Gagaku And Buddhist Chant

Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers - Buhaina (1973) {2014 Japan Prestige Masters Collection 1000 Series UCCO-90295}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 281 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 99 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 217 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1973, 2014 Prestige / Concord / Universal Music Japan | UCCO-90295
Jazz / Hard Bop / Modal Music / Groove / Soul Jazz

An amazing album that has Art Blakey completely reinventing himself for the 70s! Blakey shifts from straight hardbop to kind of a modal soul jazz groove, touched with some of the electric playing of the younger jazz generation, but not enough to qualify as fusion or funk. Instead, he's working with some great younger players – like Carter Jefferson, Woody Shaw, and Michael Howell – hitting a groove that reminds us of some of the best underground soul jazz on labels like Muse or Strata East. Includes the amazing long groovers "Mission Eternal" and "Chant For Bu", a famous Tribe Called Quest sample – plus new electric piano versions of "Moanin" and "Along Came Betty", both of which feature vocals by Jon Hendricks.

While the most renown track in this omniversal opus is the atomic expletive-filled repartee “Nuclear War,” there is so much more to this dark mysterious journey through the mind of Sun Ra. The sprawling, suite-like 20-minute title track sustains a lyrical edge in spite of an open framework and textures, which encourage sonorities to surface and emerge from the band as if there was no human intention behind them. In opposition to “Nuclear War,” Ra's organ playing here was built less on bombast and sonic terror than it is on whispers, stutters, shivers, and swells. Fireside Chat offers a wide stylistic array, as was the artist’s intent, reflecting his eclectic, seemingly irreconcilable approach to compositional extremes. With Sun Ra you get everything… except predictability.

Tasto Solo - Meyster ob allen Meystern: Conrad Paumann and the 15th century German Keyboard School (2009) {Passacaille PASS950}
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 293 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 136 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 10 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2009 Passacaille / Musica Vera | PASS 950
Classical / Renaissance / 15th Century / Early Music

The unique mission of this quartet is to perform music written for the keyboards of the Middle Ages on exact replicas of the Medieval clavisimbalum, organetto, and Gothic organ. Not only the content of Renaissance Music has been awarded so often, but the recording done by Jean-Daniel Noir is of very, very high quality. A winner in all respects.

Press play and enter the world of Loreena McKennitt, where walls dissolve into thick, billowing mists as the ground beneath your feet turns to compacted earth and the sky above opens up to reveal a black cloak dotted with shimmering stars draped beneath silk-like clouds. Were McKennitt's composing and songwriting abilities lacking of any luster (as they most certainly are not), her voice would still possess the strength to hold her fifth album, The Mask and Mirror, up on its own. But the combination of this talented woman's vocal prowess and songwriting ability makes her all the more similar to her work – ethereal and almost unbelievable in its level of quality.