This 2-CD, 32-track collection features album deep cuts and previously unreleased studio recordings, while the second disc takes in live recordings spanning 1977-1996 including renditions of “Imaginary Lover” and “Spooky.”
Often described as a more radio-friendly version of Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Atlanta Rhythm Section was one of a few Southern rock bands to hit the upper reaches of the charts during the ’70s. Hailing from the small town of Doraville, Georgia, the formation of ARS can be traced to the remnants of two groups (The Candymen & The Classics IV). Local hit songwriter Buddy Buie, assembled the band which comprised singer Rodney Justo, guitarist Barry Bailey, bassist Paul Goddard, keyboardist Dean Daughtry, and drummer…
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While Seattle-based grunge unfolded in the late 1980s and early ’90s, a much different movement was playing out in the UK, centered in another big city. Alternately known as “Baggy” (based on its adherents’ sartorial preferences), “Madchester” (an appropriate take on its Northern English epicenter), or, more literally, “indie dance”, the scene was all that grunge was not, and vice-versa.
Both grunge and Madchester were, at heart, reactions to the new wave, synthpop, and New Romantic movements that dominated the 1980s. By 1988 or so, this music had lost most of whatever edge or cultural influence it had ever had. In an inevitable swing of the historical pendulum, many young musicians on both sides of the Atlantic turned back to the “classic rock” that…
1. SBT – 13th St. #2
2. Meg Baird – Cross Bay
3. Sam Burton – Maria
4. Jim Ghedi – What Will Become of England?
5. Angeline Morrison – Unknown African Boy…
6. Lisa O’Neill – If I Was a Painter
7. Julie Byrne – The Greater Wings
8. Angel Bat Dawid – We Are Starzz
9. Angelica Rockne – Protection, Prayers and Vigilance
10. Kara Jackson – Dickhead Blues
11. Lankum – Netta Perseus
12. Jana Horn – The Dream
13. Cassandra Jenkins – New Bikini
14. Sunny War – Sweet Nothing
15. Myriam Gendron – Poor Girl Blues
1. Blind Gary Davis – Death Don’t Have No Mercy
2. Lottie Kimbrough – Rolling Log Blues
3. Blind Roosevelt Graves and Bro. – Crazy About…
4. Sleepy John Estes – Expressman Blues
5. Robert Johnson – Love in Vain #1
6. Mattie Delaney – Tallahatchie River Blues
7. Charley Patton – High Water Everywhere, Part 1
8. Long Cleve Reed, Little Harvey Hull & (Down Home Boys) – Original Stack O’Lee Blues
9. Tommy Johnson – Cool Drink of Water Blues
10. Ruby Glaze & Hot Shot Willie – Lonesome Day…
11. Geeshie Wiley – Last Kind Words Blues
12. John Lee – Down at the Depot
13. Julius King – I Want a Slice of Your Puddin’
14. Skip James – Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues
15. Son House – Clarksdale Moan
Award-winning vocalist Kavita Shah presents a homage to the legendary Cape Verdean singer Cesaria Evora, as well as an expression of her own sodade: a melancholic sense of transience. The daughter of Gujarati immigrants to the US, Shah found a sense of home in Cape Verde that had eluded her for most of her life and says that Evora’s music summoned her down this path since she first heard it.
Most of the compositions are from Evora’s repertoire, with some of Shah’s own thrown in for good measure. A chance meeting with Evora’s musical director/guitarist, Bau, has meant that he plays a prominent part on this album, with the overall sound being faithful to traditional morna sensibility yet with a subtle jazz aesthetic…
Space may be the final frontier for some, but for pianist Satoko Fujii and guitarist Otomo Yoshihide its inner and outer most reaches, string theories, bosons, black holes and wormholes have provided a veritable playground, an infinite source of daring and inspiration.
So one might wonder why it took these two mainstays of the Japanese avant-garde nearly 30 years (and well over 150 albums between them) to take the stage together in January 2022 at one of Tokyo’s most prestigious jazz clubs, the Pit Inn. Terra-forming in scope, Perpetual Motion is the rich culmination of that event.
Performed as one whole conceptual piece (the titles were added post-production), “Perpetual Motion I” opens like a cutting-room soundtrack…
Put a vibraphone into a small ensemble, listen in and the label “exotica” might come up — that exotic music pioneered by Martin Denny and Juan Garcia Esquivel. The pairing of pianist Satoko Fujii and vibraphonist Taiko Saito — a duo they call Futari — on their two terrific albums, Beyond (2021) and Underground (2022), both on Libra Records, sounded like exotica from the Twilight Zone. There is something about the glowing murk of vibes combined with the out-of-this-world sounds of Fujii’s prepared piano ruminations that give those two albums a space-age atmosphere.
