Shot in a pseudo-50s sitcom style really fits the video for the new track by Dar.Ra titled ‘Diamonds N The Shadows’. The video gives a stylistic way to tell a story in a campy comedic way. The track is five minutes twelve seconds of sonic bliss that never lets up and is comprised of an almost continuous hook. ‘Diamonds N The Shadows’ is a track that really needs to be put on a loop. It’s that melodic and tasty.
About Dar.Ra
Born in Dublin, Ireland, Darragh J Brady – AKA Dar.Ra has been in the music industry for a while with hits in the UK and Australia, signed to EMI, Festival and various dance labels over the years, remixing Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Tears 4 Fears, Savage Garden, and writing for Rachel Brown (Faithless, Groove Armada) plus having music on various Hollywood films like ‘Snakes on Planes’ films starring Hilary Duff on ABC TV, Match Of Day (BBC TV) and US Documentary City Of Hope.
He grew up in Brighton and London and his first solo album Soul Hours was released in 2010 made the album of the week of Spain’s Heart FM, as well as receiving support from BBC Radio, playing to over 1 million people on air within one live show.
Also an author, Dar.Ra has a book available called ‘Road Tales’ which has been getting brilliant reviews and is based on people Dar.Ra met while being the road from the late 1990s to 2008.
LINKS:
https://facebook.com/Dar.Ra7
https://youtube.com/kushadeep7
https://twitter.com/kushadeepmusic
https://instagram.com/dar.ra.brady
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Tito Montana Premieres ‘Why Not Me? 2.0’ on Jammerzine (The Week in #Indie Segment)
From his debut release in 2014, when the premiere of ‘Miracle’, produced by Just Blaze appeared on MTV and BET Jams, receiving numerous positive reviews from several renowned sites (The Source, The Hype Magazine, Revolt TV, All Hip Hop, and Medium.) and national radio play – it was evident Tito Montana was here to make a statement in the Hip Hop world.
Tito Montana was born Rayhiem Drayton in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, which at the time was notorious for street crime due to poverty and drug-induced warfare. A young Tito and his family relocated to the quiet town of Poughkeepsie, New York where he would pen lyrics from the age of 12 about the hardships he’d encountered in his youth. Those hardships would become his personal vices, indulging in the illicit and fast-paced lifestyle of the streets, this led to a tumultuous relationship with the law.
After many years hustling, fast forward to April 2009 and Tito Montana launches Final Score Entertainment , the independent record label features some excellent artists including D. Weathers, Foreign Dre, Pro-T, U-Neek, and Jalitha, there are several subsidiaries including a media company: Panoramic Films and an urban clothing brand, Phly or Die.
When the label began picking up traction Tito released his own material and has since been touted by DJ Funk Master Flex on Hot 97 which then led him to open for many great artists including French Montana, 2 Chains, Fabolous, Juelz Santana, Young MA, and Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter Elle Varner and also featured on/in Scrilla Guriellas, Felon Magazine, This is 50, and The Source to name a few.
In 2016 Tito collaborated with DJ Tek Wun for a European tour and performed in several countries including Scotland, Germany, Amsterdam, France, and England and he’s planning a return in 2019.
This brings us to this release, ‘Why Not Me?’ which is a culmination of where Tito has come so far. The EP features production by the L.O.X.’s producer Vinny Idol and also Final Score Entertainment’s in-house producer Half and Kenny Buttons, special guest appearances from artists including Dave East, Maino, Fred The Godson, Emanny, (FSE’s own) D-Weathers, and Nino Man.
Tito Montana is a walking testament of hustle and ambition, defying the odds and breaking the barriers of hardships and challenges whilst remaining independent and building his empire, the inevitable is yet to come. Why Not Me?
LINKS:
https://www.facebook.com/TitoMontanaMusic
https://www.instagram.com/iam_titomontana -
An Interview with Blur’s Dave Rowntree
Jammerzine has an exclusive interview with the multi talent and Blur drummer known as Dave Rowntree. His new album titled ‘Radio Songs’ is out as of today and features a gamut of styles and genre hopping contained within songs straight from the heart of a musician that wears that heart on his sleeve.
‘Radio Songs‘ (playlist below) is one of those albums that you could say is truly diverse. Sometimes subtly, and sometimes genre bending. But, what I find really endearing about it is that feeling you get when each song was created out of that certain passion that comes from artists that stay late and work until that sense of completion is present.
