Britpop icons Blur will headline a show at London’s Hyde Park to celebrate the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics on August 12th. The bill for the event, which will include giant screens displaying highlights from the official closing ceremony, will also feature performances by New Order and the Specials.

Blur will receive the Outstanding Contribution to Music award at the BRIT awards tonight in London. The band are set to perform a version of their 1999 single “Tender” with a 32-piece gospel choir, at the ceremony, which is the British record industry’s rough equivalent to the Grammy Awards.

lur reunited in 2009 for a series of concerts in Europe that focused on hits from throughout their catalog, but the group’s recent performance at the War Child Benefit in London included a brand new composition titled “Under the Westway.” Though the band have been working on new material sporadically over the past few years, it remains to be seen whether or not they will actually put out a new record this year, or if they will introduce more new songs as they tour the United Kingdom this spring.

You can watch a video of Blur performing “Under the Westway” below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rihanna celebrated her 24th birthday over the weekend by debuting a pair of remixes in which she teamed up with her ex-boyfriend Chris Brown, who was convicted for felony assault after beating her before the 2009 Grammy Awards.

Here is the remix for Rihanna’s track “Birthday Cake,” which features a verse by Brown in which he sings “Girl, I want to fuck you right now / been a long time / I’ve been missing your body.”

That’s right, we’re giving away a free ticket to one lucky fan of Advaita to see the band launch their new album The Silent Sea in Mumbai (22 February).

To win a ticket, name eight band members of Advaita and the instruments they play.

Email us your answers at editor@rollingstone-india.com

Advaita presents its second album titled ‘The Silent Sea’. The album, being released on EMI records has been recorded and mixed at the famed Yash Raj studios in Mumbai by the renowned engineer Shantanu Hudlikar and mastered at Sterling Studios, New York.

Sonically this album is an evolution of the band’s sound from their first effort ‘Grounded In Space’ (2009). The songs are more serious and edgier and talk about the themes of longing, contemplation, isolation and the journey of the human soul to find truth and peace in the chaos of existence. The Silent Sea is the metaphor for the still, vast truth that is unchanging beneath all our desires and ambitions.

This album is also a better reflection of the collective sound of the band members of the present line up which has been together for the last five years.

Some of the tracks to watch out for are – “Words”, “Gorakh”, “Mo funk” and “Tremor.”

Adam Lambert has confirmed through Twitter that he will be performing with Queen this summer. The American Idol star will join guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor on July 7^th, as Queen headlines the second day of the Sonisphere Festival at Knebworth Park in England.

Lambert has long expressed his admiration for Queen and their late frontman, Freddie Mercury. For the American Idol finals in 2009, Lambert was backed onstage by the band’s surviving members for “We Are the Champions.” In November 2011, Lambert performed several songs with them at the MTV European Music Awards in Belfast.

Although reports came out earlier this month that Lambert would be performing again with Queen, the singer and his label, Hollywood Records, would not confirm any guest appearances until today.

“As many suspected, I can finally confirm: I have been invited by Queen to sing one very special concert! Sonisphere at Knebworth July 7th!” Lambert tweeted this afternoon. “Sorry to be coy about the details the past few weeks, but I made a promise to keep it under wraps as best I could. Gonna be a surreal night!”

Freddie Mercury’s final performance with Queen took place at Knebworth Park in 1986.

Rising “brostep” star clobbers the club

Skrillex is a magician. His trick is turning the elusively thwump-ing U.K. dance music called dubstep into high-fiving dance-floor heavy metal. The DJ-producer’s latest EP suggests new artistic pretension with an “orchestral suite” and a woozy jam stuffed with Doors references. But for the most part, the 23-year-old’s bass-crushing, hyperpaced populism is undiluted, from the bomb-drop arena funk of “The Devil’s Den” to the screwball hip-hop breakdown on “Right on Time” to the laser-blasting inanity of the title track, which ends with someone bragging, “I’m eating Fun Dip right now/Not givin’ a fuck.” Not a bad credo for music that makes a disco sugar high feel downright pornographic.

