Month: January 2016

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Dzeko & Torres

From the front row of a Tiësto show to a coveted spot on the Dutch megastar’s management roster, the story of Dzeko & Torres is equal parts dream and determination.

The Canadian duo initially found each other through an online forum for Toronto club events. At the time, Luis (Torres) was working as a photographer and graphic designer, and Julian (Dzeko) as an event promoter. The two became fast friends and began DJing around the city’s club circuit and producing together on borrowed studio time while juggling part-time jobs. Their first electronic dance music moment of reckoning came at that Tiësto show, which provided a clarion call to pursue their musical passions full-time.

“Tiësto was our main influence and inspiration,” says Dzeko. “After we saw him at that show and playing on that scale, we knew we were interested in doing that too.”

The co-producers got serious about their studio work, releasing a highly regarded remix of Jus Jack’s “Can’t Wait” featuring Black Dog. The track caught the attention of Tiësto, who featured it on his Club Life podcast in 2011. For the two Canadian kids who had come up idolizing the artist, Tiësto’s support provided a musical springboard that encouraged them to continue chasing their dance music ambitions.

“We weren’t the best producers at the time, but we knew we were doing something right to have him support our stuff,” says Dzeko. “We decided then and there to give this thing a shot as a profession.”

Over the course of a series of standout releases on such top tier imprints as Mixmash Records, Dim Mak and CR2 Records, Dzeko & Torres built a name for themselves on the back of their distinctive melodic sound, which they also explored on innovative remix reworks of indie favorites like Capital Cities and Imagine Dragons. The loyal fan base they accrued through their beloved podcast and ten-minute annual recap mixes helped elevate them to new headlining horizons and festival appearances at Ultra Music Festival, Tomorrowland and Tomorrowworld.

Throughout their stylistic evolution and swiftly growing success, the duo continually kept Tiësto in the loop by sending tracks and demos. Their perseverance paid off at the end of 2013 when their musical mentor signed them to his management group at Red Light Management, a landmark event that the duo don’t hesitate to call “a dream come true.” Their Musical Freedom debut “Highline” dropped soon after, showcasing the intuition for upbeat melodies that put them on Tiësto’s radar in the first place. The subsequent months were a welcome whirlwind for Dzeko & Torres, who have supported Tiësto at his Hakkasan Las Vegas residency and even appeared alongside the superstar during his headline performance at Ultra Music Festival’s main stage.

2014 found the duo capitalizing on their considerable potential. After teaming up with Tiësto for his album cut “Can’t Forget” and a marquee remix of John Martin’s “Anywhere For You,” Dzeko & Torres consistently scaled the Beatport charts with originals like “For You” (No. 1 Progressive House), collaborations with Borgeous and MOTi, and widely supported remixes of ZHU’s “Faded” and ”ODESZA’s “All We Need” (No. 1 Beatport Pulse). Their momentum led to new bookings at major festivals like EDC Las Vegas, as well as a formative world tour that took them to India, Indonesia, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, Switzerland, Czech, and Scotland. With a slew of forthcoming originals including a collaboration with KSHMR and remixes for top talent like Kygo on deck, 2015 is shaping out to be the team’s tipping point towards stardom.

