70s Remixes

Fragile is the fourth studio album by the English progressive rock band Yes, released in November 1971 by Atlantic Records. After touring in support of their previous album, The Yes Album (1971), the band entered rehearsals in London in preparation for their next studio album. Early into the sessions, keyboardist Tony Kaye was fired over his reluctance to utilize more electronic synthesizers. He was quickly replaced with Rick Wakeman of the Strawbs, whose experience with various instruments helped expand the group's sound with the addition of the electric piano and harpsichord, Mellotron, and Minimoog synthesiser. Four tracks are group compositions; the remaining five are solo pieces written by each member. The cover is their first illustrated by Roger Dean, who would design many of their future logos, covers and stage sets.

Yes had fallen out of critical favor with Tales from Topographic Oceans, a two-record set of four songs that reviewers found indulgent. But they had not fallen out of the Top Ten, and so they had little incentive to curb their musical ambitiousness. Relayer, released 11 months after Tales, was a single-disc, three-song album, its music organized into suites that alternated abrasive, rhythmically dense instrumental sections featuring solos for the various instruments with delicate vocal and choral sections featuring poetic lyrics devoted to spiritual imagery. Such compositions seemed intended to provide an interesting musical landscape over which the listener might travel, and enough Yes fans did that to make Relayer a Top Ten, gold-selling hit, though critics continued to complain about the lack of concise, coherent song structures.

With 1971's Fragile having left Yes poised quivering on the brink of what friend and foe acknowledged was the peak of the band's achievement, Close to the Edge was never going to be an easy album to make. Drummer Bill Bruford was already shifting restlessly against Jon Anderson's increasingly mystic/mystifying lyricism, while contemporary reports of the recording sessions depicted bandmate Rick Wakeman, too, as little more than an observer to the vast tapestry that Anderson, Steve Howe, and Chris Squire were creating. For it was vast. Close to the Edge comprised just three tracks, the epic "And You and I" and "Siberian Khatru," plus a side-long title track that represented the musical, lyrical, and sonic culmination of all that Yes had worked toward over the past five years.

Miles Davis - Panthalassa: The Remixes (1999) {Columbia CK 69897}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 296 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 110 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 27 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1999 Columbia / Sony Music | CK 69897
Jazz / Fusion / Breakbeat / Experimental / Jungle / Trumpet

A remix album of the most influencial jazz legend Miles Davis' "Panthalassa" album (compiled by Bill Laswell) released in 1999. Panthalassa: The Remixes is the logical extension of the previous year's Panthalassa project, in which longtime aficionado Bill Laswell restructured several Miles Davis recordings in similar fashion to the original production techniques pioneered by Teo Macero on Miles albums In a Silent Way, On the Corner and Get Up with It. Here, several dance producers are brought into the fold, not just to rearrange the material but to remix it as well.

Four decades after its release, this is still the most controversial record in Yes' output. Tales from Topographic Oceans was the place where Yes either fulfilled all of the promise shown on their previous five albums or slid off the rails in a fit of artistic hubris, especially on the part of lead singer Jon Anderson and guitarist Steve Howe, who dominated the composition credits here. Actually, the group probably did a bit of both here across 80 minutes of music on a fully packed double-LP set; the group's musical ambitions were obvious on its face, as it consisted of four long songs (really suites) each taking up a side of an album, and each longer than the previous album's side-long "Close to the Edge."

The Cinematic Orchestra is a British nu jazz and downtempo music group created in 1999 by Jason Swinscoe. The group is signed to independent record label Ninja Tune…