Zemmy puts her own unique twist on the pop genre, writing songs filled with rich, instantly memorable melodies and smart lyrics. Influenced by artists such as Sade, Lauryn Hill, Sia, Dido and Imogen Heap, she creates intelligent pop songs which span across the wide spectrum of the genre.
Alexander Harmer is a multi-instrumentalist, musician, producer, engineer based in Christchurch NZ. Harmer has just finished his debut album; an album which is full of lush arrangements and concise catchy songs. Heavily influenced by the music of the Beatles, Queen, and the 70’s, Harmer’s music touches a wide variety of sounds. The new album “Eliptical” will be released in May 2013.
In Thrillionaire, Jen Turner, formerly of Here We Go Magic, picks up the guitar again, revisiting her days with Natalie Merchant, with Henrietta Tiefenthaler on bass, programming and sound design, & Nate Walcott from Bright Eyes on keys. Henri and Jen sing lush, polyphonic melodies over hard motorik beats drawn from classic Krautrock bands like Can and Neu! ...with a touch of Stereolab and Pink Floyd thrown in the mix. Their highly anticipated debut album will be finished by the end of this year with its release scheduled for summer 2013.
Making listeners slap themselves black and blue out of pure eargasmic joy since your momma was born.
Created around freestyle songwriting sessions around a fire pit, Soul of the River was formed in June 2002, out of Southern California, Soul of the River has a unique sound coupled with great songwriting is guaranteed to make even the harshest critic get down with the get down.
Soul of the River completed their first full length album late 2011. Soul of the River were voted “Best Roots” at the 2010 Inland Empire Music Awards and “Best Classic Rock” band at the 2009 Inland Empire Music Awards. Soul of the River have been featured on X-103.9 Alternative Radio, KUCR Good Morning San Diego, and the Internationally syndicated “On the Horizon” Radio Show.
Soul of the River are strong supporters of the American Cancer Society, and perform at several “Relay For Life” events every year as well as hosting and performing their annual “Rock for the Cure” concert to raise funds for the Riverside, Perris, and Hemet Relay for Life events.
“A three-piece progressive (yet chill) rock band, with sounds best heard with a drink in hand (whether it’s a diet coke or a margarita) gets the hips swaying and the feet tapping” -Tina Bold - The Vinyl Hours, IE Weekly
Ian first hit internationally in 1973 with "Painted Ladies". With a Juno award, four SOCAN classic awards for Painted Ladies, Right Before Your Eyes, Hold On and Pilot, a UNICEF Danny Kaye Humanitarian award, Juno and Gemini nominations,15 albums and nearly as many top twenty records later, Ian has now added author to the mix with two novels, Bequest (Manor House 2006) and his latest The Lost Chord (Manor House 2008).
Ian’s lyrics have been utilized in English textbooks while his songs have found international success with many artists such as Santana, America, Manfred Man, Chicago, Bette Midler and Ann Murray. He also records and tours the country regularly with good friends Murray McLauchlan, Marc Jordan, and Cindy Church in a band called Lunch At Allen’s. From 1990 to 2000, Ian wrote &recorded four albums and toured with his band “The Boomers” who were comprised of some of the Canada’s finest musicians - Peter Cardinali, Rick Gratton and Bill Dylan. When you add twenty movies as a film composer, six seasons on the Red Green Show as character Dougie Franklin and over a thousand commercials voicing characters from Clive Firkin of Firkin Pubs to Snap the Rice Crispie, the credit list starts getting ridiculous.
2009 saw Ian touring both as a solo artist and with Lunch At Allen’s, while completing the music for the animated series The Adventures Of Bob and Doug McKenzie and scoring two Hallmark Movies, The National Tree and Fairfield Road. With the new Lunch At Allen’s CD completed and 2010 underway Ian is currently writing and recording a long awaited new solo album. To hear him live is to spend time with a master songsmith and humorist. Ian lives with his wife of nearly 40 years in the Niagara wine region of Ontario because he likes both wine and his wife.
