Robert Kurka

The new solo album from Rob Reed (Magenta/Cyan/Sanctuary), the follow-up to the successful Sanctuary series. Again, Rob has collaborated with Tubular Bells producer Tom Newman and multi-instrumentalist Les Penning on the album, along with drummer Simon Phillips and multi-instrumentalist Troy Donockley. The Ringmaster albums will be released in two parts, with the second instalment coming in early 2022.

‘The Ringmaster - Part 2’ continues and now completes the ‘Ringmaster’ story that Rob Reed started with the release of ‘Part 1’ in October 2021!

During the last quarter of the 20th century, and thanks largely to Eric Clapton's remarkable devotion to his memory, Robert Leroy Johnson posthumously became the most celebrated Delta blues musician of the pre-WWII era. Among numerous editions of his complete works and various anthologies that combine his recordings with those of his contemporaries and followers, J.S.P.'s The Road to Robert Johnson and Beyond combines many of his essential performances with those by dozens of other blues artists from Blind Lemon Jefferson and Henry Thomas to Muddy Waters and Elmore James. 105 tracks fill four CDs with several decades' worth of strongly steeped blues that trace the African American migration from the deep south on up into Chicago. This is a fine way to savor the recorded evidence, as primary examples from Blind Blake, Charley Patton, Son House, Charlie McCoy, Walter Vincson, Skip James, Ma Rainey, Tampa Red, Kokomo Arnold, Scrapper Blackwell, Leroy Carr, Lonnie Johnson, and Peetie Wheatstraw lead directly to early modern masters like Big Joe Williams, Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Bill Broonzy, Johnny Temple, Leroy Foster, Johnny Shines, Homesick James Williamson, Robert Jr. Lockwood, Snooky Pryor, Little Walter, and David Honeyboy Edwards, among many others.

At the same time Brian Eno was working on Here Come the Warm Jets, he was flexing his experimental muscle with this album of tape delay manipulation recorded with Robert Fripp. In a system later to be dubbed Frippertronics, Eno and Fripp set up two reel-to-reel tape decks that would allow audio elements to be added to a continuing tape loop, building up a dense layer of sound that slowly decayed as it turned around and around the deck's playback head. Fripp later soloed on top of this. (No Pussyfooting) represents the duo's initial experiments with this system, a side each. "Heavenly Music Corporation" demonstrates the beauty of the setup, with several guitar and synth elements building on top of each other, the music slowly evolving, and Fripp ending the piece with low dive-bombing feedback that swoops over the soundscape, bringing the piece to its conclusion…

A double-disc box set containing everything Robert Johnson ever recorded, The Complete Recordings is essential listening, but it is also slightly problematic. The problems aren't in the music itself, of course, which is stunning and the fidelity of the recordings is the best it ever has been or ever will be. Instead, it's in the track sequencing. As the title implies, The Complete Recordings contains all of Johnson's recorded material, including a generous selection of alternate takes. All of the alternates are sequenced directly after the master, which can make listening to the album a little intimidating and tedious for novices. Certainly, the alternates can be programmed out with a CD player or mp3 player, but the set would have been more palatable if the alternate takes were presented on a separate disc…

The German Electronics artist Robert Schroeder (discovered 1978 by EM pioneer Klaus Schulze) has produced numerous excellent solo CDs as well as his success album Double Fantasy / Universal Ave., which reached the US Charts in the end of the 80s. The music of Robert Schroeder is various, but always soulful. He combines spherical synthesizer sounds with modern rhythmical contrasts, often supplemented by spacey guitars and sometimes also by piano, cello or voices. Schroeder's music spectrum includes Electronic, Ambient, Chill-Out, Lounge, Adventure and Trip-Hop. Electronic Music in the widest sense is the musical style of this artist who has his roots in the music of Klaus Schulze, Can and Pink Floyd.

Robert Paterson’s The Four Seasons consists of four song cycles, with a total of twenty-one songs, for four different voice types: soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, and bass-baritone. Each voice type represents a different season: Summer Songs (soprano), Autumn Songs (mezzo-soprano), Winter Songs (bass-baritone), and Spring Songs (tenor). The four critically-acclaimed singers on this album, soprano, Marnie Breckenridge, mezzo-soprano, Blythe Gaissert, tenor Alok Kumar, and bass-baritone David Neal have worked closely with Paterson, and gave the world premieres of these works with American Modern Ensemble, one of America’s most beloved new music ensembles.

Robert Palmer's second EMI album, which turned out to be a sales disappointment, seems to combine two different musical concepts in its 18 tracks. The first is a straightforward, rhythm-heavy Robert Palmer rock album that takes up about the first half of the record. The second is a soundtrack for a planned musical that a Palmer bio describes as "a futuristic comedy using telling songs from the '40s to the present day," some produced by jazzman Teo Macero. These include songs like Bob Dylan's "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" (done reggae style), Marvin Gaye's "Mercy Mercy Me" and "I Want You," and Rodgers & Hammerstein's "People Will Say We're in Love." The idea looks forward to Palmer's next album, Ridin' High, which is comprised entirely of standards, but the mixture of rhythm tracks and string-filled arrangements here makes for a confusing mixture.