Connections Plus From September October 2016

Robert Plant launched the Digging Deep podcast in 2019 as a way for him to explore the intricacies and oddities of his body of work. A year later, he released Digging Deep: Subterranea, a double-disc deep dive that effectively functions as a soundtrack to the podcast. Plant talks about Led Zeppelin tunes on Digging Deep but Subterranea pointedly concentrates on his solo career. It's a compilation that strives to make overarching connections, so it doesn't proceed in a chronological order, nor does it have all of his hits. Neither his oldies folly The Honeydrippers or Raising Sand, his Grammy-winning collaboration with Alison Krauss, are here, nor are there big rock radio hits like "Little By Little" and "Tall Cool One." Instead, Digging Deep: Subterranea places 1993's Fate Of Nations at the forefront and follows its strands front and back, creating a moody, adventurous bit of autobiography. Maybe it doesn't deliver the hits the way most compilations do but it certainly captures the musical wanderlust that defines Plant's career.

In collaboration with Tate Liverpool, Soul Jazz Records release this stunning new collection entitled The World of Keith Haring featuring music influential to the artist Keith Haring including Fab 5 Freddy, Yoko Ono, Gray (Jean-Michel Basquiat’s group), The Jonzun Crew, Larry Levan, Talking Heads, Sylvester, Johnny Dynell and many others.

Studio Album and Live Album recorded with National Orchestra of Bretagne conducted by Zahia Ziaouni.

Studio Album and Live Album recorded with National Orchestra of Bretagne conducted by Zahia Ziaouni.

Studio Album and Live Album recorded with National Orchestra of Bretagne conducted by Zahia Ziaouni.

The machine learning system for Blossoms was developed through extensive audio training, a process of seeding a software model with a sonic knowledge base of material to learn and predict from. This was supplied from a collection of their existing material as well as 10 hours of improvised recordings using wood, metal and drum skins. This collection of electronic and acoustic sounds formed unexpected outcomes as the system sought out coherence from within this vastly diverse source material, attempting to form a logic from within the contradictions of the sonic data set. The system demonstrates obscure mechanisms of relational reasoning and pattern recognition, finding correlations and connections between seemingly unrelated sounds and manifesting an emergent non-human musicality.

Imarhan - Temet (2018) {City Slang SLANG50135}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 262 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 100 Mb | Full Artwork | 5% repair rar
© 2018 City Slang | SLANG50135
World Music / Blues / Tuareg

When Imarhan released their self-titled debut album in 2016, they stepped into a genre already flooded with talent and exposure, but still managed to rise to the top and be heralded as the “new wave Of Tuareg music“ by Fact Magazine and The Guardian. It is with much anticipation that the band from Tamanrasset, Algeria have announced the details of their second album Temet, due out February 26 on City Slang.

Although it's not on the same level as the best progressive bands – the drums and keyboards are not really up to the challenge presented by the guitars – this album has been rather unfairly written off by some music critics. Their debut begins with their strongest composition: "Voices," whose multiple movements, chorus lyrics of "a million voices singing," broad washes of mellotron, and alternating guitar tones make it sound like an outtake from Yes's "The Ancient." The instrumental "Theme" has some fine jazz-prog sax soloing over a lush backing, and "Dawn of Evening" has a wonderfully taut bassline march pushed to the front of the mix.

Letter to You comes quickly on the heels of Western Stars, a long-gestating 2019 immersion into the lush, progressive country vistas of the early 1970s, but in a sense, it's a true sequel to Bruce Springsteen's 2016 memoir Born to Run and its 2017 stage companion Springsteen on Broadway. It's an album where Springsteen reckons with the weight of the past, how its ghosts are still readily apparent in the present, an album where the veteran singer/songwriter is keenly aware he has more road in his rearview mirror than he does on the highway ahead of him. Springsteen does find himself drawn to the good old days, reviving three unrecorded songs from the days separating the split of his first band the Castiles and his contract with CBS, adding them to a clutch of new songs where Bruce ponders what it means to be the "Last Man Standing," surrounded by the spirits of old friends who may no longer be alive but are still a palpable psychic presence.

Though Les Rallizes Denudes, also known as Hadaka no Rallizes, were one of the earliest and most revolutionary Japanese psychedelic rock bands, and have existed off and on through four decades, they are also one of the most obscure, barely known even in their native country…