Esoteric have produced a remarkable transfer that preserves beautifully the hall sound, spatial information and detail. The brass and mass strings have excellent detail, revealing a lot of subtle harmonies and variation – a boon for anything Wagner. This contributes to an overall impression of sophistication and restraint and goes perfectly with Karajan's Wagner.
Jethro Tull's first album, THIS WAS, recorded and released in 1968, shows a band that is a far cry from their better-known incarnation as a prog rock outfit in the late 1970s. Instead, Tull come across here as a solid and talented blues band with elements of jazz, folk, and psychedelia thrown in. The band's sound was heavily influenced by guitarist, singer, and songwriter Mick Abrahams, whose bluesy singing and leads distinguish this disc in Tull's discography. Frontman Ian Anderson also shines with tunes like "Some Day the Sun Won't Shine for You" and the excellent cover of Rashaan Roland Kirk's "Serenade to a Cuckoo."
A mind-bending sci-fi symphony, Stanley Kubrick's landmark 1968 epic pushed the limits of narrative and special effects toward a meditation on technology and humanity. Based on Arthur C. Clarke's story The Sentinel, Kubrick and Clarke's screenplay is structured in four movements. At the "Dawn of Man," a group of hominids encounters a mysterious black monolith alien to their surroundings. To the strains of Strauss's 1896 Also sprach Zarathustra, a hominid invents the first weapon, using a bone to kill prey. As the hominid tosses the bone in the air, Kubrick cuts to a 21st century spacecraft hovering over the Earth, skipping ahead millions of years in technological development. U.S. scientist Dr. Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester) travels to the moon to check out the discovery of a strange object on the moon's surface: a black monolith. As the sun's rays strike the stone, however, it emits a piercing, deafening sound that fills the investigators' headphones and stops them in their path.
For their second release, Tool explore the progressive rock territory previously forged by such bands as King Crimson. However, Tool are conceptually innovative with every minute detail of their art, which sets them apart from most bands. Make no mistake, this isn't your father's rock record. Sonically, the band has never sounded tighter. Long exploratory passages are unleashed with amazing precision, detail, and clarity, which only complements the aggressive, abrasive shorter pieces on the album. There is no compromise from any member of the band, with each of them discovering the dynamics of his respective instrument and pushing the physical capabilities to the limit. Topics such as the philosophies of Bill Hicks (eloquently eulogized in the packaging), evolution and genetics, and false martyrdom will fly over the heads of casual listeners…
This video lesson is for intermediate and advanced fingerstyle guitarists. Chet performs and describes in detail, phrase by phrase, the playing of nine of his classic arrangements. An 80 page tab/music booklet is included. "Someone once asked me to estimate how many guitar lessons I've had in my lifetime," Chet has said. "The answer is simple – none. There were no teachers in our neighborhood when I was learning. And if there had been I doubt whether they would have taught me with that shabby guitar of mine. But I kept a lookout for any stray 'picker' that wandered into town and if he knew any new runs I would learn them before he left."
A remastered edition of All Things Must Pass, supervised by Harrison, was released in 2001, just months before his death; it contained bonus tracks, including a partially re-recorded additional version of "My Sweet Lord". It also included a newly colourised version of the originally monochrome cover. Since the original version of the album was concurrently deleted, the remastered edition of All Things Must Pass remained the only commercially-available version of the release until the 2010 release of a newly-remastered version on LP and high-resolution download, and is still the only currently-available version on CD.