Share Tweet By Billy Hallowell Editor
August 2, 2023
The siblings and family behind Christian band for KING + COUNTRY and singer Rebecca St. James are gearing up to be the subject of a new biopic detailing their journey to America and path to fame.
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“Unsung Hero,” an upcoming movie from Lionsgate and Kingdom Story Company, will release in theaters nationwide April 26, 2024, and will detail how St. James, her brothers, Joel and Luke Smallbone (for KING + COUNTRY), and their parents and siblings made their way into the entertainment realm.
But far beyond a mere story about music, “Unsung Hero” Joel Smallbone’s directorial debut will detail their struggles, tough decisions, and the remarkable faith it took to start a new life in America.
“When David Smallbones successful music company collapses, he moves his family from Down Under to the States, searching for a brighter future,” an official synopsis reads. “With nothing more than their seven children, suitcases, and their love of music, David and his pregnant wife Helen set out to rebuild their lives.”
“Unsung Hero,” which stars Joel Smallbone (David), Daisy Betts (Helen), Candace Cameron Bure, Kirrilee Berger, Jonathan Jackson, Lucas Black, Terry O’Quinn, and Hillary Scott, offers a powerful look at how reliance on God guided the family toward their destiny.
“Helens faith stands against all odds and inspires her husband and children to hold onto theirs,” the synopsis continues. “With their own dreams on hold, David and Helen begin to realize the musical prowess in their children, who would go on to become two of the most successful acts in Inspirational Music history: five-time Grammy Award-winning artists for KING + COUNTRY and Rebecca St. James.”
Last year, Helen Smallbone joined “The Prodigal Stories Podcast” to tell her family’s harrowing overcomer story. She shared that God guided her after the family came to America with absolutely nothing and catapulted them onto national and international stages.
“America was sort of the land of opportunity,” Smallbone said, noting their experience in the U.S. was a culture shock. “At this point, we were living hand to mouth. We knew we had nothing much behind us, financially. We had no family anymore, minimal friends, work acquaintances, but that was about it.”
But through faith and perseverance, the family sustained itself and found massive success. Smallbone said she knows great responsibility comes along with the family’s public ministry and work.
“There is a great responsibility under God that you honor God and finish strong,” she said of the platforms her children have. “And that has been spoken about within the home to everybody.”
Listen to Smallbone tell her family’s story:
It’s a tale Smallbone also documented in her 2022 book, “Behind the Lights: The Extraordinary Adventure of a Mum and Her Family.”
Be sure to stay tuned for more updates on “Unsung Hero” as we move closer to release.
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The 1975 frontman Matty Healy has warned of a musical “silence” that would come without the pubs and bars that give UK artists their first chance to perform.
Fresh from headlining Glastonburyin June, Healy is backing a new UK-wide festival which will see more than 2,000 gigs taking place across more than 1,000 “seed” venues in September.
The Seed Sounds Weekender aims to celebrate the hospitality sector hosting bands and singers just as they are starting out – and for some, before they go on to become global superstars.
Healy, who is an ambassador for the event, said in a statement to Sky News: “Local venues aren’t just where bands cut their teeth, they’re the foundation of any real culture.
“Without them, you don’t get The Smiths, Amy Winehouse, or The 1975. You get silence.”
Oasis, currently making headlines thanks to their sold-out reunion tour, first played at Manchester’s Boardwalk club, which closed in 1999, and famously went on to play stadiums and their huge Knebworth gigs within the space of a few years.
Image: Oasis stars Liam and Noel Gallagher, pictured on stage at Wembley for their reunion tour, started out playing Manchester’s Boardwalk club. Pic: Lewis Evans
GigPig, the live music marketplace behind Seed Sounds, says the seed sector collectively hosts more than three million gigs annually, supports more than 43,000 active musicians, and contributes an estimated £2.4bn to the UK economy.
“The erosion of funding for seed and grassroots spaces is part of a wider liberal tendency to strip away the socially democratic infrastructure that actually makes art possible,” said Healy.
“What’s left is a cultural economy where only the privileged can afford to create, and where only immediately profitable art survives.”
He described the Seed Sounds Weekender as “a vital reminder that music doesn’t start in boardrooms or big arenas – it starts in back rooms, pubs, basements, and independent spaces run on love, grit, and belief in something bigger.”
The importance of funding for grassroots venues has been highlighted in the past few years, with more than 200 closing or stopping live music in 2023 and 2024, according to the Music Venue Trust. Sheffield’s well-known Leadmill venue saw its last gig in its current form in June, after losing a long-running eviction battle.
In May, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy announced the £85m Creative Foundations Fund to support arts venues across England.
But most seed venues – the smaller spaces in the hospitality sector that provide a platform before artists get to ticketed grassroots gigs or bigger stages – won’t qualify for the levy. GigPig is working to change this by formalising the seed music venue space as a recognised category.
“The UK’s seed venues are where music careers are born,” said GigPig co-founder Kit Muir-Rogers. “Collectively, this space promotes more music than any other in the live music business, yet it has gone overlooked and under-appreciated.”