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Papadosio with The Mantras

Mesmerizing, spellbinding and genre-defying: With their fourth full-length studio release Extras In A Movie, Papadosio reveals a striking cinematic cornucopia of sounds: orchestral, electronic, organic, acoustic, psychedelic and celestial. The 16 selections that comprise the song cycle are concise and structured – launch pads for the improvisational excursions that are a hallmark of the band’s celebrated concert performances.    “The writing process was a challenge for us, to see if we could integrate some songs that were shorter than five minutes,” notes the band. They envisioned the title Extras In A Movie as a concept connected to themes of interpersonal interactions and relationships.   Hitting virtually all major and secondary U.S. music locales and select festivals across North America, Papadosio tours on a massive scale but maintains a close intimacy with their fans. With the new project they are expanding their collective stylistic palette.  “We like to have a lot of colors,” they explain. “We’re starting to push that envelope in the way we want to go – to give the people who are at the shows more of a variety of emotions. We don’t have filters. We record what’s happening.”   Originally from the creative collegiate hotbed of Athens, Ohio, the band is now centered in Asheville, North Carolina. Not that they are homebodies as they clarify. “For the past five or six years we’ve done maybe 150 dates a year and have been gone for 200 days. We were cutting back a little, but now with the new project the number of shows is about to go way back up.”    Extras In A Movie balances Papadosio’s celestial sonic ambience with an organic edge and multiple guitars, both electric and acoustic. “A lot more guitar in general,” they say. “ That’s something new with this record.” What also distinguishes the new music is the prominence of their vocals. Extras In A Movie opens with a dense, harmonic introduction titled “The Last Leaf” and across the span of songs emerges subliminal echoes of prog-rock forefathers like Jethro Tull, Yes and Genesis.    Trippy titles abound: “Gazing the Great Oscillator,” “Moon Entendre,” Anima Mundi.” Noting that these designations often come late in the creative process, if the band can’t find a suitable name, they might invent a word. “Obove” is such a creation. In the lexicon of Papadosio it is a term that references “an over arcing emotion.”       While the band gleefully dismisses observations on their collective intellect, an exegesis of their themes indicates complex underpinnings. A new song, “Therian” was inspired by archeological cave paintings depicting creatures that are half-beast and half human. “Bypass Default” is a treatise on being nagged by all of the earth’s problems, and is appropriately discordant. “The Wrong Nostalgia” includes a take on modern radio with the line “Who sold these assholes on the airwaves?” — lyrics with an edge and a bite.   It is the band’s wish that Extras In A Movie will enchant loyal fans and introduce new audiences to the Papadosio universe. “Our intention is to give people music that can be themes in their lives so they can connect to the music. To provide them with a place to hang out so they don’t feel weird in what they are thinking — to give their brains and their hearts a home.”

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Marianas Trench – The Hey You Guys!! Tour

Not only is Marianas Trench the deepest known spot in any ocean (located in the floor of the North Pacific Ocean), it’s also a Vancouver-based rock band that is the brainchild of vocalist/guitarist Josh Ramsay. Ramsay — whose dad once owned the Little Mountain Sound studio that recorded bands like Aerosmith and AC/DC in the ’80s, and whose vocal teacher mom recorded and toured with Leonard Cohen for two years — had been writing and recording since his teen years. He unsurprisingly learned to track his own songs early on, crafting music under the influence of rock and pop-punk bands as well as vocal groups with an ear for bright harmonies. Still a teenager, he began shopping his solo stuff around and took plenty of advice for improvement over the next several years. The rotating cast of musicians in the band that eventually appeared around Ramsay settled down by the early 2000s with people from the local scene: guitarist Steve Marshall, keyboardist Matt Webb, bassist Morgan Hempsted, and drummer Ian Casselman. Initially, they were called Ramsay Fiction, and the frontman’s persistence paid off when the band finally scored a deal with 604 Records (co-founded by Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger) in early 2003. By the 2006 release of their debut, however, the group — by then called Marianas Trench — comprised Ramsay alongside Casselman, guitarist/vocalist Matt Webb, and bassist/vocalist Michael Ayley. Their label debut, Fix Me, surfaced in the fall of 2006, and the single “Say Anything” soon broke into the Top Three on the Canadian singles chart; “Decided to Break It” also did well on radio and MuchMusic. Marianas Trench then contributed a song (“Alibis”) to the spring 2007 soundtrack for ABC Family’s popular teen sci-fi show Kyle XY. Their sophomore effort, Masterpiece Theatre, was released in 2009 and quickly became both a critical and commercial success after going platinum in their native Canada. Feeling ambitious, Marianas Trench decided to try their hand at a concept record, in 2011 releasing the more narrative Ever After, which was reissued with bonus material in the U.S. in 2014. A pair of singles, “Pop 101” and “Here’s to the Zeroes,” were released that same year, both were later included on the four-song EP Something Old/Something New, which showed up in early 2015. In keeping with their conceptual themes, the Marianas Trench’s fourth LP, the Goonies-referencing Astoria, arrived later that year and was inspired by fantasy and adventure movies of the ’80s.

