Norwegian black metal legends EMPEROR will release "Live Inferno", a special live series features various releases recorded/filmed during the band's sold-out 2005-2007 reunion performances, on April 16 (in Europe) via Candlelight Records. Several formats will be available, including a two-CD/slipcase with a 16-page booklet, a limited-edition box featuring two CDs and DVD with an enhanced 24-page booklet, a single DVD, and two limited-edition double-vinyl gatefold sets. The audio portion of the "Live Inferno" series features exclusive recordings from the band's headlining performances at Norway's Inferno festival and Germany's Wacken Open Air festival. Each recording will be pressed as individual double-vinyl sets; the first pressing limited to 1,000 copies on black vinyl with any additional pressings in varied colors selected by the band. A special gold-vinyl seven-inch limited to 2,000 copies titled "Thus Spake the Nightspirit" (featuring a live rendition of the band's famed song from the album "Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk" with a live recording of "Inno A Satana" from the band's popular "In the Nightside Eclipse" album on the b-side) will be pressed and released via the label's official webstore beginning February 16. The video portion, titled "Live at Wacken Open Air 2006 - A Night Of Emperial Wrath", has a running time of 70 minutes and includes footage professionally filmed at the Wacken Open Air festival with additional on-stage and exclusive backstage footage filmed and compiled by the band.
"It looks like these releases will be the final nail in the coffin for EMPEROR," says guitarist Samoth. "They are a testimony of the live reunion that took EMPEROR to even new heights; unique events like Wacken where EMPEROR headlined in front of 60,000 people. We had a great run of shows and feel lucky that we were able to come back even bigger and perform songs from our complete catalogue for a lot of dedicated fans old and new. There will be several cool formats and limited editions coming that should be a nice treat for the fans and a worthy representation of the EMPEROR legacy. EMPEROR is dead, long live the EMPEROR!"
SOURCE: http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com
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Jeffrey Wright on Cadillac Records
By Fred Topel | Images property of TriStar
In the latest musical biography, Cadillac Records, Jeffrey Wright plays Muddy Waters, the first blues artist discovered by Leonard Chess for his Chess Records label. To play the famous bluesman, Wright had plenty of research materials.
"There's a couple biographies, several documentaries based on those biographies but mainly, there's this library of music," Wright said. "For me, the intriguing way into the character was through the music. There is a specific cultural and historical place that the music comes from and it's also specific to personality. Not a lot of affectation. Folks aren't out there in the middle of the fields in Mississippi under that midday sun putting on airs. It's an expression of their experience and it's coming through relative to community but as I said, also relative to the personality so there really is a lot of information encoded in the music."
You don't need video or film footage when the man himself put his own voice down on vinyl. "He's a musician so just finding the music and finding his voice and listening and not only the way he expresses himself musically through the music, but also through his language and the way he speaks because the music as well, one of the things I really adore about the blues is it's a celebration of the language of the black American south, a language that I grew up with. My grandparents were from southern Virginia and North Carolina so I've always had a deep, deep love for the language and the sounds and the music as expressed through that."
Compared to other historical characters Wright has played, Waters actually offered a tad more flexibility. "I've done a fair amount of nonfictional characters, biographical characters. I think it's because I lack imagination. I'm too literal or something. They each have their individual challenges. There is a standard that you're trying to achieve obviously with a character that's known. There are different pressures. For example, with Basquiat, Basquiat was known in a much smaller circle than he is known now. The Powell piece in W recently was a different impetus. That was an opportunity to use the work to add my two cents' worth to the political discourse at the time. It was an opportunity to be relevant to these extraordinary days that we're just beginning. Each role, whether it's fictional or biographical has its own challenges, its own reasons for doing."
Cadillac Records is out in theaters now.
Cadillac Records chronicles the rise of Chess Records and its recording artists. In this tale of sex, violence, race and rock and roll in Chicago of the 1950s and 60s, the film follows the exciting but turbulent lives of some of America's greatest musical legends.
The story of how the blues became popular and gave birth to rock and roll begins at a dingy bar on the rough South Side of Chicago in 1947, where an ambitious young Polish émigré, bar owner Leonard Chess (Academy Award-winner Adrien Brody), hires a talented but undisciplined blues combo that includes quiet and thoughtful guitar prodigy Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright) and impulsive and colorful harmonica player Little Walter (Columbus Short). Fascinated by the sound of the music – and eager to cash in on the record burgeoning record business – Chess arranges a recording session for Waters. Waters' early recordings start moving up the R+B charts and receiving heavy play.
Chess treats his musicians like family – he buys them a Cadillac when they record their first hit record – although the line between business and personal sometimes causes conflict with his increasingly talented and successful stable of artists. After backing up Muddy on his early recordings, Little Walter becomes a star in his own right, but his quick temper and loud manner often run him afoul of friends and the law. He also finds that the only woman he can talk to is Muddy's girl, Geneva (Gabrielle Union), who struggles to remain loyal despite Muddy's poorly concealed affairs. Big Willie Dixon (Cedric the Entertainer), a songwriter and bandleader, also is a key member of the Chess Records family, as is Howlin' Wolf (Eamonn Walker), an intense and proud blues singer who develops a musical rivalry with Muddy.
But it's not until 1955 when a Chess artist finally "crosses over" into the realm of mainstream ("white") America – a skinny guy from St. Louis named Chuck Berry (Mos Def), whose dynamic "duck walk" and catchy, country-tinged tunes mark the birth of rock-and-roll. When Berry is arrested and jailed at the height of his career, Chess finds another talented performer to cross over – singer Etta James (Beyoncé Knowles), an emotionally scarred young woman whose vulnerability tempts Chess' loyalty and concern in unexpected ways.
As rock-and-roll grows more popular, the Chess artists find themselves revered by a new generation of musicians, but they have also each earned and lost a small fortune on booze, women and the high life, and their addictions begin to take their toll. Even as tragedy befalls, their music and their spirit remain strong: as the sixties wind down and Leonard Chess gets out of the record business, the blues live on.
http://www.cadillacrecordsmovie.com/
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