Releasing debut album ‘Tales From the Thames Delta’ this September, ‘The Milk’ is not only a band that re-establishes their home-county image, but a band that can be expected to remain ‘under-the-radar’ no more! Feeding the charts gaping hole of diversity and rhythm, ‘The Milk’ deliver a soulful sound reminiscent of 1960′s Motown America, an era those of us in the younger music lover generation can only pawn over the chance to have experienced.

Overall, there is something very camaraderie about the band, and it travels through the music. Lead singer, Rick Nunn, owns a voice inevitably captivating in it’s smooth delivery of heart-felt, real lyrics against the raw, classic R’n'B sound. Many try to mix the ‘old’ with the ‘new’, and most end up failing. But ‘The Milk’ have gotten their measurements right.

Conclusion? This band is real. This band is raw. Yup, this band is ‘reem‘.

Go on! Take a sip!

TOP FIVE TRACKS:

•  Broke Up the Family
• Nothing But Matter
• B-Roads
• Picking Up the Pieces feat. Idris Elba
• Every Time We Fight

And a sneaky sixth… ‘Chip the Kids’.

Enjoy!

St. Vincent is an artist that has already filled a huge spot in my iTunes playlist, so when I noticed she was collaborating with David Byrne, I was interested to say the least (not the mention, the Lady Gaga channelling artwork). Since the first listen, I’ve had this album on loop, blasting through my house – the neighbours be damned. Love this Giant is nothing what I expected. This is a marriage made in heaven.

Love This Giant opens up with the song Who; a riot of an intro – definitely one of my favourite album openings this year. Byrne’s raw, powerful vocals dominate the song, but St. Vincent’s soft and seductive voice does have its moments. However, the upbeat sound of the brass band carries the track, making the opening chaotic and infectious.

Weekend in the Dust, another track that I fell in love with, has a much more disjointed, avant-garde sound. One aspect I enjoyed is how Byrnes and St. Vincent has brought their own ideas to the table and remained honest to their former style, so we still have St. Vincent’s harsh guitar and songs that reminisce the Talking Heads.

Love This Giant is unruly, fresh, and, dare I say, artsy; an album that has wriggled under my skin.

Top Five Tracks:

1. Who
2. Weekend in the Dust
3. Ice Age
4. I Should Watch T.V.
5. I’m An Ape

Releasing début album ‘Ashes’ earlier this year as well as headlining The Guardian’s ‘New Band of the Day’ this summer, it personally surprises me as to why this woman isn’t more well-known; it is not often you find a singer/songwriter who captivates in such an emotive, original style. This is the album for the thoughtful and the emotionally charged. Lyrically poetic, track-to-track listening gears you up for a heart-wrenching, bluntly honest journey through life.

And just as eclectic as life is, so is the music; despite hailing from Watford, England, Kyla’s eclectic sound is thoroughly tinted in country roots, with all the powerful taste of Florence Welch and, dare I say, an essence of queen of the eccentric vocals, Kate Bush.

This is one musician that will haunt you long after you’ve listened. As for the ‘Lana Del Ray’ label? They may share the use of a middle name, but the similarities for me stop there. Kyla’s sound is, for now, incomparable.

TOP 5 TRACKS TO LISTEN TO:

• Vampire Smile
• Been Better
• The River
• Walk
• You Let it Go…and Lambs…and Love You Better…and Catylist…you know what? Just listen to the album; you will not regret it!

The end of the story? Not even close. In one of the biggest pieces of film news of recent years, Disney has purchased Lucasfilm for $4 billion, and has begun production on a new trilogy, beginning with Star Wars: Episode VII in 2015.

Head of Lucasfilm Kathleen Kennedy will be heading up the new trilogy, with this statement released early this morning UK time from Lucas:

Obviously I’ve been talking about retiring for several years now.  I wanted to get into sort of another stage of life where I’m not in the film business anymore, where I don’t have to run a corporation.  It occurred to me one day that the perfect person to run the company was Kathy [Kennedy].  It’s just such a perfect fit, and I felt that I really wanted to put the company somewhere in a larger entity that would protect it.  Disney is a huge corporation; they have all kinds of capabilities and faciliites.  There’s a lot of strength to be gained by this.