The Guy With the Sinister Synth Tones

Welcome to the multiplex of Trent Reznor’s mind, where your ICEE is spiked with arsenic and there’s a mind-control microchip at the bottom of every box of Goobers. Reznor’s Oscar-winning soundtrack for David Fincher’s The Social Network wasn’t too far from Nine Inch Nails’ industrial rock. But he had 14 months to throw himself into Fincher’s adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and the result is an obsessive-compulsive studio necromancer at his most maximally creepy. Reznor and collaborator Atticus Ross roll out three hours of often weirdly engrossing metal-machine music, from “Oraculum,” which distantly resembles a goth groove, to tracks like “Cut Into Pieces,” which distantly resemble suicidal vacuum cleaners. But it mainly displays Reznor’s knack for placing forlorn, darkly pretty pianos, keyboards or percussion sounds over glacial ambient whir and grind. There’s a huge debt to Brian Eno at his most austere, along with occasional nods to modern classical minimalism (check those Steve Reich marimbas on “The Heretics”). There are also two actual rock songs: a stormy ballad from Reznor’s side band How to Destroy Angels and an utterly boss synth-metal rip through Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song,” with Karen O swinging the hammer of the gods like a New Wave fjord witch, and bringing the midnight sun to Reznor’s land of endless ice and snow.

Key Tracks: “Immigrant Song,” “The Dragon Tattoo”

The erstwhile Medusa deliver a game-changing album, starting with name change

This here is a classic case of metamorphosis or simply growing up. The erstwhile Medusa, are not screaming “Who’s Your Daddy” anymore as a metal outfit. Neither are they playing with grooveboxes anymore and displaying their eager handiwork while playing Joy Division and Radiohead covers. The nearly decade old band instead have taken to quiet contemplation, changed their music preferences and simply turned down the tempo. Medusa are now Sky Rabbit and their sophomore album, Sky Rabbit is a seamless montage of their best known tracks - reworked, slowed down and delivered with elan. The album opener, “Anti-Coke Ganpati” is a perfect specimen. Vocalist Raxit Tiwari’s vocals are languid instead of agitated, Rahul Nadkarni’s axe skills are delayed in intent making it introspective rather than angsty. Siddharth Shah’s bass is sensual and Harsh Karangle’s drums beat in order not chaos. Laid back and languid, you hear the difference in the ambient and minimalistic sampling of more songs like “Hilltop,” “I Become I”, “Clone” and even “Oil.” Ashish Manchanda produced the album, responsible for its surrealistic tone and departure from noise. An evolution gone right.

Key Tracks: “Anti-Coke Ganpati,” “Hilltop”

Considering all nine of Nitin Sawhney’s albums proudly display his Indian heritage with elements including tablas, qawwali, ragas, Kathak rhythms, Sanskrit poems, and songs in Hindi woven into the DNA of his spellbinding music, it’s odd that he’s never played a live show in India. “I feel comfortable in India and it’s the first time in three years that I’m going, normally I’m there much more frequently,” says the classically-trained pianist, flamenco guitarist and club DJ.

This anomaly will be laid to rest this month when the tall, lean (“patla” rather than “healthy”) Sawhney will take the stage at Blue Frog in Delhi and Mumbai, and the Sulafest in Nasik. “Previously I’ve only DJ-ed in India, which is strange as touring India with my band is something I’ve been thinking about doing for a very long time but it’s never worked out. So I’m really pleased it’s finally happening,” says the 47-year-old as we settle into a sparse, spare room adjacent to his studio, located in a converted 19^th century dairy in Brixton, South London, one of the areas at the heart of the London Riots in August last year.

Sawhney’s a perfectionist so there are no half-measures or cutting corners when it comes to these shows, which are part-retrospective of his career and part-showcase of November’s album, his ninth, Last Days of Meaning. “I’m taking a full band, there’s 11 of us and the band’s really strong – we did a few gigs late last year which went fantastically well,” says Sawhney who’s casually dressed in jeans, trainers and a T-shirt.

The British-born composer, who was part of the Asian Underground scene alongside artists such as Talvin Singh and Asian Dub Foundation, attracted attention with Beyond Skin, his fourth studio album, that was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 1999. Since then Sawhney has helped conceive groundbreaking comedy sketch show Goodness Gracious Me, has written music for video games and has collaborated and written for the likes of Sting, Sir Paul McCartney, Brian Eno, Shakira, The London Symphony Orchestra and Cirque Du Soleil.

