Slayer - World Painted Blood release date 2nd November
The Californian thrash-metal band, Slayer are to release their tenth studio album – World Painted Blood – on Monday 2nd November in the UK with a RRP of £22.99 for the Deluxe Edition.
The album has been the cause of much excitement amongst fans and within the band itself as this is the first time Slayer have written and prepared material while in the studio. In a recent interview, Dave Lombardo, drummer has described the recording as being one of the greatest experiences Slayer has experienced: “We were together during the writing process more than we had been for the past albums”, he explained, “We worked more collectively, everyone’s suggestions and ideas were heard and considered and that camaraderie is definitely heard in the album,” he said, adding, “The other albums were good, but on this one there’s some kind of magic that I can’t put my finger on, it just flows really well, the structuring is done well, the melodies are done well.”
The album is being released in three different editions: a limited edition CD with multiple CD covers, a deluxe edition CD/DVD and a 180-gram vinyl edition. The CD/DVD comes in a double digipak, housed in a transparent, blood-red sleeve and containing an APET “blood specimen” O-card. DVD content includes the 20-minute animated graphic novel, Playing With Dolls and features music from the album as well as a previously unheard song and an expanded booklet.
The album contains some typically controversial material including a track (Unit 731) about human experimentation undertaken by the Imperial Japanese Army during the second Sino-Japanese War. Other tracks include Snuff, Playing with Dolls and Not of This God. As befits a band credited with being on the of “Big Four” thrash metal legends along with the likes of Metallica, the thirteen tracks mix brutal, full-on metal with intensely brooding intros delivered with faultless production.
Play.com is offering a free exclusive track – Jihad – on the deluxe edition, that can be downloaded within a few days of an order being placed.
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Wireless devices from Q-waves
Q-waves have launched two innovative devices to enable users to wirelessly connect or share data and online content with TVs or projectors and they’re available from 30th October.
These devices offer salvation for anyone who hates wires; the Q-waves Wireless USB AV Kit and Wireless USB Data Kit, allow you to display or transfer online content on a TV quickly and without complications or hassle. This means you can work or surf on your laptop whilst something completely different is on your TV screen or you can project whatever is on your laptop onto the TV – great for video calls, conference calls using Skype, for using in presentations or for simply playing games or watching iPlayer on the big screen.
The USB Data Kit wirelessly connects a multitude of devices at home or in the office and works by a simple system involving a Master and a Slave USB that are already in synch. Simply plug the Master into the primary device, ie the laptop, Netbook or PC and stick the Slave into whatever you want to pair it with. The products operate on Ultrawide Broadband so are compatible with your home network and work instantaneously.
The Audio Visual Experience Q-waves Wireless USB AV Kit allows users to stream from a PC, laptop or Netbook directly on to an HD TV or projector with full audio. This works in either a mirror mode which projects whatever is on the laptop on to the television or in an extend mode which gives a multi-screen experience. The kits work with AV devices featuring HDMI and VGA interfaces so can be used on all screens and support printers, scanners, DVD and CD players as well as iPod docking stations.
Available from 30th October, the Wireless USB AV Kit costs 99.99 and the Wireless USB Data Kit 69.99.
Foo Fighters are releasing a Greatest Hits compilation
The greatest hits compilation of the Grammy Award winning band Foo Fighters is due for release on 2nd November 200, at a price of £11.99.
The American rock band was formed 14 years ago when David Grohl’s previous band Nirvana disbanded following the death of lead singer Kurt Cobain. Since then Ghrol has admitted the huge influence of Cobain on his songwriting: “Through Kurt, I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that’s stripped down,” he said. Adding rhythmic riffs, great melodies and elements of punk rock and he created Foo Fighter’s unique brand of music that has won the band three Grammy Awards for Best Rock Album and a total of six nominations.
All of the group’s best hits are represented on this compilation which also has two tracks produced by Butch Vig; Word Forward and the new single, Wheels.
The deluxe edition comes with a DVD featuring the band’s music videos and live footage of their concerts at Wembley Stadium, Hyde Park and the Skin & Bones Theater Tour. It also contains a 28-page book with previously unseen photos of the band throughout their career.
Happily for their fans, after Grohl hinted in an interview in 2008 that there could be a break, the band is still performing and announced in July this year at an exclusive concert that their third best-of collection would be released on 2nd November.
The track list for the Greatest Hits Album is as follows:
All My Life
Best Of You
Everlong
The Pretender
My Hero
Learn To Fly
Times Like These
Monkeywrench
Big Me
Breakou
Long Road To Ruin
This is a Call
Skin and Bones
Wheels
Word Forward
Everlong (acoustic)
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A Christmas Carol starring Jim Carrey
A Christmas Carol is an animated, 3-D Walt Disney film retelling of Charles Dickens’s classic story about a curmudgeonly miser who undergoes a character transformation. It is to be released on 6th November 2009.
