaku, tawakal
Ganda usaha bukan simpati
Percaya besok lusa buat lagi
Mereka tanya sampai mana
Yo nampak langit sampai sana
Tiada makna kalau tiada fakta
Lihat carta situ ku diwarta

(ulang korus)

Ma kata ku pandai Pa kata ku kuat
Jadi kalau cari jalan tak jumpa, ku buat
Ke sini ke sana hanya satu garis lurus
Jangan menoleh mana-mana jalan terus
Ku bukan jenis suka omong kosong
Tolong dengar dik, jangan bodoh sombong
Lima ribu tahun atau lima saat
Kalau kita mahu kita dapat
Banyak laki, berapa jati
Banyak janji, berapa ditepati
Cuma dara sunti minta puji, anak jantan minta uji
Lepas cakap besar tanam pokok
Pasti belum boleh berteduh besok
Dan kalau tak berbuah doa sehari lagi
Tuah akan sampai dengan Taming Sari sekali

Ku cuba lagi

(ulang korus)

Klik link dibawah untuk dengar.

Maliqueibrahim

Happy Mother's Day mom Dayang Hamsiah Bt. Abang Mokhtar

2010-05-11T03:31:00.002+08:00

Artist:Alexander The Phatos Feat.AnisHaron
Title :Hey mama

Hey Mama

Produced by Adifarhud.
Arrangement/Composition
By Adifarhud.Anis Haron.Cecilia Wong
Lyrics by Adifarhud
Piano by Adifarhud.Cecilia Wong
Strings by Adifarhud
Alto Saxaphone By Anisharon
Mixed by Freddie Kam Wee Liang
Kuala Lumpur

Lyrics

Alexander The Phatos
I dedicate this one right here,
Represent my four-letter words (l.o.v.e)
goes out to .

Verse 1(By Adifarhud)
Tiny hands with grey hair,
It's been a long time I've been away
Let me write u a song, a song of a happy day
Remembering the moment of a good fam' time in this way,
Listen to my non - melodious singing; sing it in my way,
Gonna get you smiling on the d-day
Couldn't get you a big choir, singing like "family business"
Allow me to pretend it was here singing my choruses
Allow me to imagine it, singing this song in my own big concert
"Have you seen her "shouldn't be recorded,
I was wrong from the start,
Misunderstanding what love is all about
misplacing my undivided love, my undivided attention
Could I undo time and redo it for corrections
Yes, I feel God won't let me smell HIS heaven

Chorus (Adifarhud)2x
How should I write here if it cant be written,
Put up a chorus? Make a typical track for listeners?
Put up a “Tune” so it could be aired top 3 in radio stations?
Rap out the 3rd verse, the last 3 sentences.

Verse 2 (By Adifarhud)
I ain’t good in wordplayin’ , I let my melodies represent it
Let the music speak, reciting better than poetry
Showing you my love in its melody, the bass line is backing it
How guilty I felt
When I saw you, you were crying for the first time
I saw you were crying for the first time!
How sinful I was, -just- to simply ask for forgiveness
Shouldn't be looking back for her,
Because your love is unconditional
Even when the condition is critical,
The livin' is miserable, your position is pivotal
I may be lifeless without you, supporting me
You been so supportive, even when I did the opposite , I know
I'm never at home much like the old times ,
You're getting older …
And not as strong like the old times

Chorus (Adifarhud)2x
How should I write here if it cant be written,
Put up a chorus? Make a typical track for listeners?
Put up a “Tune” so it could be aired top 3 in radio stations?
Rap out the 3rd verse, the last 3 sentences.

Verse 3(By Adifarhud)
I never was a picture perfect-valedictorian,
I ‘ve never been good with numbers,
Mr. lowest grades, first going backwards,
I wish I could play some’n in a recital,
Getting an A for dissertations, making u proud,
Yet, I’m never scared to face the world ,
P/s they’d never win, competing my streetness,
I never said I’m complacent about the future,
but mommy cant u see, God has given me RAP for a career,
Doctor for a sister and - educators for the brothers,
I had enough, paradigm, ridin’this train of stresses,
Rap music degradin,
hip-hop features arguing, Music Business pondering,
I feel a gap for being an un-well classically trained musician,
I see stereotype minds with stereotypical images,

Chorus (Adifarhud)2x
How should I write here if it cant be written,
Put up a chorus? Make a typical track for listeners?
Put up a “Tune” so it could be aired top 3 in radio stations?
Rap out the 3rd verse, the last 3 sentences.

Outro
There are no words that can express this.
They fail me.
So I put my heart and my soul into this
I hope you feel me.

STEPHANIE KETTY - A contemporary Abstract Expressionist

2010-05-09T03:56:00.003+08:00

A contemporary Abstract Expressionist.Bachelors degree in Fine Art with a concentration in painting. 4 solo painting exhibits/2 group shows. Self taught photographer. Mixed media enthusiast. Chosen artist during Basel 2009 for photography series. Visual Artist in constant motion.

