DJ BIGICE sets the dancefloors on fire. The Passion and Love for the music reflects only one side of the coin. DJ BIGICE has to be considered one of the hardest working and most prolific Dj´s, with a good sense of the New Trend and only Hits in his pocket. He played with the biggest players around the globe. Alongside of the best producers he released his new mixes with attitude, style and like always on high emotions."Article source: www.djbigice.com.
"If you’re wondering where the party’s at on 21st August, the answer to that particularly forward-thinking question would be Brussels at the tenth annual City Parade. It’s a free event that attracts over two hundred thousand visitors each year, and though it takes a new location every year, this year takes place under the Atomium, which is one of those awe-inspiringly gigantic objects that are meant to make you sit back and reorganize your cosmic perspective. Or, in this case, have you dance your ass off. Things kick off at 1400, then the parade gets going from 1700 to 1830, when the trucks will assume a stationary position around the Atomium and blast music until 2330. Headliners include Thai turntablist Nakadia, as well as Mar-T, the dude who helped forge the signature sound of Ibiza’s legendary Amnesia club.
If you were at all remotely worried that this party stops at what some would consider a reasonable hour, don’t worry there’s a 25 euro after party that starts at 10:00 pm and ends at the wee small hour of 6:00 am, featuring headliner Paul Oakenfold, Dutch house master Fedde le Grand, the now-Born Again Christian Green Velvet, cheeky Swedish electro-poppers Dada Life, and eccentric Belgian Dr. Lektroluv, who’s been known to DJ with the aid of a telephone instead of the conventional set of headphones.
Again, the event takes place on 21st August under the Atomium in Brussels, Belgium. For the full line up, other important details as well as ticket info, check out their official website, which we were kind enough to find the English link for because God knows your Flemish is rusty." Article source: www.djmag.com.
"In 2008, Journey introduced a new singer to the world, Arnel Pineda, with the release of their 14th studio album ("Revelation") and an extraordinarily successful world tour. It was the latest chapter in a rock and roll saga that started more than 35 years ago and has produced some of the best-known rock songs of the 1970's and 80's.
Journey's story begins in Northern California with guitarist Neal Schon, a child prodigy who dropped out of high school to join Santana just prior to the San Francisco band recording its third album. Schon, while in high school, had been jamming with Santana keyboardist Gregg Rolie, who ultimately would follow Schon into Journey.
The union of Santana and Schon was short-lived, but in that time period, Schon would meet a man who believed that a band formed around his guitar work would be a viable entity. When Schon left Santana, he explored the idea of a power trio with two former members of Sly and the Family Stone, drummer Greg Errico and bassist Larry Graham. Playing funk, however, limited Schon's amount of soloing, which prompted him to look for another musical vehicle. Walter "Herbie" Herbert, a guitar tech for Santana who had added management duties to his job, approached Schon in early 1973 about forming a guitar-centric band. Herbert has said Schon was, quote, 'the quintessential guitar expressionist of the time', and to further his career, Herbert connected Schon with two members of the popular local act Frumious Bandersnatch, former Steve Miller Band bassist Ross Valory and guitarist George Tickner. They enlisted drummer Prairie Prince, a member of the Tubes, and the all-instrumental act began performing as the Golden Gate Rhythm Section.
They developed a local following, one that was strong enough for San Francisco FM station KSAN to hold a contest to see if a better name could be given to the GGRS. The contest yielded the moniker Journey. New name in place, Rolie joined the band in the summer of 1973. The first edition of Journey developed a largely instrumental progressive rock sound. The first change in personnel came in early 1974 when Aynsley Dunbar, a British drummer who spent time in the bands of Jeff Beck, Frank Zappa and John Mayall, took the place of Prince, who decided to stay with the Tubes.
CBS/Columbia Records signed that lineup in November 1974, but by the time "Journey," their debut album, was released, Tickner had left to attend medical school. Tickner, whose compositions were the backbone of Journey's earliest repertoire, was not replaced, making the band a single-guitar outfit.
