With one ear to the ground, the other to the sky, always observing humanity with a sideways smile and a fist, J DiMenna delivers the most profound and prophetic album from an unknown artist in years: Awkward Buildings

He discovered music at an early age, with tastes wide in range (but always sharing the common thread of being emotionally honest and musically adventurous)... And if his parents would hate it, well, so much the better.

J’s immediate talent for all forms of art at a young age carried through to his enrollment at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, NC where he met now label-mate, Jar-e. Their five piece genre bending band became a fixture on the college scene.

DiMenna immersed himself in various styles of the acoustic guitar - from alternate tunings, bluegrass fingerstyle, the inventive guitar arrangements of Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, to the dark musings of Leonard Cohen and the fresh optimism of Cat Stevens. He moved on to discover legions of indie rock — Neutral Milk Hotel, Rachels, Wilco, Cat Power, and onto the likes of Elliot Smith and Radiohead. Building on years of careful listening, he began crafting his own songs.

Past influences in music tend to bind the foundation of a musician's creative energy, but DiMenna's musical personality is simply too overwhelming to succumb to simple mimicry. "Awkward Buildings" makes evident this songwriter's real distinction from many other musicians currently rotating on the airwaves. DiMenna manages to nod to the past, without ever steering hard into it. His respect for influence consistently defers to his uniquely evolved songwriting talent and sound.

J spent a year and a half recording in Asheville with producer Steven Heller, working with local musicians - Drew Heller (Toubab Krewe), Tyler Ramsey, Bill Reynolds (Drug Money), Bill Smith, and Mike Horgan, and a special performance by the late Bob Moog.

In spring 2005, J moved north and finished "Awkward Buildings" in Brooklyn at Bushwick Studios, working with Joshua Kessler and Keith Saunders. These sessions included performances from another group of great local musicians: Ethan Eubanks (Ivy), Mike Oliverio (Good Evening, Adam Richman) and Whynot (Gavin DeGraw).

Like Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light, the album explores human relationships - the failed attempts at connecting with others and the tenuous structures we build to establish identities for ourselves.

The album is also a statement toward what J calls "literalist interpreters"; anyone who adheres so strictly to their own philosophy, be it religious or otherwise, that they are unable to fit the rest of the population into their narrow vision.

"Awkward Buildings" is so genuine and sweetly convincing that one is continually surprised to discover a stiletto's edge revealed a little more with each listening. DiMenna's lyrical sense of metaphor and his sheer musicality weaves throughout the record's string arrangements, riding the beat, abruptly stunning the listener with a well-placed turn of barely resolved cadence, or a sudden dissonance that appears and passes through each song like a dark cloud.

This is music that has been raised out in the cold and hardened in the bitter wind... lean, sinewy and mean. It’s heavy, but close to the skin; elegant and graceful, but never quite too pretty. It’s music that gets dark early.

Dogs of Winter came to be during the faint nights of a December in Brooklyn. After a decade of working together in various projects and temporary situations, childhood friends Dave Valle (drums) and Brian Grosz (guitars, vocals) came together in a basement studio and began to meticulously workshop their material. Grosz was recovering from a broken hand -- a heavily medicated month-long stretch in a plaster cast during which he sketched out an album’s worth of material using only five fingers and a piano. The songs quickly evolved from sparse, sketch-like compositions into the realm of towering guitars, thunderous drums and gravel-ragged vocals.

Their sound combines the soaring dynamics of the Deftones with the guitar-rock swagger of Queens of the Stone Age. They toy with the experimentation of Quicksand and bathe in the gravel-pits of Jawbreaker without abandoning the hooks of a Foo Fighters anthem. Their influences reach far and wide, but they always come back to the fundamental question: is it raw?

It's primal, it's loud, and it's libidinous. The music is straining against the collar around its neck, yearning to break loose and roam free.

"There is always a place for her on our stage. Her superb songs have grown on all who have seen her and we need her back, soon." —Barry Everitt, The Borderline, London

An English singer-songwriter from London, Emily got a phone call out of the blue in 2003 that put her on a plane to Australia. Having promised family and friends faithfully that she would be gone for 4 weeks, she spent the next 18 months performing and recording her debut album ‘Stranger Place’, in SE Queensland. The album subsequently received critical acclaim by the Australian media, including ‘Album of the Week’ in 2 states on ABC Radio.

Emily now divides her time between the throbbing metropolis of London and a shack made from recycled wood, tin and potato sacks on a goat farm in Australia. Her first UK tour saw her on stage opening for Gail Ann Dorsey (David Bowie's renowned bass player) in the 2005 Singer-Songwriter Festival at The Borderline in London. Other supports included opening for US bluesman Elliott Murphy, Australian icons Tex, Don & Charlie and current Aussie heartthrobs The Beautiful Girls. Together with Aussie drummer Shane Nesic and bass player Christian Dunham, Emily is returning to London for her third UK tour in May 2006.

Originally destined to be a professional cellist (and classically trained on cello, piano and flute), Emily taught herself to play guitar from Bob Marley songbooks and started writing songs instead. She remains passionate about both Bach and Bob Marley, and combines her love of classical music with a passion for beats, basslines and acoustic guitar. She has put her cello playing to good use in writing commercial music for the British Film Council, and recording string arrangements for her own songs and for other artists including former Red Box frontman Simon Toulson-Clarke. In 2003 she was commissioned to record her own version of Bob Dylan’s ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ for a 3-month audio-visual installation on London’s South Bank which she never heard, being 18,000 miles away at the time.

