A Privilege to Die

Royal Fireworks, a collection of Baroque masterpieces and new arrangements performed with the Balsom Ensemble (her hand-picked ensemble of period instrument specialists), will be Balsom’s 13th solo release for Warner Classics and her first since 2016’s Jubilo. The album sees her perform on the natural (valveless) trumpet and features concertos and orchestral masterpieces by Handel, JS Bach, Telemann and Purcell. A pioneer of adapting works written for other solo instruments, Balsom is committed to demonstrating the versatility of the trumpet and will feature three new orchestrations by arranger Simon Wright on the album.

It’s hard to find an article of Lydia Loveless that doesn’t mention some type of “fire” spitfire, firebrand, fiery. There’s no question why, of course; her music is a blaze of powerful vocals and raging rock and roll guitar, red-hot and ready with a snarl or a good, honest shout. No-holds-barred emotion burns through every song she sings, marking every ex she reams and every lost friendship she mourns. Loveless gets bitter, she gets rowdy, and she makes no apologies as a general rule.

Stardust Birthday Party is about human evolution. Specifically, one humans evolution: mine, Ron Gallo. That's the name my parents gave me. Hi. At one point, I was a very lost mid-twenties person living in Philadelphia, in a relationship with someone struggling with mental health issues and crippling heroin addiction. I was asleep. I didn't know how to handle my life. I was also writing songs for HEAVY META - my frustrated with humanity album. I laugh about it all now, but at the time it all felt like an absolute nightmare. It was the perfect doorway to look inside the place I'd been avoiding forever: myself. Stardust Birthday Party is about what is happening underneath all of this life stuff. My path inward.

On Station’s “GunGodGame”, Alan Vega sounds like Jack Kerouac on the eve of drinking himself to death, both in sentiment and poetic cadence. The “humiliations” and attempts at “trying to bring back what’s not there” haunt him. But Alan Vega has never given up. His mission is to rekindle love and dreams and rail against authority’s disdain for both. 2007’s Station, filled with several successful stabs, is proof that he won’t quit until he’s gone, and even then his legacy will remain. An audacious human being, he’s felt comfortable presiding over both literal and musical riots, contributing to punk, industrial, and electronic music, as well as rebellion and literature in the process. It’s a wonder and a privilege that he’s still around.