On 2023’s Hibiki, the Futari ladies bring in drummer Yuko Oshima to create Trio San.
Spaciousness is the name of the game. Trio San make pianist Masabumi Kikuchi (1939 -2015)…
Sometimes a live album can spirit you away and make you feel like you were at a gig even if you weren’t able to be there. Case in point when it comes to the new album from Andy Crofts’ live collection Live at the 100 Club. The frontman of psychedelic-rock band The Moons has also been reunited with his bandmate Chris Watson on piano and guitar who puts in a first class performance alongside the sublime Lunar Street Quartet.
Live at the 100 Club is a captivating new album that showcases Andy’s impressive pedigree as a singer/songwriter. Aided by impeccable production and by his compelling live performance, the album captures the magic of Andy’s stellar gig at the renowned London music venue from last autumn.
The majority of the tracks on the album are…
In 2021 Nijs and Smolders started a series of free improvisations. Each came from a different background and wanted to explore musical horizons that they were not used to. As a next step they decided to record an album of composed tracks. The experimental platform shifted from long improv sessions to composition and structure, with the work of Delaere as a source of inspiration. The material of his work, the unevenness, the detail of pigments clashing, superimposing on the canvas served as a metaphor and inspiration for sonic canvases that they constructed.
The result has become a record full of surprises. Rhythm, drone, dynamics, timbre, notes, tones, all have been thrown in the tumble dryer and during the process many times led the two…
Music journalists love labelling artists, but more often than not we don’t get it right. Understandably, this is something that artists themselves find frustrating. Fila Brazillia have felt this frustration for decades. During their most prolific and successful period in the 1990s, they were often mislabelled as a “chill out” act, despite rhythm and groove being a key aspect of the duo’s unique and nigh on impossible-to-pigeonhole sound.
On one level, this is understandable; after all, many of Steve Cobby and David McSherry’s most cherished tracks are those than roll along at a low tempo – at least in comparison to the high BPMs associated with the most popular club cuts and culturally dominant sub-genres – and…
Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story is a 2023 Australian documentary film focusing on the life and career of Michael Gudinski, the founder of Mushroom Records.
…Featuring an abundance of bangers written and performed by artists on the Mushroom Group roster, the Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story soundtrack include Kylie Minogue, Ed Sheeran (the first artist to sell a million tickets on one Australian tour when he toured for Michael Gudinski’s Frontier Touring in 2018), Garbage (who had a #1 UK album for Mushroom Records in 1998), and many more from all eras of Gudinski’s time in the music industry.
The soundtrack also boast tracks by Jimmy Barnes, Archie Roach, and Hunters & Collectors through…
1. Bo Diddley – Bring It to Jerome
2. Olatunji – Gin-Go-Lo-Ba (Jin-Go-Low-Bah)
3. Luna – Friendly Advice
4. Ornette Coleman – Lonely Woman
5. Nico – Saēta
6. The Mellows – Smoke from Your Cigarette
7. John Cale – Moonstruck (Nico’s Song)
8. Spiritualized – Why Don’t You Smile Now?
9. Delmore Schwartz – The Repetitive Heart Part IX
10. Lou Reed – I’m Waiting for the Man (demo)
11. The Excellents – Coney Island Baby
12. The Velvet Underground – Cool It Down
13. The Seeds – Up in Her Room
14. Tony Conrad, Arnold Dreyblatt, Jim O’Rourke – Tonic 19-01-2001 (Excerpt)
15. Iannis Xenakis – Concret PH
Paramount+ series The Curse has been touted as one of the best shows of the year. Created by Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie, the satirical comedy series follows newly married couple Asher (Fielder) and Whitney Siegel (Emma Stone) who believe they have been afflicted by a curse while co-hosting their problematic home improvement show, Flipanthropy, in New Mexico.
…The show’s soundtrack is written by John Medeski and executive produced by Daniel Lopatin, also known as Oneohtrix Point Never. The latter previously collaborated with Benny Safdie on his films Good Time and Uncut Gems, co-directed with his brother Josh.
…Lopatin was asked by Safdie to find someone to score the show who could do it in the spirit of…
References to soundworlds, soundscapes and sonic spaces are vastly overused in music writing; most of the time such terms can be read as florid longhand for “it sounds like this” or “reverb”.
…This new album by Osaka-based experimental producer 99LETTERS is one of the most effective, cohesive works of sonic world-building you’re likely to have heard all year.
