Sound & Recording September 2020

Throughout the historical timeline of heavy metal, the 1980s is and will always be a hallmark decade spawning countless artists, many of whom are still active today. Metal Church is one such band that has maintained a fairly consistent stream of output since their debut album in 1984…

The return of a great band! The archival recording, 'Live and Unreleased', documents the Brecker Brothers at the peak of their powers during a European tour on a particularly happening night in Hamburg on July 2, 1980 at the legendary Onkel Pö's Carnegie Hall. One of the best-selling, most potent bands of the '70s, the Brecker Brothers defined the swaggering sound of New York funk-fusion during the decade. On the strength of such contemporary crossover recordings as their 1975 self-titled debut, 1976's Back to Back, 1977's Don't Stop the Music and 1978's Heavy Metal Be-Bop, brothers Randy and Michael Brecker set a new standard in jazz with their tight arrangements, catchy funk grooves, melodic grooves and scintillating solos.

Featuring Joff Winks (vocals, guitars, drum programming and samples), Matt Baber (Rhodes, synthesizer, percussion, mini drum kit), Brad Waissman (bass) and Paul Mallyon (drums, percussion, mini drum kit), the band was formed from the ashes of the Joff Winks Band and the Antique Seeking Nuns (a heady mix of Zappa and Canterbury influenced instrumental compositions with songwriting that owed much to artists such as Robert Wyatt). However, after a year of not performing live and only working in the studio, the need for the duo to be back in a band reached a feverish pitch. So with an ever-mounting pile of new songs the members of the Joff Winks Band came back together under the new moniker of Sanguine Hum, recording the album "Diving Bell”. Initially released in limited quantities on the Troopers for Sound website, the album is a complex ensemble work, featuring profound song writing…

If I Break Horses’s third album holds you in its grip like a great film, it’s no coincidence. Faced with making the follow-up to 2014’s plush Chiaroscuro, Horses’s Maria Lindén decided to take the time to make something different, with an emphasis on instrumental, cinematic music. That album is Warnings, an intimate and sublimely expansive return that, as its recording suggests, sets its own pace with the intuitive power of a much-loved movie. And, as its title suggests, its sumptuous sound worlds – dreamy mellotrons, haunting loops, analogue synths – and layered lyrics crackle with immersive dramatic tensions on many levels.

Released on John Lennon's 80th birthday, Gimme Some Truth: The Ultimate Mixes is designed as a deluxe celebration of Lennon's solo catalog. Housed in a slipcover and bearing a handsome 124-page hardcover book with some nice song-by-song liner notes culled from Lennon interviews, Gimme Some Truth covers rather familiar territory in terms of songs – there are 36 here, starting with "Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)" and running through the posthumous hit "Nobody Told Me," hitting nearly all the familiar points along the way (Some Time in New York City, which was bypassed on 2010's Power to the People: The Hits, is represented here by "Angela," a deep cut making its debut on a hits compilation).

A good ten years after the first archival album was published in the mid-1970s, jazz rocker Light Year, who was active in California, was somewhat surprisingly released in autumn 2020 by a second collection with historical recordings of the formation. "Hypernauts of the Absolute Elsewhere" was released like "Reveal The Fantastic" by Green Tree Records from Berlin.
The material to be found on "Hypernauts of the Absolute Elsewhere" is probably the rest of the demo material that the band recorded at the time (or another part - who knows what else is there somewhere; a live cut maybe?). The sound is very good, so it can be assumed that the recordings were made in a recording studio under thoroughly professional conditions…