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…
Quintessence was the great underground band of the 1970s. Formed in March 1969, they were quickly signed to Island Records and later that year released their debut album, In Blissful Company. Between 1969-71, Quintessence, a counterculture phenomenon, made three albums for Island Records. Now, recently sourced from Island's multi-track tapes and digitised at Abbey Road Studios, this packed 2CD set reveals a wealth of stunning, hitherto unheard recordings in pristine studio sound.
By all rights, the album that came to be known as Big Star's Third should have been a disaster. It was written and recorded in 1975, when Alex Chilton's brilliant but tragically overlooked band had all but broken up. As Chilton pondered his next move, he was drinking and drugging at a furious pace while writing a handful of striking tunes that were often beautiful but also reflected his bitterness and frustration with his career (and the music business in general). Production of the album wasn't completed so much as it simply stopped, and none of the major figures involved ever decided on a proper sequence for the finished songs, or even a title. (The album was also known as Sister Lovers and Beale Street Green at various times.) And yet, Third has won a passionate and richly deserved cult following over the years, drawn in by the emotional roller coaster ride of the songs, informed by equal parts love, loss, rage, fear, hope, and defeat.
Unreleased material from a really wonderful group – one that features killer alto work from the great Sonny Red – working here in the same kind of small group setting he brought to late 60s performances with Donald Byrd! Yet this time around, the trumpeter is Blue Mitchell – who blows with a lot more bite than on some of his records of the time – really taking his time to craft out long solos on the very extended tracks from this live performance – reminding us that he can be a hell of a creative soloist when not caught up in some of the larger arrangements that would mark some points of his career!
Aquostic II – That’s A Fact! is the follow up to the phenomenally successful album from 2014 Aquostic (Stripped Bare). Aquostic II offers a generous helping of Quo classics that are immediately recognisable, and yet demonstrably re-engineered; including In The Army Now, Hold You Back and Roll Over Lay Down. Also featured are three brand new tracks from the band One For The Road, Is Someone Rocking Your Heart? and One Of Everything. This deluxe edition comes with a bonus CD featuring six tracks recorded at the band’s 2015 Stuttgart Aquostic show including Pictures of Matchstick Men and Whatever You Want.
In 1972, Lou Reed was a minor cult hero to a handful of rock critics and left-of-center music fans who championed his former band, the Velvet Underground, but he was unknown to the mainstream music audience. By 1986, Reed was a rock & roll icon, widely hailed as a master songwriter and one of the founding fathers of punk, glam, noise rock, and any number of other vital rock subgenres; he even scored a few hits along the way. If you want to know what happened during those 14 years to make such a difference, the answer can be found in The RCA & Arista Album Collection, a 17-disc box set that brings together nearly all of Reed's recorded work from this period…
Soundgarden’s third album found them making a bid for the mainstream. Though often lumped in with other Seattle bands that broke during the early '90s, Soundgarden was always unabashedly classic rock—less a departure from The Doors and Led Zeppelin than a post-punky extension of them, carried in part by the wail of singer Chris Cornell. Poised between the heavy-metal leanings of their earlier albums and their dark commercial peak (1994’s Superunknown), Badmotorfinger found the band sharpening their songs and clarifying their sound, turning piles of sludge and grit into viable radio hits (like “Outshined” and “Rusty Cage”). Here, a remastered edition of the album joins a spate of demos and outtakes, as well as a blistering 1992 live set previously released only on VHS.
Commemorating the 25th anniversary of Passion and Warfare comes a special 2CD edition of the album which includes the first-ever release of Vai's Modern Primitive songs and recordings. Based on song sketches and works-in-progress penned, and recorded, by Vai following the release of Flex-Able, the artist's debut album, in January 1984, the music on Modern Primitive has been completed by Steve for release as a full album bonus disc in the Passion and Warfare 25th Anniversary Edition. Passion and Warfare 25th Anniversary Edition was remastered from the original ½" Ampex 456 30ips analog master tapes.