Sundays are generally spent relaxing in front of the TV, playing partypoker, or getting chores you didn’t get around to during the week completed. Things rarely happen on the rest day. Unless you are in the music business. Emeli Sande’s album, Our Version Of Events has knocked Lana Del Rey’s Born to Die down a place, leaving Adele’s 21 at number three.

The Scottish singer has been enjoying success in the singles chart too. She reached number two with her track Next To Me. A number one album is clearly the goal however, so she is no doubt thrilled.

Emeli will be accepting her Critics’ Choice award at the Brits ceremony at the O2 in London this Tuesday. The award has been won previously by world golden girl Adele, Florence and the Machine and Jessie J. So it looks like women are still dominating the music scene.

The singer reportedly realised she could pursue a successful career in music, after her collaboration with Chipmunk on his 2009 hit, Diamond Rings. The song reached number six in the UK singles chart. Before then she was studying for a Science degree. Intelligence and talent: we can imagine she will go on to even greater achievements in 2012.

The chart, despite Emeli’s success, is bitter sweet. Whitney Houston’s Greatest Hits has made an expected comeback into the Album Chart, after her untimely death earlier this month. Meanwhile her singles have been sneaking back into the Singles chart too. I Will Always Love you has landed at number 14, while I Wanna Dance With Somebody sits at Number 20.

Catch Emeli Sande at the Brit Awards 2012 on Tuesday.

The Maccabees

The Maccabees have announced they will release their highly anticipated third studio album ‘Given To The Wild’ on January 9th on Fiction Records. The five piece from London – Orlando Weeks, Hugo White, Felix White, Rupert Jarvis and Sam Doyle – spent two years writing and recording the follow-up to 2009’s critically-lauded ‘Wall Of Arms’. Having previously written as a collective, ‘Given To The Wild’ saw the band explore a new approach to songwriting. Avoiding the studio, each member retreated to their South London homes to develop ideas individually. Once these sketched ideas began to take form, the band took them into their new home – a shambolic rehearsal space and recording studio near them that they discovered had been previously christened ‘The Drugstore’ by its former owners Jesus and Mary Chain. From here the songs evolved into the thirteen tracks that would make up ‘Given To The Wild’, an epic and beguiling masterpiece of distorted pop, psychedelia and soulful guitar wig outs. It is the band’s most adventurous work to date.

Taking sonic inspiration from a disparate collection of musical peers such as The Stone Roses, Kate Bush, Talk Talk and David Bowie, ‘Given To The Wild’ finds the band exploring new territory. Television and Thin Lizzy-inspired guitar hooks pop out of washed-out soundscapes (‘Child’, ‘Feel to Follow’), where programmed loops and phrases are blended against the band backdrop (‘Ayla’, ‘Go’, ‘Grew Up At Midnight’), and where they write their most complete pop music yet (‘Pelican’, ‘Went Away’).

Tim Goldsworthy (LCD Soundsystem, The Rapture, DFA, Unkle) and Bruno Ellingham were brought in to record the first part of the record. The session was recorded at Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, Wales. They spent a month there before enlisting friend and songwriter Jag Jago from Ghost of a Thousand to engineer the songs back in their own studio. Final touches were made including placing some guitars and programming from the first bedroom demos back in.

“We’ve grown up as people and changed as a band,” guitarist Felix White reflects. “We’ve learned for the first time what we really wanted The Maccabees to sound like on record. It’s taken us three albums but we finally achieved that. We’ve discovered what we’re truly capable of and that feels really exciting.”

The Maccabees were painted by revered artist Boo Ritson and then photographed for the sleeve of ‘Wall Of Arms’. Keen to continue their collaborations with British artists they chose the work of Andy Goldsworthy, a sculptor and photographer they have admired for some time, to grace the cover of ‘Given To The Wild’.

Following main stage slots at Reading and Leeds Festivals, and two sell-out shows at Brixton Academy in 2009 the band returned in October this year with an intimate run of shows to showcase their new material. In addition to their sold out tour in January – which includes a Brixton Academy show on Jan 26th – the band have announced new dates in March:

Wed 7th Mar – Middlesbrough Town Hall
Thu 8th Mar – Nottingham Rock City
Sat 10th Mar- Leeds O2 Academy
Mon 12th Mar – Liverpool O2 Academy 1

Blood Red Shoes

www.bloodredshoes.com 

Brighton-based duo Laura-Mary Carter and Steven Ansell will return this year with their 3rd album ‘In Time To Voices’ out on March 26^th  and a new single ‘Cold’, released on March 19^th via V2/Co-Operative Music. The band will also be hitting the road throughout the UK for an April and May tour.

