Focus Music Notes. "Out of the Blues". Popular music through the decades

As Japan recovers from the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck on March 11, the world’s top recording artists respond to the tragedy with this benefit album. The 38 tracks include some of their biggest hits, featuring an exclusive remix of Lady GaGa’s “Born This Way,” Katy Perry’s “Thinking of You,” Bruno Mars’ “Talking to the Moon,” Adele’s “Make You Feel My Love," and more.  All proceeds go to the Japanese Red Cross.

New Island Records signing Alex Clare, whose Diplo & Switch produced debut single  “Up All Night” has generated a genuine buzz across radio, press and the blogosphere, follows up with the April 18th release of his new single “ Too Close ” . The single, produced once again by Diplo & Switch, is taken from Clare’s forthcoming debut album which will be released in the summer. The 25 year old Golders Green native recently previewed tracks from the album during a couple of incendiary live shows and will be putting in more live shows in the coming months. Clare writes and sings his own songs but is not a singer songwriter, not in the traditional sense anyway. After playing in a succession of London bands and following a brief career as a chef, too many long hours and too many sliced fingers, Alex decided to go it alone and started writing songs and demoing them himself. Things happened very quickly from there. The demos found their way to Island Records and two weeks later a deal...

Jon Fratelli will release his first proper solo single ‘Santo Domingo’ on the Island label on April 11th. Taken from his forthcoming new album “Psycho Jukebox”, it is at once strangely familiar, lyrically obtuse and so catchy it’ll make your head swim. It follows the free download of ‘Rhythm Doesn’t Make You A Dancer’ which is available now from http://www.jonfratelli.co.uk/   Jon Fratelli’s debut solo album is called Psycho Jukebox and like any jukebox worth its salt it’s chock full of the kind of solid gold easy action that makes you want to throw the windows wide to annoy the neighbours. Psycho Jukebox is brimful of melody, pop-psychedelia, classic ’60s-tinged pop, and characters whose lives are lived in a twilight world of ambition and failure, triumph and loss. Fans of The Fratellis will not be disappointed! Says Jon: “ The chorus of ‘Santo Domingo’ is something I’ve had in my back pocket for a while now. It’s that instant thing – how quickly can you grab someone’s attention?!...

Jonathan Jeremiah, whose timeless songs and soulful voice have marked him out as a songwriter with a rare talent, introduces himself with the release on March 21st of his debut album “A Solitary Man”. Jonathan recently appeared on Later With Jools a full five months ahead of the album release giving a stunning solo acoustic performance of one of the album’s many standouts “How Half-Heartedly We Behave”. Jonathan has just completed a month long residency at the Borderline following his recent special guest appearance with Rumer at her sell-out Bloomsbury Theatre show. The album was produced and engineered by Jonathan in an analogue studio in Dollis Hill and featured collaborators included The Heritage Orchestra, a young group of classical musicians attuned to his working methods, and Jules Buckley who handled all the string arrangements. Featured tracks on the 11 song album include gorgeous string-drenched single “See”, “Happiness” and “A Solitary Man”, two songs written while travelli...

DJ Distance is a South East London-based producer who was instrumental in dubstep’s early development. Real name Greg Sanders, Distance is credited with introducing the much-imitated heavy riffage of metal to dubstep; at the dawn of the genre....... UK tour dates: 18th March, Cable, London 26th March, Bournemouth 29th March, Sheffield 15th April, Aberdeen 22nd April, Fabric, London ......... Before picking up Cubase and becoming a producer, he was a fan of heavy and industrial bands like Pantera and Fear Factory. In 2001 he was being drawn to the dark garage sound that was all around him in South London. Tracks by Oris Jay or Wookie on DJ EZ’s Saturday night show on Kiss FM caught his ear. He began to obsessively buy records from Blackmarket and Croydon’s Big Apple Records, on seminal labels like Tempa and Bingo. Attending FWD>> at its inception when the crowd of 15 or 20 consisted almost entirely of producers, Distance soon took to producing himself. He would bring ...

Celebrating 26 Solid Years of Success. The Solid Silver 60s Show has become, over the last 26 years, an institution, a household name, a true phenomenon reconfirming that the 60s are as relevant today as they have ever been. North Devon Theatres is therefore delighted to welcome the show back to the Queen’s Theatre on Saturday 12th March. The show brings together the ever-popular Dave Berry, Chris Farlowe, Wayne Fontana, Terry Sylvester and very special guests, The Merseybeats. Throughout its 26 year history The Solid Silver 60s Show has had no less than 23 top ten charting artist and bands on its bills. Legendary talents such as The Searchers, Bobby Vee, Gerry & The Pacemakers, Del Shannon, Billy J Kramer, Chris Montez and The Troggs have clocked up between them 284 weeks (over five years!) in the No.1 position, 977 weeks (equalling over 18 years!) within the Top Five chart position and a staggering 1,375 weeks within the Top Ten. As usual the mammoth tour, to meet popular deman...

‘The One’ is the second single from urban trio Encore, aka singers Mark and Cairo and rapper Pierre. DaVinChe (Tinchy Stryder and Kano) lends his production skills on this dubstep infected track, smoothly ridden by Encore’s narrative songwriting style and slick vocals, taking us through a tale of relationship woes. Encore’s debut album will follow later this year and 2011 has already been a busy year for the boys. The group have been in the studio working with top writers and producers from both sides of the Atlantic including DaVinChe, RedOne’s production team (Lady Gaga), Nate Walka (Jamie Foxx ‘Blame It’). They released their debut single ‘Wind Up’ on Valentine’s Day, and have also shot two new videos. The first video is for the ‘The One’, and the second for their street track ‘Cold/Pretender’. The grind doesn’t stop there though, Encore are confirmed support acts for both Jessie J and N-Dubz’s UK tours throughout April. Get ready to give a standing ovation… Encore new single ‘THE...