Gran Torino (2008) [re Up]

The technically proficient guitar playing of John Petrucci elevated Dream Theater to the upper echelons of contemporary heavy metal. While its lineup has continuously evolved, the Long Island-based quintet has consistently delivered sharp-edged music…

In 2008, the idea of a rock band doing their proverbial thing in Egypt holds far less cache than it did 30 years prior. However, it was unquestionably a novel notion when the Grateful Dead sought to begin diplomatic talks between the U.S. Government and Egyptian officials to allow for the band to bring their "long, strange trip" to Cairo's Gizah Sound & Light Theater in mid-September of 1978. Considering the precarious political state of the world at the time, it is a minor miracle that these shows came off at all. Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978 (2008) gathers two-and-a-half hours of highlights from the September 15 and 16, 1978 performances – with the vast majority coming from the latter date. While they played on the 13th (as a sort of sound check) and the 14th as well, there is no music from either date located here…

When Nor Elle's debut album "Phantom Of Life" was released in March 1998, it was still kept a secret, that the producer of the album was Norman Feller aka Terry Lee Brown Junior - the House DJ and producer from Darmstadt (near Frankfurt / Germany) who has had a severe impact on the development and rise of the genre Tech-House. Under the pseudonym Nor Elle, he continued his atmospherical explorations with the sophomore album "Slapstick" in September 2001. He stayed more than true to the Mole subheading "Listening Pearls" and employed structures from diverse musical backgrounds: stopping by at Dub and then straight again into Downbeat. It is especially due to the focus on Downbeat what makes Nor Elle's music so completely different from that of his much better known other alter ego…