Robert Pierre Identity
Not many kids hit adolescence with a record deal and huge youth tour—and still keep up their grades. Meet Robert Pierre, an Orlando teen with a big voice and an even bigger heart—a talented basketball player and high school student who has found his Identity, and who’s reaching out with the message that students don't need to look to the world to define who they are.

Two year...s ago, Robert released his debut album, Inside Out, while in the eighth grade. Now 16, Robert’s voice and musical style have matured, but his encouraging message remains the same. With his sophomore album Identity hitting exclusive stores this fall, this high school sophomore is on a mission to help kids discover that through Christ, they have value to God.

“A lot of kids are asking, ‘Who am I?’ and ‘How am I important?’ ” Robert says. “They are finding their identity through friends or sports figures or celebrities or whatever. They don’t understand that their identity isn’t in that stuff; it’s in Christ, because He died on the cross for their sins. It only matters what God thinks. I want kids to know that they are forgiven and set free, and that it doesn’t matter what other people think—they are very important to God.”

From the first note of the title track, Identity catches the attention of kids and teens with its bouncy hooks, sweeping ballads, clever lyrics and contagious melodies. With award-winning producer Matt Bronlewee (Jars of Clay, Steven Curtis Chapman) at the helm and top-notch songwriters like Matthew West, Scott Krippayne, and Jason Ingram contributing, Identity is set to captivate and present the gospel to a rapidly maturing generation.......


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A lot of people ask me, “Why do I do what I do, the way I do?” I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, in one of the worst neighborhoods in America, in one of the worst times in the country’s gang history. In my neighborhood just like a lot of other neighborhoods around the world, it was plagued with violence and drugs. Where I grew up 75% of the males believe that there is one way to make money and that’s trapping or as you would say selling drugs. When it comes to gangs, If your hood bangs and you hang out, you are visible to other hoods, so you might as well bang cause you affiliated, so we bang. If you a male in hoods like mines you either trapping, robbing, stealing, murking for money, or you broke. It’s the same for the women, 75% of the females either on welfare, boosting (stealing clothes), trapping or looking for a dude with money to support them, and that’s how it go. Our mindset is, “this is where I am, my momma a drunk or smoked out, my daddy was this so that’s what I’m gone be, all my family in the street get it like this, my whole hood live this way, I have to do what I have to do, this is life.” You add this onto the back of a sixteen year old that just had a baby, everyday he comes in the house there is no food, a house full of crack heads, and you get what you see in the inner cities around the world, "Survivors!" This life that we live is made to look cool, by the media, movies, magazines, documentaries, and of course, music. Most rappers you hear today spitting gangsta are “Fake thugs, point blank period!” They have never touched a gram of dope, never banged a ratchet (a gun), and have never even been hood at all, never! Every now and then you get a couple of them that really are hood, when they come out talking about hood life, the struggle of it, the drive of wanting to get out by any means necessary, they become our voice because their story is our story and therefore it becomes the soundtrack to our life. When your hear a dude talking about your struggle and you see him come up out of it, you think that can work for you and even if it don’t, the pressure that comes along with the life we live will make you try it because anything is better than this. I don’t condone anyone selling drugs, stealing, killing, robbing or any crime, but I do understand the mindset of the people that do it for survival. I’ve been in the situation where my kids didn’t have any where to stay, no family to help and thinking from a hood mindset, I would have murked the world to feed my babies. I understand the young boy that wants to be a man and provide for his family so bad that he would rob to do it. I understand that he only uses the things that he knows and I spit to give him hope that there is another way to live. "Thats why I do what i do." One day I was awakened to the fact that the way i was living was all a lie! Everything that my hood, music and movies told me was not what i was born to be, I wasn’t born to be a goon, killer or murderer. I was awakened to the fact that females were not made to be toys of my sexual pleasure. They were not part time conversations or trashcans for me to dump my hurts and emotions. I learned that God made them, as well as myself, and that God had a purpose in mind for me and them. In the hood we are some of the most religious, hypocritical people I have ever seen. We have what my friends and I call “Hood Theology.” We know God exist, we say we love God, we pray, we may even go to church, but we think God is cool with everything we do. I know I been there. I’m in the back of the police car cuffed up, I’m like, “ God get me out of this please I will never do it again.” Soon as I’m out the car I’m right back at it again. I’m stupid high riding in the car, like, “man God please don’t let me crash, I’m done getting blowed.” Soon as I wake up the next day I’m right back at it again. Faced down in the trap house by the police, guns in my face, guns busting at me, shot up in the hospital almost dead, locked up on felonies and get out messing with nasty girls. What ever the case is, we see that the grace of God. that same grace gets us out of trouble time and time again and we go right back to what we do, because God keeps showing us grace and we think it means He’s cool with what we live. That’s what I thought to, because God kept showing me grace in my (most I just named) situations I thought God was cool with how I was living, but he wasn’t, and if you living that way He is not cool with it either. The truth is this;

