Divinations

15th Anniversary Deluxe Limited Edition of Mastodon's fourth studio album, Crack the Skye, on 2CD. Disc 1 is the original album remastered while Disc 2, Crack the Skye: The Score, features instrumental versions of each track.
First off, a warning: the best way to encounter Mastodon's Crack the Skye for the first time is with headphones. Reported to be a mystical - if crunchy - concept record about Tsarist Russia, this is actually the most involved set of tracks, both in terms of music and production, the band has ever recorded. "Ambitious" is a word that regularly greets Mastodon - after all, they did an entire album based on Moby Dick - but until now, that adjective may have been an understatement. There is so much going on in these seven tracks that it's difficult to get it all in a listen or two (one of the reasons that close encounters of the headphone kind are recommended)…

The welcome and wondrous return of Lyon musician Baptiste Martin’s aerial ambient identity Les Halles, following a year’s sabbatical from recording, Zephyr takes its name from a light westerly wind, which aptly evokes the warm, weightless, whispering spirit of these beguiling electro-acoustic designs. Working entirely with a computer for the first time, Martin’s sample bank swelled in both depth and detail, giving his compositions a crisper focus and finer grain. Slovakian fujara flutes shudder and shimmer, offset with rippling PVC panpipes, chimes, and gentle webs of delay.
The tracks are titled according to their sample source, designated with one of three words that are same in French and English: horizon, mirage, and distance…

Universe in Blue, a collection of undated live club performances by Sun Ra & His Blue Universe Arkestra, was issued in small-run pressings with two different LP covers on Sun Ra's Saturn label in 1972. Until now it has never been officially reissued on LP or CD.

This is a great collection of rare and hard to find tunes compiled by Jeffrey Glenn. Hundreds of odds & ends by little known groups, famous singers, and famous singers before they became famous.