Gаrу Мооrе Тhе Рlаtinum Соllесtiоn [3сd] (2006)

Formed in the 1994 in the back province of West Saxony (Germany) and based in Leipzig since 2001, Disillusion quickly matures to something of an underground institution. Already at the very beginning the band around mastermind Schmidt is enclosed by a unique charisma which leaves no doubt about the fact that this band could become a real high-flyer on their hard way to uncompromising music.
After 18 months' time of production in April 2004 "Back to Times of Splendor" is released and is rightly being hailed internationally as one of the best debut albums in progressive metal genre. In interviews the band themselves here and there compare their work in a tongue-in-cheek comment to the opulence of Peter Jackon's "Lord Of The Rings"…

Tres Hombres is the third album by the American rock band ZZ Top. It was released in 1973. The album was the first of many times the band worked with Terry Manning as engineer. It was a successful combination as the release was the band's first commercial breakthrough. At the height of ZZ Top's success in the mid-1980s a digitally remixed version of the recording was released on CD and the original 1973 mix was no longer issued. The remix version created controversy among fans because it significantly changed the sound of the instruments, especially drums. The remix version was used on all early CD copies and was the only version available for over 20 years. A remastered and expanded edition of the album was released on February 28, 2006, which contains three bonus live tracks. The 2006 edition is the first CD version to use Manning's original 1973 mix.

Probably the best Polish progressive symphonic group. It was founded in 1976. From the beginning, the musicians had concrete, defined musical interests. Their intention was to play rock music strongly influenced by classical music. Some people call them "Polish Yes" because of the symphonic sound and high, delicate vocal of Pawel Birula. They used to play mainly at the Warsaw student club Riviera-Remont where they had a lot of young fans. In the first half of 80-ies Exodus had a tournee in the USSR and West Germany. They recorded a few TV programs, did many radio recordings and released a few singles that were received very well. But singles don't adequately render the specific character of their music. They had the tendency for creating bigger forms of music and wanted their concerts to become para-theatrical shows…

Even before the first note is played, the apocrypha proclaiming this to be a non-professional recording - which finds Naima Coltrane (John Coltrane's wife) as "audio engineer" - is fortunately true. The raw nature of the contents accurately reveal the reality of experiencing a Five Spot gig during the venerable venue's halcyon days. What can also be found beyond the sporadic chatter and general hubbub of a New York City Harlem nightclub is arguably the strongest aural evidence of the unique working rapport these jazz icons shared. While the relationship between Monk and Coltrane is the crux of these performances, Ahmed Abdul-Malik (bass) and the irrepressible Roy Haynes (drums) also contribute mightily by allowing enough context to support the soloist while pulling out occasional solos of their own. Haynes' interjections to "In Walked Bud" and "I Mean You" go beyond the simple progression of rhythm…

This disc is a sampler of Vivaldi discs released by France's Naïve label, and it's highly recommended to listeners who haven't yet given these recordings a try. The group of performers is pan-European, with French singers and Italian instrumentalists especially strongly represented, but a compilation like this brings home how well this label has done at forging a unified artistic vision. Its Vivaldi indeed tends toward "furious," as the title proclaims; it is also garish, energetic, dynamically extreme, and in every way devoted to making Vivaldi out as a rebel in his time.

One might have expected that Silva Screen Records, here operating through the subsidiary label Silva Classics, would be more interested in Jean Michel Jarre's father Maurice Jarre than in the younger musician. After all, Reynold da Silva's record company specializes in making new recordings of music from film scores, and it's Maurice Jarre who's the famous screen composer, while Jean Michel Jarre is the synthesizer player who stages spectacular concerts and sells records in the millions with his new age music. But that's the point: this is The Symphonic Jean Michel Jarre, an attempt to take his music and play it as though it had been written like his father's. As usual, Silva employs the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, with the Crouch End Festival Chorus along to provide the "ah" sounds as appropriate…