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After releasing their 2010 demo a year ago, A Past Unknown is looking to release their full length album. Recorded by Jamie King, (For Today, Alesana, Between the Buried and Me) at The Basement Studio in North Carolina, the album captures the heavy and melodic presence with emotion filled lyrics striving to show the world what hope is truly about with the power and love of Jesus Christ. Expect this album to be released late spring/early summer......


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Formed in 2001 in the outskirts of Los Angeles, Phinehas are hardly newcomers to the Christian metalcore scene but until recently have kept to their hometown. Now, after ten years of honing their sound, they have teamed with Red Cord Records to present "The God Mahcine," a full-length that is played along the same lines as As I Lay Dying, A Day To Remember and For Today that they expect will hurl them out of the garages and into the forefront of their scene.............


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Burlap to Cashmere redefined folk rock in the 90s through its unique melding of flamenco and Mediterranean influences crossed with poetically introspective lyrics, yet the band bowed out in 2001 after years of nonstop touring alongside some of the biggest acts in the business took its toll. A decade after its split, the band that paved the way for The Avett Brothers an...d Mumford and Sons – singer /guitarist/songwriter Steven Delopoulos, guitarist John Philippidis and drummer Theodore Pagano – have reunited, returning with a beautiful, stripped-down new sound.

Native New Yorkers Delopoulos, and his cousin Philippidis have been playing music together their entire lives; Burlap to Cashmere was born out of a theater project Delopoulos wrote and performed in college. Pagano joined the group shortly after the cousins began gigging in coffee houses in the mid-'90s, and Burlap to Cashmere started to do what it did best — electrify live audiences. The band grew to a seven-piece ensemble and released a live EP, followed by an album called Anybody Out There? on A&M that showcased its unique blend of classic acoustic music and rollicking Greek rhythms.

When the record label changed hands, Burlap to Cashmere was nearly a casualty of industry politics. The band kept playing to rapturous audiences, but after six years at the top of its game, Burlap to Cashmere called it quits out of exhaustion. Delopoulos recorded two solo albums and Philippidis carried on with session work, while Pagano worked as an interior designer (he's the guy who made sure Ikea showrooms and Apple stores look so appealing). All three thought about getting the band back together, but it took a traumatic event — Philippidis surviving a near-fatal car accident and doctors reconstructing his entire face — to kick-start the reunion.

When the cousins played Pagano some of the newer tunes, he was blown away: "It was Burlap again, but without all the '90s grandeur," he says. Jive Records agreed, giving the band a rare second shot. Earlier this year, the trio hit the studio in California with producer Mitchell Froom (Elvis Costello, Paul McCartney, Sheryl Crow) with a few simple rules: "There would be no nudging, no Auto-Tuning, we're going into this for everything that's organic about the band," Philippidis says. The result, the eleven-track self-titled album, releasing on July 19 on Jive and Essential Records.

"When I got out of the hospital, Steven and I just accidentally stumbled into the song ‘Orchestrated Love Song,’” Philippidis says."It's really circusy, old-school, what we used to do in the band," Delopoulos explains. But under the watchful eye of Froom, Burlap to Cashmere learned and employed restraint. "Mitchell's idea was to approach it in an orchestral way, so we're not playing a drum beat that sounds like Rush. It keeps the drama and strips back the dense instrumentation," says Pagano. The song still boasts rapidly changing time signatures that baffle even the most seasoned session player. But Burlap to Cashmere's ability to make the difficult sound simple has always been part of its magic.

"Divinity shines through dark places," Delopoulos says. "Glancing at that divinity, to me is romantic." "Tonight" — the oldest song on the disc — dates back ten years. The joyous "Santorini" will transport you to the streets of Greece as Delopoulos sings about the pleasures of his ethnic homeland.

