Eclipse O.s.t

Coming off their most successful album yet, "Paradigm" (which includes the massive single 'Viva La Victoria'), Sweden's Eclipse are coming back with their new studio album “Wired.” Preceded by the single, an anthem for the ages, 'Saturday Night (Hallelujah)’ the new record sees the Swedish quartet going from strength to strength and, as they have done since the beginning, taking no prisoners. Some of the best songs of their career arrive on this record and it’s uplifting, and much needed, to be able to enjoy such a monster album in the aftermath of the pandemic age.

Separation Songs (2013/2018)—a transcendent, slowly-evolving set of 54 variations on four-voice hymn tunes——juxtaposes and weaves together an array of tunes from William Billings’s New England Psalm Singer (1770), gradually altering them as the piece unfolds. Although its architectural surface remains fairly consistent throughout, the 70-minuter work for two string quartets is at any given moment alluring and eloquent in its simplicity and beauty. The composer writes, “Throughout the piece, hymn tunes appear and reappear in ever-expanding loops of music. . . . Each time they return, the tunes filter through a ‘separation process,’ whereby selected notes migrate from one quartet to the other . . . generating new rhythms and harmonies.” On this recording, L.A.’s acclaimed Eclipse Quartet accompanies and interacts with itself—playing both quartet parts via overdubbing.

Nakajima Megumi (中島愛) is a seiyuu and Japanese pop singer affiliated with e-stone music. She was managed by Stardust Promotion talent agency from 2003 up until 2014. She is best known for her role of Ranka Lee in the hit anime series Macross Frontier.

The most amazing thing about Stereolab's Margerine Eclipse is how much of a surprise it is. It's not just that it's a fantastic record–Stereolab have made plenty of those. But since 1996's classic Emperor Tomato Ketchup, they've been deconstructing and breaking down their mix of exotic lounge pop and progressive Krautrock, throwing up cyclones of electronic mist. It's yielded some beautiful, but cold and distancing work. Eclipse shocks you with the contrast. Filled with the warmest possible intentions, it invites you to fall in love with its kind thumps and aural flotsam. Anchored by a test pattern baseline and a sly beat machine, the title track wanders around the edges, breaking into the main groove only to smoothly dissolve in a bittersweet end. Sounds like any other Stereolab song, right? But here–stripped down, dynamic, and alive–it's simply charming.

Jade Warrior were pioneers of the world fusion genre, though in reality, their early albums didn’t really seize the moment as they should have. Like most bands from the early 70s, Jade Warrior were finding their way in the music world, and they seemed to possess three distinct styles…

Recorded in 1971, The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse reads in many ways like a follow up to the 1967 epic Far East Suite. Compelling, cosmopolitan, and organic, this music comes from Ellington's sifting of travel experiences, and it sounds as if he is using his impressions of places and people rather than appropriations of "authentic" scales and rhythms. "Chinoiserie" is boisterous and fun, with long-tone horn peals forming the melodic cornerstone. Tenorman Harold Ashby takes his place blowing pure swing. "Afrique" is a percussion-based piece, with a liberal layering of the horn players' entrances creating strains that are at first incongruous, then tie briefly together toward the middle of the affair. Preceded by the more even-tempered melodic and rhythmic structures of "Acht" and "Gong," "Tang" takes the picture to the outer limits again with strident opening horn blasts that yield to staccato call-and-responses that chill to the bone…

Total Eclipse was Bobby Hutcherson's first recording session with tenor saxophonist Harold Land, who became one of his major collaborators (and a quintet co-leader) during the late '60s. Land's rounded, echoing tone is a nice contrast for the coolly cerebral post-bop that fills Total Eclipse. Hutcherson contributes four of the five compositions (the other, "Matrix," is by pianist Chick Corea), and he's in a mood to intellectually challenge himself and the rest of the quintet, which also includes bassist Reggie Johnson and longtime drummer Joe Chambers. The results are full of the sort of skillful musicianship one would naturally expect of Hutcherson's '60s-era Blue Notes. Land's solo lines are fluid and lengthy, assimilating some of Coltrane's innovations while remaining accessibly soulful…

It’s reigning women on the latest compilation album curated by music guru Ian “Molly” Meldrum. Molly has selected 38 of his favourite songs for Molly’s Women Of Rock & Pop, including chart-toppers such as Blondie’s ‘Heart of Glass’, Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’, Kim Carnes’ ‘Bette Davis Eyes’, Nena’s ‘99 Luftballoons’, Kim Wilde’s ‘You Keep Me Hangin’ On’, and Laura Branigan’s ‘Gloria’.