Coldplay Tops Hot 100

Coldplay got some heavy play on the charts.

Thanks mostly to massive digital sales, the easy-rocking Brit band�landed its first�No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 as "Viva...

Ash make their first ever Download appearance

Ash made their Donington debut at Download Festival today (June 14).

Despite having over a decade's worth of festival experience under their belts, the Downpatrick trio have never actually appeared at the Donington rock fest in any of its guises.

The band took the Tuborg Stage at 19.30 (BST), and played songs spanning their career, from 'Kung Fu' to last year's 'You Can�t Have It All'.

Acknowledging their place at the poppier end of the Download spectrum, Tim Wheeler said to the crowd: "Thank for coming over to check us out� under a 'guilty pleasure'."

Earlier on today, Tim Wheeler told NME.COM about popping his Download cherry: "This is our first time in Download actually. We supported Stereophonics here a while ago. But we grew up listening to (radio show) The Friday Rock Scene with Tommy Vance, and he always seemed to be broadcasting from Monsters Of Rock.

"We thought it'd be quite nice for us. And people like Supergrass and Feeder have played it, and even Lethal Bizzle. It could be good! I think metallers are the nicest people you�ll meet in music. They're all big geeks for the most part!"

Although they have new material under development, Ash kept their show a strictly greatest hits affair, before encoring with 'Twilight Of The Innocents', the epic last song and title track from their most recent album.

Wheeler said: "It should be fun, when you've only got 50 minutes and you've got five albums, it's pretty easy to fill a set. There's a couple of songs from each album. I guess if we played all our singles it�d be an hour and a half now!"

Ash played:

'Orpheus'
'Burn Baby, Burn'
'You Can't Have It All'
'A Life Less Ordinary'
'Shining Light'
'Clones'
'Kung Fu'
'Renegade Cavalcade'
'Blacklisted'
'Girl From Mars'
'Twilight Of The Innocents'

Keep up with this weekend's (June 13-15) festival action as it happens on NME.COM. For news, pictures and blogs keep checking the NME.COM's Isle Of Wight Festival page and NME.COM's Download Festival page for live coverage from both sites.




Jun 15, 2008 at Carling Bar Academy, Birmingham -
Jun 17, 2008 at Barfly, Glasgow -
Jun 24, 2008 at Victoria Park, London -
More Ash tickets

Bassnectar

   
Artist: Bassnectar

   Genre(s): 
Electronic
   Dance
   

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Discography:


   
 Underground Communication

   Year: 2007   
Tracks: 16


   
 Snakecharmer

   Year: 2006   
Tracks: 1


   
 Mesmerizing the Ultra (2 of 2)

   Year: 2005   
Tracks: 17


   
 Mesmerizing the Ultra (1 of 2)

   Year: 2005   
Tracks: 18

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It's hard to avoid Bassnectar's have self-definition, which appears somewhere in all the press materials for the San Francisco-based turnout: "A free form project that merges music, art, modern media, social participation, and community values; dedicated to a always evolving ethos of collaborative creation, ego reinvention, and boundary-pushing experimentation." Or, to put it more than succinctly, Bassnectar is a breakbeat-oriented electronic saltation music act with a fine line in public relations and a sponsorship deal with Red Bull. On record, Bassnectar is DJ, producer, and remixer Lorin Ashton (aka Lorin Bassnectar) with occasional guest performers, but live Bassnectar shows ar freewheeling affairs with close to twenty-four citizenry onstage, from instrumentalists, DJs, and rappers to graffiti and video artists. Ashton began working as a DJ and remixer under the Bassnectar name in the tardy '90s, development the live feel under heavy influence from the multimedia Burning Man Festival that takes place each summer in the California desert. Bassnectar debuted on vinyl with the 2002 single "Float," followed by 2004's "Foundation Lullaby" and a downtempo album, Tempo Rosso, that was released as a promo point for Red Bull. The first gear proper full-length Bassnectar album, Mesmerizing the Ultra, was released in 2005, followed by Subway system Communication in 2007.