Margareta Bengtson I'm Old Fashioned (2006)

This year the Bremen Cathedral Choir is celebrating its 150th anniversary, and with its director of many years, Wolfgang Helbich, it also has certainly enjoyed a »musical marriage« of a rare kind. And then there is the splendid Bremen tradition that has been observed for some eighty years now: the Christmas song concert in St. Peter’s Cathedral so very dear to the hearts of the Bremen public. Since cpo, as a label with its home in Northern Germany, has long maintained close ties to the Hansa city (cf. Radio Bremen, Weser-Renaissance Bremen, and not least Helbich himself), it seemed to us to be high time to document this event full of the Christmas spirit for the pleasure of a wider listening audience. Everything that lends the Christmas season its musical magic is represented in traditional arrangements, from Adeste Fideles to Vom Himmel hoch.

Straight No Chaser's fifth full-length album, The New Old Fashioned, showcases the acclaimed a cappella ensemble's distinctive take on many of their favorite contemporary pop hits. The album follows up the group's 2013 effort, Under the Influence. As with that album, here we get the group's creative workings of popular songs from the recent past. Included here are such hits as the Weeknd's "Can't Feel My Face," Hozier's "Take Me to Church," Radiohead's "Creep," Charlie Puth's "Marvin Gaye," and many others.

Old Fashioned Gal, the title of Kat Edmonson's fourth record, certainly describes the singer. Edmonson doesn't truck with modern styles, whether they're musical or technological, but that doesn't mean she's stuck in the past. She's working an older style – one that's rooted in the first half of the 20th century – but she's adding to tradition by writing a set of original songs that blend modern lyrical sensibilities with the style of the Great American Songbook. It's a sly, subtle accent on a record that could be mistaken for an old-fashioned LP – the music and the arrangements are intimate, yet lush; the tempo is never hurried, which gives Edmonson plenty of time to luxuriate in her melodies – and that helps give this cabaret music an air of welcome freshness.

Sadao Watanabe with The Great Jazz Trio - I'm Old Fashioned (1976) {2015 DSD Japan East Wind Masters Collection 1000}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 294 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 106 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 180 Mb | 5% repair rar | DSD Mastering
© 1976, 2015 East Wind Music / Universal Japan | UCCJ-9167
Jazz / Mainstream Jazz / Neo Bop / Saxophone

Reissue with the latest DSD remastering. This album from 1976 is widely considered as one of the best, if not THE best, four-beat jazz albums by Sadao Watanabe, the legendary Japanese saxophonist. Watanabe went to New York, met with the original Great Jazz Trio – Hank Jones, Ron Carter and Tony Williams – before the super-group became well-known for its superb recordings.

Ever since 2001's Songs from the West Coast, Elton John and his longtime collaborator, Bernie Taupin, have been deliberately and unapologetically chasing their glory days of the early '70s, but nowhere have they been as candid in evoking those memories as they are on 2006's The Captain & the Kid, the explicitly stated sequel to 1975's masterpiece Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy…