Sirius Isness

   
Artist: Sirius Isness

   Genre(s): 
Trance: Psychedelic
   Trance
   

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Discography:


   
 Breaking The Matrix

   Year: 2005   
Tracks: 9


   
 Psychedelic Tuning

   Year: 2004   
Tracks: 10


   
 Flip Out Vol. 3

   Year: 2004   
Tracks: 9

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CD: Coldplay, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends

No less a musical authority than Guy Hands has called Viva la Vida "the most anticipated album of the year". For once, it's hard to argue with the new EMI boss: the anticipation comes not just as a result of Coldplay's preceding vast success, but the sense that they finally might be about to offer something different from the increasingly windy and lachrymose stadium ballads that fuelled it. Rock's most celebrated blue-sky thinker, Brian Eno, is on board. There are intimations of artistic insurrection and tumult. The album's title may sound like something you'd find on the cocktail menu on TGI Friday, but it comes from a painting by surrealist Frida Kahlo. The cover features Delacroix's romantic depiction of the spirit of revolution, Liberty Leading the People Over the Barricades.

Meanwhile, singer Chris Martin recently stormed out of a puff-piece newspaper interview, declaring "we don't care if we sell a million less records". This parting shot proves telling about the actual scale of reinvention that Vida la Vida offers. Announcing that you don't care if you sell a million fewer records sounds bullish, until you realise that X&Y sold 10m copies. Selling a million fewer than that hardly constitutes throwing commercial considerations to the wind in favour of a bafflingly abstruse artistic statement. Notice is thus served that we may not be dealing with The Faust Tapes here.

Such thoughts are underlined by opener Life In Technicolor. It starts as a Kraftwerkish instrumental, before the arrival of drums, guitars and a woah-oh chorus suitable for singing en masse in a sports stadium. Indeed, there are moments during Viva la Vida where you feel impelled to take Coldplay aside and explain to them that there's more to reinventing your sound than calling Brian Eno, coming up with some enigmatic song titles and telling people you've reinvented your sound: you are actually supposed to change your music as well.

There's certainly a wider sonic palette on offer - a jerkily funky beat powering Cemeteries of London, a vaguely African-sounding guitar line on Strawberry Swing - but it's discreet shading. Coldplay's constituent elements remain intact: mid-tempo songs, echoing guitars, piano ballads that surge into bittersweet anthemics, falsetto vocals. The words continue to deal only in the most general of generalities - "Just be patient and don't worry", "You've got to soldier on". The messages are weighty and inarguable (42, for example, has sussed out that when people die, their loved ones remember them), but the fear that Martin could let fly with a line about tomorrow being the first day of the rest of your life looms ever-present.

Lyrics aside, Viva la Vida fixes most of the glaring problems with 2005's X&Y, simply by eschewing verse-chorus structures in favour of something more episodic. Uncoupling them from the standard framework allows Chris Martin's melodies to shine: even his loudest detractor could hardly deny his way with a tune, as evidenced here by 42 and Lovers in Japan.

Perhaps more importantly, the songs seem less thuddingly predictable than Fix You or What If? Confronted with a title track so clearly destined to get huge crowds punching the air, you might say that the results are more subtle only in the same way that being slapped across the face is more subtle than being smashed over the head with a breezeblock. But there's no doubt it seems noticeably less craven in its attempt to tug the world's heartstrings.

One might argue that Viva la Vida's mild tinkering with the formula represents a failure of imagination: perhaps it's hard to think outside the box when the box is the size of the Las Vegas MGM Grand Garden Arena. Equally, however, there's a genuine conviction about its contents, a huge advance both on its predecessor and their legion of imitators.

Coldplay remain thunderingly uncool, a state of affairs you suspect couldn't be altered whether they were being produced by Brian Eno, Brian Wilson or Brian Cant: I have a terrible feeling that 42 is a reference to the meaning of life in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, thus raising the prospect that their next album might include songs called This Is An Ex-Parrot and I Invented It in Camberwell and It Looks Like a Carrot. At its best, however, Viva la Vida poses an interesting question: do you need to be cool or experimental if you can write songs that carry the listener along regardless of their reservations - indeed, almost despite them?


