Crazy Hot

Django Reinhardt - The Complete Django Reinhardt and Quintet of the Hot Club of France Swing/HMV Sessions 1936-1948 (1999) {6CD Mosaic MD6-190}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.08 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 837 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 216 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1936-1948, 1999 Mosaic Records / EMI-Capitol | MD6-190
Jazz / Continental Jazz / Swing / Gypsy / Guitar

This is the Reinhardt mother lode – a six-disc collection of the Gypsy legend's oeuvre stretching from just before to just after World War II. Disc one includes several infectious cuts with vocalist Freddy Taylor, beginning with Stuff Smith's "I'se a Muggin'." Disc six closes with one of Reinhardt and Grappelli's last recording sessions together, which included an unusually dark reading of "Oh Lady Be Good" and a revisitation of the obscure "Bricktop" (the first version appears on disc two). In between are well over 100 marvelous tracks, with sound quality up to Mosaic's (and Michael Cuscuna's) impeccable standards. The booklet contains a learned essay and annotation by Mike Peters, as well as an impressive gallery of photographs, concert posters, and news clippings. Extraordinary, and for Reinhardt's most devoted fans, entirely worth the investment.

Hot Chocolate - Box Selection (2011) {4 CD Their 8 RAK Albums 1974-1983}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 2.02 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 739 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 62 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1974-83, 2011 Parlophone Records / Warner Music | 50999-947487-2-7
Funk / Soul / Contemporary Pop / R&B

If you lived in the UK during the 1970s and 1980s, then you’re almost certainly familiar with the band Hot Chocolate, who were rarely off the UK Singles chart during the former decade and were still making regular appearances in the early part of the latter decade. These days, Hot Chocolate’s career in the US has been simplified by the media to such a degree that you’d be hard pressed to realize that “You Sexy Thing” wasn’t their only big hit. That’s why we’ve taken a look back at BOX SELECTION, a collection of the band’s eight albums on RAK Records, and shined a spotlight on some of the songs that you might’ve forgotten.

This collection pulls together a quite astonishing seventy Rock & Roll Instrumentals from the years during which R’n’R came into its own, 1956 – 1960. Including such obscure names as Phil Harvey, The Gamblers and The Renegades - behind which musical mavericks as important as Phil Spector, Bruce Johnson and Kim Fowley hid - alongside the somewhat more familiar Piltdown Men, Johnny and The Hurricanes and Sandy Nelson…

Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee Part Two (2011) {Capitol}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC+CUE+LOG -> 314 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 106 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 51 Mb
© 2011 Capitol | 509995 05639 2 0
Underground Rap / Alternative Rap / Alternative Rock

Once Adam Yauch discovered he had cancer in 2009, the Beastie Boys shelved their forthcoming The Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 1 and its companion volume, gradually reviving and revising the project once Yauch went into remission. At this point, they scrapped their convoluted plans to release concurrent complementary volumes of THSC and simply went forth with The Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2, which retained the bulk of the track list from Pt 1. All this hurly-burly camouflages the essential truth of The Hot Sauce Committee: that the Beasties could sit on an album for two years to no ill effect to their reputation or the record’s quality.