Since the release of their debut almost 4 years ago, the duo have embarked on a gruelling, unrelenting tour schedule, seeing them travel the four corners of the globe and earning them an international fanbase. However the life on the road can have its side-effects as Steven speaks of some of their more troublesome moments :

‘”From getting arrested after spending a night drinking in a biker den, Laura fighting bouncers….twice, to the two of us breaking up onstage or having a giant fight in Prague and me getting found in the street robbed by two prostitutes. Oh and there was that time where we were invited to a hotel demolition party in Paris where we broke into Keith Richards’ room and totalled it. These stories are all on the record. I guess being only two people spending more than 300 days a year together makes you kind of…volatile. Modern bands seem way too clean-cut and sensible to us anyway.“

The new album ‘In Time To Voices’, released March 26^th was recorded at The Motor Museum in Liverpool, continuing their successful partnership with Mike Crossey (Arctic Monkeys/Foals/Tribes) who co-produced the album with them.

The record sees Blood Red Shoes come of age musically, building on their punk rock roots and moving into an ambitious, three-dimensional new sound that encapsulates heavy rock as much as it does as sweeping, melancholy soundscapes and classic songwriting drawn from the likes of Black Sabbath, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones. 

Laura-Mary, sheds some light on the new, ambitious approach taken this time around:

”With this album we totally threw out the rulebook of how we write and record. We decided we wanted to make a really ambitious record, not something which reflects our live show but something which is only limited by our imaginations and not by how many instruments we use onstage. We figured the best way to push ourselves forward was to write the best possible songs and melodies we could – once you have that as your foundation, you have the freedom to go anywhere with the sounds you use. We feel like a totally different band now. We feel like we’re shooting for the stars.”

The first single ‘Cold’ to be taken from their forthcoming long-player, sees Blood Red Shoes unleash a their most bold and defiant track to date, with Laura-Mary’s confident vocal delivery set alongside a hyperactive drum groove and a truly anthemic chorus.

On the track, Laura-Mary says:

“Steven started playing this weird drum beat in a soundcheck and I wanted to make it into a song, so I found this mean riff to play over it. It has this hip-hop groove which is something we’d never tried before.”

FULL TRACKLISTING

·        In Time To Voices
·        Lost Kid
·        Cold
·        Two Dead Minutes
·        The Silence And The Drones
·        Night Light
·        Je Me Perds
·        Stop Kicking
·        Slip Into Blue
·        Down Here In The Dark
·        7 Years

Touring heavily throughout 2011, this year sees the band back on the road with no signs of slowing down with a full worldwide tour planned and UK dates confirmed, detailed below:

FULL UK DATES

APRIL

27th Concorde 2, Brighton, UK   Tickets: www.ticketweb.co.uk / Box office – 01273 673311
28th Wedgewood Rooms, Portsmouth, UK Tickets: www.seetickets.com / Box office – 02392 863911
29th 02 Academy 2, Oxford, UK Tickets: www.alt-tickets.co.uk / Box office – 01912 304474

MAY

1st Trinity, Bristol, UK Tickets: www.alt-tickets.co.uk / Box office – 01912 304474
2nd Waterfront, Norwich, UK Tickets: www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk / Box office – 01603 508050
3rd Heaven, London, UK Tickets: www.gigandtours.com / Box office – 0207 4033331
4th HMV Library, Birmingham, UK Tickets: www.gigandtours.com / Box office – 08442 485037
5th Academy 2, Manchester, UK Tickets: www.gigandtours.com / Box office – 01618 321111
7th Zanzibar, Liverpool, UK Tickets: www.ticketline.co.uk / Box office – 01517 070633
8th Cluny, Newcastle, UK Tickets: www.ticketweb.co.uk / Box office – 01912 304474
9th Tunnels, Aberdeen, UK Tickets: www.gigsinscotland.com / Box office – 08444 999990
10th King Tuts, Glasgow, UK Tickets: www.gigsinscotland.com / Box office – 08444 999990
12th The Cockpit, Leeds, UK Tickets: www.lunatickets.co.uk / Box office – 01132 436743
13th Rescue Rooms, Nottingham, UK Tickets: www.alt-tickets.co.uk / Box office – 01912 304474

Pre-sale tickets go on sale from www.crowdsurge.com on Wednesday 25^th January at 9am

Tickets go on general sale at 9am on Friday 27^th January.

