Ulrich Schnauss and Extremist

   
Artist: Ulrich Schnauss and Extremist

   Genre(s): 
Ambient
   

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Discography:


   
 Ascent From The Circle

   Year: 2004   
Tracks: 2

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Heath Ledger's Joker Facing The Chop?

Christian Bale has described calls to cut part of Heath Ledger's final film performance in the upcoming Batman movie as "bloody insane".

Movie bosses are yet to confirm whether a scene featuring  Ledger's character The Joker in a body bag will be axed from the The Dark Knight.

The scene was shot just weeks before the actor was found dead at his New York apartment in January.

Now Bale - who plays the Caped Crusader for the second time - has stated his case for keeping Ledger's last scenes intact.

He says, "I know there are a lot of people out there who don't think this movie should be shown.

"But, if you're asking my opinion, I think that's bloody insane. I also think it's an insult to Heath and everything he stood for.

"I don't think anything should be cut - I think it's the movie he wanted to make.

And Bale believes Ledger's final performance will act as a celebration of his life as an actor - insisting it would be "rude" not to run with the integral scene.

He adds, "The guy was brilliant. He was a fantastic actor and he put everything into this part. I absolutely know without question that he would have wanted everyone to see it.

"For me, this is a celebration of what he did best - entertain people...Respect the man. This is what he did. This is what he wanted to do."

Inner Circle and Jacob Miller

   
Artist: Inner Circle and Jacob Miller

   Genre(s): 
Reggae
   

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Discography:


   
 Big in Jamaica: The Best of Inner Circle With Jacob Miller

   Year: 2000   
Tracks: 15

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The Cruxshadows

   
Artist: The Cruxshadows

   Genre(s): 
Other
   

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Discography:


   
 Shadowbox (CD 2)

   Year: 2005   
Tracks: 8


   
 Shadowbox (CD 1)

   Year: 2005   
Tracks: 13


   
 Telemetry Of A Fallen Angel

   Year: 2004   
Tracks: 15


   
 Fortress In Flames

   Year: 2004   
Tracks: 14


   
 Live At San Francisco DNA Lounge (23.09.2003)

   Year: 2003   
Tracks: 12


   
 Frozen Embers

   Year: 2003   
Tracks: 13


   
 Ethernaut

   Year: 2003   
Tracks: 14


   
 Wishfire

   Year: 2002   
Tracks: 14


   
 Tears

   Year: 2001   
Tracks: 7


   
 Echoes and Artifacts

   Year: 2001   
Tracks: 11


   
 Paradox Addendum

   Year: 2000   
Tracks: 7


   
 Night Crawls In (Lim.Edt.Tape)

   Year: 1993   
Tracks: 11

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Michael Sandler and Musir Von Vidalia

Paul Cardall

   
Artist: Paul Cardall

   Genre(s): 
Ambient
   

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Discography:


   
 Hymns

   Year: 1999   
Tracks: 16

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Contemporary jazz piano player Paul Cardall was born April 24, 1973; distress from a innate heart fault, he was minded only days to live only defied medical expectations, long-suffering a serial of surgeries and illnesses passim his childhood. Finding comfort in music, Cardall began piano lessons at years eight-spot just foreswear hexad months after, not playacting once again for a 10. While in high school, however, tragedy smitten when one of his best friends was killed in a car accident; a grieving Cardall ad libitum composed a musical tribute, going away on to compose a xII more songs and in 1995 in private pressing an album. Around that same prison term he took a job playing piano at a local department stock during the holiday season, merchandising his track record to customers; one copy of the disc made its way of life to author Richard Paul Evans, the writer of the best seller The Christmas Box, wHO invited Cardall to write and record a musical adjustment of the al-Qur'an. The resulting album, too highborn The Christmas Box, was released in 1997; upon signing to the Narada label, Cardall reissued the album deuce age by and by in conjunction with a raw campaign, The Looking Glass, which, wish its forerunner, john Drew inspiration from Evans' novels. Cardall issued two albums in 2002, Daily Devotions and Miracles: A Journey of Hope and Healing. Stone Angel has distributed many of his releases, including 2004's Christmastide Hymns, Vol. 1 and 2007's Songs of Praise.

