Red Zone Planet Asteria (2023){np97cd, Ru}

ASTERIA, RED ZONE PLANET's debut album released as a preview on March 29, 2023 on all digital streaming platforms, is now available on CD in a luxury Digipak package and internal booklet with lyrics and photos. The RZP project is made up of musicians who have always been contaminated by the ROCKETS universe: founding members in 2002 of the first official tribute band, over the years some of them have also been able to boast collaborations with Little Gerard L'Her, Fabrice Quagliotti (who also donated a small but precious gem in a song on this album) and the Rockets themselves. ASTERIA is a concept album of 8 songs of pure SPACE ROCK, characterized by all those sounds, atmospheres and spatial themes that we had the opportunity to appreciate, between the end of the 70s and the beginning of the 80s, mainly thanks to the legendary silver band. A highly evocative album - but well placed in the present - of an era in which science fiction could be felt in every corner of television and radio.

ASTERIA, RED ZONE PLANET's debut album released as a preview on March 29, 2023 on all digital streaming platforms, is now available on CD in a luxury Digipak package and internal booklet with lyrics and photos. The RZP project is made up of musicians who have always been contaminated by the ROCKETS universe: founding members in 2002 of the first official tribute band, over the years some of them have also been able to boast collaborations with Little Gerard L'Her, Fabrice Quagliotti (who also donated a small but precious gem in a song on this album) and the Rockets themselves. ASTERIA is a concept album of 8 songs of pure SPACE ROCK, characterized by all those sounds, atmospheres and spatial themes that we had the opportunity to appreciate, between the end of the 70s and the beginning of the 80s, mainly thanks to the legendary silver band. A highly evocative album - but well placed in the present - of an era in which science fiction could be felt in every corner of television and radio.

A fantastic album as a leader from Sonny Red - a saxophonist who never got much chance to record under his own name, but always gave us something special when he did! Sonny recorded famously with Donald Byrd and Curtis Fuller in the 60s - but here, he's in an even hipper 70s mode of his own - a bit modal, a bit spiritual - in ways that make the whole album feel like some of the best 70s efforts on the Black Jazz label, with a righteous quality we might never have expected in Red a decade before! Sonny blows tenor, alto, and flute - all of them with a sharp, soulful edge - and he works here in a fantastic quartet that includes Cedar Walton on piano, whose own shadings give the record a lot of depth - plus the great Billy Higgins on drums, and Herbie Lewis on bass.

One of the main protagonists of the Italian dance music scene, Planet Funk emerged in 1999 as the fusion of two successful club music outfits, Souled Out (formed by Neapolitan producers Alessandro Sommella, Domenico "GG" Canu, and Sergio Della Monica) and Kamasutra (Florence's keyboard player Marco Baroni and DJ Alex Neri). The name Planet Funk was taken from an old Alex Neri track. English vocalists Auli Kokko and Dan Black were asked to join, and the ensemble mixed the track "Chase the Sun" for the summer of 2000. The song became an unexpected hit in Ibiza, prompting Verve's discoverer David Boyd to sign the group with Virgin Records. The first album, 2002's Non Zero Sumness, went gold and was also crowned at the Italian Music Awards. A remixed version Non Zero Sumness Plus One appeared toward the end of the year, followed by The Illogical Consequence in 2005 and Static in 2006. Other vocalists featured in the albums include Raiss, Sally Doherty, John Graham, and Luke Allen. Planet Funk have been invited to collaborate with Simple Minds, and to remix tracks by New Order and Faithless, among others.

Individually, Kronos Quartet and Sun Ra are two of the most groundbreaking names in contemporary music. The former is the legendary San Francisco-based string quartet that laid a blueprint for what concert music could become, working with the likes of John Cage, Tanya Tagaq, and Astor Piazzolla. The latter was a singular jazz and avant-garde bandleader, as well as a philosopher and poet, who honed an extraordinary strain of cosmic experimental music from the 1950s until his ascension in 1993. As a capstone to Kronos Quartet’s 50th anniversary, the group has joined forces with the Red Hot Organization for the new album Outer Spaceways Incorporated: Kronos Quartet & Friends Meet Sun Ra. It’s stacked with some of the most innovative artists active today — everyone from multidimensional electronic musician Jlin, to Moor Mother and DJ Haram’s radical noise / rap project 700 Bliss, to abstract hip hop luminaries Armand Hammer, to avant-garde hero Laurie Anderson, to minimalist pioneer Terry Riley.