See Also

• Kenny Chesney - Chesney Still Puzzled By Zellweger Marriage Divorce
• DJ Rap
• Guests for Sunday TV news shows feature McClellan
• 50 Cents Dix Hills mansion destroyed in fire

Crystal Clear

   
Artist: Crystal Clear

   Genre(s): 
Drum & Bass
   Metal: Power
   

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Discography:


   
 Lets Get Started and Original Ri

   Year: 2004   
Tracks: 2


   
 Payback Time

   Year: 2003   
Tracks: 10

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Gorerotted

Musa Dieng Kala

   
Artist: Musa Dieng Kala

   Genre(s): 
Ethnic
   

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Discography:


   
 Shakawtu - Faith

   Year:    
Tracks: 9

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Hayden Panettiere - Panettiere Id Have An Affair With Jolie Alba And Theron

Lil Wayne/ Paris Hilton Producer Scott Storch Wanted By Police For Skipping Child-Support Hearing

Formerly red-hot producer Scott Storch, known for his signature aviator shades, high living and banging beats, is facing some hard financial times.

According to the Miami Herald, after the beatmaster failed to show up for a child-support hearing regarding his 2-year-old son Jalen last week, a judge issued a pickup order that authorized cops to jail Storch, 34, until he appears in court. On top of those troubles, the flashy producer — behind hits by Paris Hilton, Dr. Dre, Eminem and Lil Wayne — is reportedly behind on property-tax payments on his $10 million Miami mansion and has not made support payments on one of his other kids in five months.

Storch's lawyer, Guy Spiegelman, said the financial snafus will be rectified soon and are the result of misconduct by the producer's former managers. Spiegelman told MTV News that he didn't know why Storch didn't make it to the court date — speculating that "he must have been out of town on work" — but said the support issue will be resolved shortly. "He doesn't deny paternity, but it's an issue of collection of money," the attorney said.

The missed child-support hearing was intended to explain why Storch is behind on at least $46,000 in child support, which includes $16,000 toward Jalen's Florida Prepaid College Plan. Dalene Jennifer Daniel, Jalen's mother, sued Storch for paternity in 2006 and has claimed that he has not lived up to the settlement agreement. And she's not the only one after the "Lean Back" producer for child support. Vanessa Bellido, 33, mother of 16-year-old Steven Bellido, has filed a paternity suit against the producer, who has acknowledged that Steven is his son.

The Herald reported that Storch had acknowledged previously that he is the boy's father and had been sending support payments until January but has since ceased. Bellido said without the money, she and her son are having a hard time.

"While [Storch] drives around in his Ferrari and Cadillac, [Steven] is sleeping on a couch in the same room with his mother," Bellido claimed, according to her emergency petition for child support. "The situation is dire." A car that Storch provided for the teen has reportedly been repossessed, and court documents show that Bellido claims Storch is $5,000 behind in promised tuition payments, which has put the boy's junior year of school "in jeopardy."

"It's coincidental," Spiegelman said of the dual support claims. "He stopped paying in the early portion of this year because he had mismanagement of his funds and had a big shortfall, which will be corrected soon." Spiegelman did not say who was handling Storch's affairs before, but he said the producer has been "more than generous" with both women, paying each around $7,500 a month.

Spiegelman said Storch has put together a new management team and that the financial issues will be resolved soon.

The money troubles don't stop there, though. The paper also reported that Storch is way behind on property taxes on his $10 million mansion. According to records, Storch owes more than a half-million dollars in property taxes from the past two years, a deficit Spiegelman said would also be settled soon. "The numbers are staggering because the taxes are awfully high on the property," he said, adding that he also expects to have the arrest warrant quashed within the week.

In February, LA Confidential Records owner David Menefield won a $500,000 judgment against Storch over claims that he loaned the producer $100,000 in 2003 to save the house from foreclosure and never received the four music tracks Storch had promised to Menefield's artists.

The financial crunch is especially surprising given that in 2006, Rolling Stone estimated Storch's fortune at around $70 million, but Spiegelman said "the numbers out there are not always accurate." He said the producer has a high income and the amounts he owes are above average, "but when you make that kind of money, when things go bad, they're not minor, they're catastrophic."