From the beginning, awakening a curiosity without border, the theme of travel is for him a scouring inspiration source.
His discography comes like a zoom starting with India in 2007 (“Linga Yoni, The Dub Paradox”), then all around the world in 2009 (“The Blue Train”), until the moon in 2012 with Joe Pilgrim (“Mellowmoon”). As this structure ever widening, his music is characterized by a search space, a mystical experience in the depths of the underground. Constantly pushing the frontier of kinds, he’s creating a recognizable sound, adapted to the power of broadband sound like a shockwave.
In this logic of expansion, contact with public soon became one of the essential point of his creativity. Contrasting with the intimacy of his solo studio work, his live performances reveal a breathtaking energy and run without compromise, accompanied by a massive bass played by Zeuspi. In this respect, we could say that 2009 is revealed as the year of live concretisation. The release of his album “The Blue Train” led him to perform on the internationnal stage, USA, Canada, Europe, amounting him to the rank of unavoidable artists of the French Dub scene.
In 2011, his band TelDem Com’unity released an album “Ground Zero” very welcomed by critics and concert halls. Even today, his life is divided between these two projects, sometimes punctuated by amazing colaborations, espacially with Shanti D (“Politik”) or the label Jarring Effect (compilation JFX 100).
2012 will be the year of many surprises because he released with the singer Joe Pilgrim the ambitious “Mellowmoon”. Dedicated to the moon, this new album turned to the earth on one side and to the stars on the other promises to be a first step towards a much greater dimension. A music from elsewhere for a live all in power, that you will find on stage in March.
GABRIEL produces invigorating pop/rock and adventure party events. These events feature a zipline, fire pits for s'mores, a scavenger hunt with a grand prize of night vision goggles, and a massive rock concert featuring GABRIEL's custom stages and drum flipping platform! Gabriel Redding has opened for Boys Like Girls, Hinder, Lady Antebellum, Jason Aldean, Jason Mraz, Bo Bice, Joan Jett, Gin Blossoms, KC and the Sunshine Band, and has performed in the middle-east for the troops on a USO tour. He performs at colleges and military bases all over the US, coffee shops and movie theaters, and where ever else he finds to play. From June 29th to August 10th, 2009, GABRIEL bicycled across the continent, from Virginia Beach, Virginia to Seattle, Washington, totaling 43 days and 3204.3 miles to raise money and awareness for the Multiple Sclerosis Society. GABRIEL is also an official endorser of Earthworks High Definition Microphones.
In our world, you usually have music made for the dives, the hell-holes, the trashy stages, or the teenies, the toss-away prom queens, and the plastic princess. That's not us.
We make music that's rough around the edges, that's somewhere between Kansas and New York City, that's ready to crawl between the seats of a brown-walled station wagon, and ride it across a thousand miles of Midwestern desert.
We're a little maverick. (That's right, John McCain, we're stealing your label.) Just when we reach success, we typically undermine it, chasing the next thing that captures our attention. We're currently working on a three-dimensional audio film, and if it isn't the suckiest thing we've ever done, it'll make history.
We're pirates, mavericks, anarchists, and philosopher-nomads. We've crossed most of the world's continents, and we've slept on hoods of cars under the open air high above Denver. We do things.
We are The Redding Brothers, and we play scruffy, intelligent rock.
Winners of the Prestigious Jack Daniel’s Award for the Best Rock Band in Pakistan 2010. In Jan. 2012 Awarded Gold for Best Rock Band, Umair Jaswal Best Rock Vocalist, Best Rock Song for Shehrezade in South Asia, also honored with Silver Award for their video Pukaar and voted by their peers as Best Act in all genres at IndieGo. April 2012 Awarded Best Global Rock Band and Rock Song and Bronze for Umair’s Vocals 50 Countries competed. May 2012 Qayaas premiered on the famous Coke Studio Pakistan Season 5 the video with Atif Aslam went viral with over 500,000 views in a week.
Qayaas is the first progressive alternative rock band from Pakistan, a country where traditionally music has been looked down upon rather than being celebrated as an art form. This gives our music a sense of rebellion and a rallying cry for pathos.