There’s a lot going on here. Zigoku is bookended by two of its heaviest moments, the scorched-earth techno of opener ‘Fue’ and the abattoir echoes of ‘Ousyou’; in between, there’s shapeshifting electronica (‘Kamaitachi’), eye-darting paranoia (‘Souzou’), moments of genuinely affecting, plaintive beauty (‘Nakimushinatori’) and much more.
4CD 89 track box set contains all that punk legends Chelsea recorded during their time with the seminal Step Forward Records between 1977-82. Including BBC sessions, a superb In Concert recording and all of their Step Forward singles, plus demos and monitor mixes.
Disc 1 is debut album ‘Chelsea’ which is now bolstered by the singles ‘Right to Work’, ‘High Rise Living’, ‘Urban Kids’, ‘No One’s Coming Outside’, ‘Look at the Outside’ and ‘No Escape’.
The second disc contains 26 tracks recorded for the BBC. A superb quality nine track In Concert recording is joined by studio sessions for Radio 1 DJ’s John Peel, Kid Jensen and Mike Read.
Disc 3 is titled “Rarities” as it features 12 rare demos and monitor mixes alongside a show…
Charles Hayward , co-founder of This Heat and Camberwell Now, recently entered his eighth decade, but instead of slowing down, he’s actually stepping the pace up dramatically. After a string of sensational gigs in the UK and the US as part of This Is Not This Heat, a newly revitalised and inspired Charles, formed the band Abstract Concrete in 2019. The band features Agathe Max (Mésange, UKAEA) on viola, Otto Willberg (Yes Indeed, Historically Fucked) on bass, Roberto Sassi (Cardosanto, Snorkel) on guitar, Yoni Silver (Hyperion Ensemble, Steve Noble) on keyboards and Charles himself on drums and vocals.
…Both of Hayward’s previous bands were characterised by their inclusion of non-musicians in their rosters and by certain strong…
The backstory to this album is interesting. Jackdaw and Ghost in the Big House is a collaboration based around the songs of Rob Anderson and born in the backroom of a north London pub. It is the culmination of a journey that began in the early 70’s in Eugene Oregon where an acoustic trio played the small local venues for a number of years. Fast forward to 2012 when Anderson now 65 and based in the UK via a stint in Paris, wrote his very first song in response to one that was written for him years earlier by his old Jackdaw partner Wayne Drury. “No one was more stunned than I at managing to get one out and it carried on from there”.
This current collaboration is between Anderson and two other multi-instrumental musicians…
Hot on the heels of last year’s Stolen Time album, Torontonian vocalist, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Abigail Lapell has just released her latest album, Lullabies, her first entirely solo recording. The album features eight haunting tracks of seven traditional songs from around the world, sung in English, French, Hebrew, Spanish, Yiddish, German, Japanese and Welsh, and one Abigail original, ‘Go to Sleep’ (based on a fragment of a half-remembered bedtime song from Lapell’s mother).
The album, which is actually more EP length in nature (weighing in at only 25 minutes), is Lapell’s first entirely solo recording, this time recorded and mixed by Michael Timmins, renowned for his role in the Cowboy Junkies, alongside his production…
A multi-disc retrospective showcasing Brazilian percussionist /composer/producer Airto Moreira and vocalist Flora Purim was long overdue, as they’ve profoundly influenced the world and jazz fusion scenes. They met in Rio in 1964 when Purim cut Flora e M.P.M. Purim then joined his Sambalanço and Sambrasa trios. After they married, Flora emigrated to New York in 1968 and began working immediately. He followed, working first with Cannonball Adderley, then Miles Davis, before the pair co-founded Return to Forever. He delivered 1970’s, Natural Feelings and 1971’s Seeds on the Ground, and Purim released Butterfly Dreams for Milestone. These recordings — and most since — feature both musicians. Here, 37 remastered tracks from 1965 to 1998, and…
This 50th anniversary of the soundtrack to ‘A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving’ features complete score for teh television special plus bonus material as remixed and remastered from the original, recently-discovered multitrack tapes. The soundtrack has been remixed by Terry Carleton, restored and mastered by Vinson Hudson, and produced by Sean and Jason Mendelson.
…Vince Guaraldi’s voice is the first sound on the album. “Okay, well, did ya get that last one? This is cue one,” as it swings into “Charlie Brown Blues.” It is a good introduction to the “behind the scenes feel” of the release. Hearing the musicians talk to each other helps listeners feel like they are in the studio listening to various takes…
Thanks for this exy! Love me some Otomo!