Sweet Creep includes the lyricism of prior release Dad Country with an added air of hopefulness. Recorded in Jim James' (of My Morning Jacket) makeshift hilltop studio in Montecito Heights, Sweet Creep reverberates with the feeling of sunny vistas. From album opener Are You Thirsty to the summer-crushy 'Humidifier', Sweet Creep is a freshly-signed lease on life. Jonny throws himself into the new album by stripping things down to the essentials. He gathered Nashville's Joshua Hedley and Dawes' Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith and recorded the whole album in three days. The fresh air, freedom from studio pressures, and strong cups of tea all mix into the music, with ATVs briefly heard in the background and two senior tortoises listening at Hedley's feet as he fiddles away.
Released on what would've been Jeff Healey's 50th birthday, Heal My Soul is the first collection of unheard original Healey material released in 15 years. These recordings were left incomplete at the time of Healey's death, so it was up to his estate to complete the tapes, and the efforts are relatively seamless: it all sounds like it dates from somewhere in the early 2000s, a period arriving after his hits but before he started exploring hot jazz. In other words, it's guitar-heavy blues-rock, where the songs are sometimes nicely constructed ("Baby Blue," "I Misunderstood") but sometimes feel like vehicles for tasty licks. Because Healey isn't around to spin out more of these tasty licks, there's value to this – his solos and riffs are vibrant, elastic, and alive – but the record is best understood as a testament to his talent assembled by family for his fans to cherish.
Rotting Christ have stood the test of time. 'Rituals' is an album that has obviously been written by veterans. The Greek legends inject a 27-year career, 12 albums, and more than 1.200 shows into their songwriting. With confidence and skills derived from experience, each song represents its own sonic universe. Guitarist / vocalist Sakis Tolis and brother Themis on drums achieve a perfect balance of amalgamating their classic and unique style of riffing and rhythm with exciting new elements sprinkled in to keep their material exciting and fresh. Carefully chosen guests are being added for better effect, not name dropping such as the spoken words of Nick Holmes (Paradise Lost) on "A Voice Like Thunder" or Samael's Vorph mesmerizingly quoting from Charles Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs Du Mal" throughout the song "Les Litanies De Satan"…
Reissue with the latest DSD remastering. Comes with liner notes. A great album of funky Japanese fusion – one of the few sets from the Japanese scene of the late 70s that got any sort of wider release in the US – and a treasure that we've loved for years! The set's got a really great sound – soulful and funky, but sharp too – in a lineup that features a variety of keyboards from Masabumi Kikuchi, plus work by Terumasa Hino on trumpet, Steve Grossman and Dave Liebman on saxes, and James Mason on guitar! The best cuts have a funky feel that's in the CTI/Kudu mode – perhaps mixed with a bit of Herbie Hancock keyboard jamming – and the album's a surprisingly lost funky gem in the Columbia catalog of the early 80s, with a much harder edge than some of the other work on the label at the time!
The 2016 studio release from Steve Jansen. The second solo album release from Steve Jansen. 6 panel digipak with photography and artwork by Carl Glover. Featuring guest appearances by Thomas Feiner, Perry Blake, Nicola Hitchcock, Tim Elsenburg (Sweet Billy Pilgrim) and others.
Though born in Ukraine, composer Galina Grigorjeva has lived in Estonia since 1992 and has worked within that country's deep tradition of sacred choral music. She studied music in Tallinn in the mid-'90s, and her music is thus interesting in terms of representing the thoughts of a younger generation that has absorbed the holy minimalism of Arvo Pärt as well as a variety of other styles from the Slavic world and beyond. Indeed, the unifying stylistic thread of the six works on the album can be hard to find, and indeed the booklet notes by Saale Karede point to "the living light that glows through the music," most of it religious.