It soon emerged that the treatment for Episode 7 along with storylines for 8 and 9 had already been well established. Kennedy revealed:

We are absolutely going to make Star Wars movies and we’re in the midst of the really fun part of the process which is we’re sitting down with a couple of writers and we’re starting to discuss ideas and we’re starting to talk about what those stories might be.

We’re all pretty sceptical here at ECHQ, and quite rightly – while A New Hope is widely regarded as one of the greatest fantasy science fiction films of all time, Empire Strikes Back is damn near a perfect film and say what you want about the Ewoks but you can’t argue that Return of the Jedi was a sub-par conclusion.

On the other hand, Jar Jar Binks.

What do you think about this news? Redemption time for Lucasfilm or yet another cash-grabbing franchise on the way with little regard for you, the local filmgoer?

[Source]

The image below shows off what appears to be promotional advert for stores with several pictures of Grand Theft Auto V art work and then the title with time frame of Spring 2013.

If the promotional advert is right, then we can expect to see Grand Theft Auto V any time between March till May next year, which is about right to us here at Entertainment Cocktail.

In November 8th, Games Informer are going to digitally release there next magazine which will feature a HUGE coverage about the title, 18-pages they are saying and this will be the first time details about the allusive game to come out since its big reveal over a year ago.

Check back soon for any more details about Grand Theft Auto V.

http://vimeo.com/35232100#

Sea of Bees is the project of Californian singer-songwriter, Julie Ann Baenziger. She released her sophomore album, Orangefarben, in April this year; an album that is honest and raw, an album you need to spend alone with (in a none-creepy way, I personally wouldn’t blast it out at a party). Orangefarben is a break-up album and I know you all like to have moments where you just want to be by yourself, have a pity parade and relate every sad song to some part of your life. Well, this album is great for all them type of moments.  Although saying that, Orangefarben has a balance of warmth just as much as the melancholy, but it suceeds on the latter.

Yes, this Friday we have gone downbeat, but Sea of Bees is definitely an artist that you should make room on your own musical pedestal.

Top Five Tracks

1. Alien

2. Skinnybone

3. Grew

4. Broke

5. Gone

Marking the fifty years since Ian Fleming’s novel first hit the screens courtesy of the Broccoli family and director Terrence Young, Daniel Craig pays the price for the sub-par Quantum of Solace by taking a bullet (albeit by accident) in the opening chase. With Bond dead, he’s unable to stop Javier Bardem’s blonde-bonneted Silva from snatching the list of all undercover MI6 operatives. It takes an attack on M (Judi Dench) to act as the defibrillator to jerk Bond back to life where he acts as M’s watchful guardian to hunt down the rogue hairpiece and stop him before he inadvertently puts a bullet in the head of all the other double-os. It’s a simple but unpredictable plot which whisks Craig across a handful of stunning backdrops – Turkey, Shanghai and Macau included – but never keeping him far from headquarters in London, which plays as a pivotal setting in the story.

Mendes (Oscar-winner for American Beauty and the underrated Jarhead) is clearly passionate about the character and acknowledges this with constant nods back to the series; Silva draws attention to his 1962 bottle of champers (the year Dr No was released), while the new Q (Ben Wishaw, young and excellent in both his deadpan humour and his spotty confidence) lets James know that “the days of giving out exploding pens are behind us”. Even the classic Aston Martin DB6 makes an appearance and hands out a few surprises, enough to both make all the 007 fans giddy with excitement and pay a tongue-in-cheek homage to the Bonds of old.

For all its looking back, Skyfall is brilliantly progressive. This is arguably the most personal and psychological Bond; the finale taking place in a remote Scottish estate belonging to the protagonists’ late parents, and the plot revolving around M gives a warm feeling of maternity, as Dench makes for Bond a caring surrogate mother, even at her most vulnerable. This is in no small part thanks to Daniel Craig who really has made Bond his own, making him feel – for the first time in Bond history – human. While he used to dodge bullets and hit every nameless henchman without even looking, here we see him close to having a bullet give him a buzzcut at any moment. He’s older and damaged, learned and experienced in a way that can only come from 50 years of suppressing a need for care and love.