And, in this interview, we get that sense between the words as well as a peek into how an album such as ‘Radio Songs’ comes to be. We also get to know Dave the person as well as the artist.
About Dave Rowntree & ‘Radio Songs’
As a kid growing up in Colchester, Dave Rowntree would often sit with his dad at the family’s kitchen table, building radio kits together. Then, using an antenna situated in their garden, they’d tune into stations from around the world, picking up exotic languages and music while wondering what life was like in these faraway places.
“Radio has been a constant for me,” Rowntree reflects. “It’s been one of the steadying factors in my life.”
Hence the title of Radio Songs, Dave Rowntree’s debut solo album. Many of the songs on it began life with his recordings of the weird and wonderful sounds of atmospheric static in-between stations, using them as the foundations upon which he built the tracks.“The idea of Radio Songs is me spinning through the dial,” he explains. “It sounds like you’ve got a radio tuned to some static and you spin the dial, and the song pops out of it. And then you spin the dial again, and the song dissolves back into the static.” Moreover, each of the songs on the record finds Rowntree exploring significant turning points in his life.
Best known as the drummer in Blur, Dave Rowntree is also something of a polymath: film and TV composer, podcaster, light aircraft pilot (and instructor), lawyer, former Labour councillor. “I’ve always been a bit of a nomad,” he laughs. “Never quite satisfied. I suppose I’m endlessly ambitious, really.” Those ambitions have led him to the creation of Radio Songs, which he points out is “an album that I’ve been musing on and chipping away at for a few years now.”
It’s a record set to surprise many people, being an electronic-based album with orchestral fringes, filled with great, tuneful songs delivered by Rowntree’s assured and expressive vocal performances. While down the years he’s provided backing vocals on many of Blur’s albums and onstage during their live sets, this is the first time the drummer has stepped up to the microphone as a singer in his own right. He says he didn’t particularly find the prospect daunting.
“Less than you’d think, really,” he notes with a chuckle. “I’m kind of unselfconscious in the studio, having spent half my working life there. What really helped was I took trumpet lessons during lockdown. Absolute disaster. My trumpet-playing sounds like wild geese being murdered by a fox. But that really nailed the breathing aspect of singing for me. I’m still experimenting with my voice.”
Produced by Leo Abrahams (Brian Eno, Ghostpoet, Wild Beasts), featuring co-writers including Gary Go and Högni Egilsson and stirring orchestrations recorded in Budapest, Radio Songs is a sonically expansive, but also deeply personal record. Slow-burning ballad ‘1000 Miles’, for example, is a remote long song expressing the difficulties in sustaining a relationship as a world-travelling musician.
“I’d just had an argument with my girlfriend the morning when I set off for Iceland to work with Högni,” Rowntree recalls. “Which is just the wrong thing to do, isn’t it? Because then there’s no chance of making up ‘til you get back again. And so that’s what the song is about. It’s like, ‘Oh God, I’m 1000 miles from home.’ That’s been a real problem…on tour with Blur, trying to keep a relationship going from the other side of the world.”
At the opposite end of the spectrum, there’s the deceptively bright and upbeat ‘London Bridge’, with its staccato “la-la-la-la” hook line, which on closer listening reveals a lyrical sense of dread. Rowntree says the song has its roots in strange recognitions of patterns.
“When I was in my early 20s, in Colchester, I would start to see the number 126 everywhere,” he remembers. “I lived at a house that was 126, I’d get a bus that was 126. I knew this was confirmation bias. I’d read books about that kind of thing, but it was still happening. It felt to me that the universe was trying to alert my attention to 126 for some reason, even though the rational part of me knew that that was bollocks.
“So, ‘London Bridge’ was one of those,” he adds. “Things just started happening when I was near London Bridge, or going past on the bus, or on the tube going underneath London Bridge. I would just notice events occurring, and it was slightly unsettling. Bad shit started happening around London Bridge. I had to confront my London Bridge demons and that’s what the song is about (laughs).”
Elsewhere, the tumbling beats and dreamy instrumental layers of ‘Devil’s Island’ backdrop Rowntree’s lyric returning him to darker days back in the ‘90s, and ‘Downtown’ (with its references to ‘Bitterville’) is a commentary on the “negative and divisive” UK post-Brexit. “It just felt so much like my memory of Britain in the ‘70s and how toxic that all felt,” he says.
