2009
has been another fabulous year for live gigs, CD
releases and all sorts of other Rock &
Metal related news. We catch up with some of the
artists we all know and love to find out what
2009 meant to them, and also what plans and
aspirations they have for 2010. Here's
what they told us ...
Tara's
Secret
2009
in Review / 2010
in Preview
2009
has been a very exciting year for UK band
Tara's Secret, mostly through recording our
3rd album VERTIGO and then hearing and
seeing the reactions unfold as the year
draws to a close (especially the awesome
review from MayfairMallZine).
Following
nearly 18 months of writing, we spent a
pre-production day at M2 Studios near
Wolverhampton in April and then 3 weeks through
May & June recording the album,
co-producing
with Mark Stuart & Sheena Seer.
Reviews
are due out in various magazines in early
2010 and we are sorting out shows and
distribution to coincide. So if big vocals,
big melodies, big guitars and bloody huge
drums rock your boat, then lend us your ears
for Christmas.
This
has been a very busy year for London and I!!
Our new CD "Arrival" was released
on August 1st, and the response has been
great. Lots of amazing reviews and
interviews. This album was over 3 years in
the making, and we feel it was worth every
penny, and every day we spent in the studio!
We want to take this time to thank all the
fans out there, and for all the press that
has been behind us. This has been and
continues to be an incredible journey for
WildeStarr.
2010
in Preview
Our
conceptual video for "Arrival"
will debut the first week of the new year!
We just signed a new deal with Chipster PR
& Consulting, Inc (Judas Priest, Rob
Halford, Metal God Apparel). So lots of
great promotional work is going to take
place starting in January, and working with
Chip will really help to increase our
visibility and profile worldwide. Tour plans
are still up in the air at this time, but
you never know! We may end up going back
into the studio instead to begin work on the
follow up to "Arrival". Stay
tuned....
2009
was an important year for Silhouette as our
second CD - Moods - was released by the
Swedish label Progress Records. Moods was
well received by reviewers in many
countries (see: www.silhouetteband.nl).
We had worked more than two years
intensively on this project, which is a
concept album based on an autobiographical
story by our guitarist, Brian de Graeve.
Although the story was his, the 78 minutes
long album was written and arranged by all
four Silhouette musicians together. The
cooperation with Knight Area's Gerben
Klazinga (who mixed and mastered the album)
and with Aldo Adema (Seven Day Hunt, Egdon
Heath) who played a few great guitar solo's
a la Gilmour as a guest musician, was very
rewarding.
2010
in Preview
In
2010 we will intend to continue try
gaining more fans, one by one, mainly by
playing gigs wherever we can. We will
develop a show in which we will play Moods
in its entirety. Being a Dutch band, of
course we will play in Dutch clubs but
also we have some gigs coming up in
Germany. We hope somehow also to play in
the UK and make a lot of friends there,
although we do not have the right contacts
yet.
In
the meantime we will start writing our
third album. We haven't planned the
release yet, as we intend to focus the
coming months on rehearsing and
improving our live act, but one of the
tracks is finished already and sounds
really, really well. It seems the
third album will contain some epic tracks
longer and "proggier" than we
have written so far.... "
Take
care,
Erik
Apparition
2009
in Review
/
2010 in Preview
It
was this time last year after we had
uploaded 3 new songs into the MySpace
player and uploaded the video to our song
Salvation onto the same site that I asked
myself what was the point of it all!!!! Sure
we had good comments from people but it was
so impersonal. People kept asking when we
were going to gig again and to this I wasn't
sure because I felt our singer Fiona had
lost interest and having overhearing her
tell others that it wasn't working I had to
think what to do. I decided it best that we
part company and both go our separate ways
so I started the search for a replacement. A
young lady called Samantha Smallwood got in
touch and after begging me to give her the
chance I finally agreed. She studied musical
theatre at Bournemouth Unit and was very
enthusiastic about joining a band.
This
wasn't the only change we had in line up.
Guitarist John Yates who had played Dames of
Darkness 2 became a full time member.
Myself
and John started writing songs with the then
drummer Paul Collins but disaster struck a
few weeks into rehearsals when Paul sent a
text just as we entered the rehearsal room
telling us he was quitting because he wanted
to concentrate on his other band and
because our keyboard play Ian had moved away
and could only make occasional rehearsals. I
was gutted as I had known him for years and
felt badly let down by him.