Thomas Newman – another Academy Award-winner for his work on American Beauty – gives the score gravitas and weight, and spices up old with new by filtering through the classic Dr No theme (altogether now: dunnn, dunnn, dunnn, dunnn…) alongside more bravura and even mixing in some electronica a lá Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ Social Network soundtrack. The set pieces are brutal and beautiful, particularly a one-shot melee fistfight in Shanghai silhouetted against a huge pulsating billboard, ensuring that even the most distracted viewer will keep gawping at something new each minute.

Giving the series a host of new faces that are here to stay – including Ralph Fiennes’ ministerial aide Mallory and Naomie Harris’ resident Bond-girl Eve - Skyfall becomes fleshed-out and well rounded without falling into the hole of becoming too thinly spread. It’s a deep philosophical tale of motherly love and betrayal underneath, but on the surface it’s Bond, James Bond. And he’s never been better.

We shall begin with our first look at Sir Ben Kingsley’s long hair and beard.

This is of course our very first glimpse of Kingsley as the villain of the piece, The Mandarin. Frankly he looks excellent, a perfect blend of wise and threatening.

Next we have our first teaser poster which again is just superb to look at.

Woah, that is just a phenomenally designed teaser poster. That has got to be one of, if not the best poster the Marvel marketing team have produced thus far.

Finally we have the teaser trailer in all it’s glory.

Looking good. Looking very good. It seems The Mandarin is really going to put Tony Stark through his paces and torture him no end. This is certainly looking to be a trial by fire scenario for Stark and is really going to put him to the test and decide once for all whether it is the suit or the man that makes him a hero. There’s also some footage of The Mandarin who regards himself as a teacher as opposed to a terrorist, as well as glimpses of Rebecca Hall, Guy Pearce, Don Cheadle and Gwyneth Paltrow reprising their roles as James Rhodes and Pepper Potts respectively. We have a shot of the newly designed Extremis armour and the Iron Patriot makes an appearance.

All in all Iron Man 3 is shaping up to be a great installment in the Marvel catalogue. Could this be the best Marvel film yet? We’ll have to wait til April 2013 to find out.

Only learning of this man’s existence last night, whilst attending a Gaslight Anthem gig, it is fair enough to say the experience of support-act Hause was a whirlwind romance. A voice and style thoroughly influenced by his stints in numerous HC punk bands (currently a guitarist in state-side ‘The Loved Ones’), Hause is armed with a vocal-rasp and lyrics well suited for the hard battle of winning over a crowd’s emotions, and it is no wonder Gaslight booked him as a support with the almost sibling-like vocal similarities between Dave and the ‘Springsteen heir’ (Fallon).

A musician whose is overall more suited to live performance than recorded, Hause’s sound is also one that at some points uncannily echoes that of fellow ‘punk-rocker/singer-songwriter’, Frank Turner.

Yes, you read correctly. I am hereby christening Dave Hause America’s answer to ‘Frank Turner’!

TOP 5 TRACK LIST:

• Rankers & Rotters
• Time Will Tell
• Ghosts on the Boardwalk
• Pray for Tuscon
• Heavy Heart

Assassin’s Creed 3 has been rumored to have a Season Pass but hasn’t ever been confirmed till recently on the US Playstation Network store which lists the game to digital download for $59.99 and for an additional $30 can get the Season Pass with it.

As of right now it has been confirmed to also be sold separately, and although not confirmed it will almost definitely come to Xbox 360, PC and also the Wii U versions of the game, also no individual price for the Season Pass has been given so keep an eye out Assassin’s Creed fans for any news regarding the Season Pass.

Valve announced its intentions that it would start to sell other software through the service and original set a date in September, but September came and went and now we are here looking at the all new the software it just under a month! Which in “Valve Time” means this is the quickest release they have done ever!

Right now the selection is small, Check out the list below:

• ArtRage Studio Pro
• CameraBag 2
• GameMaker: Studio
• 3D-Coat
• 3DMark Vantage
• 3DMark 11

Valve has noted that much of this software supports Steamworks features, such as easy installation and automatic updating, and on top of which this won’t be the only software to come to Steam, keep a look out for anything interesting.