Ruthless Alexis Abbott

Luke Abbott has today announced his first solo record in six years ‘Translate’ will be released on 30 October via Border Community. Along with the announcement he has shared Kagen Sound, the album’s richly textured opener – menacingly driving but punctuated with endearing flourishes, it’s an assured and impossible-to-ignore return.

"A joyous blast of rollicking rock'n'roll" - Classic Rock "The open-hearted emotional clout of Randy Newman" - Mojo "Top-notch songwriting" - Evening Telegraph Fred Abbott is joined by a band of vocalists for his second post-Noah And The Whale "solo" album.

Le Retour des dieux sur la terre and Le Caprice d’Érato are part of the tradition inherited from Louis XIV of occasional pieces that served to illustrate major events at Court: composed four years apart, the first to celebrate the wedding of Louis XV and Marie Lescznyska in 1725 and the second for the birth of their first son in1729, these two divertissememts are veritable little concert operas in which splendid grand narratives, triumphal overtures, surprising dances, solemn choruses and grandiose finales follow one another. Alexis Kossenko invites us here to savour the delights of these musical evenings, which gradually spread to all the salons of the 18th century, and where everything seems to invite us to celebrate!

Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott third album ‘Crooked Calypso’ boasts all the hallmarks of Heaton’s peerless songwriting: songs buoyant with melody, and redolent with biting wit, but also real emotion. Opening track ‘I Gotta Praise’, a euphoric secular Gospel anthem, raises the roof and opens the record in style. ‘The Lord Is A White Con’, meanwhile, considers religion as an exploitative tool of empire builders, while ‘She Got The Garden’ is the wittiest divorce song since ‘D-I-V-O-R-C-E’. And then there is ‘Blackwater Banks’, a gorgeous Irish waltz that the Dubliners would be proud to call their own.

Le Retour des dieux sur la terre and Le Caprice d’Érato are part of the tradition inherited from Louis XIV of occasional pieces that served to illustrate major events at Court: composed four years apart, the first to celebrate the wedding of Louis XV and Marie Lescznyska in 1725 and the second for the birth of their first son in1729, these two divertissememts are veritable little concert operas in which splendid grand narratives, triumphal overtures, surprising dances, solemn choruses and grandiose finales follow one another. Alexis Kossenko invites us here to savour the delights of these musical evenings, which gradually spread to all the salons of the 18th century, and where everything seems to invite us to celebrate!

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) left two very different versions of his tragédie en musique Zoroastre: the first, in 1749, suffered from cabals and the work was withdrawn from the repertory. Rameau gave it a thoroughgoing revision in 1756.