Summer Soldiers Aka Samâ Sorujâ (1972) Hiroshi Teshigahara, Keith Sykes, Reisen Ri, Kazuo Kitamura

El Juicio (The Judgement) is an album by pianist Keith Jarrett recorded in 1971 and released in 1975. On four days in July and one in August 1971, Jarrett went into the Atlantic Recording Studios with his trio (Charlie Haden and Paul Motian), plus Dewey Redman on tenor saxophone, and produced enough music for three albums: The Mourning of a Star (released in 1971), El Juicio (The Judgement) and Birth (released in 1972). Accordingly, the 1971 sessions mark the emergence of what would be later called Jarrett's "American quartet."

Bolland & Bolland are two Dutch music producers and brothers, Rob Bolland and Ferdi Bolland. They produced and wrote for such artists as Falco (including his Number 1 hit "Rock Me Amadeus"), Samantha Fox ("Love House"), and wrote the Status Quo hit "In the Army Now" – which they released under their own name in 1981 and which was also recorded by Gerard Joling. Their hit singles career started as early as 1972, with "Wait for the Sun" in a folk, a cappella-style following the success of Simon and Garfunkel and their Dutch equivalents Greenfield and Cook. When, in 1976, their success started to wane, they turned towards a more electronic sound, an early example of which can be heard in "Spaceman", a 1978 hit in the Netherlands.

Oh, My Girl, the second album by singer/songwriter Jesse Sykes and her band the Sweet Hereafter – led by Phil Wandscher – picks up where her debut, Reckless Burning, left off. Songs are played at cough-syrup tempo, production is sparse, instrumentation equally so, offering just enough of a frame for the melody and lyrics to hang themselves on, and everything, absolutely everything, is underplayed. There is plenty of dynamic tension, but little to no dynamic range. Yes, this is a good thing. Sykes' ghostly voice, which hovers about her words more than inhabits them, has enough old-world folkiness, raw – if intentionally muted – willingness, and lonesome country pain in it to carry off these tunes with authority. Produced, mixed and engineered by multi-instrumentalist Tucker Martine, Oh, My Girl is full of slow, dipping passion, moody expressionism and poetic smarts to make it stand out in a sensual, narcotic way from the rest of the gothic alterna-twang pack. And one more thing: Sykes has more emotion in the grain of her halting, cracking voice than a whole army of Margo Timmins'es – so let the comparisons stop now, please.

Live Funkhaus, Hamburg, Germany, June 14, 1972.