Artist: Roma Trio
Albums: The Four Seasons
Released: 2009
Quality: FLAC / mp3 CBR 320
Size: 441 / 163 MB
Roma Trio is splendid piano trio from Italy that debuted on Venus Records. The youngish trio consists of pianist Luca Mannutza, bassist Gianluca Renzi and drummer Nicola Angelucci. They are all up-and-coming artists who have played with Paolo Fresu, Steve Grossman, Fabrizio Bosso, Marc Johnson and Giovanni Mirabassi.
One of the finest double bassists in jazz Charlie Haden says more with a few finely chosen notes than many lesser musicians try and say with a hundred. His warm bass tone is the core element of his stunning Quartet West whose smoky, atmospheric approach to jazz has won them critical acclaim for over twenty years with pianist Alan Broadbent casting a harmonic spell from which phenomenal saxophonist Ernie Watts can take flight, while Laurence Marable’s subtle drumming is perfectly in synch with Haden’s hypnotic bass work.
Returning with a new album Sophisticated Ladies, that’s inspired by and dedicated to their mutual love of the some of jazz’s most celebrated female singers, French jazz expert Jean-Phillipe Allard writes about this spellbinding new project from one of jazz’s most consistent and compelling artists:
“I had the occasion to meet up with Charlie Haden in New York in July 2009. As I’ve been working in publishing, I hadn’t worked with him in almost ten years and had rarely seen or spoken to him during all that time. After hugs and small talk, he asked me if I’d like to work with him again on the production of two projects: a duet with Hank Jones and a new Quartet West recording. Those ten years just dissolved and it felt as though yesterday was the last time we’d spoken. Feeling honoured and very excited at the thought of working once again with Charlie and the Quartet. I heard myself say: “yes”!
After a couple of long-distance brain-storming phone sessions we decided to do a sequel to the Quartet West album “The Art of the Song” which had featured the late Shirley Horn and the unique Bill Henderson. In this case we wanted to feature our favourite contemporary jazz singers (I myself am passionate about jazz singers!) and the concept of “Sophisticated Ladies” was born. The dream became reality when all the singers enthusiastically agreed to appear on the album.” - Jean-Philippe Allard
The second box in as many years of a truckload of obscure British psychedelia. Here are ten more CDs' worth of serious rarities by some bands that barely scratched the surface of the British freakbeat scene during rock's golden era, and a few who went on to other things. In all, there are 128 cuts here, all compiled and annotated by Phil Smee -- of Perfumed Garden fame (also issued by Past And Present). While some of these acts, such as the Poets, the Human Instinct, Outer Limits, and Denny Laine left marks on the scene, as did mod bands such as les Fleur De Lys and the Buzz; many others came from the swamp and returned with only these few minutes of glory for all of their efforts. As one would imagine, this is a mixed bag, with some of this material being absolutely sublime, while some never should have been recorded at all, with the vast majority falling in between the two poles somewhere. Nonetheless, for those who have been bitten by the Nuggets bug, and procured the highly sought after Perfumed Garden volumes, this second set of Rubble will no doubt feed the jones in you like nothing else. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
Originally appearing on LP from the Bam Caruso label in the 1980s, and then on CD on the Past & Present imprint in 2003, these first ten volumes (boxed) in the Rubble Collection were conceived and collected by Phil Smee. For fans of the Nuggets series, both the two American volumes and the British Nuggets, you won't find a lot of overlap. The Nuggets comps were and are for people who want what was at least the stuff of legend, if not readily available. The collection here digs deep and are, for the most part, flawless in what they present. This set, and its companion volumes 11-20 (a separate box), are very different creatures. For starters, they dig a lot deeper into the hopelessly obscure 45s and tapes of Brit psychedelia, freakbeat, Mod, and pop. This is for the listener who wants to dig down and get virtually everything. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
Artist: Kaleidoscope
Album: White Faced Lady
Released: 1971
Quality: mp3 CBR 320
Size: 162 MB
It is a concept album that tells the story of a pale-skinned girl named Angel, from her troubled youth to her sudden rise to fame as a movie star to her tragic decline and untimely death. Reportedly, it was inspired by the life of Marilyn Monroe, and indeed the final track name-checks Marilyn and Arthur Miller. As a rock opera, it follows the example of The Pretty Things' S. F. Sorrow rather than The Who's Tommy, with the liner notes telling the complete story and the songs expounding on key events. Many of the songs are tied together by brief musical segues.
