A member of both the Songwriters and Rock & Roll Halls of Fame, Laura Nyro not only wrote songs that became hits for acts including The 5th Dimension, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Three Dog Night, Barbra Streisand, and many more, but has been cited as a major influence by Kate Bush, Elton John, Elvis Costello, Cyndi Lauper, Todd Rundgren, Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz (Godspell, Wicked), and countless others. She recorded 10 studio albums (one released posthumously), but a live performance from Nyro was always an event.
Upon its release, the 1973 LP Brain Salad Surgery had been hailed as Emerson, Lake & Palmer's masterpiece. A long tour ensued that left the trio flushed and begging for time off. Before disbanding for three years, they assembled a three-LP live set (something of a badge of achievement at the time, earned by Yes in 1973 with Yessongs and, somewhat more dubiously, Leon Russell with Leon Live)…
While the Norwegian jazz scene has been pursuing its own course for decades, the period of 1996-1997 represented a significant watershed, a milestone where an entirely new kind of music emerged, linked to jazz but distanced considerably—some might say completely, but they'd be mistaken—from its roots in the American tradition. Three seminal and groundbreaking albums were released within a year of each other: trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær's Khmer (ECM, 1997); noise improv group Supersilent's 1- 3 (Rune Grammofon, 1997); and, beating the others by a year, keyboardist Bugge Wesseltoft's aptly titled New Conception of Jazz (Jazzland, 1996). All three explored the integration of electronics, disparate cultural references, programming, turntables and—especially in the case of Supersilent, the most avant-garde of the three— noise, to create aural landscapes that were innovative, otherworldly and refreshingly new.
Cardboard sleeve reissue from Brand X features remastering in 2014 for the first time and the high-fidelity SHM-CD format…
In 1977, after three years' time off working on various solo projects – which were to have culminated with a trio of solo albums – Emerson, Lake & Palmer reunited to release Works, Vol. 1, a double LP containing the best of the solo works plus a side of group-conceived pieces. All in all, it was the most ambitious and wide-ranging body of music they'd ever released, and was followed by the more modestly proportioned but still successful Works, Vol. 2 in November of that year, and a tour that fall and winter; in keeping with the albums that spawned it, the concerts initially featured a 90-piece orchestra supporting the trio…
New expanded 3CD edition of the 2001 Album by Renaissance. Includes to bonus CDs of ‘In the Land of the Rising Sun – Live in Japan 2001’.
If ever a metal band deserved the box set treatment, it's Slayer. Love them or hate them, their accomplishments in the thrash metal subgenre is pretty much unequaled. For over 20 years, Slayer have remained doggedly and stubbornly persistent in their approach to playing the heaviest, loudest, and darkest metal in America…