The group disbanded in 1989, seemingly for good, as Schon and Cain created Bad English with John Waite while Valory, Smith and Rolie joined the Storm. In 1993, the band reunited, sans Perry, for a Bay Area concert honoring their former manager Herbert. Perry, Schon, Cain, Smith and Valory reunited one last time for 1996's Trial By Fire. The dozen songs on the album were written in just two weeks. It opened at No. 3, yielded the Adult Contemporary hit single "When You Love a Woman," which would garner the band their first Grammy nomination, and a 25-date tour was booked. Perry moved to Hawaii to get in shape, but while there he developed health problems and was eventually told he would need a hip replaced. The tour never took place and with no fanfare, the members of Journey went their separate ways.
Ultimately, Schon, Valory and Cain decided the band would forge ahead. Steve Augeri was brought in as lead singer and Dean Castronovo, a member of Bad English, replaced Smith on drums. (Steve Smith opted to continue with his solo career as a recording artist and band leader, forming the band Vital Information). Their first recording as Journey was Remember Me for the Armageddon soundtrack. Arrival, Journey's 11th studio album, was released in April 2001.
A 30th anniversary tour followed the release of Generations in 2005. The tour featured shows that were more than three hours long and included material from every phase of the bands career. A year later, Jeff Scott Soto replaced Augeri, whose time in the band was cut short due to a throat infection. Sotos tenure was short-lived and in 2007, Journey tried a variety of ways to land a new singer. After two days of watching videos on YouTube, Schon came across a video featuring Arnel Pineda performing with a Filipino cover band in the Philippines and had his management book him for an audition in the States. Within just a few songs he had secured the job. Pineda made his debut with the album Revelation, which was sold exclusively at Wal-Mart outlets and was certified platinum within several months of its release. More than 700,000 fans saw Journeys 2008 tour with Pineda as lead singer. After seven months on the road with Journey, Pineda told the media in Asia, quote, This is the best job in the world and as long as my band mates will let me rock with them, I will keep singing with Journey." Source & Full article available at www.journeymusic.com.
"INNA, last year’s dance music revelation, has already stormed to no.1 in ten countries including Spain (certified Platinum after surpassing 80,000 copies in sales), Holland, Ukraine, Hungary, Turkey and Russia and reached the top 10 in countries like Belgium, Czech Republic, Slovakia and many other, with her award-winning single, ‘Hot‘. She is also getting recognized in US after topping the Billboard Hot Dance Airplay, making INNA the dance artist with the most Airplay in the USA. Liverpool-based label, 3 Beat Blue have signed INNA and are set to smash ‘Hot’ into the UK charts on 14th March. The release comes with remixes from Play & Win, Cahill, fresh from remixing Cheryl Cole and Pixie Lott, and Riffs & Rays – the masters of the funky floor filling sounds, and is already available for pre-order on iTunes. The song was written and produced by Play & Win, a talented dance music trio and one of the most prolific music producers in Romania. They’re also ‘guilty’ for producing the following INNA’s singles: ‘Love’, ‘Deja Vu’, ‘Amazing’ and the brand new single ‘10 minutes’; all of them are successful in European music charts proving that INNA is more than a hit. ‘Hot’ was recently added to the BBC Radio 1 playlist after heavy support on the ‘Floorfillers’ show. In the same week, it hit no.1 in the Music Week Club Chart, followed by no.1 in the Cool Cuts chart. It was quickly added to playlists on Galaxy, KISS, Juice, Gaydar and many more. Also, the gorgeous Romanian artist has topped the Shazam UK Pre-Release charts for two consecutive weeks after spending eight weeks on top five.
The video for ‘Hot’ has over 50 million views on Youtube, proving the strength and popularity of the record, and is already playlisted across Clubland TV, Flaunt, The Chart Show and MTV Dance where has topped the DanceFloor Chart in the last couple of weeks.
In UK she’s already got press attention, in a review FemaleFirst.co.uk said “Inna is a massive star on the continent, already bigger than Madonna and Lady Gaga in Eastern Europe, she needs bodyguards everywhere she goes!”