The sweet stirring magic of Sawhney’s finessed, swirling arrangements of flamenco, drum & bass, dub, folk and soul, belies the fact Last Days of Meaning addresses a deeper, powerful message. “I try to catch a sense of the zeitgeist, of what’s worrying me but I didn’t want to make an album that was overtly about politics. Hopefully Last Days of Meaning captures the parochialism, narrow-mindedness, and paranoia that’s been fed by political opportunism and media in the last ten years.”

Sawhney achieves this through the clever device of Oscar-nominated actor John Hurt (Midnight Express, The Elephant Man, Alien) portraying a bitter, lonely old man railing against a changing world whether immigrants, terrorism and technology, between tracks. Gentle, stark folk dominates the album and sits comfortably alongside billowing sitar and tabla funk, drifting ethereal vocals, and school choirs.

Last Days of Meaning’s combination of balancing politics with elegant music is a tried and tested method for Sawhney and makes him stand out in an increasingly bland, anodyne, music industry. Beyond Skin explores identity and challenges India’s quest to be a nuclear power; Prophesy (2001) questions whether technology makes us happier; Human (2003) celebrates unity in a divided world; Philtre (2005) offers a soothing balm for a troubled planet driven by conflict while London Undersound covers 7/7’s terror attacks, the rise of celebrities and media dumbing down.

One of Sawhney’s key beliefs is celebrating the beauty and power of cultures crossing over, and the message really hits home in his live shows when the complexities of fusing flamenco and qawwali, tablas and drum & bass, and blues and ragas, and the extraordinary vision and subtlety of the music, comes to vivid, spine-tingling life. There are few things as mesmerizing as tabla maestro Aref Durvesh furiously matching a drummer beat for beat, a rapper spitting lyrics in time to Kathak tatkars (“ta thai thai tat, aa thai thai ta”), or a droning sitar and bongos providing the backdrop for Sanskrit poetry. Sawhney is usually either perched on a stool with flamenco guitar or on keys and is the enigmatic, unassuming centrifugal force around which it all, dizzyingly, revolves.

The grace, emotion and originality in Sawhney’s music makes him an ideal choice for composing the score to director Deepa Mehta’s film adaptation of Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie’s landmark novel that many cite as one of the greatest of all time and which is scheduled for release later this year.

How closely has he worked with Mehta and Rushdie on the score? “It’s been very collaborative. Salman Rushdie’s been in the background, but he co-wrote the screenplay with Deepa, which I think he needed to do to retain his vision of it. Deepa and I have been talking and working through themes, over-arching narratives and characterization. We discussed at length what ragas might be appropriate for certain characters, so the film ties in with Indian history and keeps that authenticity.’

“I’ve come up with a system of melodies based around ragas, with each raga attached to a character. That gives the score a sense of rootedness and complements the characters’ feelings. Salman Rushdie got in touch with me via Twitter and said, ‘It’s the best score since Ravi Shankar and Pather Panchali’. For him to say that was amazing, the guy’s a genius, I love his work,” says Sawhney, almost disbelievingly.

Both Rushdie and Mehta are pariahs of sorts: Rushdie lived in virtual hiding with a security detail for over 15 years and still keeps a low profile following a fatwa ordering his death as a result of the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1988. Similarly Mehta has been dogged by Hindu extremists, and labeled anti-Hindu, since Fire (1996) which depicted a lesbian relationship in a Hindu family, forcing her film Water (2005) to be shot in Sri Lanka.

Is Sawhney worried by working with controversial figures Rushdie and Mehta? “No, it’s great to work with giants like Salman and Deepa. They are controversial characters, because they’re intelligent and not afraid to say what they think. People are threatened because they have strong ideas but there are things Salman says I agree with and other things he says I don’t agree with and the same applies to Deepa. As creators of amazing, imaginative work, I couldn’t be happier working with them,” says Sawhney.

Rushdie, Mehta, and Sawhney’s collaboration not only reflects the growing influence of the Indian diaspora but in terms of reflecting the book is a match made in heaven. “I’m of Indian heritage but grew up in Britain, Salman Rushdie has a Muslim background and Deepa’s of Indian background but lives in Canada and together we’re working on Midnight’s Children, which is about fragmentation.”

