100 Csóknak is Egy a Vége

Ride return with the 6th studio album of their career and their second since reforming in 2014 and signing to Wichita. As with their previous album, Weather Diaries, Erol Alkan was in the producer’s chair, and Alan Moulder (with Caesar Edmunds) took care of the mixing (making this the fourth Ride album he has worked on). Gathering influences from sources such as the Jean Michel Basquiat exhibition at the Barbican, and the post punk sound of The Fall and Sonic Youth, Ride have made an album which contains echoes of their earliest days as a band, while bringing these elements into 2019. Both musically and lyrically, this is clearly an album made by a band who love being back together and who are at the very top of their game.

In 2006 Community Radio 3CR and Wakefield Press produced the Tomorrow Is Today: Australia In The Psychedelic Era, 1966-70 book documenting and celebrating the Australian youth culture of the late 1960s. In June 2007 3CR, Weather Records and Off The Hip released a double CD featuring 19 of Australia’s finest psych, garage and indie bands covering classic songs from acts such as The Masters Apprentices, Love Ones, The Twilights and Marty Rhone.

While not quite as strong as the band's debut, Scoundrel Days is still a-ha succeeding as a marketed "pretty boy" band which can connect musically and lyrically as much as any musical sacred cow. The opening two songs alone make for one of the best one-two opening punches around: the tense edge of the title track, featuring one of Morten Harket's soaring vocals during the chorus and a crisp, pristine punch in the music, and "The Swing of Things," a moody, elegant number with a beautiful synth/guitar arrangement (plus some fine drumming courtesy of studio pro Michael Sturgis) and utterly lovelorn lyrical sentiments that balance on the edge of being overheated without quite going over. Although the rest of the disc never quite hits as high as the opening, it comes close more often than not…

Howard McGhee - Life Is Just A Bowl Of Cherries (1956) {2014 Japanese Bethlehem Album Collection 1000 CDSOL-6134}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 124 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 86 Mb
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© 1956, 2014 Solid Records / Bethlehem | CDSOL-6134 | LP BCP-61 | Mono
Jazz / Bop / Hard Bop / Trumpet

Quite an unusual album for trumpeter Howard McGhee – one that has the famous bop trumpeter working in a sweet "with strings" format – ala similar 50s sessions on Verve! Frank Hunter handles the larger group here – working the strings with some nice touches that go way past just sleepy orchestrations – into a realm of playful passages that help coax some quite unfamiliar sounds from Howard's horn! The approach is quite different than some of McGhee's more seminal sides, but is also a great illustration of this under-acknowledge side of his talents – and a voice that definitely seems to echo some of his personal struggles at the time. Titles include "Sonny Boy", "The Thrill Is Gone", "The Best Things In Life Are Free", "Life Is Just A Bowl Of Cherries", and "My Sin".

Ego Is Not a Dirty Word was the second album released by Australian band Skyhooks in 1975. The album was the follow-up to their highly successful album, Living in the Seventies…