Further down the track list lie the syncopated rhythms of beautifully brooding pop song ‘Tape Measure’, the slow-moving synths of ‘Machines Like Me’ and the electronically-enhanced admissions of ‘Volcano’. Rowntree says the latter was inspired by a childhood photograph and describes the song as being about “a situation I’ve found myself in several times in life, where I can’t get any closer to something, but equally you don’t want to get any further away. And I’ve just found myself stuck.”
Meanwhile, two other tracks highlight more instrumental or abstract approaches. Closer ‘Who’s Asking’ began life as a choral piece for a film, that went unused, and was rearranged by Leo Abrahams. Similarly, Abrahams reconfigured ‘HK’ from an original track that featured cut-up recordings of radio broadcasts Rowntree had captured in Hong Kong while Blur were there making 2015’s The Magic Whip album.
“There’s something full on about Chinese commercial radio,” Rowntree enthuses. “If you think American radio is kind of pumping you the hard sell, you should listen to Chinese radio. It takes your breath away.”
Dave Rowntree is clearly an individual bursting with energy, and someone drawn to different fascinations. “I get grabbed by these random obsessions,” he says. In recent years, his film and TV composing work has included soundtracks for Netflix sci-fi series The One, the Bros documentary film After the Screaming Stops and BBC One’s technological crime thriller The Capture. Upcoming projects include a second series of The Capture and the third season of War of the Worlds through Disney+.
While he still flies his part-owned Cirrus SR22 single-engine plane every week, touring commitments with the reformed Blur around The Magic Whip put a stop to his parallel life as a lawyer. Instead, when the band’s activities died down once again, he served as Labour councillor in Norfolk County Council from 2017 to 2021.
“That was great,” he says. “I believe in localism passionately. Knocking on doors and offering help I think is a really powerful and amazing thing to do.”
For the foreseeable future, however, Dave Rowntree’s focus will be back on music. He’s already thinking about a second album, along with the gigs he’s planning to perform the tracks from Radio Songs.
“It’s not a traditional album,” he points out. “So, the kind of mosh pit way of doing things isn’t going to work. The idea is for it to be a bit more of an interesting event – maybe doing it in the round, surrounded by a light show. So, watch this space.”
In the meantime, there is this surprising, moving and highly melodic album to enjoy. Radio Songs: spin the dial and tune in.
LINKS:
https://daver.lnk.to/RadioSongs
https://twitter.com/DaveRowntree
https://www.instagram.com/davidrowntree
https://www.facebook.com/rowntree.david
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwdB97JxmimClJXPDMrBEOg -
An Interview with January Jane
Jammerzine has an exclusive interview with Mitch C. Mitchell and Pat Via from BMG artists January Jane. I’ll start this off with a simple truth. These are the types of artists I love to interview. Not only are they living their dream as major label artists. They made it happen on their own terms. And not only that, they seem to be a tight knit family that deserves to be where they are. Mitch and Pat are totally cool. Fame has not phased them whatsoever. I get the feeling they have the same friends and dreams they had when they first started out. Those aren’t always the types of artists who make it big, but they are almost always the ones that stay big. They are the ones their fans love not only for the music but for their character. And that’s where ‘love’ turns into ‘in love’.
And today we get to talk with Mitch and Pat about their new EP ‘Your Drug’ (review below) as well as their thoughts on music, their music, and where they are taking it. This is more of a good conversation than an interview, and that’s how you get to know good people. Enjoy!
About January Jane
“The story of January Jane is so absurd – but then, everything about being in the music business is absurd,” says January Jane guitarist Mitch C. Mitchell with a laugh.
He’s correct: January Jane has taken an unusual path so far – but this strategy seems to have worked, because BMG is set to release the band’s much-anticipated EP, Your Drug, on September 17, 2021. Every track is ridiculously catchy, overflowing with melodies that are at once smooth yet highly textured, seamlessly blended with unapologetically emotional lyrics.
It’s an exhilarating moment for the band as they take a brief pause for reflection as they prepare for the whirlwind ahead. As lead vocalist and lyricist Pat Via says, “We feel like we’re at this jumping off point right now. We’re ready: we hope that we’ll soon be overwhelmed!” he says with a laugh.
Via writes the lyrics because he’s the one who has to deliver them in a way that will connect with fans, both in the recorded versions and in a live setting. Mitchell doesn’t mind handing over that particular duty: “If it’s a very cool lyric but it’s not from Pat’s heart, the audience will know it,” he says. Besides, Mitch, along with Peter Scialla, who joined the duo in 2014 on keyboard and piano, are busy writing the band’s music.