www.bloodredshoes.co.uk http://www.bloodredshoes.co.uk/

Agent Cooper

EP ‘From The Ashes’
Release Date:  5^th March 2012

Binary Recordings / Universal

UK Tour Dates February 2012

AGENT COOPER is an Atlanta based “Southern Progressive” rock band; featuring four part harmonies interlaced with very intricate and sometimes aggressive performances. Forming in 1998, Agent Cooper is often referred to as “the Toto of the South”, largely due to the amount of session and soundtrack work the band has done. Drawing from influences such as RUSH, Queen, Genesis, Kansas, and Dream Theater (to name a few), it’s easy to see where the band gets their distinct musicality from. Agent Cooper’s unique sound is one that has been honed and carved from over two decades of playing and recording together. Members include: Doug Busbee on lead vocals and acoustic guitars, Eric Frampton on keys, Sean B. Delson (ex Fozzy) on bass guitars, Mike Martin (ex Fozzy / Stuck Mojo) on lead guitars, and Ganesh Giri Jaya on drums and percussion.

Tracklisting for the EP “From The Ashes”

1.    Power
2.    Tornado Dreams
3.    The Stand
4.    Mother
5.    I Can
6.    Misunderstood

The band are playing two intimate live dates in late February supporting Tony MacAlpine at:

21^st Feb        Manchester, Moho Live
22^nd Feb        London, Underworld

Tickets are priced £15 (£16.50 London) – subject to booking fee. Tickets are available from www.ticketmaster.co.uk

“From The Ashes” is released through Binary Recordings / Universal

BENGA 

Benga kicks off 2012 in a big way with, believe it or not, his first ever UK and European headline tour with over 14,000 tickets on sale for the UK dates alone. Having recently signed as a solo artist to Columbia Records and an album due in Autumn, expectations are high for one of the pioneers of dubstep.

Benga is also releasing his first song ‘I Will Never Change (Wow Wow)’ as a free download in March and it’s as epic as you can possibly imagine. With piercing synths and drums that can only be Benga, it sets a confident direction for his album.

Joining Benga on tour is the brilliant MC Youngman.

The full list of shows are:

Friday 24th February – Brighton Audio
Saturday 25th February – Plymouth University
Sunday 26th February – Swansea Sin City
Tuesday 28th February – Leeds Mint Club
Wednesday 29th February – Coventry Kasbah
Thursday 1st March – Loughborough Echoes
Friday 2nd March – London Fabric
Saturday 3rd March – Bristol Motion
Friday 9th March – Manchester Sankeys
Saturday 10th March – Sheffield Tuesday Club
Monday 12th March – Liverpool Magnet
Wednesday 14th March – Southampton Oceana

Slash reveals cover art and album title for his second studio album ‘Apocalyptic Love’ featuring the one and only Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators. Due out May 3rd.

WWW.SLASHONLINE.COM

CONFIRMED FOR UK’S DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL JUNE 2012

SLASH–the iconic, Grammy-winning rock guitarist and songwriter–has revealed the cover artwork and album title for his second studio album APOCALYPTIC LOVE. Due out May 21 (in the UK), the new album features Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators and will be released SLASH’s own label DikHayd International and distributed through Roadrunner Records in Europe, Middle East, and Africa.

In the UK, the album will be released on May 21 in exclusive Classic Rock Fan Pack form – providing a unique collectable package containing the studio album with bonus tracks alongside a specially created magazine with unseen behind-the-scenes content put together by Classic Rock. The Fan Pack format will also come with free gifts including a pin badge & artwork poster and will be available to buy via more than 2000 retail outlets on newsstands nationally as well as the traditional high street and online music retailer. The Fan Pack is available for pre-order now at www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/slash-fan-pack.Roadrunner Records will simultaneously release the record digitally. The standard physical release of the Slash album will follow through Roadrunner Records on June 18 2012.

SLASH is currently in a Los Angeles studio putting the final touches on APOCALYPTIC LOVE. This week he announced his headlining U.S. tour will begin May 3 inBaltimore. A fan pre-sale is happening now on www.slashonline.com,the regular on-sale starts tomorrow, Friday, February 17. See the full itinerary below which more dates to be added. 

APOCALYPTIC LOVE, will follow his 2010 debut album Slash (Also released in Fan Pack format and which has now sold over 100,000 copies in the UK alone) and his November2011 first-ever live  solo album, the two-CD/DVD set Made In Stoke 24/7/11. Notably, the Slashalbum debuted on the Billboard Top 200 chart at #3(#1 on the Rock chart, #1 on the Independent chart, and #1 on the Hard Music chart). Digitally, the album also became the #1 overall digital album and hit #1 on iTunes in 13 countries. Internationally, the disc achieved Top 5 chart positions in over a dozen major territories, hitting#1 in both Japan and New Zealand.

