ap 2023

Analogue Productions presents another classic title on Hybrid Stereo SACD - Jethro Tull's multi-platinum-selling smash Aqualung. Originally released in March 1971, the album has sold in excess of 7 million copies worldwide, achieving Top Ten chart status in both the U.K. and U.S.. Aqualung's success signaled a turning point in the band's career, making Jethro Tull a major radio and touring act.Recorded at Island Records' studio in London, it was their first album with John Evan as a full-time member, their first with new bassist Jeffrey Hammond, and last album featuring Clive Bunker on drums. Aqualung is regarded, despite the band's disagreement, as a concept album featuring a central theme of 'the distinction between religion and God.' Something of a departure from the band's previous work, the album features more acoustic material than previous releases; and-inspired by photographs of homeless people on the Thames Embankment taken by singer Ian Anderson's wife Jennie-contains a number of recurring themes, addressing religion along with Anderson's own personal experiences.Jethro Tull's multi-platinum-selling smash on Hybrid Stereo SACD!Remastered by Chris Bellman from the original master tapes.

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Led by the songwriting and virtuoso musical duo of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, Steely Dan released an extraordinary run of seven albums on ABC Records and MCA Records from 1972 through 1980. Filled with topline musicianship, clever and subversive wordplay, ironic humor, genius arrangements, and pop hits that outshone the Top 40 of its day, their records, which were as sophisticated and cerebral as they were inscrutable, were stylistically diverse, melding their love of jazz with rock, blues, and impeccable pop songcraft.

Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were remarkable craftsmen from the start, as Steely Dan's debut, Can't Buy a Thrill, illustrates. Each song is tightly constructed, with interlocking chords and gracefully interwoven melodies, buoyed by clever, cryptic lyrics. All of these are hallmarks of Steely Dan's signature sound, but what is most remarkable about the record is the way it differs from their later albums. Of course, one of the most notable differences is the presence of vocalist David Palmer, a professional blue-eyed soul vocalist who oversings the handful of tracks where he takes the lead. Palmer's very presence signals the one major flaw with the album – in an attempt to appeal to a wide audience, Becker and Fagen tempered their wildest impulses with mainstream pop techniques.

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Superbly crafted choral music and a rare recording of a neglected masterwork! "The inspiration for Hugo Distler’s gem of a Christmas narrative can be found in the German-language protestant sacred music of the early baroque era, especially the music of Heinrich Schütz. Drawing on Schütz’s example, Distler composed his Christmas story exclusively for vocalists – soloists and a 4-8-voiced ensemble – in what is, in Distler’s own words, described as an “Oratorium mit kammermusika- lishem Charakter”.

A master and champion of the instrument (as well as one for his native Celtic and Breton hinterlands), Alan Stivell pioneered a new wave of fondness for the Celtic harp, and Celtic rock as a whole subsequently. His second album Renaissance de la Harpe Celtique, described as "one of the most beautiful and haunting records ever made" by music journalist Bruce Elder, was Stivell's first and strongest statement on the power of the Celtic harp. The album also began the Breton musician's development of traditional Celtic and contemporary rock styles, a combination which earned the 1971 LP praise from both French and English critics, as well as awarding Stivell the Prix de l’Académie Charles-Cros.

On 2 CDs "Bravo Hits Vol. 120" offers again the best of the charts: Only the best fill the tracklist.

At the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, an animated feature film caused a sensation and won the Special Jury Prize: La Planète sauvage by René Laloux, with phantasmagorical drawings by Roland Topor. For this philosophical tale of anticipation, where men serve as domestic toys for blue giants, the Draags, the immense composer Alain Goraguer unleashes his inspiration with a haunting main theme, of great melodic obviousness, soaring and hypnotic climates , but also pursuits with a rhythm with very funk accents, wah wah guitar in support, as if Goraguer was reaching out to Isaac Hayes of Shaft.