Rasputina will soon be doing their first-ever show in the UK, performing in London at Queen Elizabeth Hall on January 29th. The band is looking to possibly do another show while in the country; interested clubs or venues should email their manager John Hall at John<@>virtuallabel.biz. “Oh Perilous World,” the latest Rasputina CD, comes out in the UK on January 21st.

Coming out on October 16, 2007, ” Oblivion With Bells ” marks the first regular Underworld CD release since 2002’s “A Hundred Days Off.” But it isn’t that the band went on a five year hiatus, as they have been extremely busy with internet and film projects. We were able to get member Karl Hyde on the phone for a short interview, where he talked about the online releases, film scoring, and more.
• Read the interview now!

Fusing together various styles of dance music, Purity manages to create a slick, high-energy electronic sound that also has the raw intensity of rock music. Their sound represents what pop music SHOULD be like: ultra-catchy, yet with a strong edge to it. The group originally signed to Tommy Boy Records in 1997 and opened for Depeche Mode on their 1998 European tour. After being away from the project for many years, Jill Stark and Florence Briggs are BACK with new Purity music. They have a single out, “Liberation (so alive)/Driving Me Insane,” as well as an album’s worth of material written. In an email interview, Jill told us more about the return of Purity.

• Click here to read the interview

Back in 1994, Chaos Control interviewed former Cure member Laurence “Lol” Tolhurst about his latest project, Levinhurst. The group, which features Lol’s wife Cindy Levinson on vocals, had just released their debut album, “Perfect Life.” It was a superb collection of slightly dark, atmospheric electronic pop music and a logical extension to Lol’s work with The Cure. Levinhurst recently released their sophomore album, “Home By The Sea.”

• Click here to read our interview with Levinhurst
• Click here to visit the Levinhurst website

From the official UNDERWORLD website:

Underworlds’ Rick Smith, Karl Hyde, Darren Price and crew were caught up in trouble reportedly caused by “anarchists” at the Ejekt Festival in Athens on Saturday night (16/06/07). Underworld were scheduled to close the festival that also included Madness and The Beastie Boys. It is reported that a group of around 30 masked individuals, armed with CS-gas, iron bars and baseball bats stormed the stadium at around 11.20pm as The Beastie Boys were performing. As cars were burned and property damaged, the stadium was evacuated. Underworlds’ Rick Smith was one of the injured. He was hospitalised for a time in Athens, but has now returned to the UK for further treatment. Several other people including security guards were seriously hurt.

Rasputina will be releasing a new album, “Oh Perilous World,” on June 26, 2007. I’ve heard some of the material performed live, and it’s AMAZING, so this is looking to be a great release! It also has an interesting concept behind it:

Deciding that current world events were more bizarre than anything from the distant past, Rasputina foundress Melora Creager culled words, phrases and whole stories from the Internet that especially intrigued her to create the lyrical inspiration for this album.

“Oh Perilous World” will be available in CD or LP format, and pre-orders are currently being taken over the official Rasputina website.

• Be sure to check out our many interviews with Rasputina!

Real Life (“Send Me An Angel”) have just set up an online mp3 store, where the bulk of their back catalog can be purchased at $.99 track. On the official Real Life site (reallifemusic.net) frontman David Sterry wrote:

Call me old fashioned, but it seems like yesterday when my German record company handed me my first CD (Send Me an Angel). I thought no one would give up vinyl for this new format, but it did make a good frisbee. I was wrong!! Then came the Internet that put us in direct touch with people who wanted more music from us. These days we can record on our computers without spending $3000 a day in a studio.

Now below you see our moveable Jukebox/Music Shop. We’ve uploaded Heartland, Flame. Lifetime, Happy/Happier, Imperfection, Re mixes and Demo’s. there are over 70 tracks. You can listen to all of it (suggest with a bottle of Champagne in a hot bath) and if you like it you can buy most of it if you want (some things we don’t have rights to). And if you buy stuff, something very very strange happens……. We actually get paid.

We will also upload all our videos when we can find them..

If you want you can copy this to your Myspace site or any webpage by clicking the share button and pasting the code. Lots of people put years of their lives ito the following songs. Hope you find something you like…

• Click here to sample and purchase tracks from Real Life!

The The have released a new song, “Mrs Mac,” exclusively as a download purchase from their website. It’s their second release in this format, the first being a re-issue of the instrumental “GunSluts“ (a limited edition single for the last world tour.) Sonically, the vocal-driven “Mrs Mac” is pretty bright sounding by The The standards, but the subject matter itself is on the dark side. On the official The The website, Matt Johnson explained how the song is based on an old Victorian school he attended as a child.

“…Mrs Mac was a ferocious dinner lady/enforcer who worked there. Actually I’m not really quite sure what she did except terrify the living daylights out of children. When you’re 5 or 6 years old it’s hard to work out why some adults are so spiteful to you. Maybe she thought she was somehow doing the right thing by forcing us to eat those awful school meals and shouting at us? Maybe she was just a deranged sadist? I’ll never know.

Although life could be quite miserable there at times the atmosphere of that old school building has long lingered within me and may explain my fondness for Victorian glazed brickwork, polished wooden floors, huge windows, high ceilinged rooms and yes, even the smell of carbolic soap!”

For more info, and the purchase the single “Mrs Mac” visit the official The The website at thethe.com.

Note: Songs sold on thethe.com have no DRM (Digital Rights Management) so they can be played on any mp3-capable device.