Inside Outside May 2017

Includes: Hybrid Theory (2000), Meteora (2003), Minutes To Midnight (2007), A Thousand Suns (2010), Living Things (2012), The Hunting Party (2014), Hybrid Theory: Live At Download Festival (2014), and 2x One More Light (2017).

Six astronauts aboard the space station study a sample collected from Mars that could provide evidence for extraterrestrial life on the Red Planet. The crew determines that the sample contains a large, single-celled organism - the first example of life beyond Earth. But..things aren't always what they seem. As the crew begins to conduct research, and their methods end up having unintended consequences, the life form proves more intelligent than anyone ever expected.

Although originally formed as a chamber pop quintet, matt pond PA went through several different lineups throughout its existence, with each incarnation revolving around the talents of singer/songwriter Matt Pond (previously of Mel's Rockpile). Pond formed the group upon relocating from New England to Philadelphia, and he filled out his first lineup with guitarist/bassist Josh Kramer, cellist Jim Hostetter, violinist Rosie McNamara-Jones, and drummer Sean Byrne. The band debuted in 1998 with Deer Apartments and won top honors in an unsigned bands competition sponsored by online retailer CDNOW. A sophomore effort, Measure, followed in 2000 and garnered comparisons to a stripped-down version of the Cure, while the I Thought You Were Sleeping EP appeared in spring 2001. By the next year, the band shifted its roster to include drummer Mike Kennedy, bassist Matt Raisch, guitarist Jim Kehoe, and cellist Eve Miller, alongside Pond and Hostetter. A third album (and the band's first release for the Polyvinyl label), The Green Fury, was released in spring 2002 while Pond also took on duties writing music for the Oxygen Network. The Nature of Maps followed several months later, marking the band's third release in two years.

Recorded live in May 2018 in the small church of Casola (BO), solo for bandoneon and flute, this fourth musical chapter of Maver is the transformation of a feeling, where listening outside and inside is a goal, thanks to as a listener and performer they find themselves together in a total experience. Volver is music that comes from silence and that is attracted by silence. The solo does not entertain, undress. The choice to play solo allows Maver to keep the sounds of the instruments pure, working in subtraction and leaving an almost decisive role to the pauses.

When Weaves wrote their debut self-titled album, released last year, the Toronto quartet were in the business of rattling fixed formulas. They peeled apart the classic roles of an indie rock band a singer, guitarist, bassist, and drummer so that each member ricocheted off the other, using Weaves as a space to deconstruct and then rebuild songs, like an espresso-laced jazz troupe set loose in a bounce house. As much as their first album was about living in the musical moment, their follow-up, Wide Open, is about reflecting on moments at large. Weaves shed their improvisational tendencies in favor of more polished pop, and this swap pushes frontwoman Jasmyn Burke’s songwriting to the foreground. It’s a welcome change that sees what Weaves can do inside a box instead of operating outside one.

Remember when the punk community lost its shit in '89 when MINOR THREAT/DAG NASTY legend Brian Baker turned up in a blues-based piss rock band? Funny when you consider punkers were quietly harboring a love of and subsequently forced to relinquish GUNS N' ROSES to the mass rock market once Baker cropped up in JUNKYARD, to the chagrin of many.

"Complacency is such a disease when you’re in a band,” says Tyler Connolly, singer and guitarist for Theory. “People are so afraid to progress, but you have to change you can’t just write the same song over and over. So when I saw where this record was going, I said to the other guys, ‘We’re in a car and it’s going off a cliff. Do you want to jump out or ride it to the bottom?’" With their sixth studio album, Wake Up Call, Theory hit the reset button, diving into a new sound, a new approach, even a new location. The more melodic, intimate style that defines the project is a bold move for one of the leading rock bands in the world. Since forming in British Columbia in 2001, Theory of a Deadman Connolly, guitarist Dave Brenner, bassist Dean Back, and drummer Joey Dandeneau have placed nine songs in the Top 10 on the rock charts, including the Number One hits “Bad Girlfriend,” “Lowlife,” “So Happy,” and “Angel.”

'“Hymns/Spheres”, Keith Jarrett’s celebrated 1976 encounter with the Trinity organ of Ottobeuren’s Benedictine abbey, is at last released in 24bit Studio-Master quality as a double-album set remastered from the original analog tapes. “No overdubs or technical ornamentations were utilized, only the pure sound of the organ in the abbey is heard”. The pure sound, as channelled by the mind, hands, and feet of one of the great improvisers of the age. When “Hymns/Spheres” was first released in 1976, some critics made comparisons with the organ music of Ligeti, Messiaen and Reger, but time has shown this to be an essential expression of Jarrett’s creativity, original to the core.