Genesis of Genius

Continuing Contemporary Records’ 70th anniversary celebration, Craft Recordings is proud to announce the release of the new box set, Ornette Coleman – Genesis of Genius: The Contemporary Albums : 2-LP, 2-CD and digital formats out March 25. The sets feature two seminal releases, 1958’s Something Else!!!! The Music of Ornette Coleman and 1959’s Tomorrow Is the Question! The New Music of Ornette Coleman. These albums transformed an unknown jazz visionary from the hinterlands into the talk of the New York scene.

London Symphony Orchestra - Mendelssohn Symphonies Nos 1 & 4 - Sir John Eliot Gardiner (2018) {B&W Society of Sound LSO98}
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© 2018 LSO / B&W Society of Sound | LSO98
Classical / Early Romantic

Completed when Mendelssohn was only fifteen, his First Symphony is an energetic work, exhibiting the young prodigy’s genius and youthful outlook. Both versions of the third movement (the orchestrated scherzo from his Octet from the London premiere, and the original version) are presented here for comparison. One of his best-loved works, the “Italian” Symphony stems from Mendelssohn’s tour of Europe (1829-31) and is inspired by Italy’s vivid sights, sounds, and atmosphere.

Ayreon - The Theory Of Everything (2013) [4CD+DVD] {InsideOut Limited Deluxe Artbook Edition}
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© 2013 InsideOut Music / Century Media | 5052205066690 / IOMLTDCD392
Rock / Prog-Rock / Neo-Prog / Progressive Metal / Heavy Metal

2013 album from Dutch singer, songwriter and musician Arjen Anthony Lucassen AKA Ayreon. Deluxe artbook edition worthy of this album's lavish and grandiose musical content. This includes the double CD album and a DVD featuring a "making of" feature, full-length interview segments, and a time-lapse view of the recording session. Plus a whole other double CD featuring entirely instrumental versions of all the songs, all packaged in a gorgeous artbook package. Artbook is LP-sized with a 48-page booklet. In his latest Ayreon release, The Theory of Everything, Dutch multi-instrumentalist, composer, singer and producer Arjen Anthony Lucassen unveils a completely revamped conceptual universe for Ayreon. Gone are the complicated story lines featuring sci-fi, aliens and time-travel; in their place is a real-world drama set in the here and now.

This disc contains some sonatas for wind instruments by Johann Sebastian Bach from his years in Weimar (1708-17) and Cöthen (1717-23), having in common – as they have come down to us or as several musicologists have proposed – their being intended for the recorder and/or the oboe. The interchangeability of instrumentation, linked to different creative periods, to practical contingencies, and to the inexhaustible desire for perfection that induced the genius of Eisenach, according to the testimony of his earliest biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel, to continually revise his own works, often makes it difficult to go beyond their sterile catalogue dates in tracing their evolution. For this reason an experimental approach was chosen here, to bring back to their presumably original state what today is a handful of works, which were part of a much larger repertory. Chamber music was becoming the composer’s principal occupation in the time period under consideration, which was decisive in the progress of Bach’s career from organist to Konzertmeister (1714) and then to Kapellmeister of a Calvinist court (1717) essentially devoted to the cultivation of secular music.

Frank Zappa - Joe's Corsage (2004) {Vaulternative Records}
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© 2004 Vaulternative Records / The Zappa Family Trust | VR 20041
Rock / Experimental Rock

While no specific designation has been given to Joe's Corsage (2004), the liner notes indicate that this is the debut of an "exciting new series." The title is undoubtedly a clever play on Frank Zappa's Joe's Garage (1979), but the "Joe" in this case is audio archivist Joe Travers, who has been involved with the Zappa Family Trust (ZFT) since the triple-CD release Läther (1996). Granted, exceptions exist, however for the most part the earliest incarnations of the Mothers of Invention are included here with Zappa (guitar/vocals), "Baby" Ray Collins (vocals/tambourine/harmonica), Roy Estrada (bass), and Jimmy Black (drums).
Albeit brief, Joe's Corsage is a hardcore enthusiast's dream, displaying the genesis of Zappa's genius in a rock & roll setting. Let's hope Travers continues to produce a multitude of further and equally diverse installments.

If boiled down to a simple synopsis, the Beatles' LOVE sounds radical: assisted by his father, the legendary Beatles producer George, Giles Martin has assembled a remix album where familiar Fab Four tunes aren't just refurbished, they're given the mash-up treatment, meaning different versions of different songs are pasted together to create a new track. Ever since the turn of the century, mash-ups were in vogue in the underground, as such cut-n-paste jobs as Freelance Hellraiser's "Stroke of Genius" – which paired up the Strokes' "Last Night" with Christina Aguilera's "Genie in a Bottle" – circulated on the net, but no major group issued their own mash-up mastermix until LOVE in November 2006.

Enjoy the best box release ever: The Cult Love (Omnibus Edition) 4xCD Boxset!
Some albums deserve an expanded reissue. Some don’t. The Cult’s second album, 1985’s Love, is largely a work of genius. Despite the heady heights of success scaled by The Cult during the arena rock years, their second album Love is by far their best. Originally released in 1985, there simply isn’t a bad song on here, and evergreen rock anthems such as Rain and the iconic, She Sells Sanctuary are probably their best known and best loved tracks. Re-mastered from the original studio analogue tapes, this four-disc box set is a feast for fans. Aside from the original album, there’s a disc of remixes and non-album B sides, a disc of previously unreleased early demos and a disc recorded live in 1985 on the Love tour. Add a 48-page book with unseen contact sheets from the album photo session and a mass of other material assembled by Astbury and Duffy and you have the ultimate version of one of the greatest British rock records of the 80s.

Two CD edition contains the original 11 track album remastered by Primal Scream and Kevin Shields, plus a bonus CD containing the four track Dixie Narco EP. Digitally remastered 20th Anniversary edition of this classic 1991 album. The first signs of the genesis of Screamadelica came in Spring 1990 when they released 'Loaded'. Initially a throwaway Dance/Rock excursion, Andrew Weatherall took a sample from I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have from their previous album, slipped in some acid-fried funk and threw on a Peter Fonda sample and transformed it into a masterpiece of the era. 'Loaded' was the Primal's passport to Top Of The Pops and elevated Bobby Gillespie to Smash Hits poster-boy status. Subsequent singles were equally potent: 'Come Together', 'Higher Than The Sun' and the MC5-meets-Rave-Italo sensation 'Don't Fight It Feel It'. The album was released to widespread critical acclaim, and is still today frequently acknowledged as one of, if not THE, best albums of the 1990s.

Rick Wakeman's third solo album is among his best, as he employs his vast array of keyboards to their full extent, musically describing the characters pertaining to the days of King Arthur's reign. With orchestra and choir included, although a little less prevalent than on Journey, he musically addresses the importance and distinguishing characteristics of each figure through the use of multiple synthesizers and accompanying instruments. "Lady of the Lake" is given a mystical, enchanted feel, perpetrated by a more subtle use of piano and synthesizer, while the battle of "Sir Lancelot and the Black Knight" is made up of a barrage of feuding keyboard runs and staccato riffs, musically recounting the intensity of the duel. But it's on "Merlin the Magician" where Wakeman truly shines, as the whimsy and peculiarity of this fabled figure is wonderfully conjured up through the frenzy of the synthesizer.