Axis 01

With his second CD for Warner Bros., Wallace Roney began to break free of the frequent claim that he was overly imitating Miles Davis. With an exciting quintet including brother Antoine Roney on trumpet, pianist Carlos McKinney, bassist Clarence Seay, and drummer Eric Allen, the trumpeter encouraged his band to contribute pieces for this recording; the sideman are responsible for six of the ten pieces, and the performances indicate this is a true band and not just a showboat leader with a supporting cast. Antoine's tense, post-bop cooker "Spyra" is an excellent opener, with provocative solos and terrific ensemble work, while Seay's dark "High Stakes" is an eerie bossa nova with an explosive solo by the leader…

Anyone who enjoyed the Lighthouse Family's previous two albums is bound to enjoy this one. Seemingly buoyed after a four-year break, their third and indeed final album, Whatever Gets You Through the Day, was actually their most inventive.

…British new wave icons Pet Shop Boys took the Mojave stage in front of a much smaller but undeniably devoted crowd. Keeping in step with the band’s current Electric tour, PSB’s set was an over-the-top visual feast imagined by reknowned costume and set designer Es Devlin. Dancers in animal skulls and other obtrusive headgear flanked singer Neil Tennant and ever-stoic keyboardist Chris Lowe, who treated the fans to a series of flamboyant, futuristic costumes…

Trolls, after all, are mythical creatures from Nordic mythology, and Nordic mythology of pre-Christian times has been a prominent theme among Scandinavian extreme metal bands. One of Finland's best-known metal bands, in fact, is named Finntroll. But Hello Troll has nothing to do with metal. The focus of Norwegian pianist Helge Lien is straight-ahead post-bop jazz, and on Hello Troll, he embraces the time-honored acoustic piano trio format (Frode Berg is on upright bass, Knut Aalefaer on drums). Over the years, that format has been successful for a wide variety of acoustic jazz pianists ranging from Erroll Garner to Cecil Taylor to Red Garland; it also works well for Lien, who favors a clean-sounding post-bop pianism along the lines of Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Ahmad Jamal.

In 1942 Britain was clinging to the island of Malta since it was critical to keeping Allied supply lines open. The Axis also wanted it for their own supply lines. Plenty of realistic reenactments and archival combat footage as the British are beseiged and try to fight off the Luftwaffe. Against this background, a RAF reconnaissance photographer's romance with a local girl is endangered as he tries to plot enemy movements.