The year 2009 has been full for INNA who, in addition to international recognition, has dominated the music market in Romania and has won numerous awards including: four awards at MTV Romania Music Awards for ‘Best Dance’, ‘Best New Act’, ‘Best Show’ and ‘Best Border Breaker’, MTV Europe Music Awards for ‘Best Romanian Act “, 2nd place at Sopot International Song Festival for ‘Best International Song’ and more other.
The year 2010 seems to be even better for the young artist. The new single, ‘10 minutes’, although released one month ago, promises to be another hit brand INNA, winning position rapidly in the charts in Czech Republic, Hungary, Turkey, Bulgaria and, of course, Romania.
With a huge continuously growing fan base, more than 185.000 fans on her Facebook page, making her the most followed Romanian on Facebook, there’s only one next step for INNA: global recognition." Article source: www.musiqqueen.com.
Virtual Surround Sound technology makes it possible to enjoy a 5.1-channel Dolby surround sound through a pair of headphones, or even a single speakerbar playback set-up.
Many may wonder how it is possible to pack five speakers and a subwoofer into a pair of headphones, least image into a single-speaker system! Yet, this is all possible thanks to Dolby Headphone and Dolby Virtual Speaker technologies.
In this article, we discuss virtual surround sound technologies - explaining the principles in the setup of a virtual soundfield around the listener while pointing out the limitations of such systems with respect to multi-channel speaker systems. It may sound somewhat contradictory - playing a 5.1-channel sound system over an ordinary pair of stereo headphones while still enjoying practically the same immersive experience generated by a multi-speaker surround sound playback system.
But when you start thinking about it, there is nothing contradictory in the whole idea; after all we only have two ears through which we capture all sound information, irrespective of the number of different sound sources present at any time.
In simple terms, this is the concept behind Dolby Headphone Technology
In other words, getting a surround soundstage through a pair of stereo headphones should not be something unrealistic. But what about Dolby Virtual Speaker technology that enables you to enjoy 5.1 Dolby surround sound listening experience over a single speaker system?
Single speaker surround sound systems use advanced virtual surround technologies that manipulate audio signals with sonic spatial cues by applying varying delays and phase-shifts between the different channels in a 5.1 sound source. The whole process is based on extensive room-modeling technologies to reproduce the sonic spectrum and dynamics of a properly placed 5.1 multi-speaker system in a typical room environment.
Dolby Surround Virtual Speaker technology is just one of the many proprietary advanced digital processing algorithms in use today for single-speaker virtual surround.
It is important to understand here that irrespective of the digital signal processing (DSP) algorithm used to generate a virtual surround soundstage, these single speaker systems consist in reality of a speaker-bar with multiple mini-speakers mounted onto the speaker unit.
A minimum of two such speaker channels are necessary; in fact, to be more precise, Dolby Virtual Speaker technology is a 5.1 virtual surround over a 2-speaker playback setup.
It is through the use of these mini-speakers within the single speaker bar unit that it is possible to generate a virtual surround sound stage. More complex single speaker designs incorporate additional mini-speaker drivers and tweeters - all mounted into the same single speaker unit, while some units also include a woofer driver.
However, irrespective of whether a single-speaker bar includes a woofer driver or not, it is best to complement single-speaker surround sound systems with a compact powered subwoofer as their bass response is quite lacking. One such interesting option which can complement the Polk Audio Soundbar 50 featured above is the Polk Audio PSWi225 Wireless Subwoofer. Despite its compact 1 cu. ft design and 100W continuous power rating, the PSWi225 is capable of delivering exceptionally deep bass and the convenience of wireless connectivity." Source & Full article available at www.practical-home-theater-guide.com.
"When computing started, the computers just had to handle silence or “beep”. Then the computer games more advanced than “Ping-Pong” came, someone turned the computer into an electric piano, then 3D-sound and later surround sound became a necessary feature. Today our home computer doubles as music organizer and player, recording studio, sound system for a home movie theater and as a musical instrument. Gaming has become a sound as well as a visual experience and movie fans can choose between different versions of surround sound from an ever increasing number of speakers and channels.