The centerpiece of the record is the gorgeous, Simon and Garfunkel-esque "Love Reclaims the Atmosphere." "It's about a dying patient," Delopoulos explains. "I feel like we have an idea of what it's like to die, and we talk about peace and divinity and bliss, but what about the person actually going through that process? In darkness, there's light, and I think a lot of these songs go to those dark places so there can be an eruption of light." It's a heavy topic, but on record, Burlap to Cashmere handles it with a delicate beauty, recalling its primary influences: Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Cat Stevens and Van Morrison. In the years between Burlap records, Philippidis became especially infatuated with Paul Simon's One Trick Pony.

"Steven sang this whole record, live," Philippidis says. "There was not room for error. He had to get it or we threw the whole take away." It's that incredible musical skill and the band's gift for mind-blowing live shows that promise to deliver Burlap to Cashmere back to its fans — and introduce them to a world of new............


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California native Dominic Balli’s chosen musical identifier--as purveyor of “CaliRockReggae” -- quickly gives one a glimpse of the sonic style residing within the man’s output.

“Art is an expression of who you are,” Balli says. “I’m just a half Italian, quarter Greek kid from California, but somehow inside of me there’s this little reggae dude just trying to get out. The most common comment I hear is, ‘I don’t even like reggae, but I love your stuff.’ I love that because it means that my music has become accessible to fans that might otherwise totally shy away from anything even reminiscent of reggae.”

That accessibility led fans to snatch up more than 20,000 copies of Balli’s independent debut, Public Announcement, making it one of iTunes’ Top 30 reggae albums of 2008. Such visibility on the sales charts combined with Balli’s electric live show, afforded him the opportunity to perform on stages around the world, alongside a diverse set of artists including Ziggy Marley, Natasha Beddingfield, Jason Mraz, Big Head Todd and the Monsters, George Clinton and the P-Funk, Hawk Nelson, Lecrae, and Barlow Girl.

But a handful of oft-repeated phrases have come to uncover a great deal of truth about Balli, both on a personal and professional level.

Consider the saying “You can’t always get what you want.” Balli’s life has a parallel example. “When I was 13 years old, I wanted to play the drums, even though I was a kid who had no sense of rhythm at all,” Balli says. “My dad told me that if I took guitar lessons for a year, he’d buy me a drum set. I resisted, because I thought only country singers played acoustic guitar!

“I reluctantly started the lessons and eventually fell in love with the guitar. I never did get that drum set.”

The phrase that seems to be informing Balli’s work most these days, and certainly on the title track of his new full-length project American Dream, is “be careful what you ask for, because you just might get it.” The inspiration and insight found within that song (featuring P.O.D. frontman Sonny Sandoval) came from Balli finding just enough of what he’d been working for his entire life: success.

“For me, I basically grew up my whole life with that kind of goal in mind: whatever I want to do is possible, and it’s all about me,” Balli says. “It was all about the steady job with the nice income, and when I got married, it’d be great to buy a house and have brand new cars and really nice clothes. It was all about setting up my life to be comfortable, which is at the heart of the American Dream................


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"Guess what I'm currently working on??? A little EP that I was supposed to release in October last year."

I read a quote I thought Jessy Ribordy saying that he's working on this EP due to the fact the timing of the next The River Empires album was delayed more than he anticipated. Sort of as another thing to put out for the fans of his work until TRE's. And as that says, this EP was supposed to be released last year actually. I recall seeing a few posts from him or others about that.

Slow Chorale, the debut record from TGC was pretty good. I think the stuff on this EP is going to be some songs (or ideas for songs) that he hadn't finished, but were written (came up with) during the same time as the music on Slow Chorale. So to expect vast differences in the music on this from SC might not make sense.

But regardless, this is something to look forward to along with the new Falling Up record, and then likely in the fall sometime..................

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William Matthews is a worship leader from Bethel Church in Redding California and is a burgeoning singer-songwriter and recording artist for Bethel Music.

He has spent several years as a lead prophetic singer and background vocalist for Misty Edwards, Julie Meyer, Cory Asbury and others at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City and has been a part of worship teams leading for The Call. Du...ring this time he wrote several songs on various Forerunner Music albums and compilations.

William has also been a background vocalist for Brian & Jenn Johnson, Suzy Wills Yaraei, Kim Walker, Chris Quilala, Jake Hamilton, Matt Gilman, Jeremy Riddle, and many others.

William has a heart to see young and old develop deep lifestyles of prayer and power........


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