I
wondered if to knock the band on the head but
Sam encouraged me to carry on. I agreed
as I had something to prove to him!!!
A
month before all this happened I was
shopping in Tesco's and I bumped into an old
friend of mine called Rob Swinnerton. He
used to play drums in a local band I knew
and still did have the odd play on them. He
told me he ran a fancy dress hire company so
with that knowledge I soon hunted him down
and asked him if he was interested in
joining us. The band which was on its
knees stood up, dusted itself off and got
ready for what was to follow.
To
introduce the new members to the
public we decided to make a rough demo
showcasing them and uploaded it onto
our Myspace site.
With
only a few practices under our belts we
started gigging. The first was in
Southampton organised by Ian. Southampton is
Sam's home town too so she brought a lot of
family and friends to watch.
Next day we played the Damsels of
Destruction in London. Apparition had built
up a reputation from past gigs with Fiona so
Sam really did have something to prove in
the public eye.
This
years highlights would have to be supporting ex-Nightwish
Singer Tarja in London and playing both days
of the Femme Metal Festival in Birmingham
and Kingston.
The
Kingston gig was keyboardist Ian's last gig
with us as he was finding the traveling
difficult and expensive.
So again I seek new people to join the band.
In 2010 we hope to record a new album
as well as release a compilation CD of our
songs featuring all the musicians I have
worked with in the past.
Next
year when I do this again I want to
feel like I have achieved something.
So
to all our supporters Merry Christmas and a
Happy New Year xx
David,
Apparition
New
Generation Superstars
2009
in Review
Crazy,
crazy, crazy!Probably our
best year yet, though the year did start with
the unfortunate bereavement of a close friend.The Rock Bus sadly passed away in
January after Davey tried to fix it by
himself.Did he
unintentionally kill it?We’ll
never know, but it’s clear Davey will never
make a doctor or mechanic, so deciding that
it’s best to stick with a guitar, it was
time to pick our collective heads up and
soldier on.
We
kicked off by writing and recording the
remaining tracks for our second album
‘Raising the Stakes’.This
was all complete by the end of April, though
we still managed to squeeze in lots of shows
in between studio time and also had an
adventure over in Helsinki, Finland, playing
Mama Trash’s ‘Trashfest
II’ festival.The
reception was overwhelming and we started to
make plans to return back to Finland for a
full tour before the year was out.
As
summer rolled on we worked hard to get
everything ready for the August release of
‘Raising the Stakes’, an album which was
very well received by our fans and the press.Being very much an independent band,
supporting ourselves by relentless gigging and
releasing records through our own label, it
was a tough task to pull off, but one we’re
very proud of.A big
success we feel!
Shortly
after the release we hit the road with
Love/Hate and Ricky Warwick (The Almighty) for
a full UK tour, then made that trip back over
to Finland to tour with a Swedish band called
Violent Divine.There were
lots of new faces, fans and friends we made at
Trashfest who
greeted us - things seem to really be taking
off for us over there!Finally
in November/December we wrapped things up in
the UK, undertaking one last tour with Vain,
ending the year and tour to a packed house at
Rock City, in our home town of Nottingham.
2010
in Preview
Welcoming
a new decade with open arms, we’re ready to
embrace 2010.We start back
at Rock City supporting Hardcore Superstar and
then release ‘Nothin’
to Lose’ as a single.The
excellent new video for the single will also
be at the same time.Stop
by our you tube channel (www.youtube.com/newgenrocks)
or web-site (www.myspace.com/newgenrocks)
and leave a comment.If ya
feel really inclined, maybe even purchase a
copy from i-tunes,
Amazon, play, 7 digital (and more) and support
independent music.Imagine
getting that in the charts?!This
single release coincides nicely with our third
jaunt in a year to Finland (holy crap!) to
play ‘Trashfest
III’ in March (we’re very lucky!).
Straight
off the plane from Finland, in support of the
new single we hit the road for a UK tour with
Violent Divine and Vanity Ink (from Finland)
for our own headline tour (see www.myspace.com/newgenrocks
for dates), followed by a further headline
tour in April with Stereo Junks (also from
Finland).
We’ll
likely see you at a festival or two next
summer and will be continuing to write and gig
hard.
Thanks
for all the support everyone has shown in
2009; here’s to a great 2010.
Cheers,
Chris
& The NGS Crew
Read
more Reviews of 2009 and Previews of 2010 *Here*