Sawhney’s no stranger to scoring films; in fact releasing albums is a small part of what he’s achieved over the past two decades. In recent years he’s conceived a soundtrack to the silent 1929 Indian film Throw of the Dice, a magnificent, Mahabharat-esque tale of romance and adventure directed by Franz Osten, with the London Symphony Orchestra. He’s taken this on tour to Chicago, Toronto, Florence, Auckland, and Amsterdam, and hopes to bring to India in the future. “I’d love to project the film onto some palace walls,” he says.

Sawhney will be scoring the king of suspense Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger at the British Film Institute, again with the London Symphony Orchestra. Surely Sawhney’s one of the few people on the planet who’s as comfortable and capable with a globally renowned orchestra in the world of classical music, as DJing in clubs and releasing a mix for iconic, revered UK club and bastion of electronic music, Fabric.

Also in the last five years, workaholic Sawhney’s been gradually immersing himself in sound design for video games. Rather than a teenage time-pass, he sees video games as the cutting edge of technology, and culture. “I really enjoy working in gaming it’s an emerging art form. Seeing the physics of motion in virtual reality really interests me. People dismiss gaming as trivia but it’s an expression of consciousness, that’s why gaming interests quantum physicists too, they relate to Hindu philosophy too,” he explains.

It’s observations like these that evidence a keen, enquiring mind and make Sawhney the ultimate dinner party guest. Here’s a man who connects video games with Hindu Vedas and the Big Bang, discusses politics in Burma, race relations in Britain, Fox News’ disinformation and the London Riots (“a symptom of a capitalist society out of control”). He can effortlessly light up a room with stories about his mate Paul McCartney (he appears on LP London Undersound), A.R. Rahman who he took for dosa in London over 15 years ago only for Rahman to be harassed by a waiter insisting on photographs, or how his cousin, actress Lara Data is due to give birth around the time of his India gigs. “She said to me either she can come to my gig or I can come to her delivery,” jokes Sawhney.

Whatever the scenario, in the company of Sawhney it’s easy for hours to pass in what feels like seconds, as conversation turns from economics to string theory, via virtual reality and flamenco’s roots in Rajasthan folk music. However, as he heads to India for his first live shows in the motherland and meetings on big projects that he’s not allowed to reveal just yet, all you need to know is more than anything else, Sawhney’s music does the talking.

A decade in the making, the debut album from Mumbai alt-rockers Split is finally out and the band is celebrating with a massive eight-city romp through the length and breadth of the country. East, West, North, South, they’re hitting them all. ROLLING STONE INDIA caught up with the Old Monk-living band, now halfway through their triumphant tour and asked them what life on the road is like:

Shekhar Mohite (Photo: Sukrit Nagaraj, location: Blue Frog, Mumbai)

You’re halfway through your eight-date album launch tour. Hows it going and what’s the reception like?

Varoon [Aiyer, drums]: The gigs have been great fun.

Aviv [Pereira, guitar]: The reception has been warm in all the cities played so far (Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai).

Mel [Melroy D'mello]: We’ve already sold around 50 CDs (10 off Flipkart, within 24 hours of launch), and had 2 great after parties. Looking forward to more…

Hotel rooms, early morning flights, long bus rides, whats the hardest part about being on tour. Also, what’s the best part?

Shekhar [Mohite, bass]: Train travel was the hardest part. The best part are the early morning flights and ‘saxy’ hotel rooms.

Mel: The gigs are real close to each other, so I’ve got to say that it’s the various body aches that would be the worst part. The best part – food and airport hotties.

Aviv: We don’t get to spend enough time in the cities we visit – that’s the worst part. The best part is that we’re playing to new audiences who’ve never seen us live.

Melroy D'mello

Which songs are going down the best with the audiences you’ve played to so far?

Punk Rock Days, Holy Ghost Machine Gun, Return to Bicameralism, Isn’t It Strange and Counting Perfume – in no particular order.

Any interesting tour stories/memories that you guys have collected so far?

Varoon likes rough towels. This whole tour has been about him and his towel. Also, we spent 30 minutes trying to give our Chennai cabbie directions in Tamil – and when we’d pretty much given up, Varoon remembered that he is Tamilian.

