Orion Blaze.

The late singer and songwriter Blaze Foley is almost unheard of outside of the circles of music fans who follow that scene closely. For many Austin musicians, he was a crazy saint, an iconoclast who was banned from virtually every bar in town, but whose songs are deeply admired and whose persona was singular – he didn't give a good god damn what anybody thought of him. He has been immortalized in Lucinda Williams' beautiful "Drunken Angel" and songwriter-guitarist Gurf Morlix, who played with him, lovingly mastered a record they made together in the late '70s which was released in 2006 as Blaze Foley & the Beaver Valley Boys. Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Kings of Leon, Lyle Lovett, and John Prine, among others, have recorded his songs. He's been exploited on a few compilations that have come out over the years with awful post-production work that he would never have agreed to. Fat Possum deepens the legend further without soiling the artist in the process. The Dawg Years is a collection of 20 Foley songs, recorded when his moniker was Deputy Dawg.

Pure delight: two of Britain’s most exciting singers together with one of the most vibrant of the English period bands, in a collection of wonderful duets from Händel’s English oratorios and odes. Both Carolyn Sampson and Robin Blaze collaborate with Masaaki Suzuki in his recordings of Bach Cantatas, for which they are receiving high praise. ‘Sampson's rounded, lyrical, glowing tone is just what I want to hear in the warm-hearted soprano cantata O holder Tag’ said the critic in International Record Review about BIS-CD-1411, whereas The Times, UK, has described Robin Blaze as being ‘blessed with a most alluring countertenor – creamy in tone, naturally expressive, exquisitely controlled…’.