Science From 19 February 2016

Rick Springfield released the big, bold Songs for the End of the World in 2012, just before he received a boost in credibility from Dave Grohl. The Foo Fighters leader featured Springfield in Sound City, his 2013 feature-length love letter to classic rock, and while its accompanying soundtrack wasn't a smash, it did help shift the conventional wisdom on Rick Springfield. Now, he was celebrated for his power pop and arena rock, two things that helped him land a plum role in Jonathan Demme's 2015 film Ricki and the Flash, where he played a puppy dog foil to Meryl Streep's aging lead. Springfield knocked his role out of the park, allowing himself to be vulnerable and funny, two qualities he sometimes avoids on record. Happily, Rocket Science – the 2016 album that is his first since the great Rick renaissance of the 2010s – finds the rocker acting looser than he's been in years, letting his gift for the frivolous sit alongside his yen to explore his spiritual side.

Of all of rock & roll's many comatose old tricks, few are hanging as tenuously to their life-support systems as that absolute relic known as the live album. Having said that, Rage's first such effort, From the Cradle to the Stage, benefits from a better premise (celebrating the enduring power thrashers' 20th anniversary), a better track listing, and a better overall recording quality than most half-hearted, contract-fulfilling entries into the format…

Yussef Kamaal - Black Focus (2016) {Brownswood Recordings BWOOD0157CD}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 260 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 104 Mb
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© 2016 Brownswood Recordings | BWOOD0157CD
Jazz / Contemporary Jazz / Soul Jazz / Broken Beat / Jazz Funk / Electro Jazz

Yussef Kamaal is the South London duo of drummer/percussionist Yussef Dayes and Kamaal Williams (Henry Wu) on Rhodes piano and synth. The former is best known for his work as kit man for cosmic Afrobeat ensemble United Vibrations. The latter is also a producer whose dubplates have garnered wide-ranging critical notice. Gilles Peterson signed them to Brownswood based on witnessing a 20-minute live set.

When Angels Speak of Love, released in 1966 on Sun Ra's Saturn label, is a rarity, there having been limited pressings (150 copies, by one estimate), which were sold thru the mail and at concerts and club dates. The tracks were taped in New York during two 1963 sessions at the Choreographer's Workshop, a rehearsal space/recording den with warehouse acoustics. Ra spent countless hours at the CW from 1961 to 1964 sharpening the Arkestra during exhaustive musical huddles. John Corbett calls this "one of the most continuous, best-documented periods of Ra's work"; much tape from these seminal sessions has survived and been issued on LP, CD and digitally.

The last of four albums recorded by this madcap New York City band co-led by Phillip Johnston and Joel Forrester, Beauty Based on Science ends their all-too-brief career on a high note. As usual, the pieces take their cues from a multitude of sources, including film noir soundtracks, Ellington, barrelhouse blues, and Steve Lacy, all performed with an odd combination of homage and tongue-in-cheek, spiced with a liberal dose of free jazz in the solo work. The near-obligatory tango shows up in Johnston's slyly titled "Waltz of the Recently Punished Catholic School Boys." Their horn arrangements are possibly richer than ever, shown to great advantage in compositions like "Come From Behind" (a small classic and frequent live performance highlight) and Johnston's "Rocky's Heart." Forrester's bouncy, infectious "Lobster in the Limelight," also a band mainstay, offers another example of the Micros at the top of their game, with its giddy riffs providing exactly the right balance and support for all manner of free soloing by Paul Shapiro and Dave Sewelson.

Collected together for the first time, ‘Manipulations Of The Mind – The Complete Collection’, assembles the entire solo works of founding Black Sabbath bassist and lyricist Geezer Butler across four CDs.  Featuring the albums ‘Plastic Planet’ (1995), ‘Black Science’ (1997), and ‘Ohmwork’ (2005), with a bonus 4th disc of rare and largely unreleased material, ‘Manipulations Of The Mind’ shines the spotlight on a creative force who, as chief master of the heavy metal originators heavyweight bottom-end and the lyrics that gave voice to the monolithic riffs, didn’t rest on his laurels and created three solo albums of forward-thinking new music throughout those years. The 4th bonus disc is a treasure trove of unreleased demos, studio outtakes, single edits and three live tracks captured at the Majestic Theatre, Detroit, MI, February 1996, alongside the song ‘Beach Skeleton’, only previously heard on the Japanese edition of ‘Black Science’.