Faintly Blowing (Fontana) came out in 1969. While it may lack some of the key album cuts that made Tangerine Dream so special, Faintly Blowing is consistently strong and features influences as diverse as folk and hard rock. Some of the highlights include “Poem,” a soft folk track similar to “Please Excuse My Face,” the phased out hard rocker “Music” and the edgy psychedelic title cut. Abrasive numbers “Snapdragon” and “Love Song From Annie” represent Kaleidoscope’s new hard rock approach while still retaining the group’s clever edge – these cuts are both gems. Some songs’ lyrics, like that on the tuneful folk-rocker “A Story From Tom Blitz,” deal with morals and important life lessons to be learned.
Though not as popular as the U.S. Kaleidoscope, this British band was also a band from the psychedelic movement with moderate domestic success, and just enough international exposure to have this album recognized in the genre's catalogue and regarded as one of the best in the same.
Now sought by collectors and highly acclaimed by critics and fans this album has been musically compared to Nirvana's "Story of Simon Simopath" and Pink Floyd's "Piper at the Gates of Dawn".
Peter Daltrey, lead singer of the band was asked about the lyrics and the music of the album, and he wrote the following statement in the album's sleeve notes:
Artist: E. Power Biggs
Album: Scott Joplin on the Pedal Harpsichord
Released: 1973
Label: Columbia
Quality: mp3 CBR 320
Size: 78 MB
“This LP should come as a surprise not only to those familiar with E. Power Biggs as an organist, but also to ragtime aficionados who associate this repertoire exclusively with the piano. For Biggs is performing a set of Scott Joplin compositions on a pedal harpsichord, specially made for him and incorporating three sets of bass strings which are played with the feet—just as they are on the organ. This enables the performer to sustain bass notes, while the left hand plays the off-beat chords, in a way which is impossible on the conventional harpsichord. It scarcely needs saying that Biggs demonstrates remarkable technical facility. What is more arguable is whether his approach always fits the material. Certainly he gives Joplin's melodic lines a suitably light and dancing quality in Elite Syncopations, Sunflower Slow Drag (actually a collaboration between Joplin and Scott Hayden) and Pine Apple Rag, but Maple Leaf Rag comes across as heavy and melodramatic, with the rhythms much too laboured. Similarly, Peacherine Rag, another early but attractive composition, sounds a little as though it were being played on a calliope. And the second strain of The Easy Winners is made to resemble The Ham) Lime Theme (or is it the Cafe, Mozart Waltz?) even more than usual. Most of the time, though, these are fascinating and agreeable interpretations with Biggs changing the textures cunningly in the repeats of various strains, using, in fact, the kind of discretion that seems called for. And it is pleasant to find a selection that does not consist entirely of the best-known Joplin compositions. I was especially delighted to discover Cleopha, a march and two-step which was a firm favourite with the Sousa Band, and The Strenuous Life. My only quibble concerns the inclusion of Binks' Waltz, not syncopated at all (unlike the delightful Bethena, which was published the same year—in 1905) but just a straightforward and really rather commonplace waltz.” C.F.
“…on record, they sound like a band that wanted to ply their trade in heavy rock, folk-pop, and funk all at once-- but there's a rawness on this album that gives it a familiar garage-band appeal. Rhythms shift from minimalist plod-stomps one track to supple grooves the next; lead singer Keith Kabwe's voice sometimes stretches past his melodic range into an off-key flatness that would be more off-putting if it didn't sound so spontaneous, and it's all recorded with a muddy fidelity that, if reminiscent of bedroom tape culture, doesn't do the music any favors by turning what could've been a wall of guitar squall into a flimsy chain-link fence.
