The lead vocalist of Junoon - a radical rock band of the last decade, Ali Azmat, has launched his first solo album titled ‘Social Circus’. The album is released by Sadaf Stereo.

Addressing a press conference at the Karachi Press Club on Thursday, Ali Azmat who is famous for his vocal powers and stage performance, said he had been planning to launch this album since the release of Junoon’s last album, Deewar - a flop album as compared to the band’s earlier ones.

Describing his album’s theme, he said it was a personal expression — a kind in which philosophical moods and thematically expressed events of his life are included.

Name: Salman Saquib a.k.a Mani

Date of Birth: 23/03/1978

Place of Birth: Karachi.

Education: B.Com from Govt. Commerce College, Karachi.

Hobbies: Personalities usually watch TV programs. I watch sports in my spare time and I also play along with the showbiz team.

Other Occupations: Well this is my bread and butter…. If you are fit in this profession you can more than a CA or an MBA.

What do you think about your job?

It’s cool.

Would you encourage others to take up this job?

Recently rock bands from Lahore Jaal, [eP] and Visaal performed in Isloo in a concert arranged by Melange, the Elite club. It was arranged in NIC Auditorium in Blue Area. Fans really enjoyed performance of their favorite bands but much appreciated was [eP]. With Spring and SAF games around the corner, we look forward for more concerts in Islamabad.

EP’s first release was reputed to be filled with weird electronic sounds, synthesizer magic and the poppish guitar-driven anthems, long before the album saw the light of day or the introspective title Irtiqa was associated with this ambitious effort. With all the hype surrounding the album, Irtiqa is certainly one of the albums that Pakistani aficionados have anxiously been waiting for. Now, living up to all the hype and expectations, I imagine, is probably one of the band’s prime concerns. The album does deliver. Ambition and dedication is clearly visible or audible, rather, amidst the rising and falling of synthesized crescendos, aggressive alternative rock guitars and the meticulously crafted and programmed drums.

While conducting a poll on the top ten Pakistani bands/soloists, I realized how ignorant of the pakistani music scene our expatriates are. For instance, the only bands they would know of were Junoon, Strings or EP…beyond that, most of them still thought that Awaz was making waves…ok, I’m exaggerating, come to think of it, our music scene has finally started making its presence felt…a far cry from just a year or two back when we were all still hooked on to the ‘I love junoon’ phase. Now, at least we have a number of bands to choose from…when you ask non-Pakistanis about which Pakistani band they like, at least some of them add strings or Ali Zafar to the necessary bout of Junoon mania. It’ll take time to get our selves established, but heck! We’ve started haven’t we? Ample proof of that is Strings contribution to the spider man movie!

Indus Music (IM) will hold the first pop music awards ceremony in Pakistan at the Alhamra Arts Centre on July 24.

The channel has also signed an agreement with MTV whereby IM will broadcast old English songs in a show called ‘MTV Classics’, presented and produced in Pakistan.daily Times reported.

The IM music awards focus exclusively on the popular music scene in Pakistan. The awards target two specific areas of Pakistani music: the history of pop music in Pakistan and the new groups and singers that have performed on IM and new albums that have been released.

As a six- year-old I could hardly understand music. But there was one tune, which I still remember humming in my class when I was in grade one. The song had a distinctly catchy tune and had taken the Pakistani Pop scene by storm. It started off as Sar kiye yeh pahar. Then suddenly the band who sang this song vanished. And when after eight years the Strings launched their smash hit album called Duur I realized that they were the same guys whose tunes infused a craze of music in me at a very young age.

Dubai is a happening city from always with many international music stars performing there
frequently.This time, our very own Pakistani bands [eP], Call, Jal (Gauhar) and Nabeel /Kamran of AaroH will be performing in Dubai on the 17th of June, 2004
at Wonderland theme park.

Pakistani Rap/Rock band Entity Paradigm is going strong with their debut album “Irtiqa”. According to the sources they have already sold 21,000 cassettes and 10,000 CDs in the first month of release. They launched “Irtiqa” along with the video release of “Aghosh” in the first week of October.

The music boom of 2002 lived up to its hype and exceeded expectations in 2003. All it needed was the steely resolve of underground musicians, the mushrooming of local music channels, and the dependency of drama oriented TV channels to fill their empty time slots with music videos. All in all, the stage was set for the emergence of the third generation of artists in 2003 such as Fuzon, Noori, Ahmad Jehanzeb, Aaroh, EP and Ali Zafar, all of whom have helped drag the industry through its latest phase of evolution.