Albert Hude

Richard Wetz's ultra-conservative Third Symphony, like his second, resembles sort of a cross between Bruckner and Max Bruch. Not that this explains anything useful. One thing's for sure, though: Wetz writes beautiful music. His themes sing, stay with you when listening, and offer clearly contrasting moods and images. While never calling attention to itself in an ostentatious manner, Wetz's orchestration elucidates his musical arguments with perfect clarity and efficiency. His harmony, both diatonic and tastefully chromatic, is gorgeous. There's more than a touch of Schubert in his mixture of major and minor modes, and he knows how to use both discrete dissonance and fluid rhythms to carry his melodies across the bar lines. In short, the guy knows how to write symphonically, and if he now appears to have been born a generation or more too late (the piece dates from 1922 but sounds more like 1872), that need not concern us now.

Richard Wetz's ultra-conservative Third Symphony, like his second, resembles sort of a cross between Bruckner and Max Bruch. Not that this explains anything useful. One thing's for sure, though: Wetz writes beautiful music. His themes sing, stay with you when listening, and offer clearly contrasting moods and images. While never calling attention to itself in an ostentatious manner, Wetz's orchestration elucidates his musical arguments with perfect clarity and efficiency. His harmony, both diatonic and tastefully chromatic, is gorgeous. There's more than a touch of Schubert in his mixture of major and minor modes, and he knows how to use both discrete dissonance and fluid rhythms to carry his melodies across the bar lines. In short, the guy knows how to write symphonically, and if he now appears to have been born a generation or more too late (the piece dates from 1922 but sounds more like 1872), that need not concern us now.

Albert Hammond is one of the more successful pop/rock songwriters to come out of England during the 1960s and 1970s, and has also enjoyed a long career as a recording artist, his work popular in two languages on three continents across four decades. Hammond was born in London in 1944 – his family actually came from the British colony on Gibraltar, but wartime considerations caused his mother to be evacuated to London, where she gave birth. He spent his childhood and youth on Gibraltar, where he became fluent in both English and Spanish – that bilingual ability would serve him well in his later career. His family lived modestly on his father's fireman's pay, and one of his early diversions was music – he sang in church and became head choir boy. He also became interested in popular music, sang for his own enjoyment, and also took up the guitar.

Crosscut Saw reissues Albert King's 1983 album San Francisco '83 (a studio album, not a live one), adding two previously unreleased cuts. His first new release in five years, it wasn't one of King's better records – but it did represent a return to a basic five-piece sound, an improvement upon his over-produced outings of the late '70s.

The reissue of a great, classic, wonderful Spanish progressive album. Feliu is a guitarist who plays only Spanish guitar, while Joan Albert, the leader of the equally great Musica Urbana, performs on acoustic piano, Fender Rhodes piano, clavinet and Moog synthesizer. Recorded in 1977, released on Edigsa and always hard to find, it is reissued here from the master tapes for the very first time! Musically very active and intricate and filled with great melodic passages, yet also very stripped down and open, allowing the listener to really get inside and hear all the details. Then, on the last track, Murica Urbana and guests join them for a rocking finish!

Albert Marcœur is a French composer, singer and songwriter. He began his career in the early 1970s. His body of work mixes melodic, rhythmic and sonic experimentations with fancy nursery rhymes, humorous and offbeat lyrics. In France he has been called "the French Frank Zappa". Albert Marcœur was born on December 12 1947, in Dijon, France. During his formal education of clarinet at the National Academy of Music and Dance of Dijon, Marcoeur actively participated in many straightforward college rock 'n roll bands. Closing an end to his formal training Marcoeur's musical visions had gravitated towards the experimental facets of music, wishing "to do nothing else but make my own music".