I made sure we dropped a quick video blog whilst recording a session for the new album last month. Enjoy!

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Here, as promised, is the scan of the article/interview with me that ran in last week’s (Nov 6th ‘09) issue of Eastern Eye newspaper here in the UK. Hope you managed to grab a copy!

Click on the picture to see the full size version. Enjoy!

Peace…

S-Endz

xx

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Neofunk Vlog #1: Filmed on Android G1 Phone….S-Endz talks about ‘Outer Space’ and show you a newly published interview he did with the UK’s ‘Eastern Eye’ newspaper – scan of that interview coming soon!

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Hello friends, fans, groupies, lovers, family, music lovers, neofunkers,

My new EP ‘Outer Space’ is out now – click the picture to the right or here for your download.

I’m offering it for free, but if you choose to pay for it you may pay any amount you choose. To get your free download, simply enter ‘0′ when asked for a price, and then choose your format (MP3, WAV, FLAC, etc)

Thanks for the support, I hope you enjoy the music…..this is the introduction to neofunk!

Peaceloveandbewild,

S-Endz

xxx

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If you don’t know who Martin Atkins is, go and do your homework. From Public Image Ltd with Johnny Rotten, to Killing Joke, to Nine Inch Nails, to his industrial supergroup Pigface, to his legendary label Invisible Records to teaching music industry strategies at some of the mos prestigious universities and music industry events around the world,  to pioneering DIY music business industry models, when Martin talks, you better listen if you wanna learn something from someone who’s been there….done it….and LITERALLY wrote the book (If you’re in a band, his book TOUR:SMART is ESSENTIAL reading).

Andrew Dubber is another man to be taken seriously. A music industry expert and the man behind the website newmusicstrategies.com and the infamous "20 Things You Must Know About Music Online" e-book (also essential reading for anyone in the music industry).

And if you don’t know who I am, just hit the "About" button at the top of the page and figure it out. But suffice it to say, I’m an artist who is proactive and vocal about the nature of the new music model online, who strives to stay three steps ahead of the game. If you’re familiar with the band I am in, Swami, then chances are you’ll have noticed and been impressed by our vociferous attention to social music media.

Check the video and learn something.

Peace. S-Endz

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The CD’s have been pressed, the record company has sent the stock to the distributors, and all systems are go for the UK/India physical release of ‘53431‘ on the 17th August!

Here’s the tracklist:

1. Electro Jugni
2. Sugarless
3. DesiRock
4. Mehbooba
5. Turn It Up
6. Hey Hey
7. Tonight
8. Don’t Hold Back
9. Shakedown
10. Homage
11. Ching
12. Disciples
13. Big Beat Thumbi
14. Ching (Shiva Soundsystem’s Mo-Flo Remix)
15. DesiRock (Shiva Soundsystem’s Radio Remix)

‘Sugarless‘ has blown up on radio worldwide, and we’re incredibly happy with all the love you guys have shown for the song. We’ve shot a performance video for the song and we hope to have it completed within the next few weeks. For all you club DJ’s, don’t sleep on the hard-hitting dancefloor-targeted "New Desi Generation" remix of ‘Sugarless‘ – if you’re on Facebook, you can listen to it here – get in touch with us for your copy!

If you’re in the UK or India, you’ll be able to pick up ‘53431‘ in stores from the 17th. If not, we will have some stock on our digital store  – where you can also grab your own ‘DesiRock‘ or ‘53431‘ T-Shirts which have been flying off the merch tables at Swami shows this summer! Get yours now cos stock is extremely limited!

We’re currently finalizing details for the digital release of ‘53431‘ which will be in early-to-mid September.

Are you ready for ‘53431′?

Peace!!

S-Endz

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So here I am, standing in Heathrow Airport waiting for the rest of Swami to check in, and I begin to think about all the humorous airport and plane experiences we’ve shared as a band, and on my own too!

