.Capable of creating melodic hard rock hits in his sleep, Axel Rudi Pell is a name synonymous with epic head-bangers. Along aside a strong supporting cast of musicians, Pell enters 2022 sounding as fresh as ever with Lost XXVII…
German hard rock guitar wizard Axel Rudi Pell has finished recording and mixing his latest album "Diamonds Unlocked II", set for release on July 30th 2021 on Steamhammer/SPV.The successor to last year's top 5 album "Sign Of The Times" is the follow-up to his 2007 cover recording "Diamonds Unlocked". Pell's carefully considered decision not to release brand-new material for the first time in almost 15 years is mainly based on the ongoing pandemic and current restrictions on live concerts. The 61-year-old explains that "it makes no sense at all to put out new songs that we will not be able to perform live." But fans desperately waiting for a new studio album will have to acknowledge that this kind of solution is a pretty good one indeed!
Harald Grosskopf is a legendary drummer who was among the first (if not the first) to play drum together with sequencers. He was a regular guest on albums by Klaus Schulze in the second half of the seventies. After he’d joined Ashra, the band headed more into a rock direction, never forgetting their electronic roots. Steve Baltes became a member of Ashra in the nineties. His electronics gave the pioneers a modern approach. Axel Manrico Heilhecker is considered on of Germany’s leading guitarists. They already work together as Sunya Beat (Harald and Axel) and N-Tribe (Harald and Steve).
"Four Times Three" (4x3) is released under their own names. The four tracks on "Four Times Three" all have traces of the great classic Ashra albums…
Ballads play a very special role in the history of rock music. Firstly: They document the emotional side of the genre and show that behind (almost) every rocker`s hard chest beats a soft heart. Secondly: Those quieter songs are being played by radio stations without rock-affinity – and are loved by listeners for their emotional depth. And thirdly: In an increasingly hectic world, ballads offer brief moments of pause, of reflection on the essential things in life. So it`s no wonder that the ballad compilations of the Axel Rudi Pell Band are an absolute success. Over 250,000 copies have been sold of ‘The Ballads I’ (1993) to ‘The Ballads V’ (2017) alone.
The organ works of Axel Ruoff, born in Stuttgart in 1957, constitute one of the most important contributions to the literature for the instrument by any composer since Messiaen, with Ruoff often using its unparalleled resources to write music of extraordinary power and dramatic flair. This third volume in Jan Lehtola’s complete recording features the organ in the unusual role of duo partner in chamber music – but it is chamber music conceived on a symphonic scale. Here these five muscular duo works are separated by a series of weighty chorale preludes.
Axel Manrico Heilhecker is the essential component of Sunya Beat. The German multi-instrumentalist is accompanied by the Gambian Samson Gassama. The latter is a world famous specialist in African drums and percussions from Boogaraboo. Recorded in 1999, "Wandyah" reveals ethnic influences from one, and flamenco inclinations from the other. Music of album is soft African influenced new age.
Bach and other Baroque composers often transcribed their music for new instrumental combinations as needed under the press of a busy schedule, and performers like South African-born recorder player Stefan Temmingh have taken this fact as carte blanche to create arrangements of Bach's music as desired. You can make various arguments pro or con in connection with this practice, and the procedure here, going from keyboard works to ensemble pieces, is in some ways the most problematical. So what you think of Temmingh's disc may depend on where you come down on the larger question.