Automatic

R.E.M. began their Warner contract in 1988 as the biggest band to emerge from the college-radio-fueled American underground. Fifteen years later, they released In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003, the first overview of their long stint at Warner Records. During that decade and a half, R.E.M. had a turbulent journey…

Jean-Michel Jarre - Electronica 1: The Time Machine (2015)
EAC Rip | FLAC (tracks) | cuesheets+log | 67:35 mins | covers+booklet | 143 + 494 Mb
Style: Electronic, Ambient, New Age | Label: Sony Music

The French synthesizer icon has been teasing out details on the new album since April, revealing various high profile collaborators involved with the record. Electronica 1: The Time Machine is in fact a fully collaborative effort: all of its 16 tracks have Jarre working with another producer.

In the late 1970s, Jean-Michel Jarre’s albums Oxygène and Équinoxe sold in their zillions, demonstrating that electronic music could be embraced by mainstream tastes. Almost 40 years later, the list of Jarre’s collaborators on Electronica 1: The Time Machine reads like a who’s who of electronic music, including Massive Attack, Moby, Air, Vince Clarke, Laurie Anderson and John Carpenter. True, by assembling such a stellar lineup, Jarre is reminding us of his status as a pioneer. But this does not feel like a cynical exercise - perhaps because Jarre was shrewd enough to work in person with his collaborators rather than remotely by sharing digital files. Jarre’s soaring washes of chords are present on tracks such as Conquistador (with French techno artist Gesaffelstein) and Zero Gravity (one of the last recordings of the late Edgar Froese of Tangerine Dream)…

Their second album to hit the shelves in 1978, Japan's sophomore effort, Obscure Alternatives, found the band dropping most of their debut's funk fringe in favor of guitar-oriented fuzz and quirk – scooping up the glitter left behind by all the scene's other nascent Siouxies and Adam Ants…

Yo La Tengo - Stuff Like That There (2015) {Matador OLE-1079-2}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 287 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 107 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 37 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2015 Matador Records | OLE 1079-2
Rock / Indie Rock / Alternative / Dream Pop

These days, every band seems eager to honor the anniversary of one of its landmark albums, usually in the form of a concert tour or an expanded reissue, and even Yo La Tengo have gotten into the act – a quarter century after they released their endlessly charming 1990 LP Fakebook, in which they covered a handful of their favorite songs and reworked a few of their own numbers in semi-acoustic fashion, YLT have recorded what amounts to a sequel, 2015's Stuff Like That There. Just like a sequel to a 1980s horror movie, Stuff Like That There follows the template of the original as closely as possible – there are two new songs, three remakes from the YLT back catalog, and nine covers, which range from the instantly recognizable (Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," inspired by Al Green's version) to the thoroughly obscure (unless you're a Hoboken pop obsessive or a James McNew completist, "Automatic Doom" by the Special Pillows is probably not on your hit parade).

C89 is another celebration of the Eighties Indie scene, documenting a golden era when tuneful guitar-based bands made records on shoestring budgets, often issued on small labels with hand-made artwork, with little hope of mainstream exposure.