Blood Taisei Iwasaki

The difference between Blood, Sweat & Tears and the group's preceding long-player, Child Is Father to the Man, is the difference between a monumental seller and a record that was "merely" a huge critical success. Arguably, the Blood, Sweat & Tears that made this self-titled second album – consisting of five of the eight original members and four newcomers, including singer David Clayton-Thomas – was really a different group from the one that made Child Is Father to the Man, which was done largely under the direction of singer/songwriter/keyboard player/arranger Al Kooper…

Ireland’s Cruachan have been hailed as one of the originators of folk metal, starting out way back in 1995 with their now almost legendary Tuatha Na Gael album, which had combined black metal with celtic folk. In the years to follow, the Irish went through several different style adjustments, all of them staying within the band’s context, mind you, going completely folk metal, then bringing back the black metal influences on their 2011 album Blood on the Black Robe, to now arrive at album number seven, titled Blood for the Blood God (second in their “Blood” trilogy).lood for the Blood God is the Irish’s most powerful offering to date and quite possible Cruachan’s strongest album in their already quite lengthy career. It is this organic feel and authentic package with the lyrics going hand in hand with the music, which sets the band apart from most of their peers and the conviction is palpable. Without a doubt one of the best folk metal albums of 2014 and it is good to see the band still going strong and pushing their envelope after all these years!

They were a pioneering jazz-rock outfit and a hit singles band (which shows how progressive pop music got in the late '60s/early '70s) that wowed fans and critics alike. They were Blood, Sweat & Tears and this two-CD, 32-track set offers not only the most comprehensive collection ever compiled of their work, but also the most appropriate lens through which to view their long and often chaotic career…

Ten previously unissued live recordings from 1970 recorded in Yugoslavia, Romania, and Poland.

Tales of Captain Black first appeared in 1979 on the Artist House label in America. It was a label set up for the purpose of allowing visionary artists to do exactly what they wanted to do. They had issued a couple of records by Ornette Coleman previously, so it only made sense to issue one by his then guitarist, James Blood Ulmer. With Coleman on alto, his son Denardo Coleman on drums, and bassist Jamaladeen Tacuma on bass, Ornette's harmolodic theory of musical composition and improvisation (whereby on a scale of whole tones, every person in the ensemble could solo at one time and stay in this new harmony) was going to get its first test outside of his own recordings…