Qayaas literally translated as “deliberation” is not only the name of our band but the essence that encapsulates the entire philosophy behind our music. The idea or feeling taking birth in one band member’s mind is developed and brought to fruition by collective deliberation or Qayaas by the whole band. Five different people, their different moods, outlooks and music philosophies harmoniously blend to form compositions that reflect the true spirit and creative energy of our band; unadulterated in this wondrous journey by commercial concerns or other shortcuts.
Our music tends to explore emotions, specific moments, certain relationships and particular events which resonate powerfully as we try to understand ourselves and the world around us. We do not aim to have a large body of musical compositions but only put through quality pieces governed by unique ideas and techniques. Each melody is a different journey, starting with something personal and then refining it to create a certain mood. As a whole, Qayaas is an accumulation of musicians from quite diverse backgrounds. All members have been, and still are, part of various other projects that serve as a vent for musical expression.
Qayaas is the brainchild of lead guitar player and songwriter Khurram Waqar. It all started when he saw Umair jam with his previous band in his studio and invited him to work on material that he had written. What started out initially as an acoustic EP turned into a full blown album. When Fifu and Sherry who were already in a band ‘kNuMB’ with Khurram joined in, “Qayaas” was born. Sarmad Ghafoor who was an old friend of Fifu and Khurram joined in later when he was invited by them to come and listen to the album. He loved the material and became a part of Qayaas. Khurram and Sarmad then worked together to complete the audio production of the album which was released on April 16, 2011 in Pakistan in Peshawar, Islamabad, Lahore, Sialkot and Karachi. The album can also be bought online on CD Baby, iTunes, Amazon and Rhapsody.
The most important thing about the album is that it has been recorded and produced completely by the band. This is at par with any international recording with attention being paid to ever minute little detail. Every single song has been mixed and mastered as per the overall feel and vibe of the song.
We were a part of Coke Studio Season 5 where we collaborated with pop star Atif Aslam for a song "Cahrkha Nolakha". It is the biggest hit of the season so far with almost 1.5 million views.
We bagged the awards for the Best Rock Vocalist, Best Rock Song (Shehrezade), Best Rock Group, a silver award in the category of the Most Mind-blowing Music Video for Pukaar and were voted as the Best Freaking act in the Universe by our peers at the IndieGo awards held in Malaysia in Feb 2012. The awards aim to honour some of the best independent music and bands present in South Asia.
We have recently won the JD Award for the best rock band from Pakistan 2010. The awards were hosted by Jack Daniels and Rolling Stones Magazine, India. We performed in New Delhi at The Hard Rock Cafe on December 16, 2010 for the JD Rock Awards Tour in front of a packed 800 crowd.
We are the first band from Pakistan to be invited to come and perform at one of the biggest and most prestigious Music Festivals in USA called SXSW (South By Southwest) which takes place every year in Austin, Texas.
Our song “Inquilaab” recently made it to the Semi Finals of International Songwriting Competition (ISC) out of 15,000 entries from all over the globe.
We were the most played band with our song “Mera Wana“ on the METAL ASIA COMPILATION 2010 which included all Asian metal bands.
Our songs “Inquilaab” and “Pal” have been chosen as the soundtrack for an upcoming movie “Waar”. The movie is being produced my Mindworks Media.
Our song “Mera Wana” will be used in the soundtrack of another upcoming movie “Peochar” by Mindworks Media.
We have so far released 4 music videos “Tanha”, "Pukaar", "Umeed" and "Shehrezade" which are currently doing the rounds on the Pakistan music channels namely MTV, Aag, ARY Musik, Oxygene and Play TV. We are in the process of releasing more singles and videos.
Band Members:
Umair Jaswal: Lead Vocals. Khurram Waqar: Lead Guitars/Rhythm Guitars, Arrangement & Audio Production, Band Manager Sarmad Abdul Ghafoor: Guitars & Audio Production. Shaheryar Ghayas: Bass Guitar. Salman Rafique: Drums/Percussions
In the final analysis, people will always love real music of the highest quality - passionately created, beautifully crafted, carefully constructed, artfully produced and powerfully performed. Magazine Gap are one of the most musically intoxicating bands emerging on the scene today.
