MUSIC REVIEWS & ARTICLES   

EXCLUSIVE: Interview with Tina Cousins 

Billy Idol: Devil's Playground

William Paul: Horse Dreams

Erasure: Nightbird

G-spot: Come Here, Go Away

Tuck & Patti: A Gift Of Love

Jen Foster--Everybody's Girl

Sean Wiggins: I Gotta Be Me

Heart: Jupiter's Darling

Mellowdrone: Go Get Em Tiger

Real Life Imperfection

Matthew Ryan

Sigue Sigue Sputnik: Ultra Real

Interview with Josh Jackson of the Josh Jackson Band, a Nashville based pop/rock group...

Holes Soundtrack

Lizzie McGuire The Movie Soundtrack

Jen Elliott: The Secret's Out
Kage Alan reviews the debut CD for Jen Elliott...The verdict is: GOOD

Mooney Suzuki
Brief overview & song demo...

Smile-dk: Golden Sky
Back by popular demand! Smile-dk's third album & review by Kage Alan.

Smile. DK
EXCLUSIVE interview with the VERY popular music group!

Ace of Base: Da Capo
"Da Capo" is a return to material that first caught our ears and made us long for more.

Sex Without Sex: 30 Minutes With Amber
Kage Alan spends 30 minutes with Amber in a very intimate interview.

Amber: Naked
In this day and age of music artists who release one seriously hyped album and then are never heard from again or don't get a second release in the US (our market tends to have its head shoved up its own ass more often than not), releasing a second and third album is definitely testament to the artist's talent and appeal. 

Jay Farrar's ThirdShiftGrottoSlack
A preview of the newly released 5-track EP. The EP is a follow-up to his critically acclaimed solo-effort, Sebastopol.

Propaganda: Outside World
It's hard to know what keeps the flames of Propaganda alive anymore.  Is it the fans, the rumors of a reunion album or the record company?  Whichever it is...Kage Alan gives their album an A rating!

Voyeur
Kage Alan reviews Berlin's new album, Voyeur, which is due to be released August 20th on ARTISTdirect by BMG. 

Berlin: Voyeurs & Pleasure Victims
Exclusive coverage of the Berlin concert, where Terri Nunn and Chris chat with our own correspondent, Kage Alan, about "almost anything and everything under the sun."

Exclusive Smile.DK Info
The Smile.DK management has kindly sent us some cool info about Smile.DK. This includes official information such as a fan club address and the fates of the girls. Be sure to check this out!

Smile.DK - Future Girls
...A little Pop album I picked up in Hong Kong a few years ago by an unknown group named Smile.DK...[the review] went through the roof!  Apparently the music really struck a chord with people as much as it did me.

Ian Van Dahl-Ace
Dance music, especially European dance music, has a bad reputation for all sounding the same.  Well, some of it does.  Yadda yadda yadda...  A mix artist gets a hit and everybody jumps on the bandwagon trying to duplicate it, much like the boy band craze in North America. 

a-ha: Lifelines
The biggest problem with a group that starts their career off with a couple of major pop hits, in this case "Take On Me" and "The Sun Always Shines On TV", is that we hate when they don't follow up in the same style.  How many of Britney's followers would remain loyal if she suddenly did a Blues album?  

Secret Garden: Once In A Red Moon
Don't you just hate it when a music reviewer feels the need to share part of his/her life with you when discussing an album?  I don't.  Listening to music is a part of us all and it can serve as a reminder of special moments in our own personal history that we rarely get a chance to share with anyone else. 

Darren Hayes -- Spin
I wasn't particularly impressed with the way the Savage Garden split was publicized at all.  Darren apparently announced it at a press conference and Darryl knew nothing about it.  Yeah, real nice (if it indeed went down like that).  Darren loves the spotlight and Darryl doesn't, so Darren decided he had what it took to take the show on the road by himself. 

Celine Dion: A New Day Has Come
I know, I know.  You probably think I'm arbitrarily giving Celine Dion's new release an "A" because I'm one of those fans obsessed with anything this Diva puts out.  Okay, that is so not the case here. . .I was extremely nervous about listening to "A New Day Has Come" because I didn't want to be disappointed.  Again, so not the case here.

Smile.DK - Smile
There’s something about having two Danish women record a Pop album in English and release it in Japan and Hong Kong that makes me laugh. 

Go-Go's: Live in Central Park (DVD)
Wow! Talk about a blast from the past. I had no idea what the Go-Go's new album was going to sound like or if would even be any good. It had been so long since we'd heard new material from a group that only seemed to be focusing on their solo careers and doing the occasional reunion tour that who knew what to expect?

Gigi D'Agostino: L'amour Toujours
I'm starting to think that I ought to just move to Europe because of how much Europop and Eurodance music I listen to.  Maybe we ought to just lure some of their music artists over here like we do their actors and then ship them all of our Britney Spears and Britney clones.  Let them choke on our sickeningly sweet image-only music for a while.  Hmm, was I just off on a tangent?

Dead or Alive: Unbreakable (The Fragile Remixes)
I was totally excited last year while shopping in Japan when I found a new Dead Or Alive CD called "Fragile." It turned out that it was partially new material and partially old material redone, but at least there was new material.  DOA seem to be doing that an awful lot lately.  Their previous outing, "Nukleopatra," had an older track redone as well and they even remade an entire album ("Nude") before that.

