Birth of The Third Stream

UB40 are an English reggae and pop band, formed in December 1978 in Birmingham. The band has had more than 50 singles in the UK Singles Chart, and has also achieved considerable international success. They have been nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album four times, and in 1984 were nominated for the Brit Award for Best British Group. One of the world's best-selling music artists, UB40 have sold over 70 million records. The ethnic make-up of the band's original line-up was diverse, with musicians of English, Irish, Jamaican, Scottish and Yemeni parentage.

There are moments in our lives when birth and death intersect and engage in dialogue for a moment. Often, this is done in silence. La Féline decided to go the musical route. Vie Future, the third album by musician and author Agnès Gayraud (she is just about to publish her recent philosophical essay Dialectic of Pop in English (Urbanomic, 2019), is a truly cosmic record. At once deep and airborne, like the musician herself, it is an opus concerned with the cycle of life – that arc in which the cosmos expresses itself in the physical world, and where worries about the present never stand in the way of joy.

Richard Wagner - Parsifal (2012) [4CD BoxSet] {PentaTone Classics}
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© 2012 PentaTone Classics / Deutschlandradio Kultur | PTC 5186 401
Classical / Orchestral / Opera

The third issue in PentaTone's ambitious project to record ten mature Wagner operas by the time of the composer's bicentenary in 2013 proves to be the finest so far released. The live recording was made on April 8, 2011 in the Philharmonie, Berlin, with an exceptional international cast of soloists under the direction of Marek Janowski and the superb contribution of the Rundfunkchor, Berlin, a vital component in the success of this undertaking… From the opening bars of the Prelude one is struck by the luminous and pellucid sonic quality that the engineers have achieved. The ethereal string playing benefits from the unexpectedly spacious acoustic, and when the brass enter they are rich and weighty in tone. Janowski imparts a wonderful sense of purpose to the music and the clarity of execution that he achieves from his orchestra is remarkable.

Randy Weston - Mosaic Select 4 (2003) {3CD Set, Mosaic MS-004 rec 1957-1963}
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© 1957-63, 2003 Mosaic Records / EMI Music | MS-004 / 72435 82413 2 7
Jazz / Hard Bop / Post Bop / Piano

The three CDs that make up the Randy Weston Mosaic Select package comprise the complete sessions from six different albums, one of which was previously unreleased. Weston has had a long and varied career, and one that has established him in the consummate realm of piano soloists with his idiosyncratic, inclusive style. His deep jazz roots were accompanied, almost from the beginning, by the influences of Afro-Caribbean folk and the music of Asia, which he encountered during his tenure with the U.S. armed forces.

Onmyo-za is a band that is difficult to categorize. The band members themselves introduce their music as "Yokai Heavy Metal," with yokai (creatures from Japanese folklore) being the subject matter for many of their songs. This however, does not give full scope to the wide range of styles that the band performs, including pop, rock, ballads and their own special matsuri (traditional Japanese festival) style compositions that end every concert performance. Admittedly their music is deeply influenced by orthodox heavy metal, but there are also many aspects of traditional Japanese music woven throughout their compositions…

Front Line Assembly (FLA) is a Canadian electro-industrial band formed by Bill Leeb in 1986 after leaving Skinny Puppy. FLA has developed its own sound incorporating elements of electronic body music (EBM) and electro-industrial. The band's membership has rotated through the years, including Michael Balch, Rhys Fulber, and Chris Peterson, all of whom are associated with several other acts…

In honor of the 150th anniversary of Richard Strauss' birth, DG gives us this collection featuring the composer as conductor. While on the surface this would seem a wonderful opportunity to hear his music as Strauss intended it, this set winds up being something else: an examination of what happened when 19th century conducting styles met 20th century technology. For while Strauss is regularly feted as being one of the great conductors of his era, those who know also emphasize the fact that he didn't like recording all that much. Thus, this Strauss set is fascinating evidence of how recording technology can alter our perceptions of music.