Joe's Big Toe

With less than two weeks to go until the start of the fest­ival, we bring you this week’s Spot­light On: Szi­get 2010, focus­sing on the Israeli psy­che­delic trance group, Infec­ted Mush­room. The band star­ted out with only two mem­bers, Erez Eisen (I.Zen) and Amit Dudevani (Dudev) in 1998 in north­ern Israel. Since then, they have been joined by three oth­ers to form the most recent line-up, that used for “Legend of the Black Shawarma”.
Their first for­ays into the world of music together were made in 1998, and they looked to …

Click here to hear some of the main reas­ons we’re excited about Szi­get — a first for JBT — an art­icle with a soundtrack!
Szi­get is a music fest­ival held annu­ally in Bud­apest, Hun­gary. Szi­get lit­er­ally means island (and is pro­nounce “see-get”), and it’s called that because it’s held on an island in the middle of the Danube. Its first incarn­a­tion was as a mainly student-run fest­ival in 1993, and the second, in 1994, was a Wood­stock re-union fest­ival in Europe. Dur­ing the four years since its incep­tion, they must have …

This week’s Spot­light on: Szi­get will be focus­sing on the massive UK dance act, Faith­less. Formed in 1995 by Sis­ter Bliss, she recruited Maxi Jazz, Jamie Catto and Rollo Arm­strong to join her. The four­some released Salva Mea later on that year. They have released six albums of ori­ginal mater­ial, Rev­er­ence, Sunday 8PM, Out­ro­spect­ive, No Roots, To All New Arrivals and The Dance. They describe their sound as a blend of trip-hop and techno, and they have undoubtedly influ­enced thou­sands and thou­sands of today’s dance acts.
The suc­cess­ful artist Dido, is Rollo …

Ska-P hail from Val­le­cas (Mad­rid), Spain, and were act­ive from 1994 until 2005. In 2005 the band took a break to work on side pro­jects, but reunited in 2008, and released their sixth album in Octo­ber that year. The name of the band comes from, obvi­ously, ska music, but also is a play on the Span­ish word escapar (to escape), and is sup­posed to be pro­nounced “es-kar-peh”. The band have a huge fol­low­ing in Spain and Latin Amer­ica, and a smal­ler, but still sig­ni­fic­ant, fol­low­ing in Europe and North America. …

Wel­come to the first part of our Spot­light On: Szi­get 2010 series, and today, we’ll be intro­du­cing the band Skindred.
Skindred are a Brit­ish band hail­ing from New­port in Wales. They’ve been around since 1998, after the break-up of Dub War, the vocal­ist (Benji Webb)‘s pre­vi­ous band. Webb blames Dub War’s break up on pres­sure from the record label, Ear­ache Records. Skindred’s first record, called Babylon, came out in 2002. It was reis­sued twice, once in 2003, and then again in 2004, with new cover art, and some new material. …