Roxette: All Videos Ever Made And More
Roxette holds a very special place in my heart.  I was on a sailboat about 10 years ago playing a cassette of their first album, which had only been released in Sweden at the time, when a young man asked me where I'd gotten it from.   After explaining that it was an import, he asked me if he could borrow it.  I told him "no," but we exchanged phone numbers and I did let him come over and record it.  If not for that incident, I would probably have never started dating him three years later.

Vangelis - Mythodea: Music for the NASA Mission: 2001 Mars Odyssey
The majority of people who don't listen to New Age music with any regularity  tend to recognize the name Vangelis from either "Chariots Of Fire," the  "Blade Runner Soundtrack" or Carl Sagan's "Cosmos." I knew all of these  particular pieces as well, but it wasn't until I wrote my first novel to the music of "1492" that I really started to seek out the artist's other albums and begin to explore his work. It's been an inspiring journey and I've looked forward to each new album as well as continuing to discover the older ones.  Finding "Mythodea" took me by surprise because as often as I look to  see if there is a new album, I hadn't seen this until a few days ago and it was released late last year...

Steps: Gold (Greatest Hits) DVD
I came across an album in the import bin a few years back by Steps called "Step One," their first.  Despite having ended up with some very crappy CDs because I liked the look of the cover (one would think I'd learn), I pulled out the checkbook and made the purchase.  Thankfully, it turned out be an amazing breath of fresh air in the Pop vein and did extremely well in Britain and the rest of the world.   Their sophomore album, "Steptacular," did even better and the US record division FINALLY decided to give them a shot. Instead of releasing one or both albums in their entirety, they released "Step One" and featured the most popular songs from the first two albums, which means that North American buyers are only getting 11 out of 26 tracks...

Sarah Brightman - Eden (Live in Concert) DVD 
I remember taking a trip to Toronto quite a few years back and trying to impress the man I'd already been dating for a year or so by pretending to know something I really didn't. We were in one of the music stores when he became rather animated upon seeing one of the new releases. "Look! A new Sarah Brightman." "Oh," I replied, "I LOVE Sarah Brightman!" This immediately set off an alarm in his head. It must have been that first year we spent together. "Do you even know who Sarah Brightman is?" "Sure," I lied, "she sings that one song." Yeah, I was really going to get away with that one...

Enigma: Remember the Future (DVD)
There's good news and bad news about Enigma's collection of videos here. The bad news is that it's not as impressive as the Enya compilation, but the good news is that it's available domestically and for a bit less than Enya. That's the only comparison I'll make between the two discs because it really isn't fair to put them side-by-side.

Enya: The Video Collection (DVD)
I don't think there's anybody left in the world who doesn't know a song by Enya or who hasn't at least heard her name (which should always be said with reverence).  While there's always been an audience for New Age music, it's been Enya who's brought over a whole new generation of listeners.  With 5 full albums, one "Greatest Hits," several soundtrack contributions including the recent "The Lord Of The Rings," four Grammy award nominations and two wins under her belt, it's been high time for either a tour or the next best thing; a DVD compilation.

Cher - Living Proof
When I heard the first single, "The Music's No Good Without You", I thought  we were in deep sushi. A few people have likened the new album as a  duplicate of the last, but if the first single was supposed to be proof of that, it didn't follow. The song is probably my least favorite of the 12 tracks on "Living Proof".  Why it was released as a single is beyond me.   I  guess I'm grateful that "The Music's No Good Without You" is the first track on the album because we only had one direction to go after it; up. Fortunately, once track two, "Living Again," strikes up it's synth chord and dance beat, the album takes off! 

Red Flag: An Overview
There are so many horror stories floating around the music industry these days about how artists are treated and steered in their careers. Heck, some groups are formed based on looks alone and the talent comes later. The almighty single, a hip video and an album full of as many commercial hits as possible has become the goal of the major record companies for the sake of acquiring as much money as possible. It's not a pleasant game by any means, but a number of new and established artists play it because it's the only thing they can do if they want to be heard. Well, not the only thing.

Cyndi Lauper's Shine
I buy very few CDs these days without first hearing most of the tracks on them.  Despite the music industry's belief that downloading MP3s from Napster led to lost revenue, I always went ahead and bought the CD if I liked enough of what I heard.  There are a few exceptions, though, when I'll buy an album based on past listening experience.  Cyndi Lauper is someone I trust enough to blindly shell money out for and despite my disappointment in the dreadfully dull "A Night To Remember" and a somewhat lackluster "A Hat Full Of Stars", "Sisters of Avalon" was a step back in the right direction.

Roland Orzabal's Tomcats Screaming Outside
Being a quintessential 80's child, I seem prone to follow artists I've been listening to since that time.  The 80's were...well, they were the 80's. Everybody was in a band during that time or so Belinda Carlisle stated in her Lifetime TV Intimate Portrait.  You know you're starting to get a bit older when people like Belinda are as intimate as they can get these days.  In any case, it's a rare thing to see artists from that decade still putting out new material, especially anyone from Tears For Fears.