product: Ragdoll - Back To Zero

release date: 14.04.2016

label: Bad Reputation

format: CD

PR: D, AT

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Hard rock power trio Ragdoll have blazed a trail for independent Aussie rock music since releasing their debut EP in 2011. Built around the classic trio format and lead by the incredible vocals of singer/bassist Ryan Rafferty, Ragdoll have built a solid fan base at home and abroad by compiling an impressive tally of releases backed by international touring. Drummer Cam Barrett and guitarist Leon Todd round out the trio with a sound that owes as much to the arena rock of the 70's and 80's as it does the grungey sounds of the post 90's musical landscape.

Ragdoll came to life after Leon Todd (guitar) and Cam Barrett (Drums) were introduced by a mutual friend to Ryan Rafferty (bass and vocals), a regular on the Perth pub covers scene.

"After a few years trying to put our dream band together, hearing Ryan sing for the first time was a revelation. There was no way we couldn't be in a band together". - Cam Barrett

Building their sound around powerful vocal hooks and tight, riff driven arrangements, Ragdoll quickly entered the studio to record their first EP, "Ragdoll Rock". Released in September 2011, the EP quickly sold out of it's first pressing and garnered the band a solid home town following and positive reviews. Ragdoll immediately began working on a follow up EP, "Here Today", an altogether more modern and hard hitting release.

"We really hit our stride with Here Today, and in many ways I feel we created a clearly defined and unique Ragdoll sound" - Ryan Rafferty

Here Today" garnered rave reviews and international attention, culminating in Ragdoll being invited to play Rocklahoma festival in the USA alongside Rob Zombie, Megadeth and Chickenfoot. Merely 9 months after their first release, Ragdoll were living every young band's dream and touring the heartland of the USA. Furthermore, their performance at Rocklahoma earned them an invitation back for the following year.

Another EP "All I Want Is Everything" followed in 2013, backed by a 30 show tour of the USA and another 40 shows in Western Australia to promote the EP. "All I Want" also saw the release of the first official Ragdoll music video, for the title track. 

"Touring heavily really pushed us to hone our craft and grow as a band. Being a self funded, independent band from the world's most isolated capital city means we have had to grab any and every opportunity we get with both hands." - Leon Todd

Demand for a full length album lead to the release of "Ragdoll Rewound" in 2014, a compilation of the band's first two EP's remixed and remastered by long time collaborator Troy Nababan. "Ragdoll Rewound" was backed by two successful US tours, including a headlining slot at The Whisky A Go Go in LA, and saw an international release through Retrospect Records (USA) and Lion's Pride Music (EU). Furthermore Ragdoll were nominated for a prestigious WAMI award for the song "Here Today".

After a much needed break from touring at the start of 2015, Ragdoll began writing their first fully fledged album. The first single and video "Rewind Your Mind" was made available in May 2015 and ushered in an expansion to the band's sound, in an attempt to capture more of the energy and power of their live show. 

Recorded over 4 months at Crank Recording in WA and produced by Troy Nababan, Ragdoll's debut album "Back to Zero" is tour de force, bringing together influences from over 40 years of rock music into sharp focus. Instead of the sex, drugs and rock'n'roll that is so typical of the genre, "Back to Zero" explores lyrical and emotional themes ranging from technological alienation (Rewind Your Mind), social media addiction (The World You Gave Us), domestic abuse (Letting Go) and the existential (Shine) without sacrificing the raw power of a Ragdoll live show. "Back to Zero" is best described as "Hair Grunge"; hooks reminiscent of the finest 70's and 80's rock with the aggression of the early 90's. 

