Smith’s music relies heavily on digital sampling and crosses many genres, forming a combination of “glitchy hip-hop beats, buzzing synth lines, and vintage funk and soul samples, sometimes grime.”. Pretty Lights’ sound is generated by synthesizing samples and organic beats using the Novation X-Station, monome and the Akai MPD32. Smith uses these digital controllers to program the music production software Ableton Live 8. Due to the sample-based nature of his music, Smith releases all his music for free with a recommended donation, so as to avoid having to clear samples. When performing live, Smith uses two Macbook Pros running Ableton Live 8 and two Akai MPD32s

If you like it, be sure to visit the website: http://prettylightsmusic.com

MartinSolveig – Hello (Charles Deluxe Remix) 320Kbps due popular demand ! by Charles Deluxe

End of Line.

Nero -’Welcome Reality’

Nero, an electronic music act from London, England released their debut album this year on August 15th 2011 to much success. The album is filled with great dubstep beats and catchy tracks. Spin wrote, “Alana Watson gives Nero’s robotic skronk a rare injection of humanity, and the U.K. producers are smart enough to build most of their debut full-length around her husky voice, skipping the sampled spasticity of Skrillex in favor of Daft Punk’s melodic big beat, ’80s-inspired electro-pop, and stadium-sized mash-ups of squealing guitar and windy synths.”

Amazon | iTunes

Stanton Warriors – ‘The Warriors’

Stanton Warriors, a breakbeat duo from Bristol, England released their 7th album in March of 2011. In the mix wrote, “Dom and Mark have certainly crafted a solid offering of radio-friendly ‘songs’ on The Warriors, full of catchy hooks, vocals and clever musicality. Importantly, though, they haven’t cashed in their breakbeat credentials in the process. The beats and grooves are water-tight as always, but musically they’ve pushed themselves beyond simply crafting effective DJ tools. The different elements just interlock so cleverly, with the Stanton’s clever use of samples complimenting their songwriting, rather than being the groundwork on which the tunes are based. ”

Amazon | iTunes

Camo & Krooked – ‘Cross the Line’

Camo & Krooked are a Drum & Bass duo from Vienna, Austria. They released their second album, Cross The Line, on October 3rd 2011. Kmag wrote, “Following the success of 2010’s Above and Beyond, Austrian duo Camo & Krooked brought their second album to the table this year, the monumental Cross the Line. Aptly released on Hospital, their trademark mix of serene vocal-lead liquid, punchy electro, and filthy tear-out featured the likes of TC, Jenna G, Futurebound, and Ayah Marar to devastating effect.”

Amazon | iTunes

Since I am in the mood to post trailers, here is one more for you guys. The trailer for Peter Jackson’s upcoming film The Hobbit. I am pretty excited to see it:

Prometheus began life as a prequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien, but became something different in production. It still clearly takes place within the Alien universe though. The first trailer for the movie is here:

I can’t wait to see this when it comes out on June 8, 2012.

When the crew of Erasmus comes to, they find themselves in a strange village with Japanese people taking care of them nursing them back to health. They have never seen a Japanese person before, and they soon realize that they are completely different from these people. Blackthorne and his crew are “barbarians” to the Japanese, the Japanese are disgusted with them, and the pirates are equally disgusted with the Japanese. Blackthorne is the first to learn that him and his crew have some very serious problems. At this point in time, Japan is ruled by several extremely powerful and clever Feudal Lords that are referred to as “Daimyo”. These daimyo have several other “lesser” feudal lords under them that are known as Vassals. These daimyo’s have several hundreds of thousands of samurai who are ready to spill blood and die for the honor of their daimyo. These daimyos all have hidden agendas, and almost all of them have one of the same goals, to be the Shogun.

A Shogun is the military dictator of all Japan, and basically has MORE power than the actual Emperor of Japan himself. None would dare defy the shogunate. In the book there is currently no Shogun. Japan is waiting for the heir, a little boy named Yaemon to become of age to inherit Japan. John Blackthorne does not realize to full extent of situation he is in, but what he witnesses and experiences is bad enough for him. The moment he sees a samurai, he witnesses the samurai cut a villagers head clean off with a single swing of his sword because the villager did not “greet” him as politely as he should have. Manners are very important to samurai. Blackthorne’s main objective is to get his crew, and get on his ship and get back to his homeland. Pretty soon after Blackthorne witnesses the beheading, he is introduced to a feudal lord by the name of Yabu, and with him, an enemy he is currently at war with, a Portuguese Catholic priest (Jesuit). This is when Blackthorne realizes how bad the situation is. Blackthorne ends up in the hands of one of the most powerful daimyo in all of Japan, Lord Toranaga. This daimyo has never lost a military battle in his whole life, he is a military genius, some people believe him to be invincible.

