Dark Matter

Enduring German hard rockers Dark Age are back with their seventh studio album and it’s their finest to date. The Hamburg based quintet look set to finally get that all important recognition they deserve outside of their homeland.

Hector Zazou - Lights in the Dark (1998) {Detour 3984-21662-2}
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© 1998 Detour / Erato / Warner Music France | 3984-21662-2
Experimental / Religious / Sacred Celtic Music / Folk / Ambient

With Lights in the Dark, Hector Zazou set out to create accessible versions of the ominous, sacred music of Ireland. Utilizing a talented cast of vocalists, Breda Mayock, Katie McMahon, and Lasairfhiona Ni Chonaola, Zazou keeps the music relatively quiet. Shimmering bells, plaintive flutes, and Mark Isham's mournful trumpet serve mostly as background noises to the passionate, female vocals. There are moments of great power, such as "Song of the Passion" and "In the Name of the Father May We Gain Victory," and other songs where there's just a few too many hallelujahs for most modern listeners. The title of the album is telling.

French black metal phenoms THE GREAT OLD ONES return with their new album 'EOD : A Tale Of Dark Legacy'. Steeped in nightmarish Lovecraftian lore, the band once again draw inspiration from the iconic writer to produce cold, gruesome pitch-black metal. Colossal tracks such as "The Shadow over Innsmouth", "Mare Infinitum", and "When the Stars Align" and more emanate tense, horrific atmospheres in a flurry of utterly extreme metal. Reinforced by macabre themes and morose subject matter, THE GREAT OLD ONES have made 'EOD…" a truly grim journey and, in doing so, one of the year's most compelling black metal releases.

Commemorating the 25th anniversary of Passion and Warfare comes a special 2CD edition of the album which includes the first-ever release of Vai's Modern Primitive songs and recordings. Based on song sketches and works-in-progress penned, and recorded, by Vai following the release of Flex-Able, the artist's debut album, in January 1984, the music on Modern Primitive has been completed by Steve for release as a full album bonus disc in the Passion and Warfare 25th Anniversary Edition…

Grayfolded is a two-CD album produced by John Oswald featuring the Grateful Dead song "Dark Star". Using over a hundred different performances of the song, recorded live between 1968 and 1993, Oswald, using a process he calls "plunderphonics", built, layered, and "folded" all of them to produce two large, recomposed versions, each about one hour long.

Animation - Machine Language (2015) {Rare Noise Records}
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© 2015 Rare Noise Records | RNR055
Jazz / Fusion / Jazz Rock / Jazz Funk / Trumpet / Bass

Twice Grammy-nominated Animation (Bob Belden, Pete Clagett, Roberto Verastegui, Matt Young, here with Bill Laswell and Kurt Elling as narrator) delve deep into current borderline science-fiction themes about the relationship between Human Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence. Machine Language is a suite of connected pieces that evoke the thrilling moods Miles Davis conjured from his early 1970s bands and records. There are long solos for trumpet and leader Bob Belden’s soprano sax, linear, spacey grooves, and layered textures for keyboards, notably the distinctive Rhodes electric piano of Roberto Verastegui. Bill Laswell plays bass guitar as if the Miles Davis gig was the one he always wanted – he even quotes ‘Ife’ (from Davis’s Big Fun) at one moment. The album scores high on atmosphere, and it sounds as if the five players who made up Animation, completed by drummer Matt Young and trumpeter Pete Clagett, had a lot of fun devising the twelve tracks. Sadly the project has acquired an extra gravitas, for it is the last album Bob Belden completed before his untimely death in May 2015 at the age of 58.

Vessel in Orbit presents the first new group music in over a decade from singular drummer-composer Whit Dickey. It is a richly melodic and deeply focused album; structural integrity and emotional resonance are paramount throughout. Created together with the impeccable improvisers Mat Maneri on viola and pianist Matthew Shipp, each of these men has a lifetime commitment to creative music, and they share a musical relationship with one another that dates back decades. Dickey’s wonderfully inviting compositional structures provide fruitful platforms for his esteemed colleagues and, par for his work as a leader, he cedes the spotlight to the collective as a whole. Wide-open listening and fluid expression abound here.