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of "Back to Zero" is the way in which it was created. With no label support or financial backing, Ragdoll instead hit the road throughout 2015 playing over 70 shows throughout Australia and the USA in order to fund the recording. In being able to road test new material and have control over the creative process, the result is a consistent and honest expression of the Ragdoll sound. 

product: PEO - Welcome To The Party

label: AOR Heaven

release date: 29.04.2016

format: CD

PR territory: Europe

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Peo Pettersson has been active in the music recording business since his teens and involved in over 250 recordings to this date. It would be just logic then that a solo album now would offer a lot of influences and a great variety of styles, but on “Welcome To The Party” we’ll once again get pure AOR/Melodic Rock – also due to the new collaboration with song-writer and guitarist Roger Ljunggren (T’Bell; Niva , Grand Illusion a.o).

The history of PEO started with the album  “Look what I’ve started” back in 1995. After being in bands like Leviticus and Axia this was Peo Pettersson’s first solo effort where he teamed up with members from Masquerade , Niva and some other great musicians. This album in the meantime has become to be a sought after  AOR /Melodic Rock classic release. Many years and many albums later, Peo now has hooked up with Roger Ljunggren  to make an album filled with classic melodic rock inspired by the heroes of the past.

Peo took care of the vocal, bass and keyboard parts on this album, all guitars were played by Roger Ljunggren and drums by Tony Morra. The album was produced, mixed and mastered by Peo Pettersson at  POP Production Studios between October to December 2015.

product: Billy Satellite - II

label: AOR Heaven

release date: 29.04.2016

format: CD

PR territory: Europe

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Billy Satellite frontman Monty Byrom always knew that what he wanted most in life was to be a rock star. Having (initially at least) turned his back on the burgeoning country music scene in his home town of Bakersfield, to be more like his idols Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Deep Purple, he was playing in a Bay Area group called The Heaters when he cheekily asked local whiz kid guitarist Danny Chauncey, then a member of RSO Records signed Mistress, to produce a demo tape. Chauncey duly did so. The two remained in touch. After Byrom had formed Billy Satellite as a trio in the early 80s, he again approached Chauncey. This time he wanted the guitarist in his band.

Billy Satellite had originally formed some months before Chauncey’s eventual arrival, with bassist Ira Walker and drummer Tom ‘Fee’ Falletti joining vocalist/guitarist Byrom in this exciting new adventure. Falletti and Walker, like Monty, had come of age playing the Bay Area music scene. Chauncey’s musical career had taken off straight after leaving high school, when he had joined the aforementioned Mistress. However, as a disciple of Bad Company guitarist Mick Ralphs, the prospect of being in a harder rock band, which Monty promised with Billy Satellite, was too good an opportunity for Danny to miss.

Billy Satellite’s original demos were cut with Phil Kaffel manning the production desk. Kaffel has gone on to carve out a solid career in record production as a producer, engineer or mixer on albums from such diverse names as The Cult, Freak Of Nature, Heart, Eddie Money, Cher and No Doubt. Signed to Capitol Records in 1983 by the label’s legendary A&R man John Carter Billy Satellite’s debut album was produced by Don Gehman and recorded at Rumbo Recorders in Los Angeles. 

Although the debut Billy Satellite album is considered a jewel of the AOR genre, it’s actually more of a straight ahead rock album than it has ever been given credit for. It did reasonably well at retail once released in mid 1984 too, hitting #139 in September that year, with the two single releases ‘Satisfy Me’ and ‘I Wanna Go Back’ both reaching decent Billboard chart positions (#64 and #78  respectively). Billy Satellite found themselves out on the road with Night Ranger (managed by Marty Cohn’s brother Bruce Cohn) on the ‘Midnight Madness’ tour as the opening act, before heading out on a further stint of road work as support to Jefferson Starship.

When it came time to begin preparations for Billy Satellite’s second album, Monty and his colleagues were boosted by the news that Keith Olsen had been signed up to produce the record starting in Summer 1985 at Good Night L.A. studios. Once work had commenced things did sometimes get a little heated, as Monty and Danny fought with Olsen over some changes the producer wanted to make, specifically declaring that he wanted to bring in session bassist Randy Jackson to play Ira Walker’s bass parts. In the end, only a keyboard player (Bill Cuomo) was brought in, but had Monty expected such a confrontation before working with Keith, or did it come as a bit of a shock? Monty recalls that the album took around four to six weeks to complete, but the band were soon on the receiving end of a bombshell that would utterly derail their progress.

