Digital Home September November 2019

Danish-American Psychobilly heroes NEKROMANTIX celebrate their 30th Anniversary by storming thru a 19-song live set at the Observatory Theater in Santa Ana, California. Captured in all its glory by famed director Vicente Cordero (3TEETH, ROOM 37: The Mysterious Death of Johnny Thunders), the once-in-a-lifetime concert features band founder/bassist/vocalist Kim Nekroman, guitarist Franciso Mesa and recently-crowned drummer Rene De La Muerte ripping thru the band's glorious nine-album catalog, much to the delight of their enduring, adoring fans!…

Parlophone Records (BMG in the US) will continue their reissues series of the IRON MAIDEN catalogue with the fourth set of Digipak CD titles in The Studio Collection – Remastered, to be released on November 22nd. Following on from 2014/2017’s black vinyl releases and 2015’s Mastered for iTunes project, The Studio Collection – Remastered features recordings taken from the same remasters as the 2015 hi-res digital releases. The albums supersede the previously available studio catalogue and all titles are also available on streaming platforms.

Live songs of iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE is a two-CD compilation sent to U2.Com subscribers as the annual subscriber gift for 2019. The CDs are housed in a photographic book documenting the tours, and they contain live music from the band. The booklet is similar in size to a 7-inch record. The set features one disc of live versions of songs from the Songs of Innocence album. The second disc features live versions of songs from the Songs of Experience album. Both releases are roughly sequenced to match the song flow from the 2015 and 2018 tours. All of the songs performed live from those two albums are represented on this release, with the exception of two bonus tracks, “Lucifer’s Hands” and “Ordinary Love.” The version of “The Little Things that Give You Away” is taken from the 2017 tour. All of the songs on the first disc are taken from 2015 with the exception of “Iris (Hold Me Close)” which is taken from the 2018 tour. There are 23 songs in total in this collection. The first disc is labeled “Live Songs of iNNOCENCE” and the second disc in the set is labeled “Live Songs of eXPERIENCE.” Both are manufactured in the Czech Republic.

Iiro Rantala is a jazz chameleon who loves to appear in many guises. The Finnish pianist invariably springs a surprise with the concepts for his albums, particularly those of his solo piano projects. For "My Finnish Calendar", he has turned a new page: this is improvised music but with an extra-musical narrative: from a very personal and Finnish point of view, he has set to music the passing of a complete year in his home country, and he has done it with his typical mixture of melodic inventiveness, melancholy and humour. His well-known technical finesse and mastery, acquired over the years, have been applied here with an unerring instinct for bringing the essential to the fore.