Ray Russell

In 1988, guitarist/composer Ray Russell climbed onto the Montreux Jazz Festival stage with a crack band comprised of rhythm team Mo Foster and Simon Phillips, trumpeter Stuart Brooks, and keyboardists Tommy Eyre and Tony Hymas. The success of their show convinced Russell to capture this unit for posterity, and bolstered by saxophonists Iain Ballamy and Tony Roberts, the group entered the studio. A Table Near the Band was the result, a set originally released in 1989 and now reissued by Angel Air. Within, the group laid down seven pieces in a range of fusion styles, but all given the cinematic sheen that today is Russell's trademark.

Why Not Now is a remastered reissue of an album by British jazz guitarist Ray Russell. Recorded in 1987 and originally released on the tiny Theta label under the name Childscape, Why Not Now is a unique blend of progressive jazz and space rock that manages to escape the clichés of new age music (despite the presence of some extremely dated synthesizer sounds) in favor of a calm, hallucinatory stillness that owes much to Gil Evans' '50s charts for Miles Davis. Evans, in fact, appears on the album, playing electric piano on his own composition, "The Pan Piper," and serving as the subject of the lovely closer "Sketches of Gil," completed shortly before the master arranger's death. The other ten tracks are similarly placid, built on overdubbed layers of Russell's Bill Nelson-like treated guitar soundscapes and the ambient keyboards of Mark Isham and Tony Hymas, over which Russell (and occasionally Isham, who doubles on trumpet) spins delicate, crystalline solos unencumbered by the sort of fast-fingered showiness that usually ruins this sort of album. This is not a "player" album, but it's also not quite melodically minimal enough to truly be ambient music. Perhaps the closest comparison is to David Sylvian's quiet art pop, or the post-minimalist experiments of Michael Nyman.

Ray Russell, the UK session guitarist who’s worked on James Bond film scores and too many other soundtrack projects and sideman recordings to count, gets back in touch with his noise-rock side. With the endlessly inventive Bay Area guitar hero Henry Kaiser at his side, this Transatlantic summit meeting of plectral titans was convened in the making of The Celestial Squid, due out February 3, 2015 on Cuneiform Records.

This tracks on this album were recorded between 1967 and 1969 and include all the tracks on the five sessions Ray Russell’s Quartet recorded ‘live’ for Jazz Club in that period. Those sessions included compositions from Ray’s first two albums he made as leader for CBS – Turn Circle and Dragon Hill. Just six tracks from these sessions were previously released on very limited edition vinyl as Spontaneous Event by Jazz In Britain in 2000. That album attracted particular interest on its release, it received great reviews and quite high prices are now being asked for second-hand copies… if you can find one! We have regularly been asked if we plan to re-press that album or re-issue it on CD. So, in response to those requests, we have decided to release all the music on a double CD as ‘The Complete’ Spontaneous Event.

Samplephonics presents a truly stunning collection of guitar loops and samples from legendary session guitarist Ray Russell. The sample pack takes us on a journey through guitar melodies, from dark tension building 7 string bass-lines, trancelike Coldplay inspired chord progressions, driving distorted riffs, ambient reflective melodies, mad feedback and pedal effects and downright funky loops and samples.

Susan Garth è una ragazza perbene: occhi limpidi, capelli biondi, brava a scuola, tutte le domeniche a messa… Almeno fino al giorno in cui comincia a comportarsi in maniera insolita e alla chiesa non riesce più nemmeno ad avvicinarsi, o alla notte in cui si spoglia di fronte al vecchio parroco e gli affonda le unghie nella gola… Gli anni Sessanta stanno sbocciando, e i preti ormai confidano più spesso nella psichiatria che nella demonologia, ma non il vescovo Crimmings, convinto che dietro quello sguardo apparentemente innocente si nasconda il Principe delle Tenebre, il Diavolo in persona. A Susan non serve un bravo psicologo, bensì un esorcismo in piena regola e, per eseguire il rito, il prelato chiede aiuto al nuovo parroco, padre Sargent, un giovane e disinvolto prete dalla mentalità aperta e la passione per il brandy. Insieme, i due esorcisti, in un crescendo di tensione e violenza, affronteranno l'oscurità che tormenta la ragazza. Ma un'altra sconvolgente verità attende di essere rivelata. Perché se il Male ha un solo nome, può avere molti volti…

Turned To Stone is the first album by Troll (Barry Ryder and Mac Prindy), released in 1978.