Allan Blocks

Remember Jan Hammer and Jeff Beck jamming together with lead tradeoffs ad libitum forever amen? You will hear many similarities in guitar legend Holdsworth and keysman Jens Johansson springboarding off each other. A big difference soon unfolds – this duo just plain smokes, cutting early into the fast lane and getting right down to business. Things overall are compositionally interesting, noticeably precise, big and phat, just more intriguing than those Hammer/Beck excursions. It immensely helps havin' monster-everywhere drumming, a veritable demon-wind blowin' at their backs like Anders Johansson kept rock steady. It was refreshing to hear Holdsworth get funked up and get in a rockin' groove thang for a change on many cuts. His guitar tone seemed bigger – perhaps augmented in places with some background triggered synth-echo delays and textures.

Tales of Mystery and Imagination is an extremely mesmerizing aural journey through some of Edgar Allan Poe's most renowned works. With the use of synthesizers, drums, guitar, and even a glockenspiel, Parsons' shivering effects make way for an eerie excursion into Poe's well-known classics…

Tales of Mystery and Imagination is an extremely mesmerizing aural journey through some of Edgar Allan Poe's most renowned works. With the use of synthesizers, drums, guitar, and even a glockenspiel, Parsons' shivering effects make way for an eerie excursion into Poe's well-known classics. On the album's 1987 remix, the instrumental "Dream Within a Dream" has Orson Welles narrating in front of this wispy collaboration of guitars and keyboards (Welles also narrates "Fall of the House of Usher: Prelude"). The EMI vocoder is used throughout "The Raven" with the Westminster City School Boys Choir mixed in to add a distinct flair to its chamber-like sound.

Tales of Mystery and Imagination is an extremely mesmerizing aural journey through some of Edgar Allan Poe's most renowned works. With the use of synthesizers, drums, guitar, and even a glockenspiel, Parsons' shivering effects make way for an eerie excursion into Poe's well-known classics. On the album's 1987 remix, the instrumental "Dream Within a Dream" has Orson Welles narrating in front of this wispy collaboration of guitars and keyboards (Welles also narrates "Fall of the House of Usher: Prelude"). The EMI vocoder is used throughout "The Raven" with the Westminster City School Boys Choir mixed in to add a distinct flair to its chamber-like sound.

Live In Japan 1984 marks an end-point in the first phase of Allan Holdsworth’s touring career as group leader. It’s his first posthumous release approved by his family estate.Herein is the closing live set of Holdsworth’s “I.O.U.” band, featuring live versions of material from his first three studio releases starting with Allan Holdsworth, I.O.U., and followed by the Grammy-nominated Rood Games. With a young, new rhythm section recruited locally after his permanent move to Southern California, Holdsworth continued with the core of this band as a power trio featuring drummer Chad Wackerman and Jimmy Johnson…

Coming on the heels of some rather mediocre efforts, The Sixteen Men of Tain is startlingly superb. Holdsworth has stripped away the distracting banks of keyboards and allowed his soaring, gliding guitar to shine through in a way it hasn't since the 1980s. Even the Synthaxe, Holdsworth's signature guitar synthesizer, sounds organic and immediate, not to mention far less prevalent than on previous albums. Dave Carpenter's acoustic bass is a radical departure (check out his solo on the title track), as are Walt Fowler's two guest appearances on trumpet. "The Drums Were Yellow," a burning guitar/drum duet tribute to the late Tony Williams, is also a first. Gary Novak's drumming is appropriately complex and riveting on this and six other tracks.

From 1950 and onwards, Allan Pettersson was mainly occupied with working on the monolithic symphonies for which he is best known. But before that, while still a student at the Conservatory in Stockholm and later a viola player in the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, he composed two sets of songs: Six Songs and Barfotasånger (Barefoot Songs). Of these two, the second would become especially important for the composer, who returned to it throughout his life, quoting various songs from it in his symphonies.

Polydor Universal Music (Mylène's former record company) is offering a Collection - Intégrale 1986-1996 box set on October 28, 2022. This set contains 16 CDs, 211 tracks and a 48-page booklet. This is a support that follows the album Plus Grandir Best-Of 1986/1996 released on August 20, 2021.