Charles Portal Air Marshall

The President of the USA goes to Moscow and gives a stirring speech outlining the USA's new "Zero-tolerance" policy with respect to terrorism. On the flight home, terrorists take over Air Force One (the President's official plane) and take the passengers (including his wife and daughter) hostage. The terrorists plan to execute one hostage every half-hour unless/until their demands are met. However, the President is a former Medal of Honor winner, so the terrorists may be in for a surprise…

In the late '60s, Earland became one of the stars on the B-3 organ and earned a classic with 1969's Black Talk. Like many organ players in the '70s, Earland moved over to the Fender Rhodes, the Mini-Moog, and the ARP string synthesizer with mixed results. This 1977 album is the follow-up to 1976's Odyssey. While Earland's skills are never in question here, the execution and the style are the problems here. Although many players legitimately started to do more material pertaining to the universal, even zodiacal concerns, by this time it was becoming old hat. The title track is symptomatic of Earland's the more pensive direction and even emotive Gabor Szabo's guitar solo; can't save the "deepness" from being cloying. Of course with albums of the type, the biggest success comes when the artist isn't really trying.

Gustavo Diaz-Jerez is one of the leading composers and pianists in Spain. His compositional output spans all genres, from solo works to opera. His works have been premiered by prestigious ensembles and orchestras. His orchestral work Ymarxa, commissioned by the XXVII Canary Islands Music Festival, was premiered by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Charles Dutoit. In 2018, his first opera was premiered, La casa imaginaria. This album represents the culmination of more than ten years of compositional work. A unique endeavour in the history of music in the Canary Islands, it comprises seven symphonic poems almost two and a half hours of music which evoke the landscapes and natural beauty of the Canaries.

First performed at the Paris Opéra in 1802, Sémiramis by Charles-Simon Catel is an example of the revival at that time of the tragédie lyrique inherited from Gluck. A work with a touch of exoticism (Babylon), expressing the pathos of isolation, but also with pomp in its ambitious finales, the work bade farewell to the ‘Louis-XVI style’ and announced, in a neo-Classical style, the grand opéra of the Romantic period. But it came at a time of polemics between supporters and detractors of the new Paris Conservatoire, where Catel, at that time professor of harmony there, had made so many enemies that the audience pit at the Opera was bristling with vengeful hostility when the curtain rose on the first act…

The US band is finally presenting an official release of their famed and reverently discussed Portal tapes! After splitting up, Cynic members Paul Masvidal, Sean Reinert and Jason Gobel formed the short-lived project Portal together with Chris Kringel on bass and stunning vocalist Aruna Abrams. Aruna’s beautiful and haunting voice combined with Paul’s clean vocals is the perfect fit for these laid back and subtle songs that have more in common with the sound of Porcupine Tree and The Gathering than their original Progressive Death Metal roots. This genre was shaped by Cynic’s full-length debut “Focus” (1993). Yet since their reunion in 2006, Cynic have moved via the Progressive Metal of their highly acclaimed second album “Traced in Air” (2008) towards ever more open soundscapes combining many stylistic influences. With “The Portal Tapes” the missing link in Cynic’s evolution is now available.