YOUR FAVORITE MTV SHOWS ARE ON PARAMOUNT+

Dance Beat: States Sue Major Labels Over CD Prices ...

Suit targets program that subsidizes stores who agree to sell CDs above a certain price.

Twenty-eight U.S. states filed a lawsuit Tuesday (Aug. 8) against the five major label groups — Warner Bros., Sony, Universal, BMG and EMI — accusing them of fixing CD prices, Reuters reported. The suit, which seeks unspecified damages, focuses on the labels' minimum advertised pricing policy, under which labels help retailers pay for advertising if they agree not to sell CDs below a certain price — a practice that the suit contends has kept CD prices artificially high. ...

Underworld will provide daily downloadable music and video to fans via a server that can be accessed only from their upcoming DVD, Everything, Everything, due Oct. 10. "It's called 'Live,' " Underworld's Rick Smith said of the feature. "If you have the DVD in the drive of your computer, you can click on it and access different things each day. It's quite exciting for us. It makes the DVD less finite." The long-awaited live-album portion of Everything, Everything will be released Sept. 12. ...

Leftfield singer/composer/producer Jimi Tenor will perform Sept. 17 at London's renowned Barbican Centre, a progressive art, theater and music venue. Tenor will be joined by the Trinity College Orchestra at the show, which will highlight music from his latest album, Out of Nowhere, for which he used Poland's 60-piece Orchestra of the Great Theatre of Lodz on several tracks. ...

One of Germany's most widely respected techno producers, Ian Pooley, will release his second U.S. album, Since Then, Oct. 10 on V2 Records. In addition to dozens of singles and EPs, including several on the highly respected German label Force Inc., Pooley has released two albums, 1996's The Times and 1998's Meridian. ...

Renowned house and techno duo Deep Dish will release the second volume of their Yoshiesque mix series in early October, a spokesperson for the Washington, D.C., team said. The first volume, released last year, included tracks by Underworld and Lo Fidelity Allstars. In addition to Yoshiesque 2: You've Been Warned, Deep Dish — Ali "Dubfire" Shirazinia and Sharam Tayebi — are slated to record a live double album at the London club Renaissance. The double album will be released on the venue's record label. A release date has not been confirmed. Deep Dish will play Aug. 11 at Twilo in New York as part of their residency. ...

Three remixes of the title track of Madonna's upcoming album — released as promotional downloads on the Web sites sonicnet.com, MTV.com and VH1.com — were pulled last week. The sneak preview from Music (due Sept. 19) was released Wednesday and was supposed to have been available until Aug. 16, according to the MTVi Group. Officials at the MTVi Group, which runs all three sites, would not say why the tracks were removed. Madonna's representative at Warner Bros. did not return calls. A fourth remix, by the duo Deep Dish, was still available Friday (Aug. 4) at madonnamusic.com, a site owned by Madonna's Boy Toy Inc. The single will be released in stores Aug 26. ...

Techno veteran Dave Clarke will release two new download-only tracks Sept. 28 on the Web site iCrunch (www.icrunch.com). "Before I Was So Rudely Interrupted" will be "clubby," according to a message from Clarke on the site. The other track is untitled. ...

MTV "Global Groove" spinner DJ Skribble is mixing a volume in the Essential Mix series that recently launched in the United States with a double-disc set from Fatboy Slim and Paul Oakenfold. DJ Skribble's Essential Dance 2000 is due Sept. 12. (Sonicnet.com's parent company, Viacom, also owns MTV.) ...

San Diego hip-hop DJ/producer Greyboy is working in his home studio on a forthcoming album for Ubiquity Records, which the label says is due next year. The untitled project will be Greyboy's third solo LP and his first since 1996's Land of the Lost. In the early '90s Greyboy and saxophonist Karl Denson formed Greyboy Records, which spawned the popular funk outfit the Greyboy Allstars. ...

French house duo Cassius tapped veteran diva Jocelyn Brown to sing on their latest single, "I'm a Woman," which is due Oct. 3 on Astralwerks. Cassius, the team of Paris producers Philippe Zdar and Boombass (born Hubert Blanc-Francard), released their full-length U.S. debut, 1999, which included the singles "La Mouche" and "Feeling for You," last year. ...

Electronic-music icon Aphex Twin has teamed again with filmmaker Chris Cunningham, director of his videos for "Come to Daddy" (RealAudio excerpt) and "Windowlicker," for a short film that will be presented at the London's Royal Academy of Art exhibit "Apocalypse: Beauty and Horror in Contemporary Art." Aphex Twin (born Richard James) contributed 17 minutes of new music to the project, which will be showcased next to work by artists and photographers from around the globe. The exhibit opens Sept. 23 and runs through Dec. 15. ...

The second full-length disc by the Icelandic experimental ambient quartet Sigur Ros, Agætis Byrjun (loosely, "A New Beginning"), will be released Aug. 14 by the cutting- edge UK label FatCat through the progressive New York label Bubblecore. Led by singer/guitarist Jon Thor Birgisson (a.k.a. Jonsi), Sigur Ros' moody, heavily effected psychedelic sound is deeply intense and transcendently gorgeous. Sigur Ros (translated as "victory rose") released their debut, Von, in 1997, which was accompanied by Von Brigoi, an album of remixes. ...

John Digweed and remix partner Nick Muer have reworked Underworld's 1993 single "Cowgirl" (from their debut LP, Dubnobasswithmyheadman) for an upcoming single, according to the band's co-founder, Rick Smith. Future Shock also will contribute a remix. "They're fascinating," Smith said of the remixes. "They will be released very soon, within the next month." A spokesperson at V2 Records, Underworld's U.S. label, was not aware of the tracks. ...

Detroit techno icon Jeff Mills will return to the infamous New York club Limelight for a performance on Aug. 26. Mills, who co-founded the pioneering Detroit collective Underground Resistance and has released a number of seminal techno tracks on his own Axis and Purpose Maker imprints, had a celebrated residency at the Limelight in 1992. This will be his first performance at the club since then. Mills recently released a CD, The Art of Connecting, which compiles 10 of his classic singles but is available in the States only as an import. ... The third album by innovative French techno producer Laurent Garnier, Unreasonable Behaviour, will be released Oct. 17 in the United States. Featuring several jazz-influenced experimental tracks, including the recent singles "The Sound of the Big Babou" and "The Man With the Red Face," the album (released in February in Europe on Garnier's Paris label, F Communications) is a departure for the techno and acid-house veteran. ...

P.S. 1, a contemporary-art museum in Queens, N.Y., is hosting "Warm Up 2," the second in its series of Saturday-afternoon outdoor summer music events. Upcoming shows include Brooklyn Afro-beat 12-piece band Antibalas with DJ Afro of Venezuela's Los Amigos Invisibles (Aug. 12), and New York abstract hip-hoppers Anti-Pop Consortium (Aug. 19). Past performances this year have featured Swayzak and Luke Vibert. More information is available at www.ps1.org/cut/press/events.html.

— sonicnet.com staff report

Latest News