The sound cards of today are almost like a computer themselves. They have a processor and own memory modules for example. That makes it capable of several different tasks; many cards today are generalists that can give you superb sound quality regardless if you play computer games, creates or record music or just use your computer as a music organizer/player. There are also more specialized cards for musicians and recording studios.
Besides deciding what main purpose your sound card should serve, you must also decide what, if any, sound devices you are going to connect to your card, what connections they require and finally what output connections you need, for example, for a movie system or recording media like a CD burner. The number of channels and type of movie sound encoding, such as Dolby or THX, is of importance for the movie fans while a gaming enthusiast must check that the card meets the specs of the game – as nowadays some games requires special hardware and/or software. The possibility to record music in various qualities is also important, sometimes you want to make a quick recording and sometimes you accept to use a little more time in order to get the ultimate sound quality.
Many manufacturers often pack their sound cards with a software pack like music organizers, recording studio software and mp3 sound improvers. Some may be useful, but some only includes light versions. Be sure to check the connection possibilities of the sound card, you should have both analog and digital connections in order to use it with other devices as music systems or instruments, for example. The more connections the better.
After deciding which sound cards to choose between, read the tests of interesting models. Check your software – and other hardware – manuals to make sure they will work together.
TIP:
As a lot of new versions of components, softwares and so on are released over time, log on regularly to the home page of the manufacturer of your sound card to check for upgrades. That will make your computer work smoother and more efficiently in the long run." Article source: www.testfreaks.com.
"Cheryl Cole was born Cheryl Tweedy June 30, 1983 and raised in the northern England city of Newcastle upon Tyne. She was interested in dancing as a young child and also explored modelling. She won a number of competitions and also appeared in two British Gas advertisements. Cheryl Tweedy was working as a waitress when she auditioned for the talent competition show Popstars: The Rivals at age 19. The show ended with a public vote in November 2002 and five of the girls in the competition formed the group Girls Aloud. Cheryl Tweedy received the most votes of any of the girls and thus was the first announced to be part of the new group. Girls Aloud is the most successful of artists to come out of a Britsh TV talent competition. They have reached the UK pop top 10 with 20 different singles.
In January 2003 Cheryl Tweedy caused a tabloid sensation when she was involved in an altercation with nightclub attendant Sophie Amogbokpa. The incident went to trial and she was convicted of assault occasioning bodily harm. Cheryl Tweedy was sentenced to 120 hours community service plus a compensation to her victim and court fees.
In 2004 Cheryl Tweedy began dating English football star Ashley Cole. They were engaged in June 2005 in Dubai and married in July 2006. Later tabloid stories indicated infidelity issues in the relationship, but they have reportedly since reconciled.
June 10, 2008 Cheryl Cole was announced as the replacement judge on the phenomenally successful British TV talent show X Factor. She replaced Sharon Osbourne. As mentor on the show, Cheryl Cole was given the girls group to guide and ultimately one of her competitors, Alexandra Burke, won the competition. She returned in 2009 and is the mentor for the boys. Joe McElderry, one of the boys, has been cited as a favorite to win.
Cheryl Cole contributed vocals and danced in the video for will.i.am's top 5 UK pop hit "Heartbreaker" in 2008. The following year she began working on solo material. The first single "Fight for This Love" was released in October 2009 and became the fastest selling single of the year to that point going straight to #1 on the UK pop singles chart. The album 3 Words followed the single on to the charts and instantly topped the album chart selling over 125,000 copies in its first week." Article source: www.top40.about.com.
"When you're an artist as, well, flexible as Shakira, every video presents a challenge: Just how do you top the last one?
Over the years, Shakira has taken the art of over-the-top gyration to new heights, so much so that, at this point, anything less than a dance sequence resulting in a full hiatal hernia would be considered a letdown. And she knew this when she teamed with director Sophie Muller for her "Did It Again" clip. The two scoured the globe to find inspiration for the video, taking cues from Moroccan dancers and 19th-century British painters, and recruiting a Florida-born dancer and an Icelandic choreographer for the project. How do we know all this? Well, we asked Shakira about the video, and she gave us the inside scoop — frame by frame.