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Galactic Into The Deep Tour 2016 with The Record Company

It’s been more than 20 years since Ben Ellman, Robert Mercurio, Stanton Moore, Jeff Raines and Rich Vogel began exploring the seemingly limitless musical possibilities born out of their work together as Galactic. Since then, the seminal New Orleans band has consistently pushed artistic boundaries on the road and in the studio, approaching their music with open ears and drawing inspiration as much from the sounds bubbling up from their city’s streets as they do from each other.

A key part of that creative spark comes from the teamwork of Mercurio and Ellman, whose ever-evolving production and arranging skills helped usher the band into a new phase of studio work beginning with the loop-centric “Ruckus” in 2007. A series of albums focused around specific concepts like Carnival followed, as did collaborations with guests hailing from worlds outside the one Galactic calls its own.

On “Into the Deep,” the band members look within themselves instead, drawing inspiration from people and ideas that have long been close to their hearts – and, in turn, close to the development of their unique sound. Shot through with soul, funk, blues and rock, the result is an organic riff on elements of Galactic’s past, filtered through the lens of where they’re headed in 2015.

“I see this album as a kind of culmination of all of our collaborations or experiences, from [trombonist] Corey Henry to the people we met on the road, touring,” says Mercurio, referencing Ellman’s first full-time gig in New Orleans, which kicked off when Henry hired him into the Little Rascals Brass Band in 1989.

“The previous albums took us in the opposite direction,” Mercurio says. “We collaborated with rappers that we had never dealt with and even on the New Orleans tracks, we didn’t have working experience with most of those artists before the recordings.”

In contrast, “Into the Deep” contributors like JJ Grey, David Shaw and Maggie Koerner spent significant time touring with Galactic. A few years ago, Mavis Staples sat in with the band, all of whom are longtime fans of the legendary singer’s R&B-meets-gospel soul style. They caught up with Macy Gray when she performed a memorable concert at Tipitina’s where Ellman says he could see from the outset “how much she cares about the music.” And each of the players had also developed a deep appreciation for the Honorable South’s Charm Taylor, whose contribution, “Right On” was written specifically to suit her vibe.

“Quint Davis [the producer of] Jazz Fest always has a couple people he books at the festival that aren’t big names but that Quint knows are going to be super cool,” says Ellman. “That’s how we met Brushy One-String. We originally wanted to bring him in to do anything, just to see what would happen. But when we heard his song ‘Chicken in the Corn,’ we really wanted to do our version of it.”

In the end, he joined them on the road for over a month, collaborating with the band onstage at each show.

For the instrumental tracks, Galactic mined the interests and tastes they’ve cultivated together for years in New Orleans. “Buck 77” was written via improvisation, a long-standing cornerstone of their live shows. The funky bass line and tumbling guitar part on “Long Live the Borgne,” meanwhile, represents an updated, more composed take on some of the concepts that made early albums like “Coolin’ Off” so strong.

As for the opener “Soogar Doosie,” Ellman points out Galactic tends to record at least one track on each album that speaks to the band’s collective love of brass band music.

“We write [those songs] with the idea of how awesome it would be to hear the Rebirth going down doing the street in a second line playing one of our songs. We try to think of a real second line song that would get people slapping stop signs and dancing on cars,” he says.

The album, Ellman says “is all about people. It’s these connections we’ve made over 20 years. They’re people in our orbit that have come into our little world and affected us in some way.”