I’m gonna share a couple of anecdotes with you today

The first one comes from the Swami tour of India in 2007. We were on a Kingfisher Airlines flight from Delhi to Hyderabad (the only airline in the world sponsored by a beer company?) and got to our seats when we noticed something hilarious. A little perspective first – I’m mixed race, half Indian (Punjabi), but on my mothers site, so I have an English surname. Liana from the band is English with Irish roots and our manager Luc is French. When we got to our seats, me, Liana and Luc were sat together, and there were 2 white tourists in the same row…..and the rest of the plane was Indians!! So they had put all the people with non-Indian names together! Here’s the best part – this was obviously standard practice on this airline, so when the staff/crew walked past, they saw all the white folks, and then me sat with them! (Although I’m half English, my skin tone and features are clearly not “white”). So they were all looking at me with confused expressions! It was hilarious!

The second story I’ll share today is from when I flew to LA with DJ Semtex and his producer Julie to make the 2Pac documentary for BBC 1xtra. Myself and Julie were in the queue to board the plane, when her phone beeps. She pulls out her phone and has gotten a text from Sem, and loudly exclaims, right in the middle of the airport, “Oh! Semtex is on the plane!”. After she said it she realized how that sounded to everyone else!!! (For those who might not know – Semtex is a type of plastic explosive!)

Haha….

Anyway, flights about to take off, so I’m outty!

Peace!!

S

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Hello neofunkateers. Just wanted to give you all an update of what’s going down with me and the band at the moment!

We’re set for a very hectic few weeks. Next Wednesday (the 17th) we will be performing a set on an outdoor stage outside the BBC White City complex in London, it’s for BBC World and is being recorded for later playback and is hosted by Bobby Friction and Nihal. Straight after that we fly to Toronto for a short but busy tour of Canada.

On Friday the 19th, folks in Mississauga will be able to see an exclusive S-ENDZ solo performance at Rock The Coliseum 2009.

I will be premiering selected tracks from my album live for the first time including She’s Like My Shadow, Electric Man, and the forthcoming single Do U Wanna Come? It’s a free event and I’ll be performing at 4PM, so hopefully I’ll see some of you guys there.

The next day, Sat 20th, get yourself to Mississauga for the Swami headline performance at Mosaic Festival 2009. I think we’ll be performing at about 8 or 9PM, but the festival has stuff going on all weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) so show up whenever you want to and have some fun, just don’t miss our performance, it’s going to be something special. The line-up for that event is Diamond on decks and guitar, myself and Sups on vocals, Liana on keyboard and vocals, Az on bass and Pravin on the drums, it is going to be a killer set with classic and new material, all performed fully live. Both of those performances (the Swami performance and my own solo set) are free entry, so if can get there there’s no excuse for not coming!

If you’re in Toronto and you can’t make it to Mississauga, we’ll be performing in Yunge-Dundas Square in downtown T-Dot at 4PM on Sunday 21st as part of North By Northeast Festival. Check out the site for more information on ticketing etc. There’s some very cool acts performing there including GZA of Wu-Tang Clan and Cool Kidz, so it should be pretty awesome. This will be a special show as it isn’t just a Swami set, but a Swami/Fell On Deaf Ears set. If you haven’t heard, Fell On Deaf Ears is Diamond (DJ Swami)’s new alternative rock project with Florida based rock singer Josh Lyons and we’ll be doing a collaborative set, with Diamond on guitar, Pravin on drums, Az on bass, myself and Sups on vocals (for the Swami half) and Josh on vocals (for the Fell On Deaf Ears part). It’s going to be a sick show. Those of you interested might like to know that some of the Fell On Deaf Ears tracks of course started out as Swami songs with myself, Sups and Diamond. After determining that the direction of those songs didn’t match with the direction of Swami as an existing band, they were re-shaped and re-written by Diamond and Josh for their new project. (The Fell On Deaf Ears material is incredible, btw). So if any of you guys can make it out to this show, you’ll witness history in the making.

The following Friday (the 26th), we’ll be doing another Swami performance in Yunge-Dundas Square as part of the Global Grooves event. That will be a more electronic set with Diamond on decks, and myself, Liana and Sups on vocals. Come check it out and get down the with the equalizin desirockin grooves!

Keep checking out my Twitter and the band Twitter account for live updates, pics, and maybe even videos from on the road!

