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Globally Respected and Critically Acclaimed Electronic Dance Artists Create Unparalleled Roster of Residencies at …

LAS VEGAS, NV--(Marketwire -03/20/12)- Wynn Las Vegas daylife and nightlife venues will feature more than 30 electronic dance artist residencies at Encore Beach Club, Surrender, Tryst and XS nightclubs throughout 2012. Top artists from around the world, including Afrojack, Calvin Harris, David Guetta, deadmau5, Diplo, Sebastian Ingrosso, Skrillex, Steve Angello, Tisto and many more will join the award-winning venues this year. The complete line-up of exclusive partnerships includes:

"Residencies with this many artists, offering this caliber of talent, will create a remarkable experience for fans of the electronic dance music genre," said Jesse Waits, co-owner and managing partner of XS and Tryst nightclubs. "Our venues will feature an incomparable lineup in 2012. With the addition of special surprises throughout the year, there will be no better destination for music enthusiasts than Wynn Las Vegas."

"With an unprecedented line-up of superstar electronic music talent filling our calendar, we can't be more excited about 2012 at Encore Beach Club and Surrender Nightclub," said Sean Christie, co-owner and managing partner of Encore Beach Club and Surrender. "Encore Beach Club has been widely honored as the finest dayclub in the country, and this year we're elevating the experience with a series of must-see events including Tisto, deadmau5 and Steve Angello. We're not missing a beat at Surrender, where performances from EDM luminaries and red-hot cutting-edge artists will confirm Wynn Las Vegas as the epicenter of dance music culture in America."

Encore Beach Club is open Friday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Surrender is open Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. Tryst is open Thursday through Saturday from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. XS is open Friday through Monday from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. Table reservations are highly recommended (Encore Beach Club and Surrender: 702-770-7300; Tryst: 702-770-3375; XS: 702-770-0097). For more information, visit http://www.wynnlasvegas.com/NightClubs.

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Globally Respected and Critically Acclaimed Electronic Dance Artists Create Unparalleled Roster of Residencies at ...

Spin city: DJs rule Columbus nightlife

Do you hear that? The deep rumble thats been approaching over the horizon for a few years now that screeching, skittering WOMP WOMP WOMP that sounds like Optimus Prime having sex with a dial-up modem?

It has arrived.

Turn out to Short North nightclub Circus on Wednesdays and find several hundred young people twirling glow sticks and gyrating to aggressive strains of dubstep and electro, the genres at the forefront of electronic dance musics surge into the mainstream. Its an impressive sight, especially on a school night, but its nothing compared to the scene when thousands of them flock to see rock-star DJs like Skrillex and Bassnectar headline LC Pavilion, bodies moving with a ferocity that verges on mosh pit status.

After years on the fringes, electronic dance music is having its big mainstream moment, and Columbus is in on the fun.

Thump is just one of many massively popular dubstep and electro nights in town; Thump promoter Nick Reeds monthly LeBoom party routinely brings more than 500 people to Skullys, while Scott Niemets multi-genre Sweatin has been reliably attracting hundreds to various venues for half a decade.

Columbus-based promoter Prime Social Group books major global names like Tiesto and Steve Aoki at local spots like The Mansion and The Bluestone; the company also promotes events across the Midwest and even in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where theyve recruited a superstar DJ lineup for a 42-night spring break experience called Electro Beach.

We even have a rising superstar DJ act of our own, the laser-eyed duo roeVy, now popular enough to repeatedly pack the Newport and steadily making a name across the Midwest.

The causes of this nationwide phenomenon are myriad: taste-making producers like Diplo and Girl Talk brought dance music to fans of rap and indie rock; diverse festivals like Bonnaroo, Coachella and Electric Forest act as Petri dishes for new music discovery; DJs from Skrillex down to roeVy have seized the opportunity and fashioned themselves as rock stars with elaborate stage shows worthy of KISS or Alice Cooper.

This has been a long process, said Reed, who deejays under the name Carma. We put on a free show with Rusko and 12th Planet that only had 300 people two years ago. We recently had him back, and he sold out Bluestone.

With the influx of local dance nights has come an influx of local electronic musicians. Not all of them dabble in dubstep (the decade-old brainy English genre that morphed into bro-friendly party music with violent bass drops) and electro (a splicing of drum machines and funk that dates back to the 80s). The local ecosystem supports everything from gloomy midnight-techno duo Funerals to vibrant Moombahton act Cassius Slay to Digiraatii, who infuses dubstep and electro with the energy of hardcore punk. Niemet, who has made it his business to use Sweatin as a vehicle to bring together disparate social groups and styles, has a lot to work with.

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Spin city: DJs rule Columbus nightlife

Reggae In The U.K.: A Steady Force

Echoes/Redfern/Getty Images

Music For 'Disenfranchised Working-Class Youth': The British reggae band Steel Pulse formed in Birmingham in 1975. Mykaell Riley is third from the left.

