Belle and Sebastian are a Scottish indie pop band formed in Glasgow in 1996. Led by Stuart Murdoch, the band has released ten albums. They are often compared with acts such as The Smiths and Nick Drake. The name "Belle and Sebastian" comes from Belle et Sébastien, a 1965 children's book by French writer Cécile Aubry later adapted for television. Though consistently lauded by critics, Belle & Sebastian's "wistful pop" has enjoyed only limited commercial success.
Grindcore is an extreme fusion genre of heavy metal and hardcore punk that originated in the mid-1980s, drawing inspiration from abrasive-sounding musical styles, such as thrashcore, crust punk, hardcore punk, extreme metal, and industrial. Grindcore is considered a more noise-filled style of hardcore punk while using hardcore's trademark characteristics such as heavily distorted, down-tuned guitars, grinding overdriven bass, high-speed tempo, blast beats, and vocals which consist of growls and high-pitched shrieks. Early groups like Napalm Death are credited with laying the groundwork for the style. It is most prevalent today in North America and Europe, with popular contributors such as Brutal Truth and Nasum. Lyrical themes range from a primary focus on social and political concerns, to gory subject matter and black humor.
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band formed in London in 1962. Active for six decades, they are one of the most popular and enduring bands of the rock era. In the early 1960s, the Rolling Stones pioneered the gritty, heavier-driven sound that came to define hard rock. Their first stable line-up consisted of vocalist Mick Jagger, multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones, guitarist Keith Richards, bassist Bill Wyman, and drummer Charlie Watts. During their formative years, Jones was the primary leader: he assembled the band, named it, and drove their sound and image. After Andrew Loog Oldham became the group's manager in 1963, he encouraged them to write their own songs. Jagger and Richards became the primary creative force behind the band, alienating Jones, who had developed a drug addiction that interfered with his ability to contribute meaningfully.
Supergrass is an English rock band formed in 1993 in Oxford. The band consists of brothers Gaz and Rob Coombes (keyboards), Mick Quinn and Danny Goffey.
Napalm Death are an English grindcore band formed in Meriden, West Midlands, in 1981. While none of its original members remain in the group since December 1986, the lineup of vocalist Mark "Barney" Greenway, bassist Shane Embury, guitarist Mitch Harris and drummer Danny Herrera has remained consistent through most of the band's career since 1992's Utopia Banished, although, from 1989 to 2004, Napalm Death were a five-piece band after they added Jesse Pintado as the replacement of one-time guitarist Bill Steer; following Pintado's departure, the band reverted to a four-piece rather than replace him.
Emmylou Harris is an American singer, songwriter and musician. She has released dozens of albums and singles over the course of her career and has won 14 Grammys, the Polar Music Prize, and numerous other honors, including induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In 2018, she was presented the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Snog is a band that was formed by Australian musician Dee Thrussell, along with fellow art school friends Tim McGrath and Julia Bourke in 1989. The band's music is a fusion of many different styles, including industrial, techno, ambient, experimental, funk and country music. The band name is a reference to "kissing and cuddling".
David Allan Stewart is an English musician, songwriter and record producer, best known for Eurythmics, his successful professional partnership with Annie Lennox. Normally credited as David A. Stewart, he won Best British Producer at the 1986, 1987 and 1990 Brit Awards. Stewart was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2020 and the duo were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.
Scorn is an English electronic music project. The group was formed in the early 1990s as a project of former Napalm Death members Mick Harris and Nic Bullen. Bullen left the group in 1995 and the project continued on until the end of 2011, as an essentially solo project for Harris. Harris restarted the project in 2019.
Michael John Harris is an English musician from Birmingham. He was the drummer for Napalm Death between 1985 and 1991, and is credited for coining the term "grindcore". After Napalm Death, Harris joined Painkiller with John Zorn and Bill Laswell. Since the mid-1990s, Harris has worked primarily in electronic and ambient music, his main projects being Scorn and Lull. He has also collaborated with musicians including James Plotkin and Extreme Noise Terror. According to AllMusic, Harris's "genre-spanning activities have done much to jar the minds, expectations, and record collections of audiences previously kept aggressively opposed."
John Sellekaers is a Canadian-born musician and audio mastering engineer. Born in 1973 in Montreal, Quebec he later moved to Brussels, Belgium. He has released over 40 records under various aliases on labels such as Ant-Zen, Hymen Records, Nova Zembla and Disques Hushush. His style range from experimental music to electronica.
Whine is a live album by Scorn, released on October 21, 1997, through Invisible Records.
Logghi Barogghi is the fifth album by Scorn, released on August 20, 1996 through Earache Records. The album's departure from the band's early sound eventually led to Mick Harris parting ways with Earache after its release, both sides apparently having been unhappy with how the project was being handled. After leaving Earache Records, Scorn kept pushing the dirty bass and heavy beat sound, subtly changing with each release.
Zander is the sixth album by Scorn, released on February 18, 1997 through KK Records. For Zander, the band kept pushing the dirty bass and heavy beat sound, subtly changing with each subsequent release. In May 1997, Mick Harris decided to end the band to finish relations with KK Records, and from 1997 to 1999, he was making music with other names and other musicians, until 2000, when returned with the band with the record company Hymen Records for Greetings from Birmingham.
Anamnesis is a compilation album by Scorn, released in 1999 on Invisible Records.
Plan B is the eighth album by Scorn, released in August 2002 through Hymen Records. In 2000, Mick Harris returned with the band with the record company Hymen Records for Greetings from Birmingham, but eventually Harris parted ways with Hymen in 2002 after the release of Plan B. The intervening years since saw a break in recorded output with live dates popping up periodically.
Stealth is the ninth album by Scorn, released on November 19, 2007 through Ohm Resistance. After a five-year absence, November 2007 saw the band return to the studio properly with this album.
Downwards Records is a record label founded by the techno DJs and producers Regis and Female in Birmingham, England in 1993. The label was initially established to release the set of tracks that fellow Birmingham DJ and producer Surgeon had recorded in the small studio that ex-Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris had built in his downstairs toilet.
Birmingham's culture of popular music first developed in the mid-1950s. By the early 1960s the city's music scene had emerged as one of the largest and most vibrant in the country; a "seething cauldron of musical activity", with over 500 bands constantly exchanging members and performing regularly across a well-developed network of venues and promoters. By 1963 the city's music was also already becoming recognised for what would become its defining characteristic: the refusal of its musicians to conform to any single style or genre. Birmingham's tradition of combining a highly collaborative culture with an open acceptance of individualism and experimentation dates back as far back as the 18th century, and musically this has expressed itself in the wide variety of music produced within the city, often by closely related groups of musicians, from the "rampant eclecticism" of the Brum beat era, to the city's "infamously fragmented" post-punk scene, to the "astonishing range" of distinctive and radical electronic music produced in the city from the 1980s to the early 21st century.
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