Fabled Miami music studio celebrates golden anniversary and still making hits

MIAMI - On any given night, as the fabled moon rises over Miami, the densest concentration of pop stars is likely to be found not in some South Beach nightclub, but in a quiet warehouse section 24 kilometres to the north.

Rolls Royces and Ferraris fill spaces reserved for Justin Timberlake or Jennifer Lopez. Assorted rock stars stop to chat in a parking lot next to the studio that many music aficionados consider hallowed ground.

"It's like an auto show," says Iggy Pop, who recorded most of 2003's "Skull Ring album" at the studio founded 50 years ago as Criteria. "All these rappers have these cool cars. And then Michael Stipe leaves a note on your window."

In these days of cheap digital home recording programs, professional studios seem like endangered species - Hit Factory's original New York studio closed its doors in 2005 and Sony Studios in Manhattan shuttered a year ago.

But in Miami, the Hit Factory has brought a second life to one of the hardest-working spaces in the recording business, a place where the technical, creative heavy lifting of making hits has been innovated, defined, and refined for five decades.

A who's who of artists - from James Brown to Bob Marley to the Rolling Stones to Michael Jackson to Madonna - have worked at the studio now known as the Hit Factory Criteria. A recent check of the Billboard Hot 100 found that virtually every other song - including Lil Wayne's "Lollipop," Madonna's "4 Minutes," and Usher's "Love in this Club" - was cut, tracked, mixed, or remixed in one of Hit Factory Criteria's renowned high-ceilinged rooms.

"I used to see 'recorded at the Hit Factory Miami' written in the back of some of my favourite CDs," says Toronto-based Nelly Furtado, who recorded her 2006 album "Loose" there. "When I finally cut an album there, I understood why. The whole building has this creative magic."

If the Hit Factory walls could talk, what stories they could tell stories about rock-star decadence, the birth of disco, and teen-pop titans.

When Mack Emerman, a jazz fan, founded Criteria in 1958, the Rat Pack was playing Miami Beach hotel clubs and Miami's Overtown neighbourhood had a jumping late-night blues scene.

Local singer Steve Alaimo, who had a '63 hit with "Every Day I Have to Cry Some" and was a founding figure of what became known as the Miami sound, says he was the first to record at Criteria, back when it was one room. "We only had three tracks," Alaimo recalls. "James Brown happened to be in town and said, 'You need a band, take my band.' James played organ."

Brown's own "I Feel Good" was Criteria's first gold record. Miami soul queen Betty Wright was 18 when she recorded the "Clean Up Woman" here. But it was after Atlantic Records co-chair Jerry Wexler and engineering pioneer Tom Dowd decided to make Criteria their tropical base that the flood of top stars began in earnest.

"I wanted to escape the rigorous northern winters," says Wexler, who recorded Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett, among others, at Criteria. "And I wanted to play golf and do a little fishing."

Criteria - which became known as Atlantic South - was renowned for a certain sound and studio wizardry. Emerman was a gear-head. By accident, brothers Howard and Ron Albert created a booming sound by hooking drums up to expensive microphones. "The magic was this fatback drum sound," Howard Albert says. "That brought in all the R&B people."

Landmark 1970s albums "Layla and Other Love Songs," "Saturday Night Fever," "Hotel California," "Highway to Hell," and "Rumours" were recorded in whole or in part at Criteria.

The Albert brothers remember all-night jam sessions with Clapton, the Allmans, and Crosby, Stills, & Nash. The sound of cars going over a nearby bridge inspired the Bee Gees' "Jive Talking," produced by another Emerman protege, Karl Richardson.

Trevor Fletcher, general manager and vice-president of the Hit Factory Criteria, whose mother managed Criteria in its first heyday, recalls as a kid riding circles on his skateboard around a meditating Cat Stevens as he sat in the middle of Criteria's helicopter pad, which was shaped like a giant record album.

