One Size Fits All

As interesting and fun as the Daevid Allen period was, the name Gong became more meaningful in the context of the music as percussionist Pierre Moerlen assumed the role of bandleader. An emphasis on percussives of all sorts became clear on Gazeuse!, the band's first completely instrumental album, and the music became much jazzier, though never considered jazz. Expresso II finds Pierre Moerlen's Gong at their peak. Like their previous studio release, Gazeuse!, the album is instrumental, the music is very polished, the sound very clean.

Frank Zappa - Zoot Allures (1976) {1995 Ryko Remaster Complete Series}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 266 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 99 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 127 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1995 Rykodisc / The Zappa Family Trust | RCD 10523
Rock / Experimental Rock

Zoot Allures, released in October 1976, is mostly a studio album (there are some basic live tracks, as in the title track and "Black Napkins") featuring a revolving cast of musicians who, oddly, do not correspond to the ones pictured on the album cover (for instance, Patrick O'Hearn and Eddie Jobson did not contribute). Compared to previous releases like One Size Fits All, Roxy & Elsewhere, or even Over-Nite Sensation, and to upcoming ones such as Zappa in New York, Studio Tan, or Sheik Yerbouti, Zoot Allures sounds very stripped down to bare essentials.

German rockers Pink Cream 69 caught the tail-end of the '80s party-metal boom before adopting a more traditional European hard rock/power metal approach that they would cultivate into the next century. Founded in 1987 by vocalist Andi Deris, guitarist Alfred Koffler, drummer Kosta Zafiriou, and bassist Dennis Ward, the band released their eponymous debut long-player in 1989 via Epic. Deris left the group in 1994 to join Helloween, and was replaced by British vocalist David Readman, who made his first appearance on the group's fourth LP, Change. The band became a five-piece in 2003 with the arrival of second guitarist Uwe Reitenauer, who was hired to help out Alfred Koffler, who was struggling with Focal Dystonia, a neurological condition that made playing difficult - Reitenauer made his debut on 2007's In10sity…

As interesting and fun as the Daevid Allen period was, the name Gong became more meaningful in the context of the music as percussionist Pierre Moerlen assumed the role of bandleader. An emphasis on percussives of all sorts became clear on Gazeuse!, the band's first completely instrumental album, and the music became much jazzier, though never considered jazz. Expresso II finds Pierre Moerlen's Gong at their peak…

Recording as Hardfloor, Oliver Bondzio and Ramon Zenker are responsible for some of the most hair-raising acid cuts to come out of Germany during the heyday of rave culture. As Dadamnphreaknoizphunk, the pair explore the chill side of electronic music, resulting in a jazzy trip-hop sound that seems to be the complete antithesis of their mind-bending dance attacks. The common thread between this seemingly irreconcilable duality is that most classic of electronic music machines, the Roland TB-303. And while the tiny silver box has done for dance music what the distortion pedal did for rock & roll, Bondzio and Zenker bring the machine's alien squelching sound home with them, melding it with more typical jazz and hip-hop samples to create downtempo tracks with a fluid groove that spaces out the otherwise blunted rhythms. "Custommade Sneakers" joins a repetitive acid blurb with subdued organ flourishes while "Complex Dinner Wardrobe" uses the 303 itself to achieve its melodic ends with overlaid acid lines that sound like Plastikman if he were to employ a funk drummer.

Boz Scaggs has had a long and varied career, playing blues, singing soul music, recording hits with smooth grooves, and taking his time with his temperamental muse. The Essential Boz Scaggs features 32 songs that tell the story of his solo career. It starts, after his stint in the Steve Miller Band, with his Atlantic Records self-titled debut album. Duane Allman fires up “Loan Me a Dime” with his trademark guitar work. Scaggs moved to Columbia Records, where he released a number of fine albums, culminating with the sleek, sophisticated grooves of Silk Degrees, provided by the band that would become Toto. Six tracks appear here, including the hits “Lowdown,” “Lido Shuffle,” and “Harbor Lights.”

Previous Grapefruit genre anthologies have shown how the various strands of British psychedelia developed tangentially in subsequent years: I’m A Freak Baby observed how the blues-based, harder-edged element of the genre gradually morphed into hard rock/proto-metal, Dust On The Nettles examined the countercultural psychedelic folk movement, while Come Join My Orchestra looked at the post-“Penny Lane” baroque pop sound. Our latest attempt to document the British psychedelic scene’s subsequent family tree, Lullabies For Catatonics charts the journey without maps that was fearlessly undertaken in the late Sixties and early Seventies by the more cerebral elements of the underground, inspired by everyone from Bartok, Bach and The Beatles to Dada, Dali and the Pop Art movement. Suddenly pop music was no longer restricted to moon-in-June lyrics and traditional song structures. Instead, it embraced the abstract, the discordant and the surreal as pop became rock, and rock became Art.

Humbucker were formed in 1998, and after a few years break, the band are now more active than ever. This year they have released their debut album, named "R.O.C.K.S".Recorded at Urban Sound Studios in Oslo.Produced by Thomas Wang. Mixed and mastered in the US by legendary starproducer Beau Hill and cover made by Hugh Gilmour Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Led Zeppelin, Whitesnake etc…!R.O.C.K.S has got awesome reviews from all over the world with some even suggesting it could be one of the best rock albums of the year! And Humbucker has also signed a publishing deal after beeing contacted by legendary US publisher Michael Davenport.

To make an album with the music of a genius such as Frank Zappa is dangerous! But Bohuslдn Big Band with the guitarist Patrik Ehrnborg and trombone player Nicklas Rydh have done the unbelievable. Material from the -72 albums "Overnight Sensation", "Apostrophe" and "One Size Fits All", with new arrangements. This period was maybe Frank's most commercial period which not at all makes it easier for the musicians. But the Big Band is not only a tight ensemble. Among the brilliant musicians is Mia Kempff, the girl who sings on the album so powerfully. Anna Gustafsson plays marimba totally wonderfully. This is very creative music that boils. Music for both heart and brain. Frank Zappa would have been 61 this year. There is no one left like him. But thanks to this Big Band does the music lives on. This years Big Band album is here to stay!