See Also

• Hayden Christensen - Christensen Returns To Jumper
• Night of the Living Dead - 5/20/2008
• Hulk Hogan’s Son Wants Out of Solitary
• TMZ TV Tonite — Sluts, Slots, and Sloshed

Moby and Public Enemy

   
Artist: Moby and Public Enemy

   Genre(s): 
Electronic
   

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Discography:


   
 Make Love Fuck War [With Public Enemy]

   Year: 2004   
Tracks: 3

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Lopez' Chorus Line To Close

Mario Lopez couldn't rescue Broadway show A Chorus Line from the axe - it's closing in New York five months after he first took to the stage. Producers hired the former Dancing With The Stars star in April to boost falling theatre attendances. But he has just filled 60 per cent of New York's Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre since starting his run - and bosses are pulling the plug on the 18-month-long revival of the dance spectacular. The final performance will be 17 August .


See Also

• Tem is Ben’s ‘Star Wars’ Jedi master
• Beatles to travel ‘Across the Universe’
• Paul McCartney Plays Liverpool Concert to 36,000 Fans
• Tony Soprano makes an offer — his wardrobe

Jr. Grover Washington

   
Artist: Jr. Grover Washington

   Genre(s): 
Jazz
   

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Discography:


   
 Strawberry Moon

   Year: 1990   
Tracks: 9

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Filmmaker Ari Gold Makes ‘Frogger: The Movie’

Bob Geldof Gives Daughters Peaches and Pixie a Curfew

Rocker Bob Gelof has given his hard-partying daughters a strict curfew.

The former Boomtown Rats star, 56, is so worried about the girls' wild ways, he has demanded they return home by 11pm.

Peaches, 19, was recently quizzed by police for allegedly buying drugs, so Geldof is determined to keep 17-year-old Pixie safe.

Having been to a fashion party at London's Earl's Court, Pixi headed to the Hospital Club for the MySpace Mars Planets Radio bash.

A source reveals, "As she was going in someone told her the time. Pixie blurted, 'Oh my God, I have to go! If I break my curfew I'm not allowed to any parties for the rest of the week'."

See Also

• Hulk Hogan’s son transferred out of solitary
• Cops: Tatum O’Neal Nabbed in Crack Bust
• Jackass star Steve-O ordered to rehab
• Christian Bale - Bale Hates Romcoms

'Kung Fu Panda' beats projections

Adam Sandler's 'Zohan' also tops forecasts in second

Moviegoers across North America were in a fighting mood during the weekend, cheering the family cartoon "Kung Fu Panda" to the top spot at a boxoffice packed with hits. DreamWorks Animation's Jack Black comedy about a panda who dreams of martial arts glory handily beat forecasts by earning an estimated $60 million during its first three days, distributor Paramount Pictures said on Sunday. But it was not a complete knockout. Columbia Pictures' Adam Sandler comedy "You Don't Mess with the Zohan," in which the comedian plays an Israeli commando-turned-New York hairdresser, opened at No. 2 with $40 million, also beating forecasts. Going into the weekend, the championship could have gone either way. In one corner, "Kung Fu Panda" was powered by rave reviews and an underserved family audience; in the other, Sandler could count on young male fans unlikely to be swayed by negative notices from puzzled critics. Last weekend's champ, New Line Cinema's romantic comedy "Sex and the City," fell to No. 4 with $21.3 million, a massive 63 percent drop from its surprisingly strong opening weekend. Sales to date stand at $99.3 million for the big-screen adaptation of HBO's fashion-and-relationship series. Just ahead of it was "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" with $22.8 million, down one place. The total for the Paramount-distributed adventure rose to $253 million after three weekends.

See Also

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• Harris Back To Work After Losing Album
• Off The Sky
• Arctic Monkey works with Tony Christie

Judge orders 50 Cent not to sell fire-ravaged property

A judge has ordered 50 Cent to keep the New York property where his mansion was destroyed by a suspicious fire two weeks ago.

The rapper, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, was told by New York State Supreme Court Justice Carol Edmead that he may not sell the Long Island property.

He was also ordered to put insurance proceeds in a trust account pending the outcome of his dispute with ex-girlfriend Shaniqua Tompkins, reports the Associated Press.

The home was at the centre of a legal dispute between 50 Cent and his ex-girlfriend, which became increasingly heated just before the fire, as previously reported.

Six people inside the Dix Hills home were taken to a hospital for smoke inhalation treatment and then released.

--By our Los Angeles staff.
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