With screenplay by Robert Zemeckis, the film stars Jim Carrey as the mean-minded Ebenezer Scrooge who is haunted by three Ghosts of Christmas Present, Past and Future, also played by Carrey. By showing Scrooge the meanness of his past and the bleak future that awaits him as a consequence, the miser undergoes a character transformation and is reintroduced to the true spirit of Christmas.
The roles of Bob Cratchit, Marley and Tiny Tim are played by Gary Oldman and the film also features Michael J Fox and Colin Firth.
A Christmas Carol is a 3-D film and was produced using a technique called performance capture, a technique used in previous Zemeckis films; The Polar Bear and Beowulf. It describes a process whereby all the actors A Christmas Carol is an animated Walt Disney film retelling of Charles Dickens’s classic story about a curmudgeonly miser who undergoes a character transformation. It is to be released on 6th November 2009.
Carey believes that even though A Christmas Carol was published more than 150 years ago, it’s a great story of transformation and redemption. “When you can bring a story to people in a way that hasn’t been seen before so that it leaps out of the screen and really touches them, then that’s exciting to me…”he told Reuters.
And the world premiere in London coincides with the switching on of the annual Oxford Street and Regent Street lights which will this year, have a Dickens theme.
Amelia - a biography drama of the first female pilot to cross the Atlantic
The biography drama of the legendary US pilot Amelia Earhart who disappeared whilst attempting to make a flight around the world, is out in cinemas from 13th November 2009.
With a star-studded cast including Hilary Swank, Richard Gere and Ewan McGregor, the film chronicles the life of the legendary “goddess of light” and America’s sweetheart whose life featured extraordinary adventure, romance, celebrity and mystery.
After becoming the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, Amelia continued to be an inspiration to people across the world and closer to home. With admirers including the First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Amelia was adored by two men; her husband, the publishing tycoon George P. Putnam and her lover, pilot Gene Vidal. When she embarked on a solo flight across the world in 1937 she and her husband were well aware that it would be an expedition that would go down in the annals of history. Sadly, it was a journey from which she did not return and her body has never been found.
Screen-written by Ron Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan, the film is directed by Mira Nair, produced by Ted Waitt, Kevin Hyman and Lydia Dean Pilcher and is showing from 13th November 2009.
Athlete
This concert is going to be a sell-out so get your tickets while they’re still available.
The indie rock band from Deptford, London earned a Mercury Music Prize nomination for their first album Vehicles and Animals and sold over 250,000 copies.
A second album Tourist, which reached the number one spot in the album charts, contained the emotive single, Wires which was a massive hit and secured them the Ivor Novello Award for best contemporary song. Inspired when lead singer, Joel Pott’s baby was born prematurely and rushed into intensive care, Wires was one of the major songs of 2005.
This tour is in support of their 4th studio album, Black Swan with Fiction Records and release of the first single Superhuman Touch which is also to be released in America.
Concerts are guaranteed to go down a storm. Pott’s voice has a gritty edge that compliments the sensitivity of many of the tracks. Singalong anthems and great lyrics will mix with catchy indie rock and electronic music with integrated organic sounds.
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Gary Numan
Calling all Numanoids - the “godfather of electronic music”, Gary Numan is back to perform in a mini tour in cities including Edinburgh, Norwich, Cardiff, Brighton and Manchester.
Gary Numan’s songs like Cars and Are Friends Electric are still as fresh today as they were in the late 70s and 80s but the king of electro-pop is still evolving as an artist and songwriter, writing new tracks that combine industrial and electronic with rock guitar.
Numan has always inspired strong loyalties in his followers who supported him through a hiatus in the 80s and 90s and called themselves Numanoids, reflecting Numan’s own slightly alien and otherworldly persona created by his flamboyant sense of style and make-up. Now, however Numan is back on planet earth with a host of bands and artists like Jarvis Cocker, Damon Albarn and Matt Sharp, David Bowie, Marilyn Manson and Noel Fielding queuing up to cite him as a major influence in contemporary music.
Composing songs from the age of 15, Numan rose to prominence with Tubeway Army. New wave oriented tracks included Down in the Park which didn’t reach the charts but became one of his most frequently covered songs, featuring in moves like Times Square. In 1979, the single, Are Friends Electric? climbed to number one after seven weeks in the charts and an album, Replicas followed suit. When Cars also peaked at number on in the UK and in the US, Numan set off on a schedule of sell-out tours.