Lord Toranaga is the president of the Council of Regents, which is compiled of five of the most powerful daimyos in Japan, and at this time there is treachery to try to end Toranaga, and Lord Toranaga sees this English Pilot as a great source of information to keep his enemies at bay and to protect the heir of Japan, Yaemon. Lord Toranaga ends up befriending John Blackthorne with the help of a translator named Mariko. Mariko is a woman samurai who is also Catholic and speaks very good Latin and Portuguese. Mariko is able to speak direstly to Blackthorne and she is ordered to help John Blackthorne adjust to Japanese customs and has the duty to her Liege Lord to “civilize” him’ but Blackthorne ends up opening Marikos mind and has her see the way of his customs, and the two of them end up falling in love, which is forbidden because she is married to a samurai known as Buntaro. John Blackthorne is a very fast learner and with everyone helping him try to speak Japanese (a whole village is ordered to make him learn Japanese in 3 months, and if they fail they will all die.) he is getting very good with his Japanese. Toranaga ends up really liking this barbarian, and becomes friendly with him. Blackthorne does many honorable deeds throughout the book and Lord Toranaga respects this barbarian enough to make John Blackthorne who becomes known as “Anjian’san” which means Pilot in Japanese, into a fully fledged samurai. Blackthorne finds himself torn between his English and Japanese customs, he starts to enjoy his new Japanese life. While Blackthorne is learning Japanese and enjoying his new life, Lord Toranaga is plotting and scheming on how to put the barbarians ideas into action, specifically sea warfare which Japan knows nothing about.
James Clavell’s “Shogun” is a masterpiece, and shows how this English Pilot who is struggling to try to maintain some control of his situation, does everything in his power to survive in the Japans. Death is around every corner for John Blackthorne, between the Catholic priests, Daimyo’s, Catholic Damiyo’s, assassination attempts by ninjas, natural disasters, and a forbidden love. Blackthorne is completely out of his element and has to rely on his wits to get him out of life and death situations.

“Shogun” is packed with action, drama, suspense, politics, romance, and Japanese culture. What i learned from this book, is if your daimyo tells you to commit seppuku (ritual suicide), you do it. It is the most honorable and rewarding thing in a samurai’s life to die for their Lord. Would you be willing to die for your Liege Lord? Hundreds of thousands of samurai would respond “Hai!”

If you don’t want to read the book, you can attempt to grab yourself a copy of the motion picture. I have yet to see this, so I have no opinion of it as of yet. I hope to watch it in the near future, and I hope that it does not butcher this book.

SYNOPSIS:

This jagged, hard-boiled thriller is about an aging hit man named Jack (Paul R. Sieber) who one day grows a conscience and decides to quit his blood-drenched career. But old connections just won’t die. Jack rejects his final and most detestable assignment: Annihilate the wife and daughters of a monstrous, power-mad client (John C. Bailey). Now he’s a contract killer turned target by his former organization, and it’s boss: the mysterious Mr. Callahan.

Jack takes his quest for redemption a step further by knocking off the child-murdering, psychopathic replacement killer, Ken Bayowitz (Dan Mascarello, Lead Fight Choreographer) in a brutal, no-holds barred action sequence. Enraged by his old friend’s disobedience, Mr. Callahan hires a young former soldier to end Jack’s rebellion. Jack knows someone is coming, but he has no idea that the new recruit, Red (Jay Saunders) is a starving bloodhound sent straight from hell with nothing to lose.

Bite the Hand is a darkly intense, short drama centered on the theme of lost souls with nothing left to lose; killing for a living, and finally realizing there’s always a choice–even under the influence of the most tyrannical authority.

The film is intended for festival circulation, international distribution, and as a “pitch project” for future productions.

Donations are managed though the website IndieGoGo: http://www.indiegogo.com/Bite-the-Hand-Movie