There is nothing artificial about this eclectic pop/rock band, and yet its make-up is so unlikely. How in London, a city of 12 million people, does a folk-rock singer-songwriter earning his spurs on the acoustic circuit meet and musically connect with a leading R&B/Hip-Hop session drummer and producer with several international tours under his belt, and a classically trained concert pianist and jazz maestro? Certainly a cosmopolitan city is the best breeding ground for musical innovation and London is a world-leader, but mainly it is due to the highly accomplished and creative members of Magazine Gap.
Magazine Gap's strong appeal is a testament to how the band combined their musical strengths and pooled their myriad of influences and experiences to create a fresh, distinct sound that appeals to the broadest demographic. The name of the band comes from a famous stretch of road in Hong Kong, where two of the band members grew up; it runs from the Mid-Levels to the Peak, and serves as metaphor for the band's journey as they embrace both the old school method of taking their music on the road and new school as they reach fans along the online highway. Analytics show their fanbase is equally divided between men and women.
Magazine Gap have physically travelled over 50,000 miles through touring around the world. Dates include 14 major cities in the UK & Ireland, the four largest cities in the United States (New York, Chicago, Houston & Los Angeles), three of the largest cities in Japan (Tokyo, Osaka & Nagoya), two of the most significant metropolises in the South-East Asia (Hong Kong & Singapore), and a 90 minute evening concert on the main outdoor stage at the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival.
Their live shows have garnered huge acclaim for their powerful performances and high level of musicianship. At every stop, the band has connected with local audiences, be it: New York City, Chicago, New Orleans, Houston, Los Angeles, Cape May, London, Birmingham, Oxford, Cambridge, Norwich, Milton Keynes, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter, Bedford, Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow, Dublin, Montreux, Singapore, Hong Kong, Osaka, Nagoya or Tokyo.
Their music has reached hundreds of thousands more in all corners of the globe through extensive social networking, and found an audience of real music lovers everywhere. BBC Radio has also embraced the band and has featured Magazine Gap on several radio shows with live performances and interviews. Their song "What's Next?" was Record Of The Week on the eclectic music station JazzFM in June 2012. Each new video on their popular YouTube channel, which has had over 800,000 views, instantly becomes one of the most discussed of all UK based musicians.
This creativity and fusion of styles is evident on the band's Silver Lining EP. The six songs featured are a snapshot of Magazine Gap's versatility and quality of musicianship. In keeping with that authenticity, the band worked in some of the top recording studios in the world including Capitol Studios (Hollywood), Firehouse Recording Studios (Pasadena), Avatar Studios (New York), CRC Studios (Chicago), Piety Street Recording (New Orleans), Metropolis and Abbey Road Studios (London). All songs were written by James Keen (except Silver Lining – lyrics by James Keen; music by Keen & Brian McCook). The Silver Lining EP was produced by Brian McCook and mixed by Brian Moore. The EP is available on iTunes and all digital platforms worldwide.
"This fabulous group has a magnetic originality and creativeness, and will mesmerize you with their outstanding music." ~ RadioIndy
“Beautiful musicianship, intricate rhythms and the dynamic control displayed confirms a band in full masterful command of their music. This is askilful, refined band at the top of their A-Game" ~ Overplay
“They have fused an amazing collection of various styles into a sound that is sure to amaze even seasoned musicians and producers. The pop/rock style is truly unique” ~ Sonic Shocks
“World class – with their songwriting ability, multi-layered structures and quality musicianship brimming throughout, the record sounds fantastic” ~ Buzz Jack
“Sophisticated pop and a call to all lovers of class” ~ Volume Magazine
“Tremendous pop that errs on the eclectic and could be a very big hit in the pop world” ~ Maverick Magazine
“The combination somehow works. ****” ~ Sunday Mail (Scotland)
“The vocals hold all the various elements together and fuse them into a distinct sound” ~ Bristol Evening Post
“Strong musicianship, creativity in songwriting with well crafted and insightful lyrics, plus a wonderful mix of styles and instruments, making something that is distinctly Magazine Gap” ~ Red Hot Velvet
“Magazine Gap have burst onto the music scene with great music, and managed to create a fresh and unfamiliar sound.A first class act. If you get the opportunity to see them live – do it!" ~ Maybe Magazine
"Musical genius: their set makes them stand out from other bands. You have to see it to believe it!" ~ wohomusic
"Clearly a sound from the world stage – I can't wait to see them live again" ~ Songsalive!
