Latino Joe Torres

Joe was an easy listening pop singer who died in the early eighties while still in his prime. This collection contains the best of his music from 1965 to 1979. Some of the songs are of French origin and it would appear from the credits that he co-wrote some of them. He sings one of the tracks here (The guitar don't lie) in English, although the other 45 tracks are all in French. Apart from the French songs, there are a number of other songs that he sings with French lyrics. It is clear from the titles that at least some of them have completely new lyrics rather than being translated from the original. I conclude this review with a list of some of the songs that might be familiar to you, to give you an idea of his range of material. Despite his easy listening style, the sources of the songs are diverse, including country and folk as well as mainstream pop songs.

Recent scholarship on Luis Misón (Mataró, 1727–Madrid, 1766) demonstrates the growing interest among the musicological community in studying the life and work of one who is an essential composer in the history of Spanish music. Musical historiography has extolled Misón's contribution to the genre of the tonadilla escénica, a genre widely appreciated in his time and which must have had a notable influence on his instrumental music, about which less is known.

Recorded at Middle Farm Studios in Devon, UK, Thirstier marks a turn towards a bigger, more bombastic sound for TORRES. The anxious hush that fell over much of Scott’s previous music gets turned inside-out in songs tailored for a new chapter of life. Scott co-produced the album with Rob Ellis (best known for his stunning work with PJ Harvey) and Peter Miles. Also contributing parts on multiple songs is Portishead's own Adrian Utley (synth) & multi-instrumentalist Ben Christophers (Bat for Lashes, Anna Calvi). Guitar-driven walls of sound, reminiscent of producer Butch Vig’s work with Garbage and Nirvana, surge and dissipate like surf in high winds, carrying Scott’s commanding voice to the fore.

What an enormous room is not only the title of the album by TORRES, it is an incantation, a phrase she has had in her head now for several years. In the video for What an enormous room's debut single "Collect," Scott finds herself alone in rooms that stretch beyond the frame of the camera. You can observe details of the rooms-the rubble and support beams in one, the lighting in the other-but they neither define their purpose nor explain her presence in them; these are large spaces whose lack of definition invites anxiety and even fear. What does Scott do when cast against that kind of uncertainty? She dances. She throws herself against it. When she sings "look at all the dancing I can do," it's an invitation to awe, and there is much here to be awed by. What an enormous room contains wry, Laurie Anderson-esque art rock, Nirvana's rage, and ABBA's strut. Rather than fear the unknown, Scott has chosen to fill it with as much of herself as possible, an artist unwilling to be stifled.

After Haydn composed The Seven Last Words for chamber orchestra as a devotional accompaniment to the Good Friday liturgy at Cadiz Cathedral in 1786, several other arrangements were made during his lifetime, by himself and others, all of them familiar to us now: as an oratorio with soloists and chorus, and in string quartet and solo keyboard transcriptions.