"It was a collaboration between this friend of mine who's a dancer, and me. She showed me this contemporary dance piece that was produced in Iceland. So we said, 'Hey, maybe we could do something like this for "Did It Again," ' " Shakira said. "So we brought this choreographer from Iceland from this contemporary dance company, and we worked on this piece. "And I decided to bring a little bit of this painter, [Lawrence] Alma-Tadema, who portrays women in these bathrooms, these Turkish bathrooms, and I wanted to bring a little bit of that poetic imagery to this video," she continued. "And I remember not too long ago having watched a few women turn their heads in a trans in Morocco. So we brought all these pieces — Moroccan women twirling and turning their heads, and the poetry from Alma-Tadema's paintings, plus this Icelandic contemporary dance piece — and we mixed all these pieces together for the video."
It was a lot to cram into one video, and Shakira needed a male counterpart to pull it off. Luckily, she found a (more than) able body: Daniel "Cloud" Campos, a dancer who's worked with Madonna.
"He's sick!" Shakira enthused. "What he does is unbelievable."
But did she have any problem getting close to a guy she barely knew? Not really — as she put it, people often do more with folks they know even less.
"[We worked on the routine] for a few days," Shakira laughed. "Hey, some people just get in bed after one night."". Article source: www.mtv.com.
"Ameerah - a name that breathes royalty. The Arabic word for "princess" perfectly reflects pop singer Ameerah's Tunisian, Algerian and Belgian roots. Her new single The Sound Of Missing You is a catchy, melodic dance track with influences of urban and pop. It's one of those songs you won't be able to get out of your head for a long time.
The Sound Of Missing You is the result of a collaboration of Ameerah with the renowned Swedish production team Airborn, a.k.a. Didrik and Sebastion Thott; the same team that is responsible for numerous hits for Celine Dion, Westlife and Lindsay Lohan, to name a few. It's a song about the end of a relationship. Ameerah: “It's about missing somebody so much that you can't shake off the feeling. It's like sound: it's always there.”
Music has always been the focus of Ameerah's life. Her musical skills emerged at a very young age. As a three-year-old, she started to sing along to Walt Disney songs, did her first big performance at the age of six and has never stopped since. She went to music school and took acting classes and dance lessons. At the age of fourteen, she won a free-stage competition. She went on to become one of the most popular participants of the Belgian version of Idols 2003, got signed to a Belgian record label at twenty and released two successful singles. After that collaboration ended because of musical differences, Ameerah signed a deal with HighClazz Music Entertainment.
Ameerah has always been an ambitious girl and it's starting to pay off. “People said I was a fool when I decided to go to the US and Sweden to establish my career. But I just felt I should give it a try and went for it.” With so many fruitful songwriting sessions on her name, a great new single and her everlasting determination to succeed, it is only a matter of time before Ameerah will become a true internationally successful pop princess." Article source: Ameerah on MySpace.
"Born 2 October 1951, in Wallsend, north-east England, Gordon Sumner's life started to change the evening a fellow musician in the Phoenix Jazzmen caught sight of his black and yellow striped sweater and decided to re-christen him Sting. Sting paid his early dues playing bass with local outfits The Newcastle Big Band, The Phoenix Jazzmen, Earthrise and Last Exit, the latter of which featured his first efforts at song writing. Last Exit were big in the North East, but their jazz fusion was doomed to fail when punk rock exploded onto the music scene in 1976. Stewart Copeland, drummer with Curved Air, saw Last Exit on a visit to Newcastle and while the music did nothing for him he did recognise the potential and charisma of the bass player. The two hooked up shortly afterwards and within months, Sting had left his teaching job and moved to London.
Seeing punk as flag of convenience, Copeland and Sting - together with Corsican guitarist Henri Padovani - started rehearsing and looking for gigs. Ever the businessman, Copeland took the name The Police figuring it would be good publicity, and the three started gigging round landmark punk venues like The Roxy, Marquee, Vortex and Nashville in London. Replacing Padovani with the virtuoso talents of Andy Summers the band also enrolled Stewart's elder brother Miles as manager, wowing him with a Sting song called 'Roxanne'. Within days Copeland Senior had them a record deal. But the hip London music press saw through The Police's punk camouflage and did little to disguise their contempt, and the band's early releases had no chart success. So The Police did the unthinkable - they went to America.
