Taking the over-the-top attitude of stadium techno acts like Scooter, mixing it with the profanity-laced party style of Dada Life, then filtering it all through the cutting-edge dance styles of trap and neo-electro, Amsterdam trio Yellow Claw don't consider themselves a band or project but a "partyconcept."
Never realised the breadth of the "Pop-Sike" genre until I heard Fading Yellow, a really fine compilation that hangs together beautifully as an album. That most of the tracks are obscure isn't surprising: everything is a little odd, a little ramshackle, with a strong melancholic undertow and not a little creepiness. Of course, this music is also specific to a particular time in Western pop music history so there's a strong nostalgic element, but the knowledge this music could never be exactly replicated is what also makes it so fascinating. Recommended, in a warm and loving 60s way.
It was designed to be a blockbuster and it was. Prior to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Elton John had hits – his second album, Elton John, went Top Ten in the U.S. and U.K., and he had smash singles in "Crocodile Rock" and "Daniel" – but this 1973 album was a statement of purpose spilling over two LPs, which was all the better to showcase every element of John's spangled personality…
It was designed to be a blockbuster and it was. Prior to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Elton John had hits – his second album, Elton John, went Top 10 in the U.S. and U.K., and he had smash singles in "Crocodile Rock" and "Daniel" – but this 1973 album was a statement of purpose spilling over two LPs, which was all the better to showcase every element of John's spangled personality…
The most famous Chinese concertos: the Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto was written in 1958 by He Zhanhao and Chen Gang while they were students at the Shanghai Conservatory and was first performed in May the following year, the Yellow River Piano Concerto, was based on the famous Yellow River Cantata by Xin Singhai, a work dating from the period of the Sino-Japanese War.
During his last years, Frank Zappa concentrated on his "serious music," trying to impose himself as a composer and relegating the rock personality to the closet. His last two completed projects topped everything he had done before in this particular field. The Yellow Shark, an album of orchestral music, was released only a few weeks before he succumbed to cancer (the computer music/sound collage album Civilization Phaze III was released a few months later). This CD, named for a plexiglas fish given to Zappa in 1988, culls live recordings from the Ensemble Modern's 1992 program of the composer's music.