Goran Bregović has done it all. A rock star in the former Yugoslavia, he went on write film scores and ride the fashion for brassy Balkan Gypsy music, selling over 6m albums and collaborating with everyone from Iggy Pop to the Gipsy Kings. Now he celebrates the history of his birthplace Sarajevo, a meeting place for Christians, Muslims and Jews before the Balkan war, with a wildly varied set. There are instrumental pieces honouring the three religions, each dominated by a different violinist, and including powerful atmospheric work from Tunisia’s Zied Zouari. They would work well as a documentary soundtrack. And then there are songs, many of which develop into a brassy knees-up. The cast includes the cool and dramatic Spanish singer Bebe, the Israeli folk-rocker Asaf Avidan, and – best of all – the exuberant Algerian rai-punk rocker Rachid Taha. Patchy, maybe, but often enormous fun.
"It All Starts From Pieces" is the debut album of Polish instrumental progressive/post-rock group Distant Dream. With beautifully poetic and monumental melodies, amazingly conceived and well written guitar lines - as well as majestically crafted and executed solos - are the strongest quality present on the album, that has on cautious, but mindfully expansive harmonies the greatest virtue of the work. Although the compositions are cohesively solid, and all the instruments converge precisely to the same musical horizon, the guitar work is obviously highlighted, given the fact that it becomes from the very first moment laboriously prominent in the convergent sonorous panorama of their stylistically elaborated frame, becoming what drives and guides their entire artistic perception…
Espiral was born with the idea of delivering sounds that evoke different states of consciousness. The result is a work that seeks to transport the listener to an internal journey, taking it through different atmospheres that develop their most intimate sensations.