Alien 1979

This Jerry Goldsmith soundtrack release is worth extended attention. The album is pulsingly rhythmic from the start, beginning with syncopation driven by whipcrack percussion and a clock-precise digital synthesizer pulse, on which Goldsmith builds ascending orchestra chords that sneakily reference Mars from Holst's The Planets without utterly aping the piece; this builds to a climax and changes, softening before managing to indicate menace without using the easy escape of minor chords. For once, despite the inevitable digital synthesizers and distinctive electronic percussion, Goldsmith has fashioned a score that's primarily driven by the orchestra, rather than being primarily dependent on electronic keyboards. To that extent, it's a rather old-fashioned action/suspense score, building and releasing tension in many varied ways.

Without any obvious keystone event, Biota – who started recording in the late 1970’s as the Mnemonist Orchestra – have quietly become a musical fixture, honoured for their uniquely, abstract, layered, polystylistic approach to musical construction - deaf to fashion or possible sales. And it seems, paradoxically, to have been just this art-orientated commercial indifference that has slowly won them loyal followers and surprisingly respectable sales. Now, for a wider audience - and at a congenial price - this box collects five representative releases that span their discography and track the radical evolution of their crystalline aesthetic – with added documentation, a band history, insights into their work process, and a full-length bonus CD embroidered from their archive of rare and unreleased material. Contents: Funnel to a Thread, Half a True Day, Invisible Map, Object Holder and Gyromancy (recorded as the Mnemonist Orchestra), and the box-only bonus Counterbalance.

Van Halen is an American rock band formed in Pasadena, California in 1974. They have enjoyed success since the release of their debut album Van Halen (1978). As of 2007, Van Halen has sold 80 million albums worldwide and have had the most number-one hits on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart…

Recorded "live" 12.09.1996 at Birdland (Hamburg).
Michael Naura (producer): "I have to admit it: I am a fan of Swing. Those concerts in which Armenian goatherders and a Berlin saxophonist throw phrases back and forth to each other, are alien to me. I feel closer to a trio of Hampton, Tatum and Rich. And my friend Wolfgang Schlueter (all of the world´s greatest vibraphonists shine through his playing, even Lionel Hampton) gives me the chance to answer the following "Tolstoy-esce" question: "How much Swing does jazz need?" The Swing Kings give the answer:
One day I announced: "OK, we’re off to the club "Birdland"! The NDR is making a recording there!" That was September 12, 1996. One of those nights! The trio was nostalgic to their finger tips…