Hand of Mars

"Mark Dwane's midi-guitar music continues to evolve in a more progressive fusion direction on his latest recording, The Sirius Link. As on Planetary Mysteries (his previous release), some tracks stray far from the Ohio-based artist's spacemusic past, here integrating more aggressive rhythms and using his guitar in more conventional (relatively speaking) ways. The resulting music is high-energy, propulsive and both immensely and immediately listenable. I'd rank this as one of the best driving CDs of this year, easily. Between soaring midi-synths (controlled via the artist's guitars), electro-organic percussion beats as well as conventional drum kit work, lots of assorted spacy textures and effects, and perhaps the best outright guitar playing of Dwane's career so far, The Sirius Link, if it is given half a chance, could be this artist's breakthrough recording to a much broader audience.

Four billion years ago, the infant Earth was a seething cauldron of erupting volcanoes, raining meteors, and hot noxious gases, totally devoid of life. But a relatively short time later—100 to 200 million years—the planet was teeming with primitive organisms. What happened?

Among the many recorded versions of Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring that appeared around the work's centennial year, several were of piano transcriptions, in most cases Stravinsky's own four-hand piano arrangement. The 5 Browns' live recording presents a five-pianos version by Jeffrey Shumway that shows the family of virtuoso pianists in various combinations, from the single note at the opening to all ten hands by the ballet's clangorous end. The group deserves kudos for performing this tour de force without scores, and for making it work without a conductor.

When Terry Callier returned to the music scene as an active participant in 1998, after 20 years in self-imposed exile, he jumped headlong into the recording and touring process. His first two recordings, the fine Timepeace and the less-than-satisfying LifeTime, both had songs worthy of anything Callier ever wrote during the 1960s or 1970s. The live album, Alive on Mr. Bongo from 2001, is a testament to that. But finding a producer who could properly illustrate the vast subtleties in Callier's work, which effortlessly blurs the boundaries between jazz, pop, soul, and poetry, proved difficult in the studio. On Speak Your Peace, Callier has found the perfect working mates in Jean-Paul Maunick and Marc Mac (from 4Hero), two men who understand that his work is more about nuance than statement, sense impression than solid image, poetry than prose. Callier's glorious voice and wonderfully fluid acoustic guitar are front and center in the mixes of both men.