The Diary of Alicia Keys

Alicia Keys' debut album, Songs in A Minor, made a significant impact upon its release in the summer of 2001, catapulting the young singer/songwriter to the front of the neo-soul pack. Critics and audiences were captivated by a 19-year-old singer whose taste and influences ran back further than her years, encompassing everything from Prince to smooth '70s soul, even a little Billie Holiday. In retrospect, it was the idea of Alicia Keys that was as attractive as the record, since soul fans were hungering for a singer/songwriter who seemed part of the tradition without being as spacy as Macy Gray or as hippie mystic as Erykah Badu while being more reliable than Lauryn Hill. Keys was all that, and she had style to spare – elegant, sexy style accentuated by how she never oversang, giving the music a richer feel. It was rich enough to compensate for some thinness in the writing – though it was a big hit, "Fallin'" doesn't have much body to it – which is a testament to Keys' skills as a musician.

Alicia De Larrocha - The Art of Alicia De Larrocha (2003) {7CD Box Set Decca 473 813-2}
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© 2003 Decca Music | 473 813-2
Classical / Piano / Orchestral

This splendid seven-disc set marks Alicia de Larrocha's 2003 retirement from the concert stage after an extraordinary career spanning more than seven decades. To many listeners, she is a peerless performer of Iberian (particularly Spanish and Catalan) music. Indeed, as her rendition of Manuel de Falla's Nights in the Gardens of Spain demonstrates, this Catalan pianist brilliantly captures the indefinable magic and charm of Iberian music, revealing a timeless richness and depth that lesser artists, conforming to ideas of national style, often miss. It would be a mistake, however, to define de Larrocha as an "Iberian specialist." As this set demonstrates, her rich repertoire encompasses various traditions and a timespan from the late Baroque to the present, from Bach to Xavier Montsalvatge (1912-2002).

This is an interesting concept for a live album. The title tells it as it is, isn't a typical live album, more a sonic diary of the band on tour. What you get are "selected highlights" of songs, full songs, and pieces of conversation of the band members interacting with the audience, and with each other…

The Diary of the Missed One is the debut full-length album by Ukrainian one man post rock act Krobak. Igor Sidorenko plays all instruments on the album (guitars, bass, drums, samples programming) and it is emphasized that no keyboards were used during the recording sessions which took place in the spring of 2007.
The album is cut into three songs, each one a little longer than the last, one is almost archtypical post rock, but more upbeat than you would expect, with an almost awkward start, but smoothes over, and builds into a great song. The second starts a little softer than the first, slow melodic, beautiful, but towards the end, introduces a more metalisized Krobak, with post metalish tones to a drop D palm muted guitar…

First aired ten days prior to the release of Girl on Fire, Alicia Keys' VH1 Storytellers program featured six songs. While this set expands the set to 11 songs, it does not present the full performance. Heavy editing was involved; certain portions of Keys' dialogue re hacked up, crowd noise is unnaturally lowered and raised in volume, and there is little evident effort to make the songs flow. Keys' first words here, the lead-in to "No One," are "We were at the end of the album, and it was finished, and…" – so it provokes the feeling of walking into the venue as the gig is in progress. Furthermore, much of her intro to the following "Brand New Me" was cut. For all its choppiness, VH1 Storytellers is enjoyably off-the-cuff, with Keys' anecdotes (including an extended tale about the making of "You Don't Know My Name") and remarks ("I love an acoustic guitar!") often delivered as she and her band are playing.