You could hear it on mainstream radio in 1978, courtesy of The Police, and if you're in Britain, you can hear it on the airwaves today, in the music of Birmingham-born MC Lady Leshurr: reggae's influence on British music.

"As long as there's been reggae, there's been reggae in the U.K., and that influence has played a massive role," says producer and DJ Ras Kwame, who has worked on BBC Radio for more than a decade.

Lately called "bass culture," the wide range of music influenced by reggae in the U.K. is as prominent as the rock that was inspired by R&B and blues half a century ago, says Mykaell Riley, the lead singer of the reggae band Steel Pulse, which formed in Birmingham in 1975.

"We look at the impact of it; we look at how it's changed production; we look at the story of the remix culture, rave culture and the relationship to sound systems; we look at current youth and what they use as a key reference when making popular music in the U.K., and we'll see that the resonance of the black community in the U.K. has a major contribution that has never been fully recognized," Riley says.

The contribution began in the 1950s, when Jamaican immigration to the U.K. spiked. By the early '60s, British sound systems flourished and British ska music by artists like Millie Small topped the Billboard charts.

Where in America, West Indian immigrants could be absorbed into existing African-American communities, in Britain, where there was no real black community to speak of, Caribbean people found themselves isolated. Riley says that reggae became a potent way of dealing with that alienation.

"Disenfranchised working-class youth identified through this music," Riley says, "which was rebellious, it was anti-state, anti-government, it was very politically charged and very militant, so the black youth were very motivated and socially aware at the time. And all of this came through reggae. It was not present in the schools, on television, in the books, in radio."

In the 1970s, reggae exploded in the U.K. Bob Marley lived in London. Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones recorded reggae songs, and a soulful British genre known as Lover's Rock was born. But when U.K. reggae bands like Steel Pulse and Aswad hit the scene, they struggled to be accepted by black audiences who deemed them less authentic than Jamaican-born acts. Instead, these new bands found an unlikely fan base: punks.

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Reggae In The U.K.: A Steady Force

House panel backs end to newspaper tax breaks

Newspaper publishers in Missouri could have to pay more to buy paper, ink and other supplies under a measure endorsed Wednesday by a House panel.

On a 7-5 vote, the House Tax Reform Committee backed a proposal to eliminate sales tax exemptions on newspaper equipment in order to help fund state medical subsidies for people who are blind. The measure now goes to the full House.

The result is that newspaper companies would have to pay sales tax both on the supplies used to produce their paper and on the retail sale of the paper a double hit not applied to most manufacturers.

The House is debating a budget this week that would eliminate a $30 million program that provides medical care to about 2,800 blind people and instead set aside $6 million for a slimmed-down aid program. Some House members want to use the money saved from those program cuts to reduce cuts to the states public colleges and universities.

A financial estimate included with the newspaper legislation approved Wednesday projects that bill could generate up to $4.2 million of additional money for state aid to the blind.

House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan Silvey, who sponsored the measure, said newspapers should give up their tax exemptions because some editorial boards have called on lawmakers to eliminate tax breaks as a way of balancing the budget.

The fact that they receive this corporate welfare while advocating for the end of it for others is a bit hypocritical, said Silvey, R-Kansas City.

Silvey also said he does not think eliminating the tax exemptions would interfere with a newspapers right to press freedom.

To say your medium is so unique that it needs a tax subsidy or its infringement on First Amendment rights, I think is just illogical, he said. Its not their right to have a sustainable business model.

To calculate how much tax revenue the legislation could generate for aid to the blind, legislative analysts estimated the total annual revenue of the newspaper industry and estimated how much of the revenue is spent on newspaper supplies. The fiscal estimate projects that revenue for newspapers sold in the state totals between about $120 million $208 million each year. The estimate cites an annual report filed by the New York Times Co. for 2011 that said costs for raw materials and other costs are equal to 17 percent to 50 percent of the newspapers revenue.

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House panel backs end to newspaper tax breaks

UK & World News: 300 BBC staff 'avoid income tax'

Mar 21 2012

More than 300 staff at the BBC avoid paying income tax, an MP has revealed.

Tory MP David Mowat, who represents Warrington South, said he discovered 320 "non-talent based" employees earning more than 50,000 avoided income tax.

Mr Mowat said it was "not acceptable", adding it was the BBC's Newsnight programme which had sparked the row about senior civil servants avoiding tax when it revealed head of the Student Loans Company Ed Lester had been paid via a company.

He told the Commons: "Tax avoidance matters are at the heart of this thing about us all being in this together.

"I sent a Freedom of Information request to the BBC to ask them how many employees they had who were not having tax deducted at source.

"The answer is that they have 320 non-talent based (staff), so this is administration employees, earning more than 50,000 a year but (for whom) PAYE and National Insurance is not deducted at source.

"I would ask my own frontbench, who are conducting a review across the whole of Government in terms of making sure this isn't happening but which explicitly excludes the BBC, to reconsider that."

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UK & World News: 300 BBC staff 'avoid income tax'