Shares From 17 September 2015

Portrait is a metal band from the southern parts of Sweden, founded in 2006 by guitarist Christian Lindell and drummer Anders Persson. After playing together in different irrelevant extreme metal bands since they were about 12 years of age, and after in one of these constellations rehearsing a cover of the Running Wild classic “Black Demon”, the two came to the conclusion that what they really wanted to do was to play that same kind of timeless heavy metal, being the most elevated form of music there ever was.

This collection includes all duo's five studio albums, released between 1964 and 1970, all remastered from first generation analog sources. The albums are: "Wednesday Morning, 3AM", "Sounds Of Silence", "Parsely, Sage Rosemary And Thyme", "Bookends", "Bridge Over Troubled Water".

To those who want to listen to him, Thierry Pécou relates the world, its expanse,beauty, and chaos, too, with the suffering of men and their mutilated memories. The trance of the Bahian candomblé, the Mozartian melodic sweetness, the virtuosic orchestration, the pre-Columbian musical archaeology: all these differences intermingle without getting lost in the Tout-monde that Thierry Pécou shares with us.With the virtuosos of his Ensemble Variances, he takes us off into his Tout-monde (to borrow the lovely expression by the Martiniquais writer Edouard Glissant), cultivating his relations with the Other or the Elsewhere without diluting himself. This is the full meaning of the homage he pays to Henri Dutilleux in Les liaisons magnétiques, to pre-Columbian Mexico with Soleil-Feu, or to the vitalist philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, which is the background of Les Machines désirantes. He visits Indonesian gamelans in his Sextet, without overlooking a festive, sensual detour by way of the islands of the Caribbean with Salsa dElissa and Dominica Reggae.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a soundtrack album to the 1964 Rankin/Bass television special of the same name. The original cast recordings from the TV special (side "A" of the original LP release) are supplemented with instrumental versions recorded by the Decca Concert Orchestra (on side "B"). All songs used in the television special were written by Johnny Marks.

Clare Hammond's second audiophile release on BIS is simply titled "Étude", though her program is a bit unexpected and quite exciting for its fresh material. Instead of playing the most familiar études in the piano repertoire, such as the sets by Chopin, Liszt, and Rachmaninov, Hammond explores the keyboard studies of Sergey Lyapunov, Unsuk Chin, Karol Szymanowski, and Nikolai Kapustin, which make fascinating listening for anyone venturing beyond the standard fare.

On this album, Nicki Parrott performs collection of well-known Theme songs from Hollywood movies. She has that special gift you cannot buy in a music store. She plays the bass fabulously, and has a singing voice that shares the relaxed sexiness of Julie London and the coquettishness of Blossom Dearie.