Nature 26 November 2020

Strut presents the 4CD edition of Sun Ra's 'Egypt 1971', documenting Sun Ra's first trip to Egypt with his Arkestra in December 1971.

Thanks to this tenth recording by Accademia Bizantina in the central core of the Vivaldi Edition, Il Tamerlano can now take its justly earned place in the Vivaldi catalogue, helping to renew the name and reputation of Timur, the Tartar emperor whose memory was later overshadowed by the Ottoman sultan. Vivaldi's opera was first performed during the Venice Carnival of 1735, and resurrected in 2005 under the title Bajazet. Here, under the musical direction of Ottavio Dantone, we have a sextet of dramatically engaged virtuoso soloists, and an orchestra that is perfectly aware of Vivaldi's musical dialectic. All the soloists are superbly well equipped to deal with the Red Priest's acrobatic and inventive writing here seen in the context of several of his contemporaries.

SWANS have announced a remastered reissue of Children of God on 13 November 2020 via Mute / Young God Records. The album, originally released on Product Inc. (a subsidiary of Mute) in 1987 will be available on vinyl in its original packaging for the first time since that release and both the CD and vinyl issues will include the live album, Feel Good Now, recorded on the 1987 Children of God European tour.

Disc 1 recorded on April 1 and 2, 1994 at Onkio Haus, Tokyo. Disc 2 to 4 recorded on March 29, 1994 at Pit-Inn, Tokyo.

René Thomas (1927-1975) was considered the best European jazz guitarist of his generation by fellow musicians and critics, but his career was marred by the pervasive skepticism of jazz fans. Despite trying hard to carve his own space, he never obtained the recognition he deserved for his immense talent, perhaps because of his introverted character and prolonged withdrawals from the scene.

Carrie will release My Gift (Special Edition) on CD/digital September 24, and on vinyl November 5, featuring three additional tracks. Initially released September 25, 2020, Carrie’s first-ever Christmas album, My Gift, debuted #1 across multiple global charts, including Billboard’s Country, Christian and Holiday album charts. The album remained at #1 on the Christian album chart 11 weeks after it was released and debuted #1 on the UK and Canadian Country album charts. It consistently remained in the Top 5 on the Billboard Holiday album chart throughout the 2020 holiday season, hitting #5 on the all-genre Billboard Top 200.

Laura Veirs releases her eleventh solo album My Echo via Bella Union. The album features guest appearances from Jim James, Bill Frisell, Karl Blau, Matt Ward and others.

Since his earliest projects nearly two decades ago, Polish composer Michal Jacaszek has kept some proximity to film music. Initially, his output simply felt cinematic by nature; densely detailed electroacoustic textures on releases like Lo-Fi Stories (2004), Treny (2008) and Glimmer (2011) evoked dimly-lit worlds within themselves, vignettes of the imagination. Over time his interest in sound design and collaboration would manifest actual film projects and commissions, some of which have earned him awards. Jacaszek’s practice — an amalgamation of ambient, classical, and musique concrete — deploys field recordings, acoustic samples, poetry, and baroque instrumentation to paint pictures, oftentimes melancholic, nostalgic, tragic. His 2020 album, Music For Film, marks the naturally-occurring intersection of his identities as a solo artist and a film score artist. The collection is now sequenced and released as a single autonomic movement.

Laura Veirs releases her eleventh solo album My Echo via Bella Union. The album features guest appearances from Jim James, Bill Frisell, Karl Blau, Matt Ward and others.