"The echo was unique and recognizable," says Joan Jett, who recorded there in 1980. "The vibe at Criteria was always so calm and inspiring."

The pad is gone. So is the original studio room - it's a lounge area now, with gold records from floor to ceiling. Emerman fell into hard financial times in the '80s and sold Criteria. The Hit Factory's Ed Germano bought the place in 1999 and massively renovated it. Most of the old Criteria names have passed away, retired, or moved elsewhere. Alaimo, who now works with the Albert brothers and Richardson at nearby Audio Vision, bemoans the sterilized glitz of the house he helped build. "It's pizazz; it's the Ritz-Carlton; you pay for it," says Alaimo.

The Hit Factory's managers don't necessarily disagree. Offering plush surroundings, first-class concierge-style service, and state-of-the-art equipment is part of their strategy. Each room has its own engineer and runner; the latter's job is to go out into the Miami night and fulfil any request - no matter how peculiar or picayune - for amenities or cuisine.

"You go to a studio and expect a certain level of accommodation, and technical support," says Fletcher. "Hit Factory is synonymous with a level of quality. Every room and every part of the facility and personnel needs to be conducive to creativity. When you come in here, yeah it's nice, yeah it's fancy, yeah everything works well. It's also comfortable."

In these days of such programs as Pro Tools and GarageBand turning amateurs into hit makers, Hit Factory's survival savvy is no small achievement. Even Alaimo credits Germano, who died in 2003, with Criteria's revival. Widow Janice Germano now owns the studio.

Germano astutely foresaw futures in hip-hop and Latin music. You can still hear some of that fatback drum sound in Hit Factory records by Ricky Martin, Rihanna, and Rick Ross. Producers love the place. Timbaland has been known to sleep in his tour bus outside.

And while the days of Stephen Stills and Eric Clapton staying up all night jamming may be over, all kinds of mashups are still possible as international artists converge here. "(Judas Priest's) Rob Halford and Julio Iglesias were in the lobby joking about doing a duet," Fletcher says. "Fortunately that never happened."

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Networks Face Great Wall Of China

Television networks around the world (including the U.S.'s NBC) who have been licensed to cover the Beijing Olympics are complaining about foot-dragging by Chinese officials in granting necessary permits for everything from freight shipments to camera placements, the Associated Press reported Monday. The wire service quoted from minutes of a meeting between network producers and the Beijing and International Olympic Committee organizers last month in which IOC official Gilbert Felli accused Chinese officials of imposing conditions "that are just not workable." In its report, the AP commented: "The minutes hint that procedures broadcasters have used in other Olympics are conflicting with China's authoritarian government. Some plans are months behind schedule, which could force broadcasters to compromise coverage plans." AP's own television unit, APTN, is among a number of non-rights-holding news organizations that have also complained about rigid Chinese restrictions. APTN News Director Sandy MacIntyre complained, "We are two weeks away from putting equipment on a shipment and we have no clearance to operate, or to enter the country or a frequency allocation."


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Kate Kills Rhys Ifans' thrills

LUCKILY I didn’t wake up beside a horse’s head at
Glastonbury after revealing KATE MOSS’s pals call her The
Godfather.

But I might, now I can reveal she was in full don mode again at the festival,
helping pal RHYS IFANS get over his split with SIENNA MILLER.

She took him on a bender on Friday and they ended up singing karaoke with her KILLS
fella JAMIE HINCE and GOSSIP’s BETH DITTO in the
SingStar tent.

But when two girls approached, Kate had them chucked out of the bar. That is
one protected man.

She also got the hump when Rhys started getting cosy with her fella’s
band-mate ALISON MOSSHART.

An onlooker revealed: “She was putting all her attention into making
sure Rhys had a good time.

“She didn’t like anyone else getting in her territory
though. She got two girls kicked out and if looks could kill, Alison would
be a goner.”