Former Epic records/Fifth Angel founder/lead guitarist and solo recording artist James Byrd is now represented by renowned classical star and John Williams producer David Blumberg of Sunset Audio. Byrd's last album "James Byrd's Atlantis Rising-Crimes Of Virtuosity" has been re-mixed and re-mastered with 2 previously unreleased tracks added. The special edition is now available in it's entirety at mp3.com
The first track from the album which was posted on mp3 raced 1,300 chart positions in
less than one week to top-ten on the progressive metal charts, and held the #2
chart position for 3 weeks straight. The album received an average of 1,000 plays
per week on mp3 and is on 70 stations there.
Asked for comment, Byrd said "This was an album I released in Europe and Japan in 1998, and although I'm extremely pleased with this degree of interest in the album, I'm not terribly surprised. While Sony music is re-re-releasing my original Fifth Angel album to America, the industry seems to have been ignoring an entire group of music fans since 1990; Progressive and well played hard-rock and metal. It only shows just how many sales they've lost that they think they need to re-re-release one of my albums from 1985 while I've been producing even better albums without them all these years. Maybe someone will wake-up and smell the coffee at the labels and realise that demand for quality doesn't end with multi-million dollar marketing campaigns of bands like "Limp Bizcut".
Byrd's notoriety began with the Epic/CBS group Fifth Angel in the 1980's, and in 1995
he was proclaimed by none other than Yngwie Malmsteen to be "The most exciting European sounding guitarist I've heard in years". Byrd finally extracted himself from his previous American label and is making a fresh start using the Internet as a beginning.
Byrd is currently finishing up his 7th album which features extensive symphonic
arrangements supporting virtuoso metal guitar and a new vocalist.
Licensing inquiries for the new album should be directed to: acraven@totalise.co.uk




This article courtesy of http://www.class-guitar.com.

You may freely reprint this article on your website or in your newsletter provided this courtesy notice and the author name and URL remain intact.

Submit Your Article