Recent chart successes with Rip and Crazier mean that he is back in vogue and back on tour. But he is also an evolving performer who is not content to ride of the back of nostalgia. Recent projects like the highly successful Replica and Telekon tours have seen him performing classic albums in their entirety thus celebrating the works themselves rather than trotting out hit singles. In doing so he’s gone a long way to shedding the 80s pop star label and has established himself as Gary Numan, musician and performer.
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a-ha
Back in the eighties, a-ha brought a whiff of fresh air straight from the Norwegian ffords to the London music scene and held a unique place in the hearts of many. Now they’re back on top form and raring to go with a series of concerts scheduled across the country. Fresh from the success of their headlining spot at iTunes Live festival, a-ha’s latest album, Foot of the Mountain has gone straight to the German no 1 and no 5 in the UK charts, demonstrating that the band still has a huge following worldwide.
Mortan Harket (singer), Magne Furuholmen (keyboard player) and Paul Waaktaar-Savoy (guitarist and songwriter), shot to fame after leaving the land of trolls to seek their fortune in the recording studios of London. Less troll-like individuals would be hard to find - Mortan Harket, of the finely chiselled good looks and soaring vocals, had a voice that was instantly recognisable and the band offered a welcome change from the besuited, callow youths who dominated the music industry at the time, with a style that was unashamedly upbeat and passionate.
They gained their biggest success with their debut album, Hunting High and Low, which spawned the singles; Take on Me and The Sun Always Shines on TV; a UK no 1 achieving massive international success in Europe and America. Later albums like Scoundrel Days were less successful as synth pop began to fall out of favour but the band still had notable successes with the single The Living Daylights from the album Stay on These Roads that was used as the title track theme song to a James Bond Film – something the band is proud of to this day. Another hit, Summer Moved On went to no 1 in 17 countries and was notable for securing Morten Harket the world record for the longest held note in a UK hit song, coming in at 20 seconds.
Since the band’s appearance at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in 2000, a-ha have been on the up and up with a return to the synth-based styles of the initial albums. Morten Harket describes Foot of the Mountain as an album “that incorporates the key elements that first defined the band: soaring vocals, synth hooks, yearning lyrics and melodic melancholia.”
Prepare to be shaken and stirred by a-ha’s music for passionate pop people everywhere.
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Deep Purple
Deep Purple rank as the pioneers of heavy metal rock around since the very beginning of the progressive rock era and once listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s loudest band. They’re now performing a tour across continental Europe and various venues in the UK.
The band has gone through many incarnations and line-ups, but the present one of Ian Gillan of the screaming vocals, Ian Paice, Roger Glover, Steve Morse and Don Airey has been described as earth-shattering. Still able to command huge audiences drawn from the older generation of rockers, many of whom have seen Deep Purple perform over and over again, Deep Purple has also captured a new base of younger fans seduced by iconic classics like Smoke on the Water, Fireball and Speed King.
Guitarist, Ritchie Blackmore, arguably Deep Purple’s most famous member left the band in 1975 but since then, remaining band members have successfully reinvented themselves and continue to provide spine-tingling, powerful rock with a new funkiness brought by replacement Steve Morse.
Following a punishing schedule of tours, the band launched a new album in 2005; the fourth since the departure of Blackmore. Rapture of the Deep that marks a new era and has been described as Deep Purple’s best album ever surpassing even Machine Head, full of dark melancholia, melodies that move and riff-driven rock.
As a celebration of Deep Purple’s past and the band present these concerts can’t be missed – get ready for the ‘Rapture.’
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Robbie Williams is back with a vengeance
Robbie Williams’s eighth solo studio album, Reality Killed the Video Star, is to be released on 9th November 2009.
It’s now three years since Robbie Williams produced his last album but he’s back folks - and back with a vengeance.
The former member of Take That has joined forces with the producer Trevor Horn with material written with Guy Chambers and Mark Ronson. With a title referencing the song Video Killed the Radio Star by Trevor Horn’s former band, The Buggles, Williams’s album has been described by Horn as being “a killer: old Robbie, new Robbie and a Robbie that neither of us have met…”
Written in Williams’s home studio and recorded in London, Reality Killed for Video Star marks a return to his trademark pop sound after a period of experimentation that resulted in the electronic sounds of Rudebox. Highlights include moving ballads like Morning Sun and You Know Me with the hit single Bodies providing a controversial and mesmerizing contrast.
The album is available as a standard 13-track CD at £8.95, deluxe album and iTunes digital download. The deluxe album contains a DVD with behind the scenes footage and the iTunes digital download comes with a bonus track Arizona and edited material from the DVD.
Robbie Williams has said he wants this to be his defining album; “I want people to feel elated, I want them to dance, I want them to forget about who they are and where they are for 50 minutes,” he says, adding, “This is a record that I’m very proud of.”
Why not order your copy now so you’ll be the first to get it on the 9th November.
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