Quartet [deluxe Edition]

Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton was Eric Clapton's first fully realized album as a blues guitarist – more than that, it was a seminal blues album of the 1960s, perhaps the best British blues album ever cut, and the best LP ever recorded by John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. Standing midway between Clapton's stint with the Yardbirds and the formation of Cream, this album featured the new guitar hero on a series of stripped-down blues standards, Mayall pieces, and one Mayall/Clapton composition, all of which had him stretching out in the idiom for the first time in the studio…

If it seems as though the familiar ABBA sound isn't present on this album, that's because there was no entity known as ABBA at the time that the earliest sides here were recorded. Growing out of an attempt by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus to record together with their respective companions, Agnetha Faltskog and Frida "Anni-Frid" Lyngstad, the first side cut here, "People Need Love," featured the two men singing just as prominently as the women, and was credited to "Bjorn and Benny, Agnetha and Anni-Frid." It was only after its release and the cutting of a further single, "Ring, Ring," that the more familiar sound of the quartet began to coalesce along with the idea of a permanent professional association. Unreleased in the United States until 1995, this album is more of a generic European pop release than an ABBA release; the music has several unusual attributes…

ABBA's final album was recorded during a period of major personal shakeups, principally in the decision by Benny Andersson and Frida to follow the same route to divorce that had already been taken by Björn Ulvaeus and Agnetha Faltskog. Both male members of the group would soon remarry, but at the time, despite all of these changes in their circumstances, The Visitors was never intended as ABBA's swan song - they were to go on recording together. That may explain why, rather than a threadbare, thrown-together feel, The Visitors is a beautifully made, very sophisticated album, filled with serious but never downbeat songs, all beautifully sung and showing off some of the bold songwriting efforts…

If it seems as though the familiar ABBA sound isn't present on this album, that's because there was no entity known as ABBA at the time that the earliest sides here were recorded. Growing out of an attempt by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus to record together with their respective companions, Agnetha Faltskog and Frida "Anni-Frid" Lyngstad, the first side cut here, "People Need Love," featured the two men singing just as prominently as the women, and was credited to "Bjorn and Benny, Agnetha and Anni-Frid." It was only after its release and the cutting of a further single, "Ring, Ring," that the more familiar sound of the quartet began to coalesce along with the idea of a permanent professional association. Unreleased in the United States until 1995, this album is more of a generic European pop release than an ABBA release; the music has several unusual attributes…

Recorded in the midst of 1966, naturally after the spring release of their debut but before "Pushin' Too Hard" climbed into the national charts in the spring of 1967, A Web of Sound finds the Seeds pushing their sound into new dimensions, happily keeping pace with their Los Angeles contemporaries Love and the Doors. That the Seeds never received the respect accorded to their peers, either then or now, may be partially due to their lack of lyrical ambition, or it could be due to the Hollywood teenage sleaze that seeped out of this quartet led by garage rock icon Sky Saxon. Whatever the Seeds did, it sounded somewhat dirty, a maxim that applies to A Web of Sound even if it lacks singles as hard and filthy as "Pushin' Too Hard"…

An early progenitor of funeral doom, Norway's FUNERAL have returned with ’Praesentialis in Aeternum,’ their first new album in nearly a decade! The quartet bring forth a soul-rending offering that is rife with agony and pain, providing a fitting soundtrack for the times. Crushing, mournful passages and soaring lead breaks amplify its sorrowful atmosphere, and are certain to rive the heart, mind, and soul of listeners.

John Coltrane - A Love Supreme: The Complete Masters - Super Deluxe Edition (2015) {3CD Impulse! B0023727-02 rec 1964}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 810 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 381 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 1.07 Gb | 5% repair rar
© 1964, 2015 Impulse! / Verve / Universal | B0023727-02
Jazz / Modal Music / Avant-Garde Jazz / Free Jazz / Post Bop / Saxophone

For many a jazz fan John Coltrane's A Love Supreme is their personal desert island pick, the one recording they would not hesitate to live their days out listening to. Recorded on December 9, 1964, the session has endured as a document of the saxophonist's faith, as it was the proclamation of his rebirth from the jazz life of alcohol and substance abuse.