Computer Idee From 1 December 2015

Japanese original greatest hits album from Electric Light Orchestra combines the following two albums already released: "All Over The World - The Very Best Of Electric Light Orchestra" (2005) and "Ticket To The Moon - The Very Best Of Electric Light Orchestra Volume 2" (2007). Features Blu-spec CD2 format and contains 40 tracks total on two discs.

Even though Marc-André Hamelin is world-renowned for his astonishing virtuosity and a massive repertoire of the most demanding piano works, including those of Scriabin, Godowsky, and Sorabji, he has startled many with his sudden turn toward the placid domain of Classical music. First came his critically acclaimed recordings of Franz Joseph Haydn's keyboard sonatas, which were surprise best-sellers for Hyperion, and here he offers a double-CD of the piano sonatas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with a handful of short pieces to round out the discs. Since Hamelin's fine reputation precedes him, suffice it to say that these are among the most meticulously played and wittily interpreted renditions of these pieces ever recorded.

Apparently, there was a gap in the Beatles' catalog after all – all the big hits weren't on one tidy, single-disc compilation. It's not the kind of gap you'd necessarily notice – it's kind of like realizing you don't have a pair of navy-blue dress socks – but it was a gap all the same, so the group released The Beatles 1 late in 2000, coinciding with the publication of their official autobiography, the puzzlingly titled Anthology…

George Russell - The Complete Albums Collection 1956-1964 (2015) {5CDs Set Enlightenment EN5CD9047}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 2.15 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 929 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 20 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1956-64, 2015 Enlightenment | EN5CD9047
Jazz / Post Bop / Third Stream / Experimental Big Band/ Progressive Jazz / Modern Arrangement / Piano

5CD SET OF THIS JAZZ MAVERICKS GOLDEN ERA INCLUDES ALL ALBUMS RUSSELL MADE AS BANDLEADER BETWEEN 56 & 64. George Allen Russell was an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger and academic who was among the first musicians to contribute significantly to the theory of harmony based on jazz rather than European music, as expounded in his book Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization .

Brett Dean is not shy about revealing what his music is ‘about’. Whether inspired by certain individuals (as in Epitaphs), or by an ecological or human disaster (as in his String Quartet No. 1, on the now all too topical plight of refugees), Dean’s works are usually – perhaps invariably – driven by extra-musical narratives. Rather than tease out any innate structural puzzles or tensions, his music typically falls into short little dramatic narratives – no movement on this disc lasts as long as eight minutes, many of them rather less than five. The most obviously successful work here is Quartet No. 2, ‘And once I played Ophelia’, effectively a dramatic scena. Its soprano soloist is no mere extra voice (as in Schoenberg’s Second Quartet) but the leading protagonist. Allison Bell’s genuinely affecting performance is backed by the Doric Quartet’s expressionist scampering and sustained harmonies, the strings occasionally coming to the fore in the manner of a Schumann-style song postlude.

The Lenny Hambro Quintet - Message From Hambro (1955) {2015 Japan Jazz Collection 1000 Columbia-RCA Series}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 114 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 83 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 217 Mb | 5% repair rar | Mono
© 1955, 2015 Columbia / Sony Music Japan | SICJ 27 | 2015 DSD Remaster
Jazz / Bop / Saxophone

Reissue with latest 2015 DSD remastering. Comes with liner notes. A bold little message from alto saxophonist Lenny Hambro – a very strong record that should have made him as much of a giant on his instrument as contemporary talents like Lee Konitz or Herb Geller! Hambro has some of the soulful edge of the latter, and lots of the crisp, modern chromes of the former – especially in the way he runs alongside some great guitar in the group from Dick Garcia – a player we mostly know for his work on the Dawn label at the time, but who really makes the record something special here. The rest of the combo features Wade Legge on piano, Clyde Lombardi on bass, and Mel Zelnick on rhythm – and Hambro's sax work is angular and very deft – already at the top of his game. Titles include the Legge originals "Slave Girl", "Message In Minor", "Moon Slippers", and "Hoof Beats" – plus Hambro's "Thanatopsis" and "The Lonely One".

Returning to solo status after the 2012 Matchbox 20 reunion – this time, the group didn't go on hiatus; they merely took a break while their singer pursued other projects – Rob Thomas decided to broaden his horizons on 2015's The Great Unknown by working with a variety of different producers and collaborators this time around. Still on board in an executive producer role is Matt Serletic (the producer who's worked with Thomas for nearly 20 years), and the singer/songwriter also enlists OneRepublic mastermind Ryan Tedder and Jason Derulo/Jessie J producer Ricky Reed to give him a modern pop life. This new blood is notable on The Great Unknown, which is considerably livelier than 2009's contemplative Cradlesong. He hasn't entirely abandoned power ballads – it's in his blood and it's something he does well, as evidenced by "Paper Dolls" and the spare, piano-anchored closer "Pieces" – and he retains a fondness for surging, insistent anthems, the kind that fill arenas and airwaves with equal ease.