Having fallen out with key executives at Capitol, Carter had secured a similar post at A&M Records. He was replaced at Capitol by Jimmy Iovine. As a result, the second Billy Satellite album was quietly shelved and the band was dropped. There was never any working title for the second album and, to Monty’s knowledge, none of the songs were utilised anywhere else.“I didn’t listen to the second album for about five years,” Monty adds. “But when I finally listened to it I kicked myself that it was never really finished. There are some really great songs on there! And we’d actually recorded around two other albums worth of material in our time. We were very prolific.”

Featuring a very interesting array of tunes, with a noticeably heavier direction in places than the first album that would’ve garnered rave reviews had it actually been released in 1985 or 86, Monty is really pleased that this record is finally, after twenty years, seeing official release. Of course, after Billy Satellite split Monty put together New Frontier with keyboardist David Neuhauser, drummer Marc Nelson and ex-Gamma bassist Glenn Letsch, releasing an album in 1987 through Polydor’s MIKA Records imprint. Monty then gravitated more towards production and song writing work with Eddie Money (who had scored a chart hit in 1986 with a cover of Billy Satellite’s ‘I Wanna Go Back’) and Grateful Dead’s Brent Mydlands, in addition to writing credits on records by David Lee Roth, the Stray Cats and Rita Coolidge.

However, having eschewed country music in his teens for the more powerful draw of hard rock, Monty found himself changing direction in the mid 90s by forming the country blues outfit Big House (not to be confused with the earlier Canadian hard rock group of the same name) with his former New Frontier cohort David Neuhauser, securing a deal with MCA and releasing three albums between 1997 and 2000. Byrom was then invited to join Bakersfield’s country legends The Buckaroos following the sad passing of band leader Buck Owens, a band with whom he is still very much associated with. A fourth Big House album, ‘Never Ending Train’, was released in 2008, which is strangely the rarest of the four released titles.

On January 31^st 2010 Billy Satellite reunited at ‘Slims’ in San Francisco.

More recently though, with the release of his first solo album in 2015 under the handle of Monty Byrom and the Road Pilots, Monty has further stepped back into the world of rock. The welcome release of the second Billy Satellite album through AOR Heaven gives us an insight as to what might have been had he and his talented cohorts been able to continue Billy Satellite’s orbit. The CD was remasterd by Chris Lyne (ex Soul Doctor, Mother Road). (Dave Reynolds, February 2016)

product: Rainbow - Monsters Of Rock (Live At Donington 1980)

label: Eagle Vision

release date: 22.04.2016

format: CD+DVD

PR territory: Germany, Austria (print & only only)

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Am Samstag, den 16. August 1980 enterten Rainbow die Bühne als Headliner des ersten großen Festivals in Castle Donington. Es war sowohl der Höhepunkt der Tour zu ihrem überaus erfolgreichen 1979er Album „Down To Earth” als auch die letzte Show der legendären Besetzung mit Ritchie Blackmore (Gitarre), Don Airey (Keyboards), Graham Bonnet (Gesang), Roger Glover (Bass) und Cozy Powell (Schlagzeug). Die Setliste umfasste einige Songs des neuen Albums plus frühe Klassiker der Band wie ´Stargazer`, ´Long Live Rock´n`Roll` oder ´Catch The Rainbow`. Zudem gab es virtuose Solospots für Blackmore, Airey und Powell, die unmissverständlich das außergewöhnlich große musikalische Potential dieser Band demonstrierten. Am Ende der furiosen Show zerstörte Ritchie Blackmore seine Gitarre und rammte sie in seinen Verstärker, der sofort in Flammen aufging, woraufhin ein sagenhaftes Feuerwerk das in jeder Hinsicht explosive Konzert beendete.  

product: Danger Zone - Closer To Heaven

release date: 15.04.2016

label: Pride & Joy Music

format: CD & download

PR territory: world

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When guitarist Roberto Priori started the Italian band DANGER ZONE in the early 80s a long hard road lay ahead of them. In 1984 they released the LP “Victim Of Time”.

