Stigma (Mind Assault album)

Stigma is the first full-length album by the South African metal band Mind Assault. Stigma was released in February 2008. The album has received largely positive reviews.

The creation of “Stigma”

The members of Mind Assault have had the opportunity to gain a stronger sense of themselves since the beginning of 2007. It was at this juncture, when the line-up was fully completed and all of those elements which the founding members had sought out were finally in place, that the band thought it feasible to think about an album.

It took some time, and a fair amount of argument to decide on which songs to include, and why. At the end of the day, “Stigma” is not so much an album as it is a compilation intended to showcase the abilities and spectrum of the band. The purpose of this creation was twofold:

1) Over the years of tireless performing, there has grown a public demand for good quality recorded material from Mind Assault.

2) If Mind Assault were ever going to achieve greater things than were possible in Southern Africa, then the band would require a “showcase” of sorts to exhibit themselves to prospective overseas interest.

Stigma (letter)

Stigma (ϛ) is a ligature of the Greek letters sigma (Σ) and tau (Τ), which was used in writing Greek between the Middle Ages and the 19th century. It is also used as a numeral symbol for the number 6. In this unrelated function, it is a continuation of the old letter digamma (originally Ϝ, cursive form ), which had served as a numeral since antiquity and was conflated with the σ-τ ligature in the minuscule handwriting of the Middle Ages.

History and use

The στ ligature (, ) was one of many ligature forms that came into widespread use as part of the minuscule writing style of Greek from the 9th and 10th centuries onwards. It is based on the lunate form (Ϲ) of the letter sigma.

With many other ligatures, it was used to print Greek during the early-modern era. Between the 18th and 19th centuries, the use of ligatures in print gradually diminished. The στ ligature was among the last to go, around the middle of the 19th century.

The name, stigma (στίγμα), is originally a common Greek noun meaning "a mark, dot, puncture", or generally "a sign", from the verb στίζω ("to puncture"); the related but distinct word stigme (στιγμή) is the classical and post-classical word for "geometric point; punctuation mark".Stigma was co-opted as a name specifically for the στ sign, evidently because of the acrophonic value of its initial st- as well as the analogy with the name of sigma.

Yōsei Teikoku

Yōsei Teikoku (妖精帝國, lit. "Fairy Empire"; German: Das Feenreich) is a five-member Japanese musical unit, formed in 1997 and part of Team Fairithm. Their music mixes elements of gothic rock, heavy metal, electronic and classical music. Their works include the opening tracks of the following anime series: Future Diary, Magical Pokan, Innocent Venus, Kurokami: The Animation, The Qwaser of Stigmata, Mai-HiME videogame, and the Tokyo ESP soundtrack. They have released several independent albums and four major release albums with their current publisher Lantis: Gothic Lolita Propaganda, metanoia, Gothic Lolita Doctrine , Gothic Lolita Agitator, Pax Vesania and Shadow Corps(e).

Members

Gravity (Our Lady Peace album)

Gravity is the fifth studio album by the Canadian rock band Our Lady Peace. It was released on June 18, 2002 by Columbia Records in North America. The album became a worldwide success, charting highly both in Canada and the United States with the hit singles "Somewhere Out There" and "Innocent".

The album title, Gravity, was inspired by the chorus lyrics "Falling back to me, defying gravity" from the track "Somewhere Out There". At the time of the album's release, OLP drummer Jeremy Taggart said that Gravity was "by far [their] best album".

Gravity was the first album to feature new guitarist, Steve Mazur, who replaced Mike Turner in 2002 after the latter's departure, which the band was feeling limited by Mike Turner guitar abilities in the studio. The band also wanted a guitarist who can really stand up and have a strong voice. Despite of Mike Turner departure, Turner appears on half the tracks on the album, however, having recorded parts for several songs on the album prior to his departure. This was also their last album with musician Jamie Edwards, who had performed on two prior albums and was briefly an official member, but left the band soon after the album's completion.

Gravity (James Brown album)

Gravity is the 56th studio album by American musician James Brown. The album was released on September 15, 1986, by Scotti Bros. Records. It was largely written and produced by Dan Hartman and Charlie Midnight, the authors of the album's previously released hit single "Living in America", which had reached #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was prominently featured in the film Rocky IV. It was Brown's first album for the Scotti Brothers record label.

The album's title track became a minor hit on both the pop and R&B charts, while the tango-based slow jam "How Do You Stop" cracked the R&B top ten. The album track "Turn Me Loose, I'm Dr Feelgood" was used as the theme song for the Australian TV sketch comedy series The Late Show (1992–93) and is often played by Major League Baseball's Philadelphia Phillies when one of their batters hits a home run at Citizens Bank Park.

Reception

Gravity earned a lukewarm reception from critics. Robert Christgau went so far as to describe it as "[n]ot a James Brown album--a James Brown-influenced Dan Hartman record, with James Brown on vocals", and urged readers to seek out recent reissues of Brown's earlier work instead. Ron Wynn of Allmusic.com described the album as "moderately interesting" but that, ultimately, Brown was trying to "catch up" with contemporary trends.

Gravity: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Gravity: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is the soundtrack album of the 3D science fiction thriller film Gravity, written by British film composer Steven Price. The album was released in 2013 via WaterTower Music label.

Price's score was universally applauded by film critics and audiences alike, leading Price to win and receive nominations for several Best Original Score awards at ceremonies, including a BAFTA Award, a Satellite Award and an Academy Award, as well as a Golden Globe Award nomination.

Development

"We knew we needed to express silence. We didn't want the score to be descriptive, but psychological and emotional. We composed a score which is expressive of surroundings. Here the music is moving around you all the time."

Composer Steven Price was originally called in to help out for a couple of weeks on the music design of Gravity. After having a creative discussion with director Alfonso Cuarón, Price began coming up with a template of sounds and noises that eventually led to him being hired as the film's composer. As work began on the film's score, Cuarón and Price set ground rules for distancing the score from conventional Hollywood-style action scores such as omitting the use of percussion. "Ordinarily in an action film you're often competing with explosions and god knows what else, whereas with this [movie] music could do things a different way," said Price. "With everything we did we would try and look beyond the normal way of doing things. [For] some of the action sequences where there are explosions, I knew that [...] those explosions had to be inherent."