Military Modelling From Vol.25 N 04 (1995)

The most basic compilation for American audiences interested in Pete Namlook's Fax Records is a two-disc set including tracks from Namlook guises Air, the Putney, 4Voice and Shades of Orion. A host of other Fax favorites make appearances: Plastikman's Richie Hawtin on the epic From Within track "Sad Alliance," Deep Space Network and Dr. Atmo on I.F.'s "Kisy Loa," Atom Heart and Tetsu Inoue on their Datacide track "Data Haku." Fax is easily the most traditional-sounding ambient label, and the music would make an equally strong impression on fans of Hearts of Space and Basic Channel.

A curious appendix in a couple of the Handel Gesellschaft volumes offers ornamental harpsichord arrangements by William Babell of airs from Handel operas. He in fact published a large number of versions of extracts from popular operas of the time, and these gained wide circulation both in this country and abroad in collections aimed at genteel young ladies (for whom a modest competence at the keyboard was a social asset). The transcriptions from Handel's Rinaldo (1711) are so elaborately smothered in brilliant scales, arpeggios and other embellishments that Hawkins averred that ''few could play the lessons but himself'', and Burney acidly commented that Babell ''acquired great celebrity without the assistance of taste''; but the versions of works by other composers that had been produced in London in 1709 and 1710 are much less ornate and were clearly designed for players of modest attainments.

In the 1990s, smooth jazz was the whipping boy of the jazz world - everyone from hard boppers to Dixieland revivalists to fusion guitarists railed against the schlock that filled NAC play lists. And their anger was often justifiable; elevator versions of Michael Bolton hits shouldn't be described as jazz. However, commercial pop-jazz doesn't have to be bloodless elevator Muzak, and the German keyboardist/organist Nils Gessinger was obviously well-aware of that fact when he recorded 1995's Ducks 'N' Cookies for GRP. Make no mistake: Ducks 'N' Cookies is commercial music. The pop-jazz instrumentals that dominate the CD are meant to be accessible and groove-oriented, and when Gessinger features a vocalist on occasion, he tends to favor soul-influenced pop/rock melodies along the lines of Steely Dan (but minus the cryptic, abstract lyrics that Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were known for)…

Issued nearly a year after Jobim's death, this three-CD set is ground zero, the place to start if you don't have any Jobim in your collection or for anyone who wants a single package of his multifaceted art. The set encompasses not only Jobim's own sporadic work for Verve from 1963 until his final 1994 Carnegie Hall concert and the two A&M albums of 1967 and 1970, but also sessions led by Stan Getz, Joao, and Astrud Gilberto in which Jobim appeared as a sideman. Guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves, who selected the music for this set, follows a unique game plan, devoting disc one to vocal renditions of Jobim's songs, disc two to instrumental versions, and disc three to multiple comparisons of a few Jobim standards by different performers…