In the spring of 1988 DANGER ZONE eventually opened up for Heavy Metal legends Saxon in Verona, Italy and following the performance promoter and manager Francesco Sanavio offered DANGER ZONE a production deal which included the plan to break into the US market. Almost a year later in May 1989 the new album "Line Of Fire" began to take shape when executive producer Stephan Galfas (Meat Loaf, Savatage, Stryper, John Waite and Saxon) got involved and his colleagues Jody Gray and Mark Cobrin, both successful with the Japanese Hard Rock outfits Loudness and EZO, took over the production duties.

Due to adverse circumstances the finished album got shelved at first, but as the years went by "Line Of Fire" reached an underground cult status when Rock magazines, fanzines and dedicated fans of the band continuously demanded its release. Finally in 2011 the "Line Of Fire" CD saw the light of day through a German label. The band already got back together in 2010.

In the year 2012, the guys released their follow-up album “Undying” and played several gigs in Italy.

To promote this release, the group played several shows in Italy and some Summer Festivals.In March 2014 they released a single and a video of the E.Z.O.'s song "Fire Fire", a tribute to a legendary Japanese band of the 80's, now featuring new bass player Matteo Minghetti. While keeping playing live, the Danger Zone started to work on the compositions for a new album.  The sound now turned out to be more melodic than before so they decided to add Pier Mazzini (Perfect View) and Whitesnake's Michele Luppi on keyboards.

In Summer of 2015 the Italians started the recordings with Roberto Priori and Jody Gray producing at the PriStudio in Bologna; as before the engineering duties were handled by Roberto himself.

The whole album has a very positive energy and attitude. Hard Rock and AOR were mixed together and as a result, the band feels even better presented than it was never before.

That’s why they decided to call the album "Closer To Heaven", it marks a step towards their own identity and sound.

The band is currently rehearsing with the added guitar player Danilo Faggiolino to get ready to bring this new chapter of the band on the road. Stay tuned!

product: Alberto Rigoni - BASSORAMA

release date: 15.04.2016

label: Pride & Joy Music

format: CD digi-pack & download

PR territory: world

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Alberto Rigoni is an Italian bass player and composer, internationally known for his career as a solo artist and as a member of the progressive rock band TwinSpirits, Lady & THE BASS and co-producer of the Vivaldi Metal Project.

His solo albums (Something Different, Rebirth, Three Wise Monkeys and Overloaded, worldwide released between 2008 and 2014), between progressive rock metal and fusion, also feature legendary musicians such as Kevin Moore (ex Dream Theater), Gavin Harrison (Porcupine Tree, King Crimson), Göran Edman (ex Yngwie Malmsteen), Michael Manring and many others.

Alberto has been featured on the cover of magazine such as Bass Magazine Japan, Bass Musician Magazine (Japan), Bajos Y Bajistas (Spain) and Basistas (Poland). Moreover, On March 2015 the prestigious Bass Guitar Magazine (UK) released Alberto’s CD anthology called “Into THE BASS”.

Alberto has also recorded for several international artists such as Italian pop singer Alexia and is now playing bass with Canadian rock singer and songwriter Kim Bingham (Nelly Furtado), The Italians and the Crystal Music Project, sharing stages with artists such as Alan Parsons, Jørn Lande, Paul Gilbert and others.

Rigoni is now releasing his fifth solo album BASSORAMA which will also feature Doug Wimbish, Divinity ROXX, Stu Hamm, Nik West, Steve Lawson, Anna Sentina, Lars Lehmann and Remco Hendrix.