Frode Andersen ‎– Trash

12 Studies' forms a three-way journey through composer Bo Gunge’s (b. 1964) own life of music, a range of human moods and a series of western music’s most tantalizing intervals. All twelve pieces, characterized by their simplicity and expressive clarity, are performed in both solo and duo versions; through this mirror the music shows its duality, born of a solid idea but let loose – uninhibited and free. In a widespread 2016 vote, Danish radio listeners at P2 Classical chose a choral piece by Bo Gunge as their favorite piece of new music composed after 2000. This is Gunge’s first release on the Dacapo label.

Roraima, by Norwegian bassist and composer Sigurd Hole, was commissioned by Oslo World for the festival in 2020. The work reflects themes such as solidarity and ecological vulnerability and draws inspiration from the creation myth of the Yanomami people and the sound of the Amazon rainforest.

The opening track of ‘Avant Folk’ is like a dream of what contemporary experimental folk-meets-jazz-meets-chamber-music might be…

Unbridled joy springs eternal from Halfway Home by Morning. Recorded live off the floor in Nashville, Tennessee, celebrated songwriter Matt Andersen's tenth album collects all the essential elements for a down-home ramble and shoots them through with enough electrifying energy to drive the rock 'n' roll faithful to simmer, shimmy, and shake. Over it's lucky 13 tracks, he explores every facet of his sound-sweat-soaked soul, incendiary rhythm and blues, heartbroken folk, and gritty Americana-and binds them together with palpable heart, as the band leaves everything they've got on the sweet old hardwood of the Southern Ground studio, in the same spot that legends like Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, and Jerry Lee Lewis turned up the volume 'til it couldn't go up anymore. Halfway Home by Morning is the sound of an artist doing what he was born to do.

Phenomenal first solo studio disc by this amazing gifted guitarist/vocalist from Denmark who is best known as the prolific leader/founder of the awesome power trio: Blindstone. Includes 10 tracks of outstanding, world-class, powerful, killer, retro-sonic, blues-based, total heavy guitar excellence that lands down hard with exceptional musical brilliance. Martin J. Andersen has arrived & landed rock solid to the core as a solo artist and has achieved true guitar rock greatness on the aptly titled, amazing beyond belief Six String Renegade disc. From start to finish, Andersen kicks our asses hard with his brain-damaging brand of high-voltage, electrified, guitar rock riffage/mojo. An excellent mix of vocal + instrumental tracks, the Six String Renegade disc finds the axemaster exploring his Blindstone + deep hard rock musical roots which always land with an ever-loving, vintage, blues-based, guitar rock vibe.

Well into his 30th year of recording, Eric Andersen picks up where his 1989 masterpiece Ghosts upon the Road left off. His 15th album was eight years in the making, pieced together from collaborations with Rick Danko, Richard Thompson, Benmont Tench, Howie Epstein, and Bob Dylan bassist Tony Garnier. It demonstrates the virtues of patient songwriting in sensual love lyrics, sprawling wanderer's laments, and Beat-poetry-inspired litanies of sins and ecstasies. "He thought of his mother / He thought of the automat / The space shuttle / Jersey cows and poison lollipops / As the dry heaves rose in his chest," he intones over a smoky, funky groove. Of all the folksingers to find their way out of the '60s, only Dylan and Joni Mitchell have remained as restless and provocative as Andersen. His imagination has grown ever more sure, his voice has become an unearthly, stately whisper, and his songs are still shapes by a singular, exceptional artistic will.

This end-of-the-millennium quartet session probably best defines all the inherent contradictions in who ECM attracts to the label – what kind of musician records for them – and what concerns these artists and ECM's chief producer (and creator) Manfred Eicher hold in common. This set, although clearly fronted by Markus Stockhausen and Arild Andersen on brass and bass, respectively, allows space for the entire quartet to inform its direction. Héral and Rypdal are not musicians who can play with just anybody; their distinctive styles and strengths often go against the grain of contemporary European jazz and improvised music. Of the 11 compositions here, four are collectively written, with two each by Andersen and Stockhausen.