Escape

One of Taylor Deupree’s many side projects on the Instinct Ambient record label. Good example of early american ambient. Slow and meditative most of the time, almost lounge-like at points, it's actually quite difficult to listen to it all the way through, but worth it in the end.

British AOR outfit has been away for quite some time but now guitar player Vince O’Reagan (BOB CATLEY, LEGION) starts a new version of the band including a new line-up. It’s a collection of re-recorded and freshly produced songs from earlier ESCAPE records and some of his solo stuff as well as two songs previously recorded by BOB CATLEY but written by O’Reagan (“Blinded By A Lie“ and “Walk On Water“). Everything is typical British AOR with lots of majestic keyboards but also with balls or in other words, sharp guitars. If you dig the likes of TEN, NEWMAN or SERPENTINE, you can’t go wrong here.

Taco Kooistra - Ladder of Escape 6 (1993) {Attacca Babel 9369-1}
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 219 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 142 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 25 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1993 Attacca | BABEL 9369-1 DDD
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Avant-Garde / Modern Composition / Cello

The CD series Ladder of Escape from Attacca shows musicians trying to go beyond the limits of their instrument. But listening to the sixth CD in the series, on which cellist Taco Kooistra plays works by Penderecki, Straesser, Lutoslawski, Kergomard, Lachenmann, Chin and Gehlhaar, you wonder what exactly the limitations of the cello are. After all, the image of dark-brown music in which sadness and consolation go hand in hand comes from the romantic tradition.

Robert Dick - Ladder of Escape 5 (1991) {Attacca BABEL 9158-1}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 209 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 141 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 15 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1991 Attacca | BABEL 9158-1
Jazz / Classical / Post-Modern / Modern Composition / Avant-Garde / Flutes

Prince of the postmodern flute, Robert Dick has once again taken the listener on a journey where he or she thought they couldn't be taken. With his revolutionary techniques for extending the tonal possibilities of instruments – such as multiphonics and other technical modifications – Dick has presented his chosen instrument in an entirely new light as both a concert instrument and as an instrument to be composed for. While Dick has recorded other composer's works before – his infamous recording of Jimi Hendrix being a case in point – he has taken the works of 20th century composers here and juxtaposed them against his own, which stacks up even.

John Carpenter is a rarity among film directors in that he is also a composer who writes the musical scores for his movies as well. Carpenter's 1981 film Escape From New York was a kind of genre hybrid, a science-fiction crime thriller with suggestions of a spaghetti western thrown in. Set in a near future when Manhattan has been converted into a no-man's-land prison, the movie needed an appropriately futuristic soundtrack, and Carpenter came up with a score for synthesizer that he played with his sound designer Alan Howarth. Despite the instrumentation, however, the composer retained a style familiar from such earlier works as Halloween. He favored simple, repetitive keyboard figures, generally two per sequence, set in a fast-slow counterpoint. The Escape From New York score had a few changes of pace, notably a borrowing from Debussy and an ersatz Broadway show tune, "Everyone's Coming to New York" ("Shoot a cop with a gun/The Big Apple is plenty of fun"), but most of the music sounded like earlier Carpenter scores, similarly creating a tense, ominous tone much of the time.