The Artist June 2020

Saxophonist Wayne Escoffery is renowned for his fiery, muscular and virtuosic tenor playing, but his explosive sound is paired with a soft-spoken and thoughtful demeanor off the bandstand. In many cases both of those aspects of his personality can be credited to the same inspirations, giants of the music who paired estimable talents and imagination with rock-solid integrity.

Horse Lords make music for the liberation of mind and body. Propulsive in a way that inspires movement and that’s felt in the gut, the Baltimore quartet’s new album The Common Task points to a utopian, modernist ideal. The group’s use of algorithmic composition techniques, microtonal harmonies, and plentifully deployed polyrhythm aren’t secondary to the music’s danceability and rhapsodic swirl, but integral to the party itself.

Over the last decade, Real Estate have crafted warm yet meticulous pop-minded music, specialising in soaring melodies that are sentimentally evocative and unmistakably their own. The Main Thing dives even further into the musical dichotomies they’re known for—lilting, bright guitar lines set against emotionally nuanced lyrics, complex arrangements conveyed breezily— and what emerges is a superlative collection of interrogative songs as full of depth, strangeness and contradictions as they are lifting hooks.

Whitesnake will bring together some of their hardest-hitting songs of its multi-platinum career on 'The ROCK Album', a new collection that features revisited, remixed and remastered versions of the group's best rock songs. The album is the first release in the band's 'Red, White and Blues Trilogy,' a series of fresh, new collections organized by musical themes that will include: 'Love Songs' (red), 'The ROCK Album' (white) and 'The BLUES Album' (blue). The collection features the debut of 'Always The Same,' a previously unreleased song that was recorded during the 2019 sessions for 'Flesh & Blood'.

Marko Tapani "Marco" Hietala is a Finnish heavy metal vocalist, bassist and songwriter. Internationally, he is most known as the current bassist, male vocalist and secondary composer to Tuomas Holopainen, of the symphonic metal band Nightwish. He is also the vocalist and bassist as well as composer and lyricist for the heavy metal band Tarot, he founded with his brother. He is also a member of the supergroup Northern Kings, and portrayed one of the main characters in Ayreon's 2013 album The Theory of Everything.

Three, the 21st album from legendary Australian instrumental trio The Necks, is a winding, textural, and visceral musical exploration through three individual, contrasting tracks that each delve into separate tenets of their sound. Three’s variety of tones and structures offer a glimpse into the boundless, immersive sonic universe The Necks have been constructing, through recorded and live performance, for over 30 years: three musicians, three variable songs, highlighting three decades of groundbreaking experimental excellence.

During these dark times, this album comes as a lifeline. Deeply personal, extremely well-crafted, cathartic and adequately bizarre to cause prog excitement. Jargon retains the goth/dark-wave aura of Verbal Delirium's sound in his personal debut and does away with most of the heaviness and guitar distortion. Interestingly, there is a glimmer of hope and optimism coming out of an abundance of minor chord progressions.
Jargon creates on piano, mostly modern classical/cinematic music, which filters influences from 70's Genesis (Time is Running Out)…