The Seed Sounds Weekender takes place from 26-28 September and will partner with Uber to give attendees discounted rides to and from venues.
Tickets for most of the gigs will be free, with events taking place across 20 UK towns and cities including London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Leicester, Newcastle and Southampton
The Rebel-Quad is the second-generation product from Rebellions and is made up of four Rebel AI chips. Rebellions, a South Korean firm, is looking to rival companies like Nvidia in AI chips.
Rebellions
South Korean artificial intelligence chip startup Rebellions has raised money from tech giant Samsung and is targeting a funding round of up to $200 million ahead of a public listing, the company’s management told CNBC on Tuesday.
Last year, Rebellions merged with another startup in South Korea called Sapeon, creating a firm that is being positioned as one of the country’s promising rivals to Nvidia.
Rebellions is currently raising money and is targeting funding of between $150 million and $200 million, Sungkyue Shin, chief financial officer of the startup, told CNBC on Tuesday.
Samsung’s investment in Rebellions last week was part of that, Shin said, though he declined to say how much the tech giant poured in.
Since its founding in 2020, Rebellions has raised $220 million, Shin added.
The current funding round is ongoing and Shin said Rebellions is talking to its current investors as well as investors in Korea and globally to participate in the capital raise. Rebellions has some big investors, including South Korean chip giant SK Hynix, telecommunication firms SK Telecom and Korea Telecom, and Saudi Arabian oil giant Aramco.
Rebellions was last valued at $1 billion. Shin said the current round of funding would push the valuation over $1 billion but declined to give specific figure.
Rebellions is aiming for an initial public offering once this funding round has closed.
“Our master plan is going public,” Shin said.
Rebellions designs chips that are focused on AI inferencing rather than training. Inferencing is when a pre-trained AI model interprets live data to come up with a result, much like the answers that are produced by popular chatbots.
With the backing of major South Korean firms and investors, Rebellions is hoping to make a global play where it will look to challenge Nvidia and AMD as well as a slew of other startups in the inferencing space.
Samsung collaboration
Rebellions has been working with Samsung to bring its second-generation chip, Rebel, to market. Samsung owns a chip manufacturing business, also known as foundry. Four Rebel chips are put together to make the Rebel-Quad, the product that Rebellions will eventually sell. A Rebellions spokesperson said the chip will be launched later this year.
The funding will partly go toward Rebellions’ product development. Rebellions is currently testing its chip which will eventually be produced on a larger scale by Samsung.
“Initial results have been very promising,” Sunghyun Park, CEO of Rebellions, told CNBC on Tuesday.
Park said Samsung invested in Rebellions partly because of the the good results that the chip has so far produced.
Samsung is manufacturing Rebellions’ semiconductor using its 4 nanometer process, which is among the leading-edge chipmaking nodes. For comparison, Nvidia’s current Blackwell chips use the 4 nanometer process from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Rebellions will also use Samsung’s high bandwidth memory, known as HBM3e. This type of memory is stacked and is required to handle large data processing loads.
That could turn out to be a strategic win for Samsung, which is a very distant second to TSMC in terms of market share in the foundry business. Samsung has been looking to boost its chipmaking division. Samsung Electronics recently entered into a $16.5 billion contract for supplying semiconductors to Tesla.
If Rebellions manages to find a large customer base, this could give Samsung a major customer for its foundry business.
The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite, a joint Earth science mission, is now set for launch from India’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre. The pickup-truck-sized spacecraft was encapsulated in the nose cone of an Indian Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle and is scheduled to lift off on Wednesday, July 30 at 8:10 a.m. EDT (5:40 p.m. IST). Once in orbit, its dual-frequency radars will circle Earth 14 times a day, scanning nearly all of the planet’s land and ice surfaces every 12 days. It will provide data to help scientists monitor soil moisture and vegetation, and better assess hazards like landslides and floods.
International Collaboration and Launch Readiness
According to the official website, NISAR reflects a significant NASA–ISRO partnership. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) built the long-wavelength L-band radar, and India’s Space Applications Centre built the shorter-wavelength S-band radar. This dual-frequency design makes NISAR the first Earth satellite to carry two radar systems, underscoring the mission’s unique collaboration.
The spacecraft is now integrated into its launch vehicle at India’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre. On July 28 NASA announced NISAR had been encapsulated in the payload fairing of an ISRO Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle on the pad. The GSLV is scheduled to lift off at 8:10 a.m. EDT (5:40 p.m. IST) on Wednesday, July 30.
Advanced Dual-Frequency Radar
NISAR carries a novel dual-frequency radar system. The satellite’s instruments operate at L-band (25 cm) and S-band (10 cm) wavelengths. The longer L-band waves can penetrate forests and soil to sense moisture and land motion, while the shorter S-band waves pick up fine surface details like vegetation moisture and roughness. This combination lets NISAR detect both large-scale and fine-scale changes.
From orbit, NISAR will circle Earth 14 times per day, scanning nearly all land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days. Its data will track changes like the advance or retreat of polar ice sheets and slow ground shifts from earthquakes, and will also aid agriculture and disaster planning by helping monitor crops and prepare for floods and hurricanes.