Holden Olivia Gaines

Known as a protégé of T-Bone Walker and former guitarist for Bobby Blue Bland, Roy Gaines continues to stake out his solo career with the combination spark of Texas blues and soul. New Frontier Lover features not only a tight rhythm section but a top-notch horn section, allowing Gaines to cover the blues and soul ground with equal ease.

Earl Gaines started his career as the singer with Louis Brooks & His High Toppers, scoring an R&B hit in 1955 with "It's Love Baby (24 Hours a Day)" for Excello. More solid sides followed for Champion, Deluxe, Hollywood, Ace and Sound Stage 7 into the late '70s before hanging up his spikes. Not unlike his Excello labelmate Roscoe Shelton, he was lured out of retirement and cut new albums in the mid-'90s for Apaloosa and Magnum before cutting this one for Black Top in 1998. Smartly produced by Fred James, who also contributes all the fine guitar work, this leans more toward the blues than soul side of Shelton's musical equation, but his gritty style is best illuminated on tracks like "Is It Good to You Baby," "Two Lovers Are Better Than One," "Every Night of the Week" and the title track…

Following a very brief stint with prototype heavy metal heroes, Blue Cheer (only half of an album) Randy Holden released this solo album featuring only himself on guitar and a drummer. It's a masterpiece of thundering behemoth rhythms and a soaring wailing guitar. Holden's guitar sound is drenched in lysergic acid. His mastery of feedback rivals anything by the master Jimi Hendriz. One could even say his innovative and experimental style is in a class by itself. Unfortunately, Randy Holden never received much acclaim during his music career for reasons of bad management and associations with less talented musicians, but this single rare album, long unavailable even on vinyl is proof that many musical geniuses are so far ahead of their time that few listeners are able to appreciate their greatness. His retooling of "Fruit & Iceburgs" from his collaboration with Blue Cheer on their third LP (NEW AND IMPROVED)is a brutal musical journey into the paranoiac synesthesia of hallucinogenics far surpassing the original version. "Blue my Mind" also represents Holden's gripping ability to hypnotize the listener and absorb one into the musical landscape he creates. All in all a great album!

The forest has always been an important place for Olivia Gay. She wanders through the woods alone, listening not only to its silence but also to its murmurs. It is a place of creation where her cellist’s instincts are awakened and where she can find peace and quiet outside the city. She joined forces with the Office national des forêts (ONF) in 2022 to raise public awareness of such spaces by inviting spectators to concerts given in the heart of the forest or in natural site. This album continues this project and includes works by Jacques Offenbach, Camille Pépin, Edward Elgar, John Luther Adams and Max Richter; the programme as a whole is under the aegis of Antonin Dvořák’s magnificent Silent Woods , which also lent its name to this initiative.