Ty Taylor (vocals) and Nalle Colt (guitar) formed Vintage Trouble after setting up a basic home studio in Venice Beach. They invited their mutual friend Rick Barrio Dill to play bass for the band, and then recruited Richard Danielson to play drums. "We got together in 2010," Taylor told Billboard. "It was one of those experiences where everything was lined up. We had all been friends, and had known each other before the band started up. We had known each other in different arenas. I had known Nalle Colt for about fourteen years, and we had tried to play with each other for so long. We were in one right before Vintage Trouble, and things just weren't working out. So, we left, and decided we wanted to do something a little more raw and down to earth." Taylor has said that the line-up of Colt, Danielson, Barrio Dill and himself developed a good chemistry: "It just felt like we were in a family of people that were going to challenge us."
The band then began creating material in the Laurel Canyon neighborhood of Los Angeles. After just two weeks of rehearsals in early 2010, the group began playing local area shows and late night speakeasies. Aiming to emulate mid-century soul music and to use the recording techniques of that era, the band spent a three-day session recording complete takes, turning out 12 new songs for the album "The Bomb Shelter Sessions". Such singles as '"Gracefully", "Nancy Lee", "Still & Always Will" and "Blues Hand Me Down" aimed to produce a sound reminiscent of the days of vinyl records and juke joints, and the essence of the original soul movement. The album was produced by Peter McCabe and co-produced by Vintage Trouble themselves. The album was mixed by Rogers Masson.
How and where the band launched their career in earnest is an important part of their story. They initially took their music outside the USA, as part of a strategy conceived by legendary manager Doc McGhee. "If you look at the history of people like Amy Winehouse, Duffy, or James Blunt, they came [to America] first and didn't make it. Then, they went back over to England, and blew up. We just decided to go to Europe first, and when they were accepted there, we would have a story to share here. That's basically what happened." McGhee wanted to get them in front of as many people as possible, and the strategy worked. "It was pretty simple. The concept was to get all the tastemakers together, and those people spread the word. We got Brian May to give us some dates, and also some stadium shows with Bon Jovi. It's just hard work by these guys. They just get up in the morning, and go conquer," he said.[
After three shows in the UK in early 2011, the band returned in April of that year to appear on Jools Holland's late night TV show Later... with Jools Holland. The band became the 6th most trending topic of the day on Twitter, attained the #13 best selling digital album on iTunes, and had the #5 all around best selling digital album on Amazon UK, beating out both Rihanna and the current Glee (TV series) albums. Additionally, VT had the #2 best selling digital Rock album on Amazon.com UK, and the #1 best selling R&B digital album on Amazon UK. On the 24th April 2011, they appeared on The Late Show with JoAnne Good, (Sunday Night Sessions segment) on BBC London 94.9.
The band joined Brian May (guitar player of rock band Queen) and Kerry Ellis for a tour starting in early May 2011, and in June 2011 supported rock band Bon Jovi on the UK leg of their The Circle Tour.
The band played for Paul Stanley on January 20, 2012 at his 60th Birthday Party and Paul sang "You Shook Me" by Led Zeppelin.
On April 24, 2012, "The Bomb Shelter Sessions" was released in the U.S.
They are the opening act for The Who on that band's first North American tour in four years.
They are the opening act for Dave Matthews Band at Oak Mountain Amphitheatre in Pelham, AL. on April 6th, 2013.