Website:
http://www.stephanieketty.com

Assassin's Creed 2 OST/ Venice Rooftops - Composed by Jesper Kyd

2010-05-03T01:50:00.004+08:00

Ramin Djawadi - Iranian Composer

2010-05-01T04:52:00.003+08:00

Ramin Djawadi (born 1974) is an Iranian composer of orchestral music for film and television.Djawadi was born in Duisburg, Germany. His father is an immigrant from Iran who studied medicine in Munich and worked as a surgeon until retirement

http://ramindjawadi.com/

Alexander The Phatos

ATP on The Find Megazine

An interview with Only Jazz Hope

Phatosism : A 21st Century Cavatina [Digital Album is priced at $7.99 USD on Bandcamp]

Alexander The Phatos - Phatosism : A 21st Century Cavatina [iTunes/United States]

It's finally up you can now purchase the album from the iTunes music store (U.S)

Alexander The Phatos - Phatosism : A 21st Century Cavatina [iTunes/Japan]

マレーシアのCradle Orchestra [HMV Japan]

Alexander The Phatos - A 21st Century Cavatina [Album's Tracklist]

Alexander The Phatos - A 21st Century Cavatina [Album Artwork]

Happy 129th Birthday Igor Stravinsky

Episode: Stravinsky's Rite of Spring

Takagi Masakatsu - Nijiko [Album/2011]

The Sky May Be Falling.But the stars look good on you

Draumalandið [Film]

39th Anniversary Of the death of Tan Sri P.Ramlee

PuzzleMuteson - EnGarde [Video]

Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians

In Ya Mellow Tone 6 [iTunes]

Happy Birthday J.S Bach

Happy birthday J. S. BACH here is a documentary on the life and work of J.S Bach a German composer whose compositions represents both the height of the Baroque and the beginning of the Modern Age of music.There are a lot of em in Youtube ,the previous series was documented by BBC.

In Ya Mellow Tone 6 [Track List]

CRIMINALIZING THE TRUTH TELLERS – AN ANALYSIS BY DR. LAWRENCE DAVIDSON

Vitium - My Life Is Cleveland

Roomful of Teeth

Radiohead - Lotus Flower

Ólafur Arnalds - Hægt, kemur ljósið [Official Music Video]

Iceland : Beyond Sigur Ros

Ecstatic Music Festival

Monoloque - Tiada Kata Secantik Bahasa

Jónsi - Go Live Videos

The film

The album

The Bolshoi Ballet Theatre Orchestra of Tashkent performs Tan Sri P.Ramlee's Menceceh Bujang Lapuk

P. Ramlee featured on History Channel

Bear McCreary - Battlestar Galactica Season (OST) - Kara Remembers

Valgeir Sigurðsson - Past tundra

Alexander The Phatos - F.A.F / Output 1 - 2 [Excerpt/Pre-Mixed]

Alexander The Phatos - Walk On By feat. Nicholas Wonder of Vitium [Excerpt]

Runaway

Valgeir Sigurðsson - Draumalandið /Dreamland

Monoloque / Live at Istana Budaya

Nieve - Playback

Scala & Kolacny Brothers (Choir)

Go Live by Jonsi

The Film

The Album

Samurai Jazz Quintet (SJQ)

『Melancholic Jazz Sunset』に収録されているWonderWheelin'のMV。

Cradle Orchestra – Transcended Elements [2010]

Nico Muhly : I Drink the Air Before Me | 5-6 Oct 2010

The Night is Right feat. GIOVANCA / Cradle Orchestra

Malancholic Jazz Sunset / Hidetake Takayama // Yuyake No Uta // 夕焼けの歌

"LASERS" Protest / Rally at Atlantic

Sting / Symphonicity : Live in Berlin Accompanied by The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Nieve : Los Angeles based Emcee Musician Superpoet.

Jónsi live show by 59 Productions

Monoloque / Halimunan abad ke -21 / Excerpt

Nico Muhly : A contemporary Western classical music composer.

We Want Lasers !

Shin - Ski

Jónsi - Go Do (Official Music Video)

In Ya Mellow Tone, Vol. 5 : Available on Itunes (Japan)

カスタマレビュー

やっとでましたね

待ってました！

ジャケ写

Jonsi - Animal Arithmetic (From Go Quiet Acoustic)

In Ya Mellow Tone 5 (Video/Promo/Japan)

In Ya mellow Tone 5 / Track List Presented by Goon Trax/Japan

Hidetake Takayama

Esperanza Spalding

Alif Ridzuan / Photographer

Audio Palimpsest (2010) is an interactive sound-based installation by Anis Haron

Musical Genius/Monoloque - Interview with BFM Radio

Cokiyu

Re:Plus - Time Goes By feat. Hydroponikz & Anika

Hideo Kojima - The Making of MGS4 / Video

Stephen Devassy

A.R Rahman Sydney 2010

The Night is Right feat. GIOVANCA /　Cradle Orchestra