What else…….oh yeah, a brand new Swami song, called ‘Sugarless’ will be premiering on desihits.com very soon…..so keep checking for it!

Peace……

S-Endz

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First of all, my apologies for the damn-near month that you lovely neofunkateers didn’t get an update. Did ya miss me?

Needless to say, I’ve been busy, and you’ve probably been keeping up with my tweets anyway. If you haven’t, shame, fire and brimstone on you (just kidding). Let’s rev up the gears a bit and post a new Throwback Photo of the Week!

[L-R : S-Endz, Sups, Stormz]

This is an interesting one. My hair was braided AND dyed at that point. There’s not many photos of that iconic piece of style right there!

This was taken in Lille, France, either before or after a gig at the Lille3000 festival in late 2006. Noteworthy fact – a photoshoot at that same gig led to the images that would become the basis for the four drawn faces of myself, Diamond, Sups and Bobby on the ‘Equalize’ album cover. I might have mentioned that before though.

Enjoy!

S

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Here it is folks. The final cut of my ‘Johnny J – Remembered’ piece, recapping the interview I did with the late legend back in 2006. Thanks to Sam Coley, without whose help this would not have happened. I hope you guys enjoy this.

Part 1:

Part 2:

History:

Back in 2006, I flew to LA to make a documentary about Tupac Shakur for the BBC. I interviewed many cool people, from David Banner, to QD3, to Candyman 187 (Havenotz in this MF!!!),  but one of the experiences that I have the fondest memories of is the 3-4 hours or so we spent with legendary hip-hop producer Johnny ‘J’ at his studio just outside LA.

It’s no exaggeration to say that Johnny had been one of my all time favorite music producers since I was a young kid. I started listening to ‘Pac when I was around 10 years old, and just as I’m sure many other fans would tell you, the soul of Johnny’s productions stood out from the beginning. Tracks like ‘All About U‘, ‘Hit Em Up‘, ‘Picture Me Rollin‘, ‘How Do U Want It‘ were bonafide classics since the day they hit the radio, and even after ‘Pac passed, Johnny’s posthumous productions were generally the ones that we fans held close to our hearts – songs like ‘Until The End Of Time‘, ‘Letter 2 My Unborn‘, and ‘Ballad Of A Dead Souljah‘.

Johnny turned out to be one of the coolest cats I ever had the pleasure of kicking it with. We sat back and chopped up the state of the current hip-hop scene, our grievances with the remixing of Pac’s music by Eminem et al, and much much more. We must have spent about 2 hours talking, not including the interview we did which lasted over an hour. We took photos of Johnnys studio, his platinum plaques and I even kicked a few rhymes in the booth, busted out a few licks on Johnny’s Fender Jazz Bass, and gave Johnny a copy of the Swami album ‘So Who Am I’ that we had recently released through Sony BMG.  Then we jumped in Johnnys car and he dropped us off at Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles in Hollywood.

Over the months that followed I spoke to Johnny a few times and we had every intention of meeting up next time I was in LA. Unfortunately this never happened. In 2008 Johnny got arrested and locked up for 6 months, the official documents unearthed suggest for a DWI, but the sentence seems overly harsh for it to be that simple. A few months into his sentence, he died. The jail claimed suicide, but I didn’t believe that for a second. The real circumstances may never be known, but I and others believe he was murdered after a racial altercation. For those who may not know, in the California prison system, fraternisation betweens Latinos and Blacks can get you killed. It is thought that Johnny may have been called out by other Latinos who may not have been too happy with Johnnys work with black artists. Johnny was not the type of person to back down and unfortunately this may have been what got him killed.

Since his death, I had been pondering the idea of some sort of tribute, aside from what I wrote at the time on my blog. A few months ago, a friend of mine who teaches Radio and Communication at Birmingham City University stopped by at my place, and we hit upon the idea of editing down the interview I had done with Johnny, recording some new parts to explain what had happened, and syncing it with unseen photos from my trip, as a recap of the interview, and a tribute to Johnny.

Fast forward to now, and it’s done and will be going online in a few days time. Watch this space – I hope you guys enjoy it.

RIP JOHNNY J – ‘UNTIL THE END OF TIME’

Peace,

S-Endz

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