The early tours are the stuff of legend - bargain flights to the USA courtesy of Freddie Laker's pioneering Skytrain; driving their own van and humping their own equipment from gig to gig; and playing to miniscule audiences at the likes of CBGB's in New York and The Rat Club in Boston. Their tenacity paid off though as they slowly built a loyal following, got some all important air-play, and won over their audiences with a combination of new wave toughness and reggae rhythms.
They certainly made an odd trio: guitarist Summers had a career dating back to the mid-60s, the hyper-kinetic Copeland was a former prog-rocker, and Sting's background was in trad jazz and fusion. The sound the trio made was unique though, and Sting's pin-up looks did them no harm at all. The band returned to the UK to find the reissued 'Roxanne' single charting, and played a sell-out tour of mid-size venues. The momentum had started. The debut album 'Outlandos d'Amour' (Oct 78) delivered three sizeable hits with 'Roxanne', 'Can't Stand Losing You' and 'So Lonely' which in turn led to a headlining slot at the '79 Reading Festival which won the band some fine reviews, but it was with 'Reggatta de Blanc' (Oct 79) that the band stepped up a gear.
Regatta de BlancReggatta's first single, 'Message In A Bottle', streaked to number one and the album's success was consolidated further when 'Walking On The Moon' also hit the top slot. The band was big, but about to get even bigger. 1980 saw them undertake a world tour with stops on all continents - including the first rock concerts in Bombay - and the band eventually returned to the UK exhausted, for two shows in Sting's hometown of Newcastle.
Zenyatta MondattaWithin weeks of the tour finishing, the band were back in a studio in Holland to record new tracks but Sting's stock of pre-Police songs and ideas were starting to wear out. When 'Zenyatta Mondatta' was released (Oct 80) although it sold well and produced another number one single in 'Don't Stand So Close To Me' and a top five hit with 'De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da' a rethink was required.
Ghost In The MachineChanges materialised on 1981's 'Ghost In The Machine', a rich, multilayered album which was augmented not only by Jean Roussel's keyboards and Sting's self taught saxophone playing, but by particularly strong writing contributions from both Copeland and Summers. The album still had the now expected clutch of hit singles with 'Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic' making number one, the bleak 'Invisible Sun' reaching number two (despite a BBC ban being slapped on its video) and 'Spirits In The Material World' also charting, but it was a much darker and complex album than its predecessors and, to many, more satisfying.
A handful of concert appearances in mid 2009 disguised the fact that Sting was also recording a new solo album, and naturally, it was not what was expected. Taking the winter as it's over-arching theme, Sting instead recorded a selection of ancient hymns, carols, folk songs and re-recorded a small selection of his own songs with a hugely talented group of musicians including Dominic Miller and Kathryn Tickell. The resulting album 'If On A Winter's Night...' was release in Autumn 2009, and the songs on the album received a world premiere in the magnificent setting of Durham cathedral, in Sting's native northeast England where the two performances were also filmed for a feature length DVD/TV programme. Further shows in New York, Paris and Baden Baden followed before Christmas 2009.
The new year found Sting performing occasional live shows in places like Dubai, Venezuela and Colombia with a core band of Dominic Miller and David Sancious and one of a selection of drummers - Vinnie Colauita, Abe Laboriel Jr and Josh Freese - depending on their respective availability. The main live activity of 2010 though will be the forthcoming tour with the Royal Philaharmonic Concert Orchestra and a quartet consisting of Dominic Miller, David Cossin, Jo Lawry and Ira Coleman. The tour will see him performing his most celebrated songs re-imagined for symphonic arrangement, conducted by Steven Mercurio (Pavarotti, Bocelli). The tour plays across North America in June and July arriving in Europe in September. As ever, Sting continues to surprise..." Article source: Sting on MySpace.