It’s an equitable and agreeable division of labor, and it was that way from the moment this band formed. Via and Mitchell met by chance at an art gallery opening in New York. Meeting up the next day to try to write together, they clicked so well that they had an outline for their first song sketched out in a mere 10 minutes.
This type of instant creative chemistry is extremely rare, so they immediately knew they were onto something special. In fact, January Jane has been such a revelation for both Via and Mitchell that they decline to discuss anything that came before it in their musical careers. “I don’t feel like anything that happened before this band matters,” Via says. “I’d rather talk about the story we’re writing now.”
Then, another New York City night cast its spell and delivered yet another surprise, when after wrapping up a show they were invited to a private gathering at a loft in the Meatpacking District: as they walked through the door they heard the sound of a piano rising from the center of a crowd that had gathered in a circle around the source of the music. They were immediately drawn in, and pushed their way past the pack to the grand piano in the center of the room, where they saw Peter Scialla manning the keys from within the eye of the hurricane. Peter seemed to sense their presence and looked up briefly from his keyboard, waving them over, before returning his gaze to the black and white keys in front of him. As the night progressed and they made their way through another bottle, singing and playing together to the impromptu crowd, they all realized they had found the missing piece, and Peter became part of January Jane.
With their epic songs, January Jane quickly gained a loyal fan base. One of their earliest supporters was Matt Pinfield, the DJ, journalist, television host, and all-around music industry legend. Pinfield has proven instrumental for the band: he took them under his wing and produced some of their early recordings (under the auspices of his own label, Whiskey Vinyl). Those songs, in turn, brought them to the attention of BMG, who quickly signed them. As always, when the opportunity came, January Jane’s members were prepared to grab it with both hands. As Via puts it, “It’s about staying ready for when the big lights get turned on.”
Being backed by BMG’s world-reaching might is exactly what January Jane’s members want, at this point. As Scialla explains, “We’ve put so much into this band – now we absolutely want to get it out there in a very big way.” Via agrees: “What band doesn’t want to be the biggest band in the world? When you have a label like BMG behind you, you get the opportunity to do that. Why walk when you can ride?”
“Taking this time to write and record has given us the chance to really explore creatively and find our unique sound,” says Mitchell. Also, the members understand that this type of band launch takes a long time to get ready, so they don’t mind waiting until everything is right for it.
As a primer for the music of January Jane, Your Drug is the perfect taster for what’s in store. From the cover of the Hall & Oates “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)” which updates the ‘80s hit by adding a modern cinematic swirl, to the epic soar of the title track “Your Drug” whose pulsating keyboards leads you right into an escalating chorus reaching anthemic heights, the EP carries a sneaky familiarity that is immediate and enduring. The lead single “Versions of You” with its fluid melodies and hooks sinks deep, cementing their indelible and transcendent mark on the contemporary pop rock genre.
Now, with their new EP finally in sight, January Jane say they’re especially excited to support the album with a tour, because live shows have long been a strength for this band. They’ve routinely sold out shows at larger theater venues like the Gramercy Theater in New York, as well as appearing at prestigious festivals such as SXSW multiple times.
January Jane have often performed charity concerts, benefitting the Akron Children’s Hospital and The Dream Foundation, among other causes. Their most unusual benefit show, in 2018, found them headlining the October Ball, held at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, with proceeds going to the Bigs & Littles NYC Mentoring program.
This desire to spread love is at the heart of what January Jane has been about from the start. In fact, it is this pure love – for the music itself, and all the good it can do – that seems to ensure that January Jane’s future will stay bright. “We’ll never run out of ideas, because we love making music more than anything – every step of the way is fun,” Mitchell says. And there’s no reason to think their luck will change: “That chance meeting that Mitch and I had has somehow gotten us this far,” Via says, “and wandering into Pete’s studio in the time that followed was pure luck. We’ll just keep riding on those chances. It’s serendipitous.”
LINKS:
https://www.januaryjane.com
https://facebook.com/JanuaryJane
https://twitter.com/januaryjane
https://www.instagram.com/januaryjane
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkM7uWL6oc9-d_vj0XB_fUw
https://tiktok.com/@januaryjane
https://open.spotify.com/artist/6ODcblM0A3Z5emvZK3H7R6