Not like much of that can be helped or even really matters, since Africa is one of those albums we should at least consider ourselves lucky to even get a chance to hear. Kabwe had retired to a life of farming by the time this album was proposed for reissue, and out of the other four band members, only guitarist Isaac Mpofu still survives. So hearing Kabwe wail, "Lemme tell you something new/ About the history of the man/ He's got nothing to lose," in "History of Man" resonates a bit more knowing just how little was saved from the Zam-rock scene for future posterity and how close to impermanence Amanaz's music actually came." - Nate Patrin, March 30, 2010
Artist: Microwave Dave and The
Nukes
Album: Nothing But The Blues
Released: 1996 (originally released in 1995 at BluesWorks Records as Goodnight, Dear)
Quality: mp3 CBR 320
Size: 141 MB
Bornand Music Box Collection
Album: Old Music Box Waltz Melodies
Quality: mp3 CBR 320 (vinyl rip)
Size: 103 MB
This record celebrates the 10th anniversary of "OLD MUSIC BOX MELODIES" with 26 familiar, always popular, old and new world waltzes. It is recorded from two large fine Swiss cylinder music boxes and four of the various size disc music boxes, among them the "King of Music Boxes" the 27" disc Regina.
As time cures many ills, it began to right this injustice; one after another, music boxes came back - museums became interested - collections were started, and the services of Joseph Bornand, one of the last surviving factory trained experts in this field, were again in demand. It was a great joy for Mr. Bornand to open his music box shop again and he in turn taught his son Adrian V. all the secrets of this long lost art, a Bornand family business in Switzerland since 1825.
The Bornand music box collection containing many rare one of a kind instruments from all parts of the world, has long been recognized as one of the foremost in existence. To share this beauty and give the world this music which will probably never be produced in its original form again, the Bornands have recorded it for the modern record players. Thus the phonograph, which ended the music box business so long ago, is now the means of bringing this music into thousands of homes, which would otherwise not know of its existence or enjoy its nostalgic beauty. (from the liner notes)
"These songs belong to the musical tradition which Africans brought to the New World, but they are also as American as the Mississippi River. They were born out of the very rock and earth of this country, as black hands broke the soil, moved, reformed it, and rivers of stinging sweat poured upon the land under the blazing heat of Southern skies, and are mounted upon the passion that this struggle with nature brought forth. They tell us the story of the slave gang, the sharecropper system, the lawless work camp, the chain gang, the pen." - Alan Lomax
Artist: Nicole Willis & The Soul Investigators
Album: Keep Reachin’ Up
Released: 2006
Quality: mp3 CBR 320
Size: 93 MB
" After a pair of essentially modern-styled R&B outings, the Brooklyn-born, Europe-based vocalist Nicole Willis struck out in a new direction on her third full-length, teaming up with Finnish funk combo the Soul Investigators in 2005 for a hearty take on '60s and '70s stylings which, by accident or design, fit right in with the vintage soul resurgence that was then getting underway. Relative to other diva-led throwback acts such as Sharon Jones and Amy Winehouse, Willis and her cohorts come off as especially convincing revivalists (or especially deceptive simulators), despite seeming comparably laid-back about taking an authentically "retro" approach, or at least about sticking to one particular type of soul. Stylistically, they trend toward the more polished, pop-oriented Northern Soul end of things, occasionally using strings in place of horns and generally keeping things up and peppy, on stomping highlights like "If This Ain't Love," "Invisible Man" (which features girl group-styled falsetto backups sung by noted dance producers Maurice Fulton and Jimi Tenor, who's also Willis' husband) and "My Four Leaf Clover," which nods specifically and delightfully to early Motown and to Martha & the Vandellas in particular. Opener "Feeling Free," which boasts the album's most uplifting and irresistible chorus hook, sports a similarly chunky early-'60s backbeat wrapped in a lavish arrangement of strings, bongos, and palm-muted guitar that suggests more of an early-'70s, Philly International vibe, whereas the slightly groovier "A Perfect Kind of Love" lays on the Stax-style horn parts and chicken shack organ. The detours into harder-headed funk ("Holdin' On" and the title track) and smoky balladry ("Blues Downtown" and "No One's Gonna Love You") are somewhat less effective: despite some compelling and atmospheric playing from the Investigators, Willis' voice isn't quite richly textured enough to be as effortlessly authoritative here as it is on the more melodic, poppier material. Still, these tracks are far from serious missteps, and they do add some well-intentioned variety to an album that, on the whole, stands as one of the finer soul full-lengths of the decade." by K. Ross Hoffman, AMG