Emily's debut album 'Stranger Place' was recorded in SE Queensland and in Soho, London and 3 songs were playlisted on ABC Coast FM, while her signature song 'Falling on my Feet' has been receiving airplay in Massachusetts, USA. She is currently recording her second album in the hills behind the Sunshine Coast and still trying to overcome her snake phobia...

At the start of 2000, the Inklein Quartet was formed to explore new musical avenues, creating an innovative style and blending music from different cultures into a vibrant and arresting sound.

The British Council attended their first performance of Raga and immediately commissioned their Chinese and Brazilian music for a World Banking Seminar.

The composer Steve Bentley-Klein, was reflecting on his time living in NY when the events of 9.11 inspired the 20 minute Brave New World Composition. The quartet's first album A Brave New World is a result of this. Composed entirely by Steve Bentley-Klein and released earlier in the year, the album comprises strongly contrasting musical styles embracing raga, be-bop, blues, classical, brazillian, chinese, funk and rock.

In the Autumn of 2004, Kevin Leman, director of music at the Royal National Theatre, invited the Inklein Quartet to perform in Stuff Happens and maintains that it is the first named quartet to work at the RNT for 26 years. They were thrilled to be involved with Nicholas Hytner's production of David Hare's political drama, in particular because of their strong links with Human Rights campaigns. As quoted in the New York Times, "More than anything else in Stuff Happens, this music expresses the profound, enduring unease that the events shown onstage have inspired."

The second recording of the Inklein Quartet to be released is of Shostakovich's Eighth quartet as played in part in this production of Stuff Happens. The Quartet has also been featured on two Bentley-Klein soundtracks for Butterfly Man (2002)and Ghost of Mae Nak (2005).

The Inklein Quartet is constantly in demand to collaborate with other artists. S B-K's legacy of orchestrating on 3 Morcheeba albums (especially "BIG CALM") lead to Inklein recording the debut album They Died for Beauty of Bristol based band ILYA (2002). In 2003 they appeared on OBI's Diceman Lopez. They have also performed and recorded for several years with the virtuoso electric guitarist Uli Jon Roth including featuring on his spectacular Metamorphosis which is based on Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

In 2005 they returned to the National Theatre to work with SUPERTHRILLER in Nick Hytner's acclaimed production of Henry IV parts 1 & 2 starring Micheal Gambon.They recorded some cuts on swinging jazz singer Matthew Ford's album The Mood I'm In (Diving Duck Recordings) and also Skye Edward's (Atlantic Records) first solo album since leaving Morcheeba which is due for release early 2006.

... just one hit is enough to hook you on the addiction that is NLX: Natasha Alexandra. The NY Times is already high on her: "NLX traffics in unschooled, confessional, piano ballads." To connect with her music is a rush like no other. Tension, then release ...

NLX has been covering her tracks. Rumor has it, she served her time in Hamilton, Ontario - a small steel town where the survivors are the fittest, and the smartest ... those brave enough to escape its desperate clutches. But it was on the gritty streets of Toronto that she developed her signature sound ... a potent cocktail infused with Daniel Lanois, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey and, of course, NIN.

Then forays to New York City where 2004's Meat Inspection Tour established her as more than just a girl at a piano. "Extraordinary, outstanding, compelling, distinctive and very, very special," is what the Songwriters Hall of Fame cited, showcasing her on their New Writers CD compilation.

Now a permanent fixture in the Big Apple, the NLX momentum is accelerating ... gigs in NYC at the Living Room, Rockwood Music Hall, Joe's Pub, The Cutting Room and Caffe Vivaldi, plus West coast action at The Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles and Lestat's in San Diego ... and inclusion in compilations from Jane Magazine and Rockrgrl.

The latest scoop: The CD release of both NLX: In Your Face and NLX: Behind Your Back, offering up heart-wrenching lyrics and dark piano melodies, but each with it's own distinctive production style.

Granddaughter of a trucker and a coal miner, Emily Zuzik hails from the Southwestern Pennsylvania town of Greensburg. She gave her first public performance singing Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" to her fifth grade religion class in Catholic school. By eighth grade, she was performing original work in front of her school. And the rest, as we say, is history...

Emily is a proud Epiphone Guitars endorsed artist and appeared in its internationally distributed 2005 calendar along with other great female artists Joan Osborne and Gretchen Wilson.

She released her debut solo album, The Way it's Got to Be, in February 2003, receiving praises from NYC's The Village Voice and Time Out, as well as Performing Songwriter Magazine's Top DIY Picks, November 2003. In addition, Emily was a finalist in the JANE Magazine Readers 2004 CD, and appears on the "Greatest Hits you’ve never Heard" UK compilation raising funds for breast cancer research.

Zuzik has been featured as an IGNforMen.com's Babe of the Day and played both the 2003 Women in Rock showcase at SXSW and as well as its documentary produced by Austin Music Network. She has shared shows with such performers as Norah Jones, Jon Dee Graham, Jolie Holland, and Tracy Bonham.

In addition to the above solo projects, the music video for Emily’s "Try a New Line on Me" (from her band, Sexfresh’s "The Fainting Room") spun nationally in high rotation in past years.

Currently, Emily is recording her second album with producer Joshua Kessler at Bushwick Studio and planning a tour for the UK in fall 2006.

You can also see Emily, nationally, as the Bond girl on the cover of the Penguin Paperback Reissue of James Bond’s Thunderball.

As a producer, his work for Exotic Recordings' Artists rap trio, Nervous System and solo artist, Jar-e launched the groups to Top 20 spots on the CMJ college radio charts. He is currently working with two R&B hip hop artists in conjunction with producers from Tribe Called Quest, Pharcyde and Will Smith.