We’ve met some really nice people so far. Aarti from BFlat, Rohan from Chennai Live Radio, Madhav (the smiler) from Score Magazine, the guys from LBG.

Hows the gear (and your lead singer’s voice) holding up under the stress and pressure of touring? (Constant movement, stress)

Gary [Garreth D'mello, lead vocals] isn’t here right now, so we’ll try to get this one for him. He seems to be coping well. He finds time to work out in hotel gyms while the rest of us try to sleep off our ill-gotten hangovers. But he does get a little whiny when we smoke in his room.

Aviv has been breaking strings like it’s going out of fashion.

No one seems to have taken our tech rider seriously, so we’ve played on some pretty unexpected amps. A really crappy Peavey, a really beautiful Bogner and a super Vox. Shekhar played a Fender Sun ’64 vintage bass in Chennai and fell in love with it enough to use it for a couple of songs on stage.

Aviv Pereira (L) and Garreth D'mello (R)

Anything you’re really looking forward to doing in the different cities that you’re going to be hitting?

Chennai – We wanted to see Marina beach, but didn’t have enough time. We bought Mysore Pak and drank chilled Badam milk. Yummy.

Bangalore – Pretty much a food trip.

Delhi – We’d like to see lakkadbaghas (hyenas) in the Jungle Fowl Camp, and play table tennis. Gary is a mean TT player. He’s mean to himself. We would also like to see the Qutub Minar near the Blue Frog.

Kolkata – (Mel) – Big nostalgia trip for me. Was in Cal for five years in the Nineties. The rest of the band will most probably go nuts on the street food.

North-East – Eat snake, duck and pork. Also, this is the first time any of us will be setting foot in this part of the country. So, pretty much go nuts doing that. And have Sikkim rum.

We know Split’s love of Old Monk. How many bottles down so far?

Nine to ten litres of the Monk.

Which of the band members is a biggest hit with the groupies?

Shekhar. The guys love him.

What’s the plan post-tour? Live album? More gigging?

The plan is to detox, rest, spend time with family. Then, get started on the music video, the next album, the next tour, the next….

If you’re looking to catch Split on the remainder of their tour, here are the details:

21 February: Blue Frog, Delhi

23 February: Blues, Guwahati

24 February: Deja Vu, Shillong

25 February: Someplace Else, Kolkata

Split’s album Couting Perfume is now available on Flipkart.com.

All Pictures by Sukrit Nagaraj. Location courtesy Blue Frog, Mumbai.

Eccentric Pendulum’s drummer Vibhas Venkatram spoke to ROLLING STONE INDIA about the eccentric nature of their song ‘Mathematicians Of Ambient Waters’ and how the band fell into place.

‘The lyrics are way too weird for the rest of the band to interpret.  Only our bassie Arun (Natrajan), who wrote it, understands it,” laughs Venkatram. “But it’s interesting because it’s about a lonely mathematician, trying to solve a problem, and the torrent of emotion that that quandary brings on. I think it was Arun’s love/hate for math that made him write this song. Also, on some level I think we all identify with that. Trying to fix something that consumes us, that no one else understands.”

The band is trying to work around their demanding schedules to make it to the awards. “This is our first time being nominated, and we’re terribly excited about it. It should be a wicked fun event to attend, whichever way the vote goes.”

He is elated about the progress the band has made “It all started with a studio project.  But a bunch of post jam lunches at a nearby dhaba, and a yearning to make fresh, genre-free music, and Eccentric Pendulum was born. It unearthed this kind of freedom in all of us; we were making music not for critics, but ourselves. And, of course, as you know, Arun took over the lyrics and the rest of us try to remain blissfully unaware.”

Venkatram diplomatically maintains that the bands that deserve to will win at the JD Rock Awards this year, but on further prodding, casts his vote for Peter Cat Recording Co. and Undying Inc.

Eccentric Pendulum are nominated in three categories this year: Best Song (‘Mathematicians of Ambient Waters’), Best Guitarist (both Arjun Mulky and Faheemul Hasan) and Best Drummer (Vibhas Venkatram).

Interviewed by Saumyaa Vohra.