Song Without End

“Within A Song” celebrates the spirit of discovery that illuminated the jazz of the 1960s, as John Abercrombie declares his musical loyalties in a quartet album that pays tribute to a range of early influences including Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins and Jim Hall. “This was the music that spoke to me. When I heard it, it was like finding a new home.” The group assembled especially for this production, recorded at New York’s Avatar Studios in September 2011 features tenorist Joe Lovano as the optimal partner for Abercrombie. Together they mine deep feelings from these modern jazz classics.

This set is a must have not only for the hardcore fans of Demis Roussos, but also for anyone with deep interest in pop music in general, and for any collector. The set actually consist not 28, but 31 original solo Demis Roussos albums (3 of them are added as bonuses), plus many non-album bonus tracks and rarities. The variety of musical styles represented here, covering 40 years of recording solo career is so vast, and the voice and the arrangements are so different in the respective periods and genres, that makes one wonders is this the same artist on all these recordings. Prog-rock, psychedelic, ethno pop, folk, reggae, real American disco, euro pop, funk, Latin vibes, krautrock, techno pop, French chansons and German Schlagers, new age, soul, vintage rock…and all this sung with a voice ranging from soaring warble, trough powerful full bodied sound, to gravelly soulful Joe Cocker – like delivery.

Matthew Fisher is a keyboard player, singer, and producer who is best known for his work as a founding member of Procol Harum - he was the group's organist, and later served as producer/arranger during that band's first three years. Along with Robin Trower and Gary Brooker, he was one of the stars to emerge from the ranks of the group, following the latter's sudden rise to fame in 1967…

British keyboard player and singer Roy Young played in rock & roll idol Cliff Bennett's Rebel Rousers in the '60s. When they broke up in early 1970, he formed his own Roy Young Band but they never really made it. They struggled on, with several line-up changes, until June 1974 when they finally called it a day.

The first album released posthumously after jazz legend Freddie Hubbard's passing in 2008, the recordings that make up Without a Song: Live in Europe 1969 actually sat in the Blue Note archives for 40 years. Recorded while Hubbard was touring Europe with producer Sonny Lester's The Jazz Wave on Tour revue, the album features performances culled from three separate nights - two in England and one in Germany. While Hubbard had already released many of his most famous Blue Note solo albums by 1969, in truth the trumpeter had only started leading his own full-time touring band around 1966 after leaving Max Roach's ensemble. In that sense, Without a Song showcases Hubbard in his technical and creative prime as one of the premiere virtuoso jazz trumpeters of his generation…

Momentum is an album that is quite simply, another excellent addition to Neal Morse’s back catalog of music, it continues his unique brand of pop/hard rock influenced progressive rock, especially with his use of 80’s-style synth and Hammond organ sounds…