It’s also about how the individual musicians within Galactic have grown over time. When it comes to trying new approaches as players, producers, songwriters and arrangers, Ellman muses, “it’s an evolution.”

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Chippendales: The 2016 Break The Rules Tour

Chippendales is a touring dance troupe best known for its male striptease performances and for its dancers’ distinctive upper body costume of a bow tie and shirt cuffs worn on an otherwise bare torso.

Established in 1979, Chippendales was the first all-male stripping troupe to make a business performing for mostly female audiences. Through the quality of its staging and choreography, Chippendales also helped legitimize stripping as a form of popular entertainment.

Today, the company produces Broadway-style shows worldwide and licenses its intellectual property for select consumer products ranging from apparel and accessories to slot machines and video games.  The Chippendales perform in a ten-million dollar theater and lounge built specifically for them at the Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Annually, the official men of Chippendales are seen by almost two million people worldwide, performing in more than 25 cities in the U.S., 23 cities in Central and South America, 60 European cities, four Asian countries, and eight South African cities.  The main troupe members today are Billy Jeffrey, Gavin McHale, Sami Eskelin, Nathan Minor, Jaymes Vaughan, Staceyy Robinson, James Davis and Johnny Howes.

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97.3 HITS SESSION starring R.CITY

Combining hip-hop, pop, and Caribbean flavors, brothers Theron and Timothy have written hits for Akon, Usher, Sean Kingston, the Pussycat Dolls, Ashlee Simpson, and many others while using the name Rock City, eventually shortened to R. City. Born in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, the brothers decided after high school that they were going to try to make it in the music business. A move to America was necessary so they came to the States via Atlanta before settling in Miami. There they began writing for Akon, who quickly signed the brothers to his Kon Live label. After their song “The Rain” landed on Akon’s hit album Konvicted, songwriting for others kept them away from their own music. It wasn’t until 2008 that Rock City released the infectious “Losing It” single, along with the mixtape Put the F*cking Album Out. The album in question was Wake the Neighbors, which Kon Live promised for later that same year. The label never delivered, and eventually the album was shelved, while the duo continued releasing mixtapes (issuing no less than eight volumes of PtFAO).

Rock City finally left Kon Live in 2011 and started their own label, Rebelution Records, briefly changing their name to Planet VI for a few years before settling on R. City. Despite all the hassles releasing their own music, they had no trouble scoring hits for other artists, penning enormously successful singles for Rihanna, Justin Bieber, and Miley Cyrus, and contributing to Grammy-nominated albums by Ariana Grande, Iggy Azalea, and Jennifer Hudson, among others. Dr. Luke signed R. City to his Kemosabe Records, and in 2015 the duo released #WhatDreamsAreMadeOf, an album about the struggles involved with their upbringing in the Virgin Islands. The album’s first single, “Locked Away,” featured Adam Levine and was a Billboard Hot 100-charting hit.

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Kottonmouth Kings with Marlon Asher and Chucky Chuck

