Mid 50s genius from Sonny Rollins - 5 albums in a single set, all presented in LP-styled sleeves. Includes 'Worktime' (1956), 'With The Modern Jazz Quartet' (1956), 'Tenor Madness' (1956), 'Moving Out' (1956) and 'Saxaphone Colossus' (1957).
Worktime is a record that perfectly illustrates why Rollins was one of the greatest players on his horn for many decades running! There's a depth of tone on the record that rivals Coleman Hawkins or Lester Young - but a quickness of pace and imagination that shows a clear influence from Charlie Parker, and a deftness that few were bringing to the tenor at the time. The rhythm section here is super tight - and features Ray Bryant on piano, George Morrow on bass, and Max Roach on drums…
Blank & Jones hit double figures with their long running SoEighties series, with the announcement of so80s 10, another three-disc compilation of extended versions of from the best decade in pop, the 1980s. The tenth edition in this series contains over 30 remixes including the near 12-minute long version of the Sisters Of Mercy This Corrosion, Pat Benatar’s Love Is A Battlefield, and Laura Branigan’s Self Control. Sade make a rare outing on a remix compilation with the extended version of Sweetest Taboo, and the Pet Shop Boys‘ Love Comes Quickly, which somehow peaked at a lowly number 19 in the UK back in the day, is included in full-length Shep Pettibone Mastermix guise.
Orphée is the tenth and final full-length studio album by Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, released under Deutsche Grammophon on September 16, 2016. The music is inspired by Ovid's interpretation of the Orpheus myth.
'Home at Last' is the solo debut album by Wayne Berry, a Nashville-based singer-songwriter and former member of the folk-rock group Timber. This is arguably one of the greatest "lost" singer-songwriter albums of the 1970s, featuring guest appearances by Johnny Gimble, Charlie McCoy, Ned Doheny, and none other than Jackson Browne. The style of this album can be described as laid-back country rock in the vein of bands like Cowboy or The Ozark Mountain Daredevils. Berry is backed by an amazing all-star band of session musicians including, among others, Steely Dan's Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, Jesse Ed Davis, Jim Gordon, David Briggs, Shane Keister, David Paich, Reggie Young, and most of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section.
Johannes Matthias Sperger was born in Feldsberg in 1750 and trained in Vienna as a contrabassist and composer from 1767. He worked from 1777 in the Hofkapelle of the Archbishop of Pressburg. From 1778 he was also a member in the Wiener Tonkünstlersozietät, in whose concerts he appeared several times with his own works and as soloist. From 1783 to 1786, Sperger was a member of the Hofkapelle of count Ludwig von Erdödy in Kohfidisch. From 1789 he was employed as first contrabassist of the Mecklenburg Schwerin Hofkapelle in Ludwigslust.
On the new album: A fantastic new album from one of the best German Bands. Fire From The Soul combines all elements you can expect from a new Epitaph album in 2016: singing twin-guitars and sparkling rock songs with choral singing for several voices. This album is surprising all along the line through the steady quality from first to last song…
"The Complete Bearsville Albums Collection" houses 11 Todd Rundgren studio albums inside a wonderful 13CD clamshell box. This boxset showcases the complete collection of Rundgren’s finest work released on the exceptionally cool Bearsville label; all studio albums apart from the epic double live set Back to the Bars, all solo, no Utopia LPs.
A pop savant who fastidiously avoided easy categorization throughout the course of his career, Todd Rundgren straddled the gap separating a mainstream star from a cult figure. Rundgren had plenty of hits in the 1970s and '80s, many of them becoming enduring contemporary standards, such as the Carole King pastiche "I Saw the Light," the ballads "Hello, It's Me" and "Can We Still Be Friends," plus the goofy novelty "Bang on the Drum All Day." These hits displayed his sharp commercial instincts, impulses he'd wind up subverting and tweaking on such heady '70s LPs as Something/Anything, A Wizard, A True Star, and Todd, records at the core of a discography…
Even though they started out on Musea, EGOBAND is another Mellow Records Italian obscurity. What does that mean? It means it's hard to find band information. But there is enough to paint a picture. The first album's lineup consisted of Alessandro Accordino on vocals and keyboards, Fabio Cioni on drums, Massimo Fava on guitars, and Alfonso Capasso on bass. However, only Accordino and Capasso would be consistent with the group over its four-album career. This, along with the fact that there were no live efforts, leads to speculation that EGOBAND may have been more of a project than a band (a la Steely Dan). They went through interesting changes over their career. Starting out purely Neo, with heavy AOR tendencies, and ending up almost in Canterbury territory by the time they got to "Earth"…