Fit & Well November 2016

Steve Hillage has always had one eye on the future, experimenting with genres such as ambient and dance before many of his peers, and creating extra-terrestrial guitar sounds throughout his career with Uriel, Khan, Gong and System 7…

It's the late Vier ernste Gesänge, Op. 121, that get the big print on the cover of this release by the awe-inspiring baritone Matthias Goerne, but actually the music on the album falls into a neat early-middle-late classification scheme. The group of middle-period settings of poetry by Heinrich Heine doesn't even get graphics on the cover, but these are fascinating. Brahms wrote a lot of songs, but you couldn't do better than the selection and performances here for a cornerstone collection item. Beyond the sheer beauty of Goerne's voice is an ability to shift gears to match how Brahms' style evolved. If you want to hear his real slashing, operatic high notes, check out the Lieder und Gesänge, Op. 32, settings of poems by the minor poets Georg Friedrich Daumer and Karl August Graf von Platen. These rather overwrought texts add up to a kind of slimmed-down Winterreise, and they catch the spirit of the still-young Brahms with his strong passions, elegantly controlled. The Heine settings, which come from several different sets of lieder, are not that often heard and are in some ways the most compelling of the group here.

John Lee Hooker - The Big Soul Of John Lee Hooker (1963) {Remastered & Expanded rel 2016}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 360 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 126 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 51 Mb | 5% repair rar | 24bit remastered
© 1963, 2016 Vee Jay / Soul Jam Records | 600881
Blues / Rhythm & Blues / Electric Blues / Blues Revival / Delta Blues

This release presents one of John Lee Hooker's finest albums, The Big Soul of John Lee Hooker. It was recorded in 1962 and released by Vee-Jay Records. Here the bluesman explores the soul and R&B sounds of the early ‘60s, while maintaining the essence of his own boogieblues style. His gritty voice is as heavily emotive and unshakable as ever on these recordings. Hooker is backed by the seed of one of the most successful studio bands of all time, which would later be known as The Funk Brothers (the Motown studio band), as well as by a wonderful female backing vocal group. In addition to the original masterpiece, this remastered collector's edition also contains 10 bonus tracks from the same period, and constitutes one of the peaks of John Lee Hooker's incomparable musical legacy.

Saxophonist Donny McCaslin’s fiercely creative quartet chosen by David Bowie to play on Blackstar, the album that would be his swansong, after he heard them in the 55 Bar one fateful New York night in 2014. Two years and an immoderate amount of mainstream press attention later, here is the 50-year-old saxophonist’s heartfelt tribute to his erstwhile boss. McCaslin and his colleagues – keyboardist Jason Lindner, bassist Tim Lefebvre and drummer Mark Guiliana – were already the sort of voracious, open-minded musicians who were drawing inspiration from the creative end of rock’n’roll. But the time spent with Bowie has clearly marked them. Concise, hard-edged, dark and mysterious, Beyond Now sounds like the future of music. There could be no more fitting tribute to the man who sought them out.

Formed in 2014 by founding Entombed member Lars-Göran Petrov, Entombed A.D. sees the influential Scandinavian death metal legends' punishing work published under a slightly different moniker…