Self-described “psychedelic hip-hop punk rock” outfit the Kottonmouth Kings emerged from Orange County, California, in 1994. Comprised of former Humble Gods frontman Brad Daddy X, rappers Saint Vicious and D-Loc, DJ Bobby B, and “visual assassin” Pakelika, the group first attracted attention with the track “Suburban Life,” which appeared on the soundtrack to the film Scream 2 and became a modern rock radio hit. After issuing an EP, Stoners Reeking Havoc, on their own Suburban Noize label in early 1998, the Kottonmouth Kings released the full-length Royal Highness on Capitol that summer. Hidden Stash followed a year later, and their third album, High Society, pushed them into the mainstream. Gigs with D12 and Bionic Jive followed in fall 2001, just prior to the release of Hidden Stash, Vol. 2 : Kream of the Krop. A fifth studio album, Rollin’ Stoned, which was produced by Brad X, appeared in October 2002.
The self-explanatory Classic Hits Live hit the streets in 2003 while the band continued its expansion of the Suburban Noize empire, putting out DVDs and CDs by rappers and punk bands. Their 2004 release, Fire It Up, came out on the stoner’s holiday, 4/20. The Kings returned in 2005 with their seventh album, a self-titled effort that featured guest shots from like-minded pals like Cypress Hill and Tech Nine. Unfortunately, the combo was forced to postpone its summer tour when D-Loc sustained a foot injury. Koast II Koast became the band’s eighth studio full-length in June of 2006. The compilation Hidden Stash III appeared at the end of the year, with a new album, Cloud Nine, arriving in 2007. Like the Kings’ 2004 album Fire It Up, 2010 album Long Live the Kings was also released on the stoner’s holiday of 4/20. Sunrise Sessions would follow a year later, featuring more of a reggae and jam band vibe, while 2012’s Mile High returned to the world of rap-rock, while reuniting the group with founding member Saint Dog. In 2015, the Kings climbed into the Top Ten of Billboard’s Rap Albums chart with Krown Power, an album that featured the Insane Clown Posse along with reggae legend Marlon Asher.

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SOJA with Collie Buddz, Etana

“I want to speak for people who don’t have microphones,” Jacob Hemphill says. “Our goal as a band is to stick up for the human race. We see the world and we try to make it better  in the limited time we have here.”

This is the philosophy behind SOJA’s music, a simple statement that has driven the Grammy Nominated D.C. area band, who blend reggae, go-go, D.C. hardcore, Latin, rock and hip-hop. Originally formed by a group of friends while still in middle school and has built a massive, dedicated fanbase around the world since. In the years following, SOJA has sold more than

200,000 albums, headlined shows in over 20 countries around the world, generated  over 4 million Facebook fans, and over 120 million YouTube views. The band has toured with Dave Matthews Band, Incubus, 311 and appeared at major festivals including Bonnaroo where they attract an almost Grateful Dead-like international fan base along the way, with caravans of diehards following them from city to city. After the release of their 2012 album Strength To Survive, the musicians started writing material for what would become their fifth full-length album, “Amid the Noise and Haste.”

For Hemphill, who pens the lyrics, chords and melody, each song starts with an experience: meeting someone, reading something, experiencing something that seems pertinent to the human condition. On this album, the songwriter is suggesting that “all of life’s problems, and all

of life’s answers are within us. We’ve been conditioned to accumulate, compete and break others down around ourselves — not inherent to the human condition, but rather taught. Those things can be untaught. The real us is in there, somewhere.” All of this is translated into short, sweet packages of music.

The writing and recording process for Amid the Noise and Haste stretched out over a year and a half, mostly because the musicians kept finding new collaborators and new ideas along the way. The aim was to engage as many guest artists as possible, with each working on a song that had a legitimate connection to them. The album was produced by Supa Dups (Bruno Mars, Eminem, Rihanna, John Legend) and recorded at Circle House Studios in Miami and Lion & Fox Studios in Washington D.C. throughout 2013. Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley appears on “Your Song,” a buoyant, hopeful number that asks fans to remind the band why they got into music by singing along, while

“I Believe” brings Michael Franti and Nahko together to offer thoughts on how to control your own destiny. Collie Buddz, J Boog and Anuhea are also featured on various tracks. “We wanted to bring together people who would help demonstrate each song,” Jacob says. “We wanted people who could either relate to or convey the message. The whole album is about the human race relating to itself and connecting with itself.”

For SOJA, whose live show is an explosion of energy and positivity, music is a means of helping people relate in a more affirmative way. It also asks people to look inside themselves and really ask what it is they want to do with their life and how they can be happy. SOJA’s music is about finding that happiness and peace we all deserve and helping others do the same, something Amid the Noise and Haste aptly conveys in its songs.

“I put words in my songs that I believe to be true,” Jacob says. “The point of the album is reconnecting people to the power inside themselves, getting them to fall back in love with life again. Look around, take a deep breath. All the answers are there.”

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