On APOCALYPTIC LOVE,SLASH–along with and his bandmatesMyles Kennedy (vocals), Brent Fitz (drums) and Todd Kerns (bass)–have teamed with producer Eric Valentine, who also produced the Slash disc. All the songs were written together by SLASH and Kennedy andcameras have been rolling throughout the entire making of the album. Check out exclusive behind-the-scenes footage airing weekly at:

SLASH is also now conmfirmed for the UK’s Download festival, which takes place on the weekend of the 8^th to 10^th June 2012. For more information and tickets please go to www.downloadfestival.co.uk

Now in it’s 4th year, 2012 Sonisphere is set to be huge with a whole host of rumours of who will play. The official full line up is to be announced at 8pm this evening with Resonance UK covering it shortly after.

Tickets will go on sale tomorrow.

RIVAL SONS

The band will start the tour on March 11th with a run of UK dates with BLACK STONE CHERRY, before heading on to mainland Europe for a number of headlining shows.

RIVAL SONS guitarist SCOTT HOLIDAY comments:

“We’re looking forward to getting back to our ‘home away from home’, Europe, and specifically the UK.  Since we were last out there we did a tour of the States and a quick run through Canada, where we pleasantly received an overwhelming response, which is fantastic.  This time we’ll be joining up with the band Black Stone Cherry for the UK dates – we hear they do really well in the UK, and are a buncha good dudes.

“The rest of Europe will see us on our own, headlining again – great response last time, and it looks like this tour is already selling really well.  We’ll have our follow-up record wrapped up before we leave for the tour (which we’re working on feverishly right now), so I suspect we’ll be feeling good and fired up to get cracking back on stage every night.  Might even sneak a new number in here and there.

“Dearest UK and European friends – we see you are starved of the rock ‘n’ roll – famished even – and that makes us sad.  No one deserves that!  So now, we will bring you the rock ‘n’ roll sandwich.  That’s us… the Rival Sons.  See ya soon.”

Due to be released on March 12th, the PRESSURE & TIME limited edition CD redux includes two bonus tracks, “Company Man” and “Life For This Road”, plus a bonus DVD featuring the following videos:

* “Gypsy Heart”, “Pressure and Time” and “Soul” live from High Voltage festival 2011
* “Pressure and Time” live backstage at Werchter festival 2011
* “Pressure and Time”, “All Over the Road” and “Get What’s Coming” official music videos
* Pressure & Time promotional trailer

RIVAL SONS drummer MICHAEL MILEY comments:

“We’re stoked to release this content because we wanted to give fans the chance to own some of the extras – there’s tons of video footage as extras, but up until now our videos have only been available on YouTube.  We’re proud to give people a visual of what we do.  Not everyone is YouTube savvy, and videos online are at the whim of internet.  It’s good for people to have a hard copy of this.”

RIVAL SONS frontman JAY BUCHANAN adds:

“Evidently Pressure & Time keeps building steam all over the place and it’s not ready to die, so the label wanted to give it another shot.  We’re releasing a third single for that record so someone must be hot for it!  It’ll have a couple of B-sides from those sessions, videos for the singles and some live footage.  If you want any of that, buy one!”

Pre-order the limited edition PRESSURE & TIME redux now in Europe at http://bit.ly/jucwYJ or in North America at http://bit.ly/mtaFfm

See RIVAL SONS on tour in Europe at the following shows:

RIVAL SONS w/ BLACK STONE CHERRY
Mar. 11 – Norwich, UK – UEA
Mar. 12 – Nottingham, UK – Rock City
Mar. 14 – Birmingham, UK – O2 Academy
Mar. 15 – Liverpool, UK – O2 Academy
Mar. 17 – Sheffield, UK – O2 Academy
Mar. 18 – Manchester, UK – Academy
Mar. 19 – Newcastle, UK – O2 Academy
Mar. 21 – Edinburgh, UK – HMV Picture House
Mar. 22 – Aberdeen, UK – Lemontree
Mar. 23 – Inverness, UK – Ironworks
Mar. 24 – Glasgow, UK – O2 Academy
Mar. 26 – Bristol, UK – O2 Academy
Mar. 27 – Southampton, UK – Guildhall
Mar. 28 – London, UK – HMV Forum

RIVAL SONS
Mar. 30 – Hamburg, Germany – Uebel & Gefährlich
Apr. 02 – Stockholm, Sweden – Debaser Medis
Apr. 03 – Oslo, Norway – John Dee
Apr. 04 – Bergen, Norway – Garage
Apr. 06 – Gothenburg, Sweden – Sticky Fingers
Apr. 07 – Copenhagen, Denmark – Vega Small Hall
Apr. 08 – Schijndel, Netherlands – Paaspop Festival
Apr. 09 – Brussels